Category: Affiliates

Affiliate marketing has a unique position within the world of online marketing.

The greatest world changers, whether in terms of religion, science, sociology, anthropology, or any other discipline have always been those pushed to the edges and marginalized.

There are two main types of marginalization:
1. Marginalization that is assigned
2. Marginalization that is embraced.

Marginalization is not accidental. Marginalization is a willful act that tries to maintain the status quo or protects the interest of those that hold the power or the money and attempt to maintain a grip on power by pushing those who disagree or attempt to push reform by marginalizing the trouble makers.

In many ways, I see affiliate marketers as the trouble makers in the general scheme of online marketing. It is a slippery channel, full of individuals not willing to easily slide into one monetized or easily defined column. That is dangerous, that is revolutionary, and that is important.

Because a group, such as affiliate marketers, are marginalized doesn’t mean that they don’t have power. Rather, they have even more power through their own imaginations, efforts, stories, convictions and forums.

Being on the periphery, or margins, and being pushed out by the power hungry center enables the potential for radical possibilities. As affiliate marketers, we are able to see things from the edges that online marketers and those in the center of power online cannot see. We are able to spot trends, such as social media and tagging, that those insulated and buffered within cannot see.

So, let’s embrace our position on the periphery in affiliate marketing. If “traditional online marketers” want to push us out to the edges of the marketing world, let’s embrace our position and enjoy the worldview which this affords.

Wow.

Now this is something to get excited about.

I’ve been a big fan of Second Life for a while in terms of its ramifications for studying sociology and metanarratives. However, it’s hard to translate such interests beyond just describing the coolness factor.

How to relate a platform such as Second Life to online marketing is not an easy task, especially when you are trying to convince the uninitiated. Sure, there’s already an audience of 2.5 million users there, but what does it mean for online marketing, and can you (or should you) really attempt to market to the users? I’d argue yes, but it takes a certain brand of marketing with a good handle of finesse and flexibility and a base knowledge of the pre-existing community.

Now, Linden Labs has announced it is opening up Second Life to coders and hackers everywhere (a la Firefox or Linux)…

Aiming to take advantage of its already-impressive momentum, San Francisco’s Linden Lab, developer of the Second Life virtual online world, will announce Monday that it is taking the first major step toward opening up its software for the contributions of any interested programmer.

The company will immediately release open source versions of its client software for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. In order to enter and move around the Second Life service, users must download and run this software on their computer desktop. But now, says Linden CEO Philip Rosedale, independent programmers will be able to “modify it, fire it up and sign on with it.” The company gave Fortune exclusive access to executives in advance of the change.

This is just the step that was needed to make the platform more accessible, more friendly and potentially easier to grok in terms of how to do marketing on a platform such as this.

Of course, this will take some time to roll out, but expect quick and numerous alterations, split-offs and eventually different “flavors” of Second Life within the coming years (such as how there are different flavors of Linux from Ubuntu to Fedora to Red Hat).

The burning question is when will Wayne Porter and his band of merry men create Affiliate Life (deliberate bait since Wayne doesn’t like the term “affiliate”) for all of us to enjoy??

Here’s the lineage of the infamous “5 Things Blog Meme” in terms of the SEO crowd. I had no idea I could be grouped with SEO’ers.

http://www.soloseo.com/blog-tag-tree.html

I’ve said the whole practice of SEO is almost meaningless in the current market and have been yelled at by a few, so I guess this is guilt by association!

Hasn’t blogging and blogging platforms such as WordPress, Typepad, Vox, Blogger LiveJournal and even MySpace done away with the need for professional SEO’ers? Forget affiliate marketing, Jeff… it’s SEO that needs a serious reconsideration and wake-up call. It seems the entire base of that profession is running off of four year old momentum.

If you do practice SEO, please convince me that it is not completely worthless.

Otherwise, I’ll go on following the data I have and producing good content… which seems to do more for Google or organic rank than any (needlessly expensive) attempt at manipulation of the system.

Many of us have interesting stories to tell of how we ended up involved in the affiliate and online marketing space.

I just had a beyond interesting conversation with a well-known name in our little sphere and we spent a long time chatting about our backgrounds and what got us here.  I’ll post my story in the comments shortly.
How did you get here?

If you haven’t taken the time to grab a pass to Affiliate Summit West at the end of the month, you’re going to have to go to eBay.

Shawn is blogging that the conference has already sold out.

Great news for buzz and for the health of the affiliate marketing industry in general.

See you there!

Nice work, Shawn and Missy.

I’m putting out a call to all forward thinking marketers in the affiliate and online spaces…

USE TWITTER!

Why?  It’s not just vanity blogging, it’s instant communication with power and community.  I’m seeing what other segments are doing with the service, and it’s pretty impressive for networking.

With the Affiliate Summit just a few weeks away, this would be a great tool to keep in touch with co-workers and people you want to meet while on the floor as you can send and check twitter messages from your phone/pda/crackberry.

Seriously… just give it a try.

Here’s mine.  Do with yours what you will, but let’s start a little ecosystem of marketers in our space.

I don’t put a great deal of emphasis or attention on metrics such as page views or feed subscribers. There are much more effective measurements of attention and readership that I’ve developed and use.

However, during this time of blog introspection, some stats are encouraging:

1. Vlad points out in the comments that the site has grown from a Google Ranking of 0 at the end of October (when it was created) to a probable 6 in the next update. Thanks for sharing, Vlad. I wouldn’t have noticed and that made my day. Explaining my excitement to my wife was tricky, however. Keep up the great work on your blog, Vlad… it’s a daily destination for me.

2. Feedburner shows that for first time CostPerNews had 100 active users of the feed in a 24 hour period yesterday. That’s no where near TechCrunch, Robert Scoble or Steve Rubel… but this blog will never see those numbers due to the niche aspect. Having 100 active feed users (along with the other site readers not using the feed) put a smile on my face this morning. Online (especially affiliate) marketing is a small industry, so seeing triple digits in the feed count gave me a definite boost.

3. CostPerNews has had readers from every continent in the last month. Who ever is in Lebanon, TN seems to be a big fan, as well. Thank you Lebanon, TN! Beautiful city. Auckland, New Zealand and Reykjavik, Iceland are two places I’ve always wanted to see (my ancestors were Icelandic Vikings). Thanks for visiting. Can I come visit you?

4. About 57% of you are spending 8 minutes or more on the site. That’s a neat stat because it shows that you’re actually reading the articles and even commenting.

5. Cost Per News’ Technorati rank has been steadily increasing and we’ve been able to maintain a solid position inside the top 100,000 which was my 6 month benchmark. We’re closing in on 75,000 so my new benchmark for the 6 month mark (June ’07) is to be within the top 50,000. Doesn’t sound impressive, but again… this is a niche blog that has a glass ceiling of “page views” and “rank.”

So, thank you for continued visits and input. The last 24 hours have been filled with positive and encouraging emails and phone calls, and I do appreciate those. Stats are fun to review, but rarely tell you much about the actual nature of a blog or a site.

Online marketing is slowly realizing the old paradigms of quantitative numbers don’t equate with the actual quality of a site’s readership or the responsiveness a community may have to certain marketing techniques. For instance, Ze Frank’s community is relatively small by traditional metrics, but incredibly loyal and devoted. I’d rather have that community than a million faceless impressions if I were building a program.

By the way, I’m still searching the job offers and would love to make an announcement at Affiliate Summit later this month. Contact me if you’re in need of someone with lots of experience in this space!

So, the rumors are true.

I am without employment.

I secured an angel investor (and a prominent member of the online marketing community) a few months back who has been keeping me and my growing family afloat while I expound on all things online, affiliate and marketing. However, that arrangement has dissolved and Cost Per Love hasn’t been paying the bills like I hoped it would.

CostPerNews is doing well (check Alexa or Technorati if you’re fool heartedly interested in page views and rank), but it’s not making money. I’m providing consistent daily and high quality content, but no one (besides Shawn and Missy) is paying up. Maybe I haven’t found my philanthropist-in-shining-armor yet, but things are not looking well for the future of this blog at the current pace.

I’d like to keep it going, but funding is required.

So, I have a few questions and I need serious answers asap…

1) Does CostPerNews requisite me keeping it going despite my attempts to stay neutral in tone and objective in nature? In other words, is it worth it for the community?

2) Do you know anyone that is hiring? You’ve seen my content here and at samharrelson.com. I’m a problem solving dreamer who knows how to put the practical to the pedal. If you have doubts, check out my LinkedIn profile.

3) Is there anyone in the space who would hire me and allow me to keep this going? CPA networks, affilaite networks, publishers, online marketers, et al… I’m interested.

People tell me I’m an idiot and that I should charge for the content provided here a la Marketing Sherpa. I don’t think so. I don’t believe that. Information and knowledge should be free and openly available. But I have to eat.

So, please… let me know your thoughts. Or, if you need a problem solving forward thinker (a la Jason Calacanis or Robert Scoble) in your network, affiliate program or marketing platform, please let me know.

Comment below or send thoughts to sam@costpernews.com

Rarely am I as impressed by a new platform online as I am by the new graphical search tool Sidekiq.

Sidekiq is based on Ajax and a few iFrame applications. The great thing about this compared to a Google or Yahoo search is the ability of the subjects of the search to determine their own destiny. Where you are, how you interact and what you do on the web results in your listings. And the listings are thorough.

Some of the categories included in the search are video (YouTube), audio (podcasts), social bookmarks (MySpace, Facebook, et al), employment (my RateMyTeachers.com page shows up), real estate (Zillow, etc), shopping, travel, downloads, movies and a few more.

Results do seem to come from more than just Google as well.

Sidekiq provides an interesting search experience and I highly recommend after playing with it for a few minutes. If only there were a social voting aspect for results, this would be the perfect killer app.  Let’s see SEO tackle this.

Is there still a place for co-regs in the online marketing world?

Now that the $1.25 pay per email and/or zip only offers have finally jumped the shark, it seems that more people in our sphere are re-evaluating the use of registration path offers.

However, international marketers are just beginning to see the boom in the reg path.

Will 2007 bring about an end to the beloved (or hated) platform? With the addition of video and wiser consumers, I think so.  There are some really fun and interesting hybrid reg path technologies coming online this year so stay tuned.