Referral Fees:

• Fees paid by advertisers for delivering a qualified sales lead or purchasing inquiry.

This is a more traditional term, not so much used in affiliate marketing.  Often this type of referral fee is related to the second tier of an affiliate program, where affiliates can earn a percentage of what other affiliates they’ve referred to the program have earned.  Many super affiliate bloggers like Zac Johnson and John Chow have admitted that this is where a large part of their income comes from.

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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine

This was also commonly referred to as the “Super Bloggers” panel.  The members consisted, in total, of:

• Jim Kukral, JimKukral.com (Moderator)
• John Chow, JohnChow.com
• Zac Johnson, ZacJohnson.com
• Darren Rowse, ProBlogger.net
• Brian Clark, CopyBlogger.com
• Jeremy Schoemaker, Shoemoney.com

Jeremy was late due to some quality Vegas partying, but once he did arrive he had some quality things to say.  They all did, really, but I especially enjoyed Darren & Brian’s takes as I had never heard them speak before and I’d heard John & Zac.

Bullet Point Review!

• Jim asked what their number #1 money maker on their blog was:
  • John Chow: Switching from an ad network to direct advertising sales using the OIO Publisher Direct plugin.
  • Zac Johnson: Direct ad sales
  • Darren Rowse: Recommended affiliate products.
  • Brian Clark: Launching a membership site & selling WordPress themes.
• Selling any old crap decreases content value; sell things you actually believe in.
• Bloggers just want to write, not sell, so plugins are useful.
• Write about something that’s interesting or else it’s not sustainable.
• Revenue: 1. Direct Ad Sales 2. Affiliate Programs 3. AdSense.
• BC: Selling things (information, membership, etc) instead of advertising makes more money.
• A couple of years ago readers would complain about ads, but now they’re accepted as par for the course.
• The amount of money to be made in “non-sexy” niches is ridiculous.
• Start with what your readers want to buy, not what you want to sell.
• Offer incentives to sign up for your newsletter – 3x the money to be made with subscriptions.
• Newsletters vs. RSS – it’s way more beneficial to get people onto your email list.
• Aweber – BlogBroadcast tools count is included in RSS subscribers & sends an automatic newsletter with your blog posts.
• Many people still have no idea what RSS is, so offer delivery by email too.
• Blogs don’t have to look monetized.
• Sell yourself using consulting.

Points brought up during the Q&A

• Wait until 100 or 1000 readers to bother displaying RSS numbers on the blog.
• RSS subscriber count is powerful for branding and can be factored into ad prices.
• JC: Rule of thumb when setting an ad price – what is the ECPM for that same spot on an ad network?  Double that.  Offer the ad to run for a month at a time or a quarter, depending on price.
• Condense your header – big headers take up valuable space.
• How much traffic do they see through search?  DR sees about 40% to ProBlogger and 60% to Digital Photography School.
• Chitika is a good ad network with powerful blog widgets for contextual, relevant ads.
• Write for your users, not Google.  Search traffic is just a bonus.
• It’s a tricky line to keep your editorial integrity and still sell stuff, so don’t sell willy-nilly.
• Build a business – get repeat customers, loyal readers.
• What percentage of the time do they work?  A LOT – you have to bust your ass, this isn’t a get rich quick scheme.
• Always look deeply at a product & only recommend valuable things.
  • Announce it
  • Talk about the product info, merchant or manufacturers information.
  • Share testimonials of readers.
  • Review your experience with it.
• Credibility is key with sharing information.
• Endorse, review products.
• Sell advertising in newsletters, lots of merchants love that.
• Establish yourself as an expert.
• Remember that Teaching Sells!

This was a very informative panel, and a great way to kick off the sessions.  The room was packed, and I especially liked Jim’s approach to using Twitter to get questions for the audience.  With a tech set crowd like bloggers, it was highly effective and a great panel for sure.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="280" caption="From miss604's Flickr Stream"][/caption]

Blog World Expo kicked off this morning and is going strong.  Due to a late arriving flight, my desire to sleep overtook my desire to hear today’s keynote – the one I’m looking forward to is tomorrow with Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park & Fort Minor anyway.  Ran into some familiar faces right away and hit the ground running into the super blogger panel moderated by Jim Kukral and featuring Darren Rowse of ProBlogger, Brian Clark of Copyblogger, Zac Johnson, John Chow, and Jeremy Schoemaker of Shoemoney, who misunderstood the timing I guess and was 45 mins late

Great stuff from those guys and I was even randomly picked to win a copy of Darren’s ProBlogger book after asking a decent question.  Of course, I’ll have more on that panel later.

Next I stayed in the same room for the affiliate marketing panel with Shawn Collins of Affiliate Summit, Mike Allen of Shopping-Bargains, and Tim Jones of TheRealTimJones (yes, all familiar names if you listen to RedHatBlueHat).  They had some really good stuff and brought up some tools and such that I’m definitely going to be looking into when my whirlwind crazy travel is  done.  Once again, more to come.

You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t blogged a lot about CJU.  Due to the motel I was staying at being so far away and the internet there being spotty I didn’t have a lot of time to get those written up.  But I’m working on it!

If you’re stuck at home with Twitter and trying to keep up with what’s going on out here, go to Twitter Search for #bwe08 and you can see all the tweets that attendees have tagged.  I’m trying to keep mine updated as I remember to use TwitPic to share a photo of something.