Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 54: Interviewing John Monarch
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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 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 MoreOnline Marketing Glossary: Manual Approval
Manual Approval:
- An affiliate application approval process where all applicants are manually approved for an affiliate program.
This is the method I personally subscribe to since I prefer to look at the affiliates first to determine their quality level before clouding up the program with possibly bogus affiliates. I had an interesting conversation with Brad Waller back in August at the Affiliate Classroom LIVE event about manual vs. auto approve and he made the good point that it all depends on what your goals with a program are. For some, manual approval might be cumbersome if there is a large demand for the program but a small staff. It’s really something to be determined on a case-by-case basis.
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Commission Junction University – Day 1
I’m down here in lovely Santa Barbara for Commission Junction University, and day one is in the can. The weather has been nice…although living in California I’m generally used to this weather, but being in the Southern end of the state there’s a distinctly different feel that I can’t quite put my finger on. But I enjoy it.
I flew from Oakland to Los Angeles on a puddle jumper, and from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara on a pack of gum. Between flights and layovers and cab rides, I arrived at my motel at 12:15am. The room is your average motel fare: 70’s floral bedspread, translucent yellow cords on the lamps, inmate furniture. The room also has a mini fridge, microwave, nicely sized TV, free wifi, and a surprisingly comfortable bed & pillows – not too shabby for $77/night. This makes me glad I’m staying at a real hotel for Blog World Expo this coming weekend.
Because of the high cost of cab fare ($25+), once I got the conference hotel I didn’t want to leave until the end of the day. I ran into Lisa Picarille and Wade Tonkin almost immediately in passing after I registered and headed to the first session, which I’ll cover later. Jeremy Palmer from Quit Your Day Job lead the first “course” as CJU calls them, and Olivier Chaine from Magnify 360 led the second. On a personal note, I read his name in the program and knew the pronunciation would be something like “o-live-e-ay shayne” and was confused when the emcee pronounced it very phonetically (olive-er chain). I was disappointed in CJ when Olivier pronounced his own name at the end of his session much like I’d imagined it was properly pronounced…if you’re going to introduce someone, learn how to pronounce their name.
I digress. Both courses were informative and well done, and I’ll be posting a bullet point review of both later on. After the courses were done I took a quick break and then headed out to the CJU Expo, a small area of tables nicely held outside under umbrellas that more closely resembled the Meet Market at Affiliate Summit than your typical trade show. It was mostly merchants and different CJU programs with tables, with the exception of an OPM (Schaaf Consulting), a couple affiliates (SurfMyAds.com), and a table for the Performance Marketing Alliance.
It’s a good thing I saw that PMA table, because it made it easy to run into some familiar faces in the form of Connie Berg & Brad Waller. Also was able to say hello to Michael Brucker from RingCentral at their table, one of the organizers of the BAAMC whose quarterly meetings I attend. (By the way if you’re an affiliate manager with a company in the SF Bay area interested in getting involved and possibly hosting about 20-25 ppl for lunch some day, let Michael know).
After the expo it was zoo time with the welcoming event being held down the street at the Santa Barbara Zoo. As much as I wanted to go, my phone was practically dead for some reason and my stomach was a bit upset, so I opted to head back to my motel. Tomorrow is a day full of sessions that look pretty good, and a keynote from Guy Kawasaki…who I think may literally be giving me the nifty orange Alltop shirt off his back afterwards. More about that if/when it happens 😉
Affsum Session: Performance Marketing Association Q&A
Well, I think many people attending this session were expecting the topic to be heated, but l’m not sure they were expecting some of the venom that seemed to be in the room. Speaking for myself, I certainly didn’t. Originally there was only supposed to be one panelist fielding questions, but since 4 out of 5 working group leaders were in attendance, they were also recruited to speak. So ultimately the panel consisted of:
- Rebecca Madigan, Performance Marketing Association
- Sam Harrelson, Publisher, Cost Per News
- Brook Schaaf, Schaaf Consulting
- Brad Waller, VP Business Development, AdJungle.com
- Peter Bordes, CEO, MediaTrust
Guns were slinging! Unfortunately there’s not many bullet points to be had, but here you go.
Bullet Point Review!
- PMA is in germination phase – not a real entity yet.
- Why start now?
- Misinformation & lack of representation.
- Legislation.
- Lack of transparency.
- Maturity of industry.
- Formation process still underway.
- Interviewed over 60 industry leaders, Formation Advisory Board voted in by 100 peers.
- Working groups of 45 volunteers.
- Working groups make recommendations on formation.
- FAB 11 ratifies formation proposals (click here to see members).
- The working group committees are Scope/Objectives (headed by Sam Harrelson), Governance (Brook Schaaf), Fundraising (Peter Bordes), Membership (Durk Price), and Operations (Brad Waller).
Points (or other observations in this case) brought up during the Q&A
- Right off the bat the questions were hostile. There’s animosity about the PMA using the NY Tax situation as a launching point for formation despite the fact that they can’t do anything to help.
- Essentially there’s nothing the PMA can do since they’re NOT a fully formed organization, no matter how much they want to help.
- Rebecca acted as moderator and moved the conversation on after almost 20 minutes of hostile banter.
- The PMA blog as been quiet because the people in working groups have had their heads down working on things without much to report at this point.
- The term “Performance” has been used over “affiliate” because it is more inclusive of the larger base of members within the industry. Inclusive of a lot more relationships than just the affiliate – merchant relation.
- The PMA has a very similar model as a chamber of commerce but the scope is still being set up. They are looking at the chamber model in forming things. Mostly they want to improve visibility & credibility.
- Rebecca was questioned as to why she didn’t attend the meetings in Albany that the NY affiliates had since she’s actually the only paid member. It was decided that there was no reason because it would have been redundant and she can’t represent an organization that isn’t formed and doesn’t officially exist.
- They were asked why they divorced themselves from ABestWeb after the controversy, to which they responded that they didn’t divorce from it BUT once a particular few threads got ugly and became increasingly unprofessional they just stopped participating in those threads.
- There’s no conspiracy regarding Rebecca’s involvement – Anik Singal of Affiliate Classroom generously donated her salary for a year and she’s just being paid to “corral cats” and help form the organization. Her comment was that if she weren’t paid for this she’d have bailed long ago based on the assumptions about her involvement and what she’s had to deal with.
- An affiliate asked how they can be assured that the PMA won’t be overtaken by large company sponsorhips and forget the little affiliate? The affiliate industry is it’s own little ecosystem and the heart of it is the average affiliate. They’ve been very hypersensitive to the issue to ensure that affiliates are included.
It seems that there’s lots of confusion about the organization – or lack thereof – and hopefully the Q&A has taken things in the right direction. Perhaps Q&A wasn’t the right moniker. Maybe Suggestion Session or Feedback Forum might have worked better. It was disappointing to see one of the most vocal critics of the PMA – ABestWeb founder Haiko de Poel Jr – leave the session half way through in apparently disgust. I hope that future discussions going forward will be a bit more productive than the session in Boston.
Read MoreLast Call for Affiliate Classroom Live! Pass
This is all she wrote, folks! I’m giving you until 7pm PST to enter to win my available pass to Affiliate Classroom Live! August 9th at the Boston Seaport Hotel in Boston, MA. This is conveniently the day before Affiliate Summit East kicks off, so if you’re attending ASE, you can work this easily into your schedule.
The Affiliate Classroom Live! pass is a $300 value. Learn from and interact with the industry’s top professionals… somehow including myself! This half-day workshop for affiliate managers will focus on:
- Networking – We’ll place you in peer groups where you can meet one another and begin building relationships.
- Roundtable Discussions – Join with your peers and a topical expert to discuss affiliate marketing best practices and advanced affiliate management strategies.
The speakers will be:
- Peter Figueredo
- Trisha Fawver (yes, that’s me)
- Lee Gientke
- Sam Harrelson
- Rebecca Madigan
- Heather Paulson
- Lisa Riolo
- Brad Waller
The winner will be drawn at random – all you have to do is email your interest to Contests@Trishalyn.com to enter! I will announce the winner tomorrow.
Read MoreAffiliate Classroom Live! August 9th
Part of advancing your career is continuing your education, so its important to learn what you can, when you can. Continuing doing their part for the affiliate community and affiliate managers, Affiliate Classroom is offering another Affiliate Classroom Live training session for Affiliate Managers the day before Affiliate Summit East in Boston this August.
I attended their full day session last February and I have to tell you – it was a completely invaluable experience. I learned so much… it was worth devoting an entire day to. I also recapped my impressions of the various sessions via this very blog. The only bummer to the whole day was the length of time in grossly uncomfortable chairs with no tables to write on. Incidentally, I spent most the time sitting on the floor using the chair as a platform – I’m just not a lap writer.
They’re at it again, this time taking in the feedback they received and cutting it down to a half day of mostly round table discussions lead by experts – and me.
That’s right, yours truly will be leading a round table discussion at this summit’s event titled: Virtual Social Butterflies: Online Networking & Its Importance for Affiliate Managers
Successfully managing an affiliate program relies heavily on being an approachable manager, developing good relationships with your affiliates. It’s equally important to develop good working relationships with your peers in the industry. We’ll talk about the blog community, social networks, social bookmarks, Twitter, and how they can benefit the affiliate manager.
Besides me, since I’m hardly an “expert” in this field, discussions will be lead by Sam Harrelson on web 2.0, Lisa Riolo on pitching your affiliate program internally, Brad Waller on the NY Affiliate Tax implications, a presentation by Heather Paulson on effective strategies, and some other well known industry leaders. So come on out and let’s talk! Register for the event now at AffiliateClassroomLive.com!
Thanks to Affiliate Classroom’s Rachel Honoway for extending the invite to me!
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