Despite more and more sessions being on Sunday of the conference, I think most people still consider the official start of the show to be the Monday keynote.  This year the event added a second keynote on Tuesday, which Dominic and I have already posted our thoughts on.  It’s just taken me awhile to formulate my thoughts for the Monday keynote! The keynote address was given by:

• Chris Brogan, President, New Marketing Labs (Twitter @chrisbrogan)
• Julien Smith, co-author of Trust Agents (Twitter @julien)

Chris actually teamed up with his co-author of Trust Agents, Julien Smith.  I’ve heard a lot about Julien through Chris’ blog and twitter, and it was nice to put a face to a name and hear him talk as well.  Overall I really liked the message that Chris and Julie gave out: remember social currency can get you farther than monetary currency sometimes.  Chris asked that the audience resist the urge to tweet the keynote as they talked as a social experiment.  I don’t know how it worked out, but I think most people were true to the experiment and did not tweet through it!

Bullet Point Review!

• To be a trust agent:
  • make your own game – standing out
  • one of us – belonging
  • Archimedes effect – leverage
  • agent zero – developing access
  • human artist – developing understanding
  • building an army – developing mass
• You’re competing with literally everything else in the world for attention.
• There are three levels of attention:
  • Awareness
  • Reputation
  • Trust
• In a lot of ways, network marketing is cold calling.
• Trust equations:
  • Trust = Social Capital
  • Social Capital + Web = Links
  • Social Capital + Web =Traffic
  • Social Capital + Web =Social Proof
  • Social Capital + Web =A big f’n network
• Understand there are other currencies than cash – that’s the secret of the game.
• Make Your Own Game
  • Find your value differentiation.
  • Create a new word for yourself.
  • Learn the systems – attuned/distorted.
• One of Us
  • Find the agent zero.
  • Seek frictionless distribution.
  • Be everywhere and create/maintain bonds.
  • All knowledge is vocabulary.
  • Insider language is huge.
• Archimedes’ Effect
  • Be the priest, build the church.
  • Be the relationship before the sale.
  • You live or die by your database.
  • Be part of everyone’s 150
• Human Artist
  • Connect people constantly.
  • Share instead of hoard.
  • Practice simple touch points of loyalty.
  • Self aware vs. Self involved.
• Build an Army
  • Give your ideas handles.
  • Teach them to fish.
  • Bring your own dial tone.
• Be the elbow of every deal.
• Be human at a distance.
• Sometimes people on top forget they’re normal people too.

All in all I think more companies need to remember that there’s a human element to business. Sometimes karma is the best reason to do things.  Here’s the presentation:

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 Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 13: 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!

Seriously, I should steal Mike’s login on GeekCast.fm & change it to my name since I’m always doing the post production on AMF!  Which is my fault that it’s late – we recorded this on Friday and between actual work and finalizing some big weekend plans involving my high school reunion, I didn’t get this edited until early this morning.  We’re probably the last people on Earth to post our recaps of Affiliate Summit East 2009 in New York City, but here it is.  We’re kind of all over the place this episode, so here’s some of the things I remember talking about.  This ramblin’ man of a podcast clocks in at about 54 minutes.

• The parties of Affiliate Summit and Mike’s inability to be in two places at one time.
• The conference facilities.
• Our positive and negative takes on some of the sessions we attended.
• A (now late) birthday shout out to former (?) affiliate marketing dude Sam Harrelson.
• A shout out to Elite Profits and Ian Fernando for giving attendees of their dinner party bottles of Dom Perignon 2000.

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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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