Guest Post by Dominic Fawver.

Session Description: Regardless what your role in the industry is, it’s important to be noticed within the industry. Learn the networking and social media techniques that make it possible.  The panel consisted of:

• Lisa Picarille, Online Marketing Consultant, LisaPicarille.com (Twitter @lisap) (Moderator)
• Michael Buechele, Owner, MikeBuechele.com (Twitter @mikebuechele)
• Trisha Lyn Fawver, Affiliate Manager, Paulson Management Group (Twitter @trishalyn)
• Jen Goode, Doodler in Charge, JGoode Designs (Twitter @JGoode)
• Stephanie Lichtenstein, Affiliate Program Manager, Andy Rodriguez Consulting (Twitter @StephARC)

This session, Getting Noticed FAST, contained a lot of valuable information from people who have gone from being a nobody in Affiliate Marketing to being well known by many of the top people in just a couple of years.  Some of the suggestions were:

“Get involved in the response…go to other sites and comment”   Jen Goode

“Start blogging”  Stephanie Lichtenstein

“Don’t flame people”  Trisha Fawver

“Do something different the first time you meet in person”  Mike Buechele

Many tips were given on the importance of using social media to get your name out there.  Also mentioned was the importance of personal branding and being consistent between all of the different forms of social media that you are on.

From the standpoint of someone who is new to Affiliate Marketing, this was a very good session with plenty of examples from the panelist’s personal experience.  It gave me ideas on where to start on getting noticed so that I can further a career in Affiliate Marketing (if I so chose) by meeting people who are already successful in the field and learn from their experiences and mistakes, while at the same time possibly being able to help them out with my own expertise.  In many cases it is not what you know, but who you know.

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I’m excited to announce that I’ll be speaking at two different affiliate marketing conferences this summer. One I applied to speak at with some dear colleagues of mine back in March after getting the idea in February, which has lead to a build up of excitement. The other came rather unexpectedly recently and I’m very happy to be speaking at both! So come hear me talk about cool stuff!

Affiliate Convention – June 18th & 19th – Denver, CO
Friday, June 19th.  10:15 – 11:15 am.
Super Affiliate Room I: Social Media Marketing

Do you Tweet? Have you found Facebook useful for fun and profit? Wade Sisson, David Snyder, and Trisha Lyn Fawver take this session through the various social media applications and teaches several ways to successfully harness the power of speaking to a massive audience of friends, followers and fellow social media users.

I’ll be speaking along side: Wade Sisson, Director of Marketing for PartnerCentric and David Snyder, Co-Founder of Search & Social

Affiliate Summit East 2009 – August 9th – 11th – New York, NY
Sunday, August 9th.  12:00 – 1:00 pm.
Classroom D: Getting Noticed FAST

Regardless what your role in the industry is, it’s important to be noticed within the industry. Learn the networking and social media techniques that make it possible.

Our panel will be moderated by Lisa Picarille, Online Marketing Consultant at LisaPicarille.com.  I’ll be joined by Mike Buechele, Founder of Comic Book Fury, Jen Goode, Doodler-in-Charge of JGoode Designs, and Stephanie Lichtenstein, Affiliate Program Manager for Andy Rodriguez Consulting.

Some come on out!  I’ll have plenty of good things to say and you’ll be able to meet me live and in person!

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Apparently this same session has been given for awhile now, and is usually referred to as Developing the Right Merchant Mindset.  The speaker was:

• Andy Rodriguez, President, Andy Rodriguez Consulting Inc.

Overall there were some good basics here… but I guess I’ve graduated to where the basics are too basic for me.

Bullet Point Review!

• Lots of merchants don’t understand how affiliate marketing works and hence end up abusing the system.
• Affiliates work when they want and for whom they want – once you understand this you’re going in the right direction.
• Affiliates cannot be fired – they’re not your employees.
• Affiliates don’t work for you, they work with you.
• Affiliates have no fixed work hours and no time requirements.
• Affiliates have no fear of loss of compensation or sick days.
• Affiliates have more work than hours in the day.
• Affiliates don’t need you, you need them.
• Affiliates’ most important asset & ROI is TIME.
• Merchant’s most important & ROI is TRUST.
• Build the relationships and the sales will follow.
  • Be sure your commissions are comparable.
  • Most sales happen in the first 24-48 hours, but long cookies are still appealing to affiliates.
  • Affiliates talk – so make sure it’s good.
• Important to notify affiliates of any downtime ahead of time.
• What does it take?
  • Merchant mindset
  • Affiliate’s first impression
  • Program information
  • Registration/Application
  • Approval Letter – make sure all letters are genuinely personalized
  • Rejection Letter
  • Creating links – make it simple for affiliates to get links
  • What’s in it for the affiliate?
  • Commission rates
  • Return days
  • Creative inventory
  • Clear call to action
  • Deep linking
  • Tools of the trade
  • Link options
  • Commission structure is flexible
  • Affiliate relationship
  • Trust

Points brought up during the Q&A

• Goldencan, popshops – some tools that are easy to help affiliates.
• Successful merchant/AM has 1st hand experience as an affiliate & is able to help partners to improve conversions, drive traffic, & motivate them.
• Just search for your top key words + affiliate to do a vertical analysis.
• There are pros & cons to direct linking that are based on the merchant – in general direct linking will have higher conversion rates.
  • Stronger brands = not so good idea to allow TM bidding
  • Smaller, weaker brands = might be good.
• Should have a program on one network
  • There are problems with different networks and compatibility (adware).
  • Transitioning is different – just be open & clear.
• How do you find niche affiliates to recruit?
  • Tools Aurelius, visit forums like ABestWeb.
• .5% – 1% – 25% of affiliates in a program are active usually.  8-12% is about average.
• Don’t remove affiliates unless they’re doing something unethical or against terms – many will apply with an idea in mind but may not get them in gear right away.
• Continue to reach out to inactive affiliates offering assistance.
  • Is everything okay?
  • Can I help?
  • Have you had a problem with this merchant?
  • Is there anything I can do to help you?
• Remember to include links, promotions, CAB (Cash Activation Bonus) and incentives
• Merchants that have their program across multiple networks with different offers are probably looking to switch networks & are offer better terms on the network they’re moving to as an incentive to get affiliates switched faster.
• If you need contact information that your network doesn’t share, there are tools that will help you go around the network to get information – the network is more of a software application.
• Have contests – it’s a great motivator to get a non-performing affiliate active.
• A low percentage of active affiliates are usually due to bad activation emails or poor merchant support.
• Banners are becomming passe, articles are great, and data feeds are here to stay.

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