LinkConnector Making Gains: Is There a “Big 4” Anymore?

With last week’s launch of the pepperjamNETWORK and the discussion that ensued about the role of affiliate networks in the online marketing space, it’s interesting to take note of some of the other networks out there that exist (in size but not necessarily quality) between the CJ/Linkshare/Performics/ShareASale affiliate network model and the more direct response driven CPA networks.

One of those networks is North Carolina based LinkConnector. LinkConnector has been active in the industry since 2004, but it looks as if they are picking up steam and advertisers according to a new press release.

LinkConnector kicked off 2008 with nine merchants from the Internet Retailer’s Top 500 Guide, tripling its market share reach, and closing the gap between itself and other large networks, such as Commission Junction. LinkConnector has redefined for many merchants and affiliates what it is they want from an affiliate marketing network. Many merchants from the Top 500 Guide selected LinkConnector for its exclusive technologies, not found in other networks, and for its notable list of high quality affiliates.

“Many top Internet retailers took notice of LinkConnector in 2007, seeking new and better solutions in affiliate marketing,” said Choots Humphries, LinkConnector Co-President. “Internet Retailer’s independent survey affirms that we are rapidly capturing market share. We believe this is due in part to our exclusive technologies and unique approaches, differentiating us from the crowd. We expect to again grow by more than 100 percent in 2008, providing affiliate marketing solutions to a growing number of merchants from the Top 500 List.”

So, the important question here is how networks such as LinkConnector, or the new pepperjamNETWORK or even the increasingly important CPA networks like AzoogleAds (not to mention agencies like MediaWhiz or the budding widget ad networks) will impact both the affiliate market and the more mentioned “Big 4” networks?

Is there even a “Big 4” anymore?

2008 should be fun as we find out.

Breaking Bad Has a Good Viral Campaign

Breaking Bad is a new movie TV show coming out about a high school chemistry teacher who creates his own meth lab business. Sounds like a silly movie, but the viral marketing campaign is tremendous.

Here’s one I just sent over to Jim Kurkal:

http://www.waltswisdom.com/flash/waltsplayer_ext.swf?_id=2001jsfyw1

You can waste some of your own time by freely contributing to the marketing of the movie here.

Looks like this will be a hit viral campaign along the lines of that stupid “put-your-face-on-a-dancing-elf” thing from this past holiday season.

Cloverfield is a Rejection of “Social Media”

Amen…

“Most of all this is a movie about how the young’uns have no tools for moral discourse and that all they can do is utter banalities and take endless pictures of each other and record their lives for no apparent purpose.”

Cloverfield is a fantastic movie for all the wrong reasons and makes you scratch your eyeballs/head/logic and reconsider who you’d go back for. Go see it for your own benefit and realize what Abrams, etc are trying to express.


Marginal Revolution: Cloverfield

Going to Affiliate Summit, Have a Mac and Need a Reservation?

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Heading to Affiliate Summit on Feb 24-26 at the Rio Hotel (as you should be)?  Have a Mac?  Still haven’t booked a hotel room?

Then this little desktop widget is for you:

Las Vegas Travel Widget… Get travel deals on Las Vegas, Reno Nevada and Lake Tahoe. Select on back which feed you want to display. Travel deals from HotelsOnTheStrip.com which searches 28 sites using the Travelocity search engine.

Las Vegas Travel Widget: Mac Update 

Lock Down Your WP Blogs!

Tony Hung has a tremendous reminder / tip / must-do if you’re running a blog on WordPress:

If you’re running WordPress, unless you’ve already locked down your Wp-content folder with some .htaccess fixes, you may not notice that your Wp-content/plugins folder is naked and bare to the world. That is, navigate to http://www.yourblogname.com/wp-content/plugins and you may find a directory listing of your plugins folder, files and all. How do you fix it? Easy. Just upload an empty index.html into the wp-content/plugins folder and its all fixed.

(Via Deep Jive Interests.)

Geek Marketers of the World Unite: GeekCast.fm Launch

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I’ve teamed up with Jim Kukral and Shawn Collins to form GeekCast.fm which will be a podcast and video show aggregator for our projects as well as select others.

I’ve been doing the daily 22 minute AffiliateFortuneCookies podcast which you can find there as well as Shawn and Lisa Picarille’s AffiliateThing and Jim Kukral’s Daily Flip vidcast and VideoNinjas podcast with Magnify.net’s Steve Rosenbaum.

We’re also doing a weekly flagship show called GeekCast Gang where we’ll be discussing various issues in online marketing, video, mobile, affiliate, search, etc. Check it out and let us know what you think.

Should be a fun venture! The first episode of GeekCast Gang is below. You can grab the feed and subscribe in iTunes or your podcast player of choice here.

http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=P15a926455cc49bb2d23bf20cb2f30520Yl9wRVREYmB9&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap28
MP3 File

Hunter Thompson on Macs

Awesome.

Then came this gem: In the mid-80s, tired of getting Hunter S. Thompson’s column copy late, by snail-mail, the editors of the San Francisco Examiner took the plunge and sent Thompson a new gizmo called a “Mac.” The relationship between the fabled journalist and his electronic tool was reportedly troubled from the beginning. It ended shortly thereafter, when Thompson called his editor screaming in frustration, grabbed his shotgun, and blasted the youthful Steve Jobs’s creation to smithereens. Then he sent back the pieces.

Silicon Alley Insider: Hunter S. Thompson Reviews Apple’s New Mac

GeekCast Episode 1: 3 Guys, 1 Cup

Shawn Collins, Jim Kukral and I discuss political affiliate programs, what we hope to do with GeekCast.fm, problems the affiliate networks aren't solving and innovation in the affiliate space.

http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=P15a926455cc49bb2d23bf20cb2f30520Yl9wRVREYmB9&buffer=5&shape=6&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap21

Download the MP3 File

Internet Marketers on Twitter

Brian Chappell over at MarketingPilgrim has a list of 75 or so internet marketing professionals actively using Twitter. If you’re new or old to Twitter this is a nice resource:

Many underground conversations go on within Twitter that never make it to the blogosphere or news sites. It can be a dynamite location for link bait ideas, breaking stories, and general topics you might not think about on a daily basis. You might even find yourself obtaining clientèle through it. I really could go on and on with what you could do with Twitter.

As an aside, over on my personal blog (?), I made some remarks about how Twitter has changed since the “good old days.”

Marketing Pilgrim – 75+ Internet Marketing Gurus on Twitter

TheUseful Settles with Florida AG

According to Mark Meckler at the Digital Moses Confidential, TheUseful has settled with the Florida Attorney General’s office for a cool million:

In a press release eerily similar to that issued by Azoogle upon its settlement and million dollar payment to the Florida Attorney General, The Useful / World Avenue USA has announced that the Florida Office of Attorney General has closed its investigation into the company’s activities and will be dismissing its lawsuit.

Watch the way you use the term “free” in Florida, folks.

Twitter Nostalgia

Twitter is like an indie band that did well and now is selling out stadiums across the world.

It’s interesting to me that when I first started using Twitter in 2006, the amount of “in-twitter” replies using the @ sign were low. If I came across someone using the @ sign more than a few times a day I tended to not follow or unfollow them because, at first, the platform wasn’t about conversing. Twitter was about answering the simple question of what we all were doing. It was interesting and amazing. The music and giddiness of something new was there.

Now, in 2008 and with 700k members, Twitter is less about telling people what we are doing and more about the “conversation” and follows the aesthetics of an IRC chat. Twitter has become a Rolling Stones-esque performance show with lead singers prancing around on the social stage clad like Bono and jubilant like Mic Jagger. It’s fun to watch, but after a few hours, I’m ready to go home and put the headphones on so I can enjoy the music like I did years ago.

I follow around 600 people, and now seeing a tweet without the @ sign is a rarity, but always gets my attention and makes me nostalgic for the good old days before Twitter made it to the cover of Rolling Stone and we practiced in a garage.

Then isn’t better than now, and the opposite is true. However, now is different than then. I don’t necessarily want Twitter to become a social network because I don’t need or want another social network. I do want to see what other people are doing, though.

Perhaps someone will make an @-less platform where we can just play our music and not have to worry about the crowds or the groupies or the roadies.

How about an acoustic Twitter album?

Cat Powers Jukebox

Cat Powers’ new album Jukebox comes out next week, but it’s available for streaming and listening pleasure exclusively on Rhapsody. I highly recommend it.

For all the beatings that Rhapsody takes, I do love the service and have been a subscriber for a while. If you don’t mind “renting” your music and have a constant internet connection (and about $12 a month to spare), I highly recommend it as well.

Born to Question

My friend, mentor and hero Prof Larry McGehee does a weekly column called “Southern Seen.”  This week’s edition is a must read and tugs at your heart strings (especially if you know Larry and Betsy):

Betsy won her first round and stayed on for the second, both taped the same day. She won that one, too. Then she returned next day for her third appearance, adding an unbuttoned sweater to her attire, and this time she was defeated by a uniformed serviceman—a sailor, best I recall.

For her two wins and her three half-hour shows, Betsy received a set of Compton’s Encyclopedia (which we gave to her niece and nephew the next Christmas) and $1,225 (her memory–I recall it as $1,210).

Elizabeth was born November 2nd in what was then New Haven Hospital (now Yale Hospital). Betsy’s Jeopardy winnings paid the hospital and doctor’s bills. That fall and spring we house-sat a professor’s home for a year while he was on leave, and the absence of rent coupled with funds left from Betsy’s winnings made it possible for her to give up her teaching position. A year later we moved to the University of Alabama for my first post-graduate administrative job.

Thank you, Larry.

ShareASale Under The Stars Party at the Palms for ASW

Just heard from ShareASale’s piano man Brian Littleton on Twitter that the “Under the Stars” party for Affiliate Summit West will be held at the Palms (btw, that’s the 100th post for the ShareASale blog… congrats to the SaS team on that):

ShareASale will be hosting a cocktail party Sunday night February 24th in Las Vegas, in celebration of the Affiliate Summit which is being held in Las Vegas Feb 24-26.

If you’re going to be at the Summit, this is a can’t miss event.  Hopefully, no one will thrown into the pool with all of their clothes on again.

We’re Falling Behind Here, Folks

Not to continually beat up on CJ, Linkshare, Performics, ShareASale, LinkConnector and now pepperjamNETWORK but why aren’t affiliate networks doing this??

Overlay.tv is an upcoming video network that lets you add hyperlinks and image overlays to video content in order to monetize the clips. The Overlay technology and network won’t be launched until Valentine’s Day, but the service is getting some early press thanks to its funding news. $4.6 million in Series A financing has been provided by Celtic House Venture Partners, EdgeStone Capital Partners and Tech Capital Partners.

Seriously.

There’s a ton of money and traction to be made in the video space. The tech doesn’t look that difficult considering the amount of money that the affiliate networks are making.

Lead us to the promised land of innovation, oh great networks. Please.

WSJ on Blog Monetization

Affiliate marketing gets a brief mention in a Wall Street Journal article on blog monetization today. We’ve really got to get out from the Amazon.com umbrella:

Many of the most widely used ad programs — such as AdSense and Amazon.com Inc.’s affiliate-marketing program, where publishers get a cut of all sales generated from ads on their site — also are trying to make ads more appealing. For instance, they have rolled out new features in recent months to give publishers more control over how the ads look and where they are placed.

Most of the article is more geared towards widgets and video advertising.  Affiliate marketing is getting left in the dust and missing out on very good exposure to new potential merchants and publishers as a result.