BOE 232 Tutorial for California Affiliates
I created this video after chatting with my co-workers here at Snow Consulting about how to make filling out the affidavit as painless as possible for affiliates. I hope this helps my fellow CA affiliates!
Read MoreVideo from Affiliate Convention
While at Affiliate Convention, I took the opportunity to bust out my Flip camera and take some brief footage of the party Paulson Management Group threw at alto in Denver. I also got some snipits of Heather speaking on various panels during the show. I have to say, this was actually the first time I used the FlipShare software to compile multiple short videos into one “movie” and upload straight to YouTube from the software. I wish I’d have been able to add a few more titles in between, but for really simple compilations it works great!
So without further ado, PMG at Affiliate Convention.
Read MoreAffsum Session: Affiliate Videos: Where Do They Work Best?
Date: Monday, January 12th, 2009. Session 5d, 2:00pm.
Session Description: How are videos being used by affiliates and merchants? A detailed look into how and where they are performing best with suggested hints and tips to drive better click through and conversions. The panel consisted of:
- Marty M. Fahncke, President, FawnKey & Associates (Moderator)
- Michael Jenkins, CEO/Founder, MarketLeverage
- Melissa Salas, Director of Marketing, Buy.com
- Jonathan Stefansky, EVP Sales and Marketing, Qoof
This wasn’t the panel I had planned on going to, but I’m glad I went and checked it out. There was some interesting factoids dropped and I enjoyed the Twitter going in the background with the anonymous admirer of Melissa asking if she was in the videos.
Bullet Point Review!
- There’s tremendous potential.
- Consider your site when trying to figure out what will work.
- Besides person to person, video is the second highest sales driver.
- ML looked at 2008 as the year of infrastructure.
- Big marketers have taken note of online video.
- In 2007, 59% of internet users watched video online. In 2008 that skyrocketed to 77%.
- With banner blindness there’s a need for a new type of creative.
- Banners are the lowest performing; video overcomes even the success of text links.
- Give the affiliate a better way to convert.
- Low cost for affiliates – no streaming costs, no hosting costs, widgets are interactive.
- Attention spans are around 3 minutes.
- Content must be engaging and capture the user within 15 seconds.
- Networks and merchants wouldn’t invest in video if it didn’t work.
- Affiliates are very eager to receive the best content for the least work.
- People who are in video now are in it for it’s potential, not the actual of today.
- 77 million unique visitors on YouTube (my notes might be wrong on that, and I didn’t write down if that was per day or per month, but I think it was per day.)
- MLTV raises brand awareness, bloggers talk about it.
- Companies are very sensitive to UCG (User Generated Content).
- DO: think about the shelf life of a video. Videos about how to do something instead of a hot trend or product will be relevant longer.
- DON’T: set your videos to auto play with sound. It’s incredibly intrusive, especially if someone’s at work, which is where most people view videos due to faster broadband connections.
- DON’T: go over 3 minutes.
- DO: grab attention within the first 15 seconds.
Points brought up during the Q&A
Where are things with .tv domains? They’re increasing in popularity, but they still don’t get near the traffic a .com domain does.- How do you track this? Qoof embeds links with the AID and PID for tracking. Others use view time, page views, how long people stay on the page, etc. to track success.
Once again, Michael Buechele of 11|15 Media blogged about this session for the official Affiliate Summit Blog. Check out his recap for anything I may have missed while tweeting ;): Affiliate Summit West 2009 Session Recap – Affiliate Videos: Where Do They Work Best?
Read MoreJune BAAMC Meeting
After running to the bank to take out money for bridge toll, heading west towards the big scary city, and rifling through my car & wallet for change for the meter while praying that the meter maids were taking a day off, I finally made it into the June Bay Area Affiliate Managers Coalition meeting, this time hosted graciously by Real Networks. As an aside, I like their building… older, brick, kinda funky and unique but still professional.
Last time I did a video because it was my first venture over there and I had a lot to say. I was happy to receive some kudos on it from BAAMC organizer Michael Brucker. We had some special guests at this meeting… Lisa Picarille from Revenue Magazine came over and Brook Schaaf from Schaaf Consulting flew up from LA just for this. Aren’t we special? 🙂
I was going to write a good long post about it, but it seems Lisa in her diligence as a journalist has beat me to it! So here’s her take at RevenueToday.com. She mentions a few other special guests that attended the meeting, but I didn’t see them (and yes… I’d recognize them!) so maybe they were on the phone listening in… I did arrive a touch late.
So, some notes not mentioned from my take. It was nice to finally meet Lisa in person, especially after subbing for her that once on Affiliate Thing. Very gracious…although I have to tell you, it’s totally surreal sitting in a room looking at a person speak that you listen to every week without an image in your head. Strange lol. She was surprised that I’d had time to come to the meeting given how busy I usually am, which prompted me to mentally review how busy I must sound on Twitter and this here blog without actually intending it!
Also said hi to Karen Garcia of GTO Management who came to the meeting directly from SFO – what a trooper! And had a nice conversation with a fellow affiliate manager who’s used PsPrint a lot in his former life of being an event promoter and loves us! Always great to hear!
Brook talked about the up-and-coming Performance Marketing Association (PMA), which got a lot of people in the room revved up. We also talked at length about the NY affiliate tax and how we wish the networks would get more involved. What’s definitely clear is that there’s a lot of confusion on how we’re effected as managers and the programs we represent. A vague law will only vaguely be enforced, NY!
Incidentally as a side note, the PMA launched their blog this week and today Rebecca Madigan posted their plan of attack.
We also talked a bit about some miscellaneous things like video widgets and the like. Since most of us in the room have our programs through Commission Junction, we collectively wish they’d buck up on offering some more interesting and innovative creative options, like widgets. One opinion was that video is pretty good for buzz, but general consumers never think to click on the video so it doesn’t convert as a sales tool. I think the jury is still out on video as a traceable seller like a banner ad.
That’s the meat & potatoes of it, really. Our next meeting should be sometime in August. And I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that I managed to escape parking-ticket free!
Read MoreOnline Video Toolkit – Live Today!
Today is the date, kiddies! The launch of Jim Kukral’s latest joint, OnlineVideoToolkit.com, has brought your freebie early this week. Jim himself has said he’s never been the kind of guy to put up a 3 mile long sales page and sell the information he knows, so he’s giving it away! That’s right, all you have to do is sign up… give him your preciously guarded email address and the keys to the castle are yours!
I signed up a couple weeks ago and was invited to check it out yesterday before it was technically launched. So far Jim has 10 really informative videos up, covering the basic aspects like sound, editing, lighting, wardrobe, and of course your choice of camera. For anyone looking to seriously jump into online video and produce well made content for reasonable prices, this toolkit is a must have.
Jim’s been doing online video for some time now, and he’s one of the most vocal proponents of online video and it’s potential. Jim currently produces The Daily Flip on his website JimKukral.com and records the Video Ninjas podcast on GeekCast.fm with Magnify.net’s Steve Rosenbaum. So, brother knows what he’s talking about here! This is really the perfect resource for beginners and intermediate online video fans, and it’s free! So there’s really no excuse not to at least go check it out.
I’m already enjoying it, and it’s inspired me to make some more video. I know, I said that about podcasting too but I SWEAR I’m working on some of that as well! So I’m going to stop wasting time and go watch more of the videos at OnlineVideoToolkit.com in preparation for my trip to Boston next week, and I suggest you do the same!
Read MoreGet a Mentor!
I don’t have one… maybe if I did I wouldn’t be cursing to the FeedBurner gods asking why my feeds are mysteriously cut short all of a sudden despite having my settings in wordpress and FeedBurner set correctly.
I digress… watch Jim Kukral talk about the importance of a mentor while I go in search of my usual creativity (and perhaps a FeedBurner mentor of my own!).
Read More
