Affiliate Marketing Fanatics Episode 4 [39:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Affiliate Marketing Fanatics – A Publisher (Mike Buechele) and an Affiliate Manager  (Trisha Lyn Fawver) talk about all things Affiliate Marketing.  From blogging to branding, social media to search, video and more!

This week we’re less all over the map, more focused on affiliate conferences, social media and communities, and once again our cherished shout outs.  Of course our favorite topic of all time, Twitter, makes an appearance as they were in the news this week.  The show comes in and just under 40 minutes for your listening pleasure.

1. Social Media: Facebook caves into community pressure again, YouTube adds a Twitter Button
2. Jermey Palmer uses surveys to make his affiliate marketing education products better.
3. Twitter: Salesforce.com creates Twitter brand management service for companies and sells it for 1K/month, Twitter will have paid pro accounts
4. Conferences: Jim Kukral organizing the monetization track for Blog World Expo Oct. 15-17, CJU dates announced Sept. 15-17, Big Omaha tech conference for midwesterners announced.  Trisha will be attending Web 2.0 Expo and ad:tech SF next month.
5. Shout outs: Sam Harrelson who called us Aff Marketing Maniacs, Brook Schaaf & Karen Garcia for their efforts with the Lobby Day against CA AB 178, Tim Robinson and shameless plug for Comic Book Fury

So please, go check it out and comment and let us know what you think!

Affiliate Marketing Fanatics Episode #4:  Listen to your Community – Facebook, Jeremy Palmer, and You(Tube)

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I believe I mentioned before, I’m participating once again in the Affiliate Summit Mentor program.  I sent these same tips and tricks to the person I’m mentoring, and since people are starting to filter into town today for the show, I’ve decided to share these last minute tips with everyone!

Now, some are just general conference/trade show things that a first timer might not really be aware of.  Some are probably common sense, but hey, they’re there for good measure.  So take my advice here, don’t take my advice, it’s up to you.  But some of this might help!

If all goes well and my flight is on time I should be in the air soon, so I hope to see you in Las Vegas!  If you want to meet up with me at any point, send me a Direct Message on Twitter – I’ll have the SMS updates turned on so it’ll be as good as texting me

General Conference Tips

• Business Cards – Bring plenty!  I can’t stress this enough.  It’s the best way for people to remember to contact you when they get back to “the real world” of work after the conference.  Also, if you’re the type of person that likes to enter booth drawings for prizes, most want you to drop off a business card to enter.
• Added Personalization of Business Cards – For an important contact that you definitely want to get back to you, write something distinctive on the back of the card when you give it to them.  It could be your cell phone number or some other bit of contact information that’s not already on the card, or just a note about who you are, like “Met at lunch on Tuesday”.  That will give the person a reminder when they get back that they actually wanted to later connect with you.
• Comfort – wear comfortable clothes and shoes that won’t slow you down or make sitting around in sessions unbearable.  As well, it’ll help to fully assess the conference bag and its contents to know if they’re suitably comfortable for you.  For example, despite being provided a notepad in the bag, I don’t usually use it.  I prefer to use a Composition Book to take notes – not only because the cover is thick and it’s easier to write in when there’s no surface to write on, but also I keep my notes when I get back, so it’s easier to keep them in the same notebook than loose all over.  Be aware of these kinds of personal preferences.
• Literature – don’t be afraid to grab literature from booths & meet market tables.  What I do is take it up to my room and unload at the end of each day.  Then I can fully read more into stuff and decide what I’ll be taking back with me.  I also find that taking stuff back with me does help me remember who I wanted to do more research into working with, more than a business card necessarily.
• Leave Luggage Space – it’s Vegas, and there will be booth people wanting to give you knick-knacks and t-shirts and you may just want to bring home souvenirs, so remember to leave space in your bags for any literature, paperwork, goodies, souvenirs, etc. that you may be bringing home with you.  Buying another bag for that stuff to bring home isn’t fun (trust me, I’ve been there).

Affiliate Summit Specific Tips

• Conference Bag – you’ll be provided with a bag when you register.  Mostly it’ll have literature inserts that businesses have paid to have included.  I recommend going through the literature immediately and removing anything you know you have absolutely no interest in.  Added papers will just bog you down when you’re walking around.  The bag usually also contains a pad of paper someone has sponsored and a pen, amongst other random goodies.
• Registration – Register earlier, that way you have time before anything important starts to get rid of the excess in your bag & get comfortable to embark on more important stuff.  If you go to the conference area just to register before any intentions of going to the Meet Market or sessions, that will give you time to examine the bag itself, pen, notebook, goodies, etc. to see if you’ll need to grab your own supplies to be comfortable and effectively meet your conference goals.
• Meet Market – GO!  I admit, my first Affiliate Summit I didn’t go because the description made it sound like it was a row of merchants sitting around waiting for affiliates to approach them in a creepy way.  But it’s a huge networking opportunity.  There’s drinks, wandering, and yes, you can have some good conversations with industry colleagues.   There are often companies that just get a Meet Market table (they’re less expensive) and won’t have a booth during the exhibit hall, so take the opportunity to talk with anyone you’re interested in doing business with – that may be your only opportunity.
• Water – I don’t know if hotels and conference centers do this for everyone or if the organizers have to request it, but there’s almost always pitchers of cold water and glasses in all the session rooms or just outside.  Carrying around a bottle never hurts either if that’s more your style.
• Timeliness – being on time to sessions will greatly help your comfort level and learning.  I usually try to get there at least a couple minutes early.  That gives me time to find a good seat, get a drink of water, and get settled before the panel actually starts.  That way I’m not interrupting anything by trying to get comfortable or by walking in late.
• Meals – if you have a full conference pass, they provide a continental breakfast & light lunch (usually sandwiches, soup, burgers, that kind of thing).  It’s nothing gourmet but it’s a good chance to talk to some people casually, approach speakers you want to follow up with, things like that.  And you’ve already paid for it with your conference registration, so you might as well take advantage of it, that’s my theory.
• Business Meetings – you may have already scheduled some.  Don’t schedule too many though – you want ample time to explore the exhibit hall and attend panels and sessions.  Also – I made this mistake at the last Summit held at the Rio – make arrangements to meet your appointments near to the conference area.  The conference center of the Rio is at the back of the hotel, so if you’ve made arrangements to meet in the lobby or closer to the casino area, it might be incredibly out of your way to go all the way out there to meet the person.  Besides, you’ll have a more professional meeting anywhere in the back near the conference center than you would out by the casino floor anyway.
• Agenda – take a few minutes now to check out the agenda for the show online.   It’ll save you time now to decide on some of the sessions/events you definitely want to attend than to have to make those decisions on the fly.  However, being flexible isn’t a bad thing – sometimes you hear things from other attendees that you can’t know by reading the description on paper.
• Session/Event Recommendations – these are a couple of sessions that are geared more towards affiliates than merchants. You might want to check out:
  • The Black Ink Session, Sunday 1:30p – 2:30p Classroom C (Miranda 5-6). Jeremy Palmer is a great guy and successful affiliate and really takes a basic “this is how you do it” approach.
  • Ethical Issues in Affiliate Marketing, Sunday 3-4pm Classroom D (Miranda 7-8). There was a session just like this with almost the same lineup of panelists in Boston, and it didn’t turn out that great, to put it politely.  I’m really hoping that they took the feedback given then and will put out a more productive and well run panel this time.
  • Mentor Program Meet Up, Sunday 6:30-7:30pm Brasilia 1-3. You’re probably already planning on attending this, but it’ll be a great mixer and balance amongst new attendees and old hat attendees, so the networking will be great.
  • Opening Remarks & Keynote, Monday 9:45am-10:45am, General Session Room Brasilia 1-7. For one, the keynote will set the tone and you’ll be sorry if you miss it. For two, Gary Vaynerchuk is the keynote and he’s a fantastic speaker!
  • Advanced Optimization for Landing Pages, Monday 2-3pm Classroom C. I’ve heard Olivier Chaine & Lisa Crossley Hunter speak before and they definitely know what they’re talking about, so with just them the session should be good. I’ve never heard Trevor Claiborne speak and I’ve spoken to Beth Kirsch before but never seen her on a panel so I can’t vouch for them.

Las Vegas Tips

• If you’re staying at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino, take a cab from the airport.  The shuttles, while less expensive, take at least an hour to get from the airport to the Rio since it’s off the strip, so usually it’s the last stop before they return to the airport.   If you’ve been traveling all day, you’ll thank yourself for saving the hassle.
• Chapstick is your friend!  If you’re not used to a relatively dry climate like Las Vegas, be sure to carry around some good chapstick or lip balm.  Even if you don’t leave the hotel at all to expose yourself to the elements, the recycled air & smoke in the casino area can be a lot to take with repeteitive exposure.
• There’s a café down the hall on the way to the conference area of the Rio called the Sao Paulo Café – avoid it!   Terrible service, mediocre food.
• There’s also a Starbucks next to that cafe, so if you need your morning latte fix, it’ll be there, but the lines may be long so plan ahead.
• The conference center is in the very back of the hotel, so from the guest elevators and gaming area, it’s a 15 minute walk if you’re taking your time, 5-10 if you’re booking it.  Remember that when planning out your arrival times and any other events during the day.
• The Carnival World Buffet is really good; I highly recommend trying it at least once while you’re there.  Don’t let the $27 price tag scare you – it’s worth it.
• The All-American Bar & Grill is a good option for a decent burger or fries at any hour.

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As the first course of the conference yesterday, I’m sure there was a lot of pressure for this hour and fifteen minutes to really set the tone for the three days of Commission Junction University.  Titled “Affiliate Marketing 101: Back to the Basics”, I attended hoping to maybe pick up some things I didn’t actually know considering I taught a lot of the basics to myself a couple years back.  The speaker was:

• Jeremy Palmer, President, QuitYourDayJob.com

I converse with & follow him on twitter and I’ve heard great things about his last projects The Black Ink Projects and Black Ink 2, although haven’t had a chance to check it out myself.  I won’t know until Thursday if this session really did set the appropriate tone for the conference or not, but it was definitely worth my attendance!

Bullet Point Review!

• Choose Your Niche
  • The niche you choose should be your passion – it’s the easiest foundation to build upon.
  • Know a lot about your niche to be successful.
• Develop a Business Plan
  • Put together a SWOT analysis for you AND your closest competitors – their weaknesses can be your opportunities.
  • Just make it a simple spreadsheet.
  • Have a unique selling proposition.  It’s not enough to just copy someone else, you have to see what they’re doing and how you can do it better.
  • Learn about the customer persona.
  • Inventory your own skills objectively – what can you do yourself and what would you be best served by outsourcing?
• Write Value Added Content
  • Start writing content before you design your site.
  • Content is the key to the site.
  • Have 10-15 pages of content before you launch to improve Quality Score.
• Design Your Site
  • You must have professional tools to create a professional site.
  • Be objective about your experience and consider outsourcing.
  • TOOL: 99Designs for design contests – you only pay for the winner, and you pay much less.
• Develop Your Site
  • Outsourcing programming can be done on Elance or oDesk quite effectively.
  • Be sure to write extremely detailed specifications on what you want the site to do and how it should be done when using outsourced talent.
  • With these services you can escrow your payment so that no money is released until certain milestones are done – and done to your satisfaction.
• Test the Waters with PPC
  • Google hates “rich pages” (also referred to as “thin landing pages”) where the only intent is a conversion.
  • Google recently updated their algorithms and human QC when assigning Quality Scores, so be sure to read up.
  • Essentially Google wants you to develop your own content: they want independent reviews, content not found directly on the merchant’s website, and the comparison of several merchants.
  • Many affiliates have had good success with video reviews because they resonate more with consumers.
  • Remember that Google isn’t the only game in town – test on Yahoo & MSN to discover what works in terms of keywords and ad copy.
• Test & Optimize
  • Look at conversions using keywords.
  • TOOLS: Tracking 202 (free), Prosper 202 (free), Optimize My Site (paid), Google Website Optimizer (free).
  • Pay equal attention to conversion rate and click through rate.
  • Don’t use vague or hype laden copy – it won’t convert well.
  • Split test your landing pages.
• Build a Sustainable Business.
  • Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
  • You want to thrive without Google just in case.
  • Facebook Ads are growing with better ROI.
  • Remember the viral marketing element (what can you do that people will pass on?)
  • You want to be who people will think of when they think of your niche.
  • Create a brand for yourself.
• Random Tips
  • Some books to check out: Unleashing the Ideavirus by Seth Godin & Malcolm Gladwell and The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual by Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, & David Weinberger.
  • When doing product comparisons, try throwing in a weaker competitor to enhance the value of the better products.
  • DO NOT use the standard Wordpress template when adding a blog to your site – make sure it looks like the rest of your site.
  • Comparison pages only need to be very simple tables.

Points brought up during the Q&A

• Mobile has great opportunities for merchants and advertisers, but it’s hard for affiliates.  People are not (yet) likely to use mobile devices to make purchases.
• Outsourcing content?  Elance is ok but Jeremy expressed some displeasure with what he’s got from that site.  An audience member suggested PR Newswire and searching for keywords to find experts.
  • My own suggestion is to try going to LinkedIn & looking for experts to approach for writing.
• Go where the good designers and writers hang out to find them – when you go to freelancing sites you’re getting the people who might be hard up for work and not that great of results.
• In regards to CJ, pay a lot of attention to the Network Earnings bar.
• Once your site’s Quality Score tanks, you’re done.  You have to start over with a new site because there’s no way to get that back.

Jeremy did an excellent job mixing up the experience level of the information he put forth, knowing instinctively that most people attending wouldn’t quite be at the 101 education level in regards to affiliate marketing.

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