Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 57: Geek Cast Wannabes
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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!
It seems longing for a simpler time, back when we all religiously listened to Geek Cast, is a virus that’s going around. Before the band got back together last week on Affiliate Thing, we had a similar idea to emulate that model for fun. Mike is back, and we were also joined by Wade Tonkin of Fanatics and Drew Bennett of BenSpark.com. In in this episode we discuss:
- Our collective love of the original Geek Cast with Shawn Collins, Sam Harrelson, Jim Kukral, and Lisa Picarille.
- The passing of Steve Jobs… would the reaction be similar if Bill Gates had passed?
CityCrashVille Hometown on iPad.- Speculating on what Affiliate Summit Central will be.
- Upcoming Affiliate Summit West in January and how the session voting is going.
- Mike’s recap of the New York Comic Con
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 MoreAffiliate Marketing Fanatics 13: The Last Temptation of Affiliate Summit
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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.
Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 5: Staring Down the Governator
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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!
We are a touch late with delivering last week’s show to you. I was out of my office away lobbying against California AB 178 on Tuesday and then at Web 2.0 Expo the rest of the week, so Mike and I took today to catch up on a few things. We start all business and devolve into my rant on the etiquette of booth staff at trade shows. So be sure to heed my words and stop, collaborate, and listen!
A few things we mention this week:
- My second job as a California lobbyist against AB 178
- Affiliate Voice: The Voice of the Affiliate Industry launched this week. Their president is Melanie Seery of NYAffiliateVoice.com
- Twitter dropped their auto-follow service, so we took a look at 3rd party apps like Tweet Later.
- Mike explored Max Banner Ads as an adserver for his blogs.
- A brief recap of the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco and the tools I found potentially useful: StartForce, Safari Books Online, and GooseGrade
- Another tech blog by our pals Sam Harrelson and Scott Jangro called Cloud39.com
- Shout outs: Stephanie Lichtenstein’s awesome work on the #advertisingtax organization and Facebook group, and Daniel M. Clark’s great help via Twitter.
This episode comes in at a mouth watering 52 minutes.
Read MoreAffiliate Marketing Fanatics Episode 4: Listen to your Community
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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.
- Social Media: Facebook caves into community pressure again, YouTube adds a Twitter Button
- Jermey Palmer uses surveys to make his affiliate marketing education products better.
- Twitter: Salesforce.com creates Twitter brand management service for companies and sells it for 1K/month, Twitter will have paid pro accounts
- 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.
- 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!
Read MoreGeek Dads At Home Podcast
A few geeky stay at home dad’s I know decided to convene during their daddy day care days for a new podcast, aptly titled Geek Dads @ Home.
Happy Birthday Ian Clark | Geek Dads @Home: “The premise of our podcast revolves around three dads working from home while we provide day care for our kids. We will share our insights on the tools that allow us to function in this set up, but more importantly the podcast gives us a record in our own voices of the experiences of raising our children. The hope is that some time in the future, when they can best appreciate it, our kids will subscribe to this RSS feed and hear their dad’s perspectives on their lives growing up ….”
Joe did a guest post here last week, Tales of a Home Office Worker Dad, so I’m stoked to listen to this. I’m sure it will be good stuff! Take a listen if you’re interested in dad’s doteing on their daughters and talking marketing and working from home!
Read MoreAffsum 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.
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