Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 15: Be My Yoko Ono
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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 kept it short & sweet this week, but hey! We did two weeks in a row! YES… I’m patting us on the back for that. We talked briefly about some things that have been going on in the industry this week, and had a short & sweet conversation with limited tangents. And almost no discussion of Twitter, other than a third party service mention. Since it was so short I messed with outro music too, which brought us to a pleasantly succinct 19:30. In in this episode we discuss:
- The fantastic fill in job Eric Nagel did last week.
- Affiliate Day came & went on September 14th.
- Sponsored Tweets picked up their traffic
- CJU, despite neither of us going.
- How cool it is when industry celebs remember you!
- Halloween & Fall promotions are upon us!
- Fantasy Football with Jason Rubacky and Shawn Collins… and a brief girl’s guide to how scoring works.
Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 10: Gonna Make a Change
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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!
Unfortunately this week we had a mic failure on Mike’s part, so even though I could hear him when we were recording the podcast on Skype, when listening back he was inaudible. I tried amplifying it and leveling it and everything, but it was a lost cause. So instead, we decided I’d give you a recap on what we talked about since they were all pretty important issues. Basically, we’re taking a page from Shawn Collins’ book on podcast failures ;). So the title refers both to all the changes going on with tax rules and disclosure regarding affiliates AND to the change Mike has to make to get the recording right next week!
The recap episode is a short and sweet 26 minutes on the dot since it includes a Jackson tribute at the end.
In this show, we discussed:
- A recap of Affiliate Convention.
- Amazon dropped North Carolina affiliates and sent a warning letter to Rhode Island affiliates. Darren Rowse wrote about it on Problogger.
- The FTC is tightening it’s rules regarding disclosure, but it’s still ambiguous enough to leave affiliates questioning what this means for them. Daniel M. Clark wrote an article on the FTC disclosure issue, as well as Brian Clark of Copyblogger’s wrote about how to turn disclosure into a selling point.
- Twitter servers took a hit yesterday when the news about Michael Jackson’s sudden death broke. Are they ready to be a major search engine?
- Rumors swirled about other celebrity deaths – this doesn’t make Twitter look like a legitimate resource in the eyes of skeptics.
- Finally, Rest in Peace to Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson, who both passed away yesterday. We pay tribute to MJ and pontificated on whether or not we’d see affiliates attempting to capitalize on these events. I see just now that Shawn Collins is thinking about this topic as well on his blog.
Cribbed Content for May 29th
At first glance when starting to compile this week’s Cribbed Content, it didn’t look like much was going on. My Google Reader was kind of light, as were the other scoops and news coming across my desk. But then when I really started to dig, I found some cool stuff! Including a really easy Twitter Contest from DIY SEO to win a Kindle!
- Last week I reported that Affiliate Summit East 2009 was all sold out of booths. They’re now all sold out of Meet Market tables as well, the first time for them that they’ve sold out of exhibitor space before Early Bird pricing was done. Congrats to the ASE09 team!
- Speaking of Affiliate Summit, co-founders Missy Ward and Shawn Collins were in Dallas at the Inbound Marketing Summit speaking about monetizing blogs. Missy was kind enough to share their slides from the presentation.
- Affiliate network ShareASale is toying with an Affiliate API and has released the initial sections for use.
- Google recently changed their trademarks policy in regards to AdWords paid search ads. Search Engine Land wrote an article on how to protect your brand under Google’s new trademark policy, and Geno Prussakov also wrote an article on how this applies to affiliate marketing.
- Apparently Google mucked around with PageRank… AGAIN… and devalued Twitter profiles. Which is fine with me since I realized awhile back my twitter page was PR9 when this here blog was only PR2 (currently my twitter page is a PR3). What really irritated me was that, out of nowhere, this blog went down to PR0 out of nowhere with no real changes other than a redesign (that, if anything, should have HELPED SEO). So in my opinion Google can shove with with their PageRank racket anyway. Anyway, Andy Beard explains a few things about the change.
- I’ve seen a certain someone from a certain CPA network tweeting a lot in the last two days about making money from Twitter with CPA ads. That seems to be ALL this person is tweeting about and it’s getting on my anti-spam nerves. So instead of calling this person out, I’ll be passive-aggressive and just pass on this article for everyone: 10 Irritating Mistakes that People Make with Twitter. Thanks Nikki Pilkington for a good article right when I was thinking about it!
- I’m a big fan of to-do lists. There’s been some talk about different apps recently (I was turned onto Toodledoo and love its integration with iGoogle homepage). Nate Moller wrote a great article on why to-do lists are key to entrepreneur success that any slightly unmotivated or scattered entrepreneur should read!
Cribbed Content for May 22nd
It’s been a slow week for news coming across my desk. Then again, it’s been a slow week for me in general. We’re doing Affiliate Marketing Fanatics about every other week now when news is slow. Hopefully with the upcoming LinkShare Symposium in New York, Affiliate Convention in Denver, and a smattering of other events we should have more to talk about soon! In the meantime, check this stuff out.
- Geno Prussakov posted some pretty great articles on his blog this week, 7 Common Problems with Affiliate Data Feeds and Common Mistakes of New Affiliate Program Managers. I have to give Geno kudos for some great articles!
- Andy Beard wrote an insightful entry on his blog about his Product Launch Affiliate Strategy, and what checklist he uses to determine if he’ll support a new affiliate launch or not. It’s definitely a good read for any affiliate starting out, and any merchant who wants to optimize their launches to make them attractive to affiliates.
- FeedFront Magazine has issued a call for entries for their 7th issue, which will also serve as the conference guide for Affiliate Summit East 2009 in NYC, at which I’ll be speaking!
- Speaking of Affiliate Summit East 2009, they’re all sold out of booths! You snooze, you lose!
- More interesting posts about whether or not you should disclose affiliate links with Shawn Collins’ Affiliate Link Disclosure Manifesto. Good stuff.
Affiliate Marketing Fanatics #6: ad:tech, Cafepress, and Hootsuite
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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’re back after two weeks away. Here’s a rundown of what we ramble about this time around. In in this episode we discuss:
- Trisha is the newest member of Paulson Management Group.
- TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop, Digsby, and Hootsuite.
- ad:tech San Francisco Recap.
- The enormity of the Affiliate Summit Beer Garden.
- Cafepress changing pricing structure to standardize pricing.
- CA tax development.
- Shout outs: Shawn Collins, Lisa Picarille, Todd Farmer, Angie Seaman, Brian Caldwell, Teresa Caldwell
My ad:tech San Francisco Experience
So ad:tech has come and gone, and for my first experience at ad:tech is was pretty good. The first day I spent most of my time connecting with some industry friends in the very cool Affiliate Summit sponsored Beer Garden. I was surprised how much it looked like the conceptual drawing that Shawn Collins had posted on his blog when he first announced the beer garden.
For those faithful listeners of Affiliate Thing, you’ll be happy to know that there were no snuggies involved. Unfortunately that first day I didn’t make it to any sessions, but I did take a quick glance at the exhibit hall. I think this might be the first time I’ve seen two floors of exhibit hall. Can you tell I’m not an old hat at ad:tech?
That evening I joined some affiliate marketing folks at AT&T Park for a Giants vs. Padres game. Shawn was quite perturbed that he could not get a signal on his AT&T serviced cell phone at AT&T Park. I can’t say that I blame him. There were some great moments in the game, including the closest I’ve ever seen two runners together when rounding the bases. The Giants won and our seats were pretty good. Luckily it was a nice balmy night and I didn’t need a jacket, but I did get blisters on my feet walking from Moscone Center to the park in bad dress shoes. Nonetheless, I have to send a big thanks to Shawn for the game invite!
The second day I was able to attend some sessions, notes from which will appear here next week. They were hit and miss… I got a lot out of some of them and almost nothing from others, except for some entertainment value.
That evening I had a nice dinner with the folks from eBay, Linda Woods of PartnerCentric, Shawn Collins from Affiliate Summit, Peter Bordes of Media Trust, and a couple folks from Red Anchor Media. We had a nice discussion on quality in Affiliate Marketing. I was honored to be invited and had a terrific time. Any fellow creme brulee fans will be pleased to hear about the lovely Butterscotch variation at Anchor & Hope on Minna in San Francisco!
I didn’t make it over for the 3rd day of ad:tech, but overall it was a good experience and I’m looking forward to attending more in the future and getting some more done once I’m more firmly established with my new clients and with Paulson Management Group.
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