Year: 2007

I quote Hunter S…

“There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.”

Amen.

As most of you already know, Wayne Porter and I are hoping to avoid the inevitability of the second coming which will be caused by 1700 money hungry affiliates, tax collectors, CPA networks, Whores of Babylon, and suit-cladded silver-tongued affiliate network devil reps gathering in the midst of Sin City.

It’s going to be epic, folks.

Here’s some info on our gonzo activities:

Article
5 Star Coverage
Shawn’s Take
Wayne’s Word

When we’re not burning dollars out in the desert, we will be at the conference. I fly in tomorrow (Friday) night around 10 and have already heard of a few goings on. I’d like to have a signficant level of intoxication while I attempt to set up my tent in the cold dark desert by myself (Wayne flies in on Saturday) in order to properly greet any rattlers that may be sharing the space with me. So, if you are doing any pre-partying or socializing on Friday night please let me know.

On Saturday, I think Wayne and I are doing a pod/video cast for anyone interested in joining. We’ll tape it at Bally’s for ease of use. You won’t miss us, so if you want to participate, just join in. Maybe we’ll be there to greet you at the door as you check in and we’ll push a camera in your face and ask you what you hope to accomplish at the Summit. Or maybe we’ll flush a cherry bomb down Shawn’s toilet and record the results. It will inevitably involve a camera.

Saturday night is Affiliate Dinner (sold out… great job, Brook)

Sunday morning is the Gospel Brunch with Wade (anticipating the Second Coming again and hedging my bets). Jim Kukral is buying everyone drinks on Sunday afternoon at the main Bally’s bar downstairs so make sure to be there from 3-6 for free drinks. Jim’s hair dresser has been on vacation, so I’m volunteering to do a guy-lights application at the bar. It will be on YouTube for those of you who miss it, of course.

Sunday night is the big music party, then Monday is the floor walking, hand shaking, card making experience. I have a few meetings and interviews set up but do have some free time for a chat, podcast or pontification.

I have to fly out late Monday night (around midnight) to be back in NC so that I can teach at 8:00am, but I will be at one of the Monday night parties until I have to exit.

SO, if you’d like to meet up and share a drink and some conversation you can contact me the following ways:

1) Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/samharrelson. Add me as a friend and I’ll be shooting out periodic updates and gossip (as I’m sure everyone will). ShareASale is doing some cool stuff with their twittering, so sign me up as a friend just to follow that experiment along.

2) Mobile: 803-413-6834. Feel free to text or call me on Friday, Saturday, Sunday or Monday. I’ll have it on my possession constantly. Hopefully there is reception in the desert.

3) AIM: sbharrelson22

4) I’ll be live blogging here on CPN as well. So, check CPN while you’re sinning it up.

My advice? Stay away from the crap tables. While that normally refers to a betting game, it can also mean certain booths of companies with ill-repute. You know who they are.

My other advice? If you’re an affiliate, dress as casually as possibly. The less formal you are, the more important your affiliate status must be because it appears you aren’t trying to impress anyone. So, don’t comb your hair, wear flip flops, forgo shaving and look like you’ve been sleeping in the desert for the past few nights… oh… wait.

We’ll leave it with Gram Parsons…

This old town is filled with sin,
It’ll swallow you in
If you’ve got some money to burn.
Take it home right away,
You’ve got three years to pay
But Satan is waiting his turn

This old earthquake’s gonna leave me in the poor house.
It seems like this whole town’s insane
On the thirty-first floor your gold plated door
Won’t keep out the Lord’s burning rain

I recently posted about a new Partnercentric managed program called AdventureQuest focused on the exploding online gaming market.

Another gaming company, K2, has also opened an affiliate program with a 90 day cookie, 10% payout and PayPal only payments.

The K2 Network, Inc. Affiliate Program provides a way for you to be a part of the exciting and constantly growing universe of online gaming. K2 Network’s games have a large audience and our subscription base is increasing at a steady pace. You can make money as an affiliate of K2 Network – all you need is a website.

Until gaming companies such as Capcom and BioWare are snagged up by the large media companies, expect more gaming companies to follow suit. It only makes sense that these companies would seek to use the affiliate platform to increase word of mouth advertising and reward loyal gamers.

I think there’s a great overlap between the world of gaming and affiliate marketing in terms of metrics, performance incentives and general macro percentages. Perhaps they will implement mobile into their ad platform as well and begin to recognize the power of Jeff Doak’s “Marketing is Flat” philosophy.

Email me or comment below if you’re a merchant or network looking for affiliates and I’ll post you below…

Forums? Email newsletters? Blogs? Email blasts? Plaxo? Web2.0 stuff?

The question that merchants and networks always have is how they can they find more affiliates. Here are five quick tips I’ve been successful with while working in the network space…

1. Have attractive offers (more is not better… we all know what FreeSlide did). Attractive offers are offers that are easy to understand, are consistent in payout and can even be niche focused.

2. Blog, podcast or do videos that discuss the industry and important issues rather than just producing fluff content describing how super awesome your network or program is.

3. Participate participate participate.

4. Don’t have long and annoying signatures on your email messages. Put them in text, make them quick and easy to read and understand, and put your phone number or maybe url at the most. If an affiliate wants your AIM or your Skype info, they’ll ask.

5. Have a gimmick that makes you stand out… use Twitter for communications, have a crazy color scheme, send Lego toys to affiliates… do something different.

What did I leave out?

Here’s a short speech I did at Affiliate Summit East this past June in Orlando, FL during the “Lessons Learned” session at the end of the conference (thanks for providing this, Shawn!).

http://video.affiliatesummit.com/embed/iframe/panel/cid/P77YJ6Z3KQQGB897

I normally don’t post links without adding something original to the conversation.

However, this article by Sally Falkow on building an email list with social media is a must read…

http://falkow.blogsite.com/public/item/155255

I came across this via Andy Beal, so make sure to check out his informative discussion on the issue as well.

A company in our space will soon be releasing a platform which allows for the ability to place affiliate links in bittorrent files. Affiliates will be able to place links and check stats while advertisers will be able to select the placements depending on file type in an automated system which looks very much like a CPA network.

The company wishes to remain anonymous at this point, but will make an announcement in the next month.

I had a beta walk through tonight, and this has the potential to be huge.

Thoughts? Legal issues? Is anyone else doing something similar?

Google is ramping up its Checkout platform.

I’ve heard rumblings from my sources within the company and from a few of the merchants involved in the Checkout program that something major is on the way… soon.

Tonight, it seems that Google has added Checkout to the main search page in a very prominent way…

Here comes the fun.

I’ll release some info when I can, but let me know you opinions on how this relates to affiliate marketing. Strap in… it’s going to be a wild ride in the coming weeks.

[EDIT] Jonathan (TrustNo1) has also posted on this development over at ABestWeb.  Be sure to follow the conversation there as well!

Are you a new CPA network, or one that is trying to grow outside of its traditional box, or a merchant program courting new publishers? Then you need to know how to treat them.

My advice?

1. Be upfront about payouts, pay rates, offer types, commission structures.

2. Google them and do research. Don’t rely on a business card, word of mouth or a forum for all of your insight. Impress the publisher with how much you knew about them before you called, and they will take the hook.

3. Interact on forums with them… argue or agree on industry issues they care about… just show that you care (and if you don’t care you should look for another line of work).

4. Don’t try to throw money, iPods, stereo equipment, cruises or other gimmicks at publishers to activate and retain them. It won’t work. If it does work, it doesn’t say much about that publisher.

5. Ask them advice on a potential new offer or industry issue by phone, im or email. People love to give feedback and state their point of view. Let them know you’re interested in theirs.

6. Don’t pressure them for leads when they have a down month. Pressuring never works.

7. Send Starbucks gift cards or cheese and wine baskets out of the blue. It’s the little things.

8. Ask them tough questions about how they are promoting your program or network offers. Don’t take gloss answers, but let them know you are actively looking at every publisher with some scrutiny to keep the quality of your offer or network high.

9. Don’t pretend like you know what you don’t know or that you are smarter than you really are… be humble and accept advice and complaints from publishers. Make a detailed “ADVICE” and “COMPLAINTS” list with info on who gave the input and how you can act on it. Then, act on it and email/call/im the publisher to let them know you are on top of things. You don’t have to make all the changes or tweaks the request, but let them know that you’re at least listening and entertaining the idea.

10. Treat the smallest publisher the same way you treat the highest performing loyalty site. It’s hard, but it works.

Have more advice? Leave them in the comments or send me an email.

Shawn Collins has posted an interesting piece on AffiliateTip based on a question he received regarding the appropriate time to fold your affiliate program if it’s not working.

Here’s the question…

Ask Shawn Collins: Time to Close the Affiliate Program

After three months, my company’s CEO is getting ancy regarding our affiliate campaign. We’re a somewhat niched market and we’ve had an account with Commission Junction that has so far yielded very little activity and even fewer sales. At what point should we simply pull the plug on our affiliate campaign?

Shawn writes that 3-6 months time should be sufficient to determine if a new affiliate program will gain momentum, if it is proactively managed. That proactively managed part is the key. If you don’t have someone competent, dedicated and even zealous about getting your program off the ground, then chances are your program is going to need far longer than 3-6 months to take off (if it ever does).

Then Shawn throws out three (in my opinion) great points:

• I would recommend running your affiliate program with three ongoing directives: recruit, activate, and retain affiliates.
• It’s essential that you recruit affiliates into your affiliate program, have a process in place to activate them, and then work to retain them.
• Affiliate marketing isn’t like other marketing channels. Money alone cannot power it – you need to focus on the relationships of your affiliates, too.

Networks and merchants do a horrible job at retaining affiliates. For the most part, I think most networks and merchants have figured out the activation part since that part of the paradigm relies mostly on affiliate action. However, retaining affiliates requires skill, finese and tenacity not often seen in networks or merchant programs.

The most important point is that affiliate marketing performance is not based on how much money you throw at your program. That’s why this is an often frustrating and slippery business. As Jeff Doak cited in the last Weekly Insight podcast with Jeff Molander, Cingular spent around $1 BILLION on brand advertising last year. Even if they threw 1/100 of that at affiliate marketing, it wouldn’t suggest a successful program. You can’t quantify relationship and that’s something big brands are just realizing with the emergence of social media.