Guest Post by Dominic Fawver.

Session Description: Learn advanced approaches to running a clean affiliate program. A review of the systems, processes, tools and techniques used by leading affiliate programs to keep their programs clean. The panel consisted of:

• David Naffziger, CEO, BrandVerity (Moderator)
• Jamie Birch, Owner, JEBCommerce (Twitter @JamieEBirch)
• Graham MacRobie, President & CEO, Alias Encore (Twitter @grahammacrobie)
• Joshua Sloan, CEO, Sloan Tech (Twitter @sloanzone)

This session contained a lot of useful information targeted mostly to companies with an affiliate program and also outsource program managers.  Some of the information was useful for affiliates, especially the need for a good relationship between affiliates and affiliate managers.  The session consisted of short presentations by David Naffziger and by Graham MacRobie and then the floor was opened up for questions.

The presentations gave a brief overview of some of the common forms of abuse affiliate programs need to avoid.  These include PPC violations, Cookie Stuffing, Legitimate link replacement, transaction lead fraud, and Brand Squatting.  Some of the ways given to combat abuse were to know how your partners work – know how traffic is normally sent, who else they work with, is their plan consistent with their performance, and is their traffic pattern different from the normal.  Examples of various software was give, a couple from Brand Verity and also free alternatives.

The question and answer portion gave several very good tips.  One of the first was that no program should auto-approve, that affiliates each be inspected to make sure that they are who they say they are.  Another was to go over the terms and conditions listed for the program at least once a year;  it is better to have over strict rules and regs. that are lightly enforced rather than not enough.  This will help in the long run because if abuse is found it can then be removed.  Less than desirable affiliates are likely to group in the smaller networks as they are less likely to be discovered.  More abuse is likely in a new affiliate program.  Having the highest payout can make you a target on account of greed.   Many of these comments can be used both by affiliate managers and also act as warnings to affiliates as to the relationship they should have with their manager.

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I took it light this time around at Affiliate Summit and only went to two events that weren’t hosted by the conference itself. Dominic and I spent the two days before the conference wandering Manhattan seeing some sights, so by the time the conference started we were not that interested in traipsing all over the city again. But we did make sure to go to the couple of smaller parties we were invited to. I’d have been asleep at the networking wheel had I not gone to any of the parties!  So here’s my take on the parties with some thanks and photos I took!

buy.at Party @ Empire Hotel

Big thanks to Ayako from buy.at for extending the invitation!  This party was on the rooftop bar at the Empire Hotel, which despite being 12 floors up was considerably shorter than most the surrounding buildings.  Only one part of the hotel bar was reserved for the party, so it was a relatively intimate affair.  We started by working the area and saying hello to old friends, and ended sitting with Heather Smith of Beautiful British Columbia and Murray Newlands of MurrayNewlands.com.  It was wonderful conversation and Dominic seemed to really feel comfortable with the jargon conversation and other assorted topics.

MarketLeverage & John Chow’s Dot Com Pizza @ Original Famous Ray’s Pizza

This was just what the doctor ordered!  I had a few culinary goals for my trip to New York: bagels, cheesecake, and pizza.  New York pizza is legendary, so I was excited to be invited to share some pizza with Dina and crew.  We got there a bit late but there was still plenty of great pizza!  I had my first real conversation with John Chow and Ted Murphy, both pleasant.  I felt bad because there wasn’t much room to sit with the main group by the time we got there to schmooze and converse, so Dominic and I ended up sitting back in the corner where the surplus pizzas were and didn’t have much chance to talk unless people came back and talked to us.

I thought it was especially funny that Dominic got an IZEA shirt from Heather earlier in the day in the Blogger’s Lounge, and decided to change out of his Blinkstar Media shirt to the Izea shirt before leaving.  We walked right up the stairs at Ray’s to see Ted Murphy, who of course commented on the IZEA shirt!  Good thing I’d taken some time earlier in the day to tell Dominic what IZEA is!  After hearing Ted and Dina and Heather talk about the last IZEAfest and the upcoming one, he really wanted to go!  Too bad we can’t afford to go to Florida and have fun with them!  Big thanks to Dina at MarketLeverage for the invite!

TechKaraoke @ the Hilton

This was unexpectedly fun, though I wish I had been able to get better photos!  Of course, the embarrassment factor of karaoke almost requires the lights to be dimmed, so the photos didn’t turn out.  I hear that I missed Chris Brogan singing a Jay-Z number, but I got down there just in time to see Ted Murphy, Shawn Collins, and Drew Bennett bust out some Milli Vanilli!  Throughout the evening I got to catch up with Connie Berg while listening to the vocal stylings of Todd Farmer, Jim Kukral, Missy Ward, and Brian Littleton amongst others.

I also never realized that you never truly appreciate how LONG some songs are until you hear them butchered at a karaoke event!  All in all though it was a good time and I hope Shawn & Missy bring back the TechKaraoke folks to do it again.  And this time bring the lights up for more embarrassing evidence!

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