Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 55: Interviewing Erin Cigich
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Affiliate Marketing Fanatics – A couple of hyper-caffeinated affiliate marketers (Mike Buechele) and (Trisha Lyn Fawver) talk about all things Affiliate Marketing. From blogging to branding, social media to search, video and more!
You’ve come to love it – our interviews! This go-round we’re interviewing speakers at the upcoming Affiliate Summit East at the New York Hilton in New York City. Today we’re chatting with Erin Cigich about her origins in affiliate marketing & her presentation “Making Affiliate Marketing a Career”. In in this episode we discuss:
- Erin’s ascent to the top at Clickbooth, her origins in marketing , and SEO.
- Determining your strengths to maximize your longevity and stability in affiliate marketing.
- Clickbooth’s new CPC network & staying flexible with your niches and traffic sources.
- Follow Erin on Twitter: @ErinCigich
- Include Erin’s presentation on your calendar, Sunday August 21st at 3:30pm in Sutton (South & Regent)
- Show some love to today’s co-host Eric Nagel! Blog: EricNagel.com & Twitter: @esnagel
Find us on Twitter: @AMF_Podcast, @MikeBuechele & @TrishaLyn. Like us on Facebook! Be old fashioned and just leave us a comment!
Special thanks to GeekCast.fm for hosting Affiliate Marketing Fanatics!
Read MoreAffiliate Marketing Fanatics 54: Interviewing John Monarch
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Affiliate Marketing Fanatics – A couple of hyper-caffeinated affiliate marketers (Mike Buechele) and (Trisha Lyn Fawver) talk about all things Affiliate Marketing. From blogging to branding, social media to search, video and more!
You’ve come to love it – our interviews! This go-round we’re interviewing speakers at the upcoming Affiliate Summit East 2011 at the New York Hilton in New York, NY. Mike’s a busy beaver and needs a break, so my co-host for this episode is the awesome Eric Nagel! Today we’re chatting with John Monarch about his origins in affiliate marketing & his “Ask the Expert” topic “High Risk Merchanting – Management and Risk Mitigation”. John is the President of Monarch Holdings LLC. In this episode we discuss:
- John’s origins in the Physics world and his transition into affiliate marketing.
- Some fellow former physicists Karen Garcia & Brad Waller.
- Merchants in certain niches need to be aware if their space is considered “high risk” by the banking industry (like smaller travel merchants).
- John’s ready to talk to merchants about their banking and how to avoid charge backs and keep their rates at a reasonable risk level.
- The difference between a charge back and a refund. A charge back, whether won or lost, still counts against a merchant’s charge back number.
- Put John’s discussion on your Affiliate Summit Schedule! Monday August 22nd, 5:00 – 6:00 pm in the Networking Space.
- Follow John on Twitter: @papajohn56
- Show some love to today’s co-host Eric Nagel! Blog: EricNagel.com & Twitter: @esnagel
Find us on Twitter: @AMF_Podcast, @MikeBuechele & @TrishaLyn. Like us on Facebook! Be old fashioned and just leave us a comment!
Special thanks to GeekCast.fm for hosting Affiliate Marketing Fanatics!
Read MoreFoursquare, Gowalla, Scoville – Geolocation Roundup
Back in January I was at a crossroads with Foursquare. I know I’ve mentioned this to people here and there, but the lack of cultivation was really getting on my nerves. It seemed that there were no moderators over there. For example, there’s a Walmart 2 minutes from my house. I go there frequently due to the convenience, and get my prescriptions there. So checking in often, I was mayor. After some time using Foursquare, and I guess with wider adoption of the service on this side of the Bay Area, I noticed it was harder to find the “right” Walmart in Foursquare as there were eventually 5 different check-in locations for the same physical Walmart.
From everything I could tell at the time, there was nowhere within the service to flag duplicate locations. Being slightly OCD, this bugged me to no end. I’d complain, attempt to contact them, no response.
Well, of course this is mostly a useless game with some potential for local businesses to market to me by offering coupons when I check in or something. So I couldn’t get too irritated.
At my wits end with Foursquare, I used it while in Las Vegas for Affiliate Summit West and then said sayonara. I used Facebook Places for awhile, then after learning that Gowalla would kill two birds with one stone and integrate with Facebook, I jumped on it.
I quite like Gowalla now and have been using it since January. There’s no mayorships, but you can “find” amusing little items at different locations. Like I’ve received Cowboy Boots at two different steakhouses. Gowalla has better graphics and I really dig it’s Android app better than the newest versions of Foursquare. From what I can tell, their service is growing as well and has frequent updates. Every time it updates, I like the functionality of the app better. One of my favorite features of Gowalla is that some businesses have made their little icons graphics of their locations or logos. It helps me find the right place. Best of all, there’s very very FEW duplicates!
One of the greatest features of Gowalla is that you have to actually be in a geographic proximity to the location in order to check in. So you don’t have a bunch of people jokingly checking into your house from thousands of miles away. Gowalla has excellent GPS technology. Most of the time once I enter a business and start the app, it suggests where you want to check in and knows exactly where I am, despite having checked in nearby elsewhere. For example… I went into my doctor’s office last week, opened the app, and it suggested the office right off the bat – despite having not been there since February.
Lately I’ve received a few invites to Scoville, which is currently in private beta. The idea behind Scoville is that it collects local recommendations based on your check ins. I liken it to Yelp Lists, where you can collect your check ins into recommendations. The theory, I suppose, is that not all the places you check into you’d necessarily want to recommend and evangelize. I signed up and I’m interested in participating, but there’s a problem – it integrates with Foursquare.
So what to do? I certainly don’t want to check in to both Gowalla AND Foursquare everywhere I go. I updated my Foursquare app so I can check in and test out Scoville, but I’m still at a crossroads. Are there business uses for Scoville? I hope to find out & report back! What are your thoughts on the geolocation check in services?
Read MoreWhat #ASE11 Sessions I’m Voting For
Let the games begin! Voting has opened up for Affiliate Summit East 2011. While some people have not been happy with this voting system, I think it evens the playing field nicely. As well, it clears any conspiracy theories about how sessions are chosen.
Before I begin, I will say I have a horse in this game. I’ve submitted a panel, The Future of Coupons in Affiliate Marketing, for consideration. If picked, I’ll be moderating this panel with industry coupon veterans Mike Allen (Shopping-Bargains.com), Connie Berg (FlamingoWorld.com), Carolyn Tang Kmet (Groupon.com), and Kim Rowley (ShoppingBookmarks.com). Please take a moment to register, confirm, then vote for our panel!
Okay, that being said, these are the panels I’m voting for. All of them have very intelligent speakers, well thought out ideas, and will offer merchants and affiliates great insight into the topics.
- It’s Not Your Mother’s Affiliate Program
- Creatives Deliver Success
- Evolution of Local Search
- Do-Not-Track? Not-So-Fast
- Killing the Affiliate Nexus Tax Dead!
- Got an Idea? Make it a Reality.
- 10 Questions for a Prospective Affiliate Manager
- A World Without Cookie Tracking
- How to Convince Online Shoppers You’re Real
- Learn to Create a Likeworthy Facebook Page
- Social Media in Niche Markets
- Merchant ABCs – Launching a New Merchant Program
- How to Avoid FTC Scrutiny in Advertising
- Affiliate Improv!
- Are Your Affiliates Adding Value?
It’s All About the Cookies!
Philanthropist extraordinaire Missy Ward has announced her latest project to help fellow marketers and share some yummy recipes in her new book, It’s All About The Cookies. As of today, Missy is now accepting folks to submit their recipes! Not only will this be a great book, but it’s ultimately for a great cause. 100% of the net profits will be donated to the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer, which has raised more than $380 million since 2003 to help fight this horrible disease.
This unique book may look like a cookbook, smell like a cookbook, and you’ll be able to make yummy delicious treats like from a cookbook… but here’s the catch. It’s REALLY a marketing book. When you submit your recipe you must also submit a marketing insight to share with other marketers. So not only are you going to get some great recipes (I’m very partial to the one I submitted), but you’re going to get some marketing schooling.
From their website:
Since the 90’s, affiliate marketers have had a love affair with cookies – not the chocolate chip, or oatmeal variety – but the pieces of code that ultimately tracks affiliates’ sales and commissions earned.
These affiliate marketers are a diverse group. Some work part-time and earn enough to subsidize their income while others have created extremely lucrative businesses.
For the uninitiated, Missy Ward is Co-Founder of Affiliate Summit, Co-Publisher/Co-Editor in Chief of FeedFront Magazine, VP of Operations for MoneyMindedMoms.com, Founder of Affiliate Marketers Give Back, and all around amazing woman I’m happy to know. Also involved in this great project are Mary Poiley, founder of InternetCareerHunt.com; and Jen Goode, Doodler in Charge of JGoodeDesigns.com.
If you’ve got an awesome recipe, and some keen marketing advice or knowledge to share, please submit a recipe!
Read More1st Affiliate Summit Day SF Recap
The first ever Affiliate Summit Day Meet Up happened on Tuesday. I’ve had a lot of time to digest, and it was definitely a great time. Knowing ahead of time that my best method of transportation into San Francisco would be BART, I was relieved to see that the meet up location was just 2 short blocks from the BART station. I was delighted to wander up to Kate O’Briens to see the familiar faces of Julie Vazquez, Lisa Picarille, and Murray Newlands congregating outside the bar.
Inside, more affiliate marketers! More familiar faces guided me through the crowd to point out where our nerdy group was assembled, but also, more patrons belonging to the group generally referred to as the “public”. I really enjoyed talking to a few new folks, and was especially flattered when someone approached me, already knowing my name, and proceeded to thank me for the knowledge I shared during our Get Noticed Fast presentation at Affiliate Summit East 2009 in New York. How nice!
Scheduled to speak was Murray Newlands about site monetiztion, however due to some unexpected limitations of the bar (noise, other patrons, space, etc) the presentation was scrapped. Hopefully Murray will just shift his presentation to next month’s meet up!
All in all, it was great. A little rough, but hey it was the first one! Huge thanks to Lisa Picarille for organizing the event – I’m sure it was NOT an easy task! In case you live under a rock & haven’t heard, Affiliate Summit Day is going to happen once a month on the last Tuesday of each month. You can follow the fun and track where your local meet up is happening on Meetup.com
