Long Strange Trip #asw12

Speaking of Affiliate Summit, found this trip down memory lane on Scribd (where the Affiliate Summit folks have uploaded a ton of material that you can fish through for hours):

Affiliate Summit 2003 Programhttp://www.scribd.com/embeds/27091560/content?start_page=1&view_mode=list&access_key=key-9a7xf92he412mjpzcqx(function() { var scribd = document.createElement(“script”); scribd.type = “text/javascript”; scribd.async = true; scribd.src = “http://www.scribd.com/javascripts/embed_code/inject.js”; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(“script”)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(scribd, s); })();

I tried to get a seat to the first Affiliate Summit since I was in town for AdTech that year, but waited too long and missed out. It’s amazing that the conference is almost 10 years old.

Especially of note is the AdBumb article on page 3.

Why Are There No Affiliate Network Apps?

Thousands of affiliate marketers will be traveling next week on the way to Las Vegas for Affiliate Summit.

We affiliate types are notoriously compulsive about checking our stats on the affiliate and cap networks, on Google and in our various analytics packages (as we should be).

I can check my Google stats, email subscription numbers and analytics numbers all from the comfort of my iPhone (and even make changes as needed). However, there’s no way to easily check CJ, Linkshare, ShareASale etc network stats. Why?

With thousands of affiliates traveling for hours and hours next week, it sure would be nice to be able to pick up an iPhone, iPad (or heavens forbid an Android device or Kindle Fire) and check on our stats with ease.

Yes, you can get to most affiliate interfaces on a smart phone as you would see them in a browser. However, it is 2012 now. Time to app up.

And this, Linkshare, is just janky:

LinkShare Mobile Dashboard Launches: “LinkShare has launched a mobile dashboard (“Mobile Dash”) that allows affiliates to login from a mobile device to find and promote links.”

So, my hope is that the affiliate app space will begin to grow up a little in 2012 beyond this (do a search in the App Store for “affiliate marketing” and you’ll be embarrassed too).

Maybe by Affiliate Summit East later this year, we’ll be able to open up the CJ or Linkshare or ShareASale app on our iPhones and rest our compulsions.

Or, you can use the name AffTrack.

Edit: I was wrong. Vinny O’Hare (aka My Little Vinny) reminded me that AvantLink does indeed have a functional mobile app for its network. Thanks, Vinny and AvantLink! Will look more at your programs now.

Time to Learn to Code

I use MarsEdit more than any other app out there. If you write content for the web and have a Mac, MarsEdit is a must.

Its developer, Daniel Jalkut, has a fantastic post on the topic of programming as the literacy of the 21st century…

Red Sweater Software Blog – Learn to Code: “Literacy isn’t about becoming a Hemingway or a Chabon. It’s about learning the basic tools to get a job done. I think programming — coding — is much the same. You don’t have to be the world’s best programmer to develop a means of expressing yourself, of solving a problem, of making something happen. If you’re lucky, you’ll be a genius, but you start out with the basics.”

That’s why I’m crazy enough to be working with a group of 15 6th-8th grade girls to help them learn how to make an iOS or Android app. Coding is the new literacy.

Brent Simmons, maker of NetNewsWire and overall deep thinker on programming, has launched Code Year. Go and join up here (free, you get a weekly newsletter to help and prod you as you learn programming).

Go and learn.

My Favorite SEO Plugin

I do most of my own SEO but when I have an affiliate site on WordPress (as most of mine are), I like to use the great SEO Ultimate Plugin. There are a few others out there (probably equally as good) but this plugin is my go-to when it comes to quick link masking, 404 detection, deep linking prefs etc.

There’s a new update out that expands on some of the functionality…

SEO Ultimate WordPress SEO Plugin Version 7.2.1 Released: “Link masking has two benefits: First, it lets you replace lengthy affiliate URLs with short, clean, internal URL masks (using 301 redirects, which have no search engine penalty). Second, Link Mask Generator automatically generates robots.txt rules that disallow your masked URLs, effectively neutering the juice-flow of the link, without resorting to the rel nofollow attribute. This combination makes Link Mask Generator a perfect tool for affiliate marketers.”

If you use WordPress, it’s worth a look as a plugin.

Here’s a PDF with all of the new features.

Web Design and Fixed Screen Sizes

If you take seriously the appearance of your affiliate site (as you should… design is how it works), this is a must read thought piece…

State of the web: of apps, devices, and breakpoints – Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report: “When I see fragmentation, I remind myself that it is unsustainable by its very nature, and that standards always emerge, whether through community action, market struggle, or some combination of the two. This is a frustrating time to be a web designer, but it’s also the most exciting time in ten years. We are on the edge of something very new. Some of us will get there via all new thinking, and others through a combination of new and classic approaches. Happy New Year, web designers!”

Granted, this debate is not for every affiliate out there but the issue of fixed-design screen sizes and how your site gets presented on a laptop browser compared to an iPad compared to an iPhone compared to an Android device with a near 5 inch screen compared to a Kindle Fire is a very real and tangible aspect of your business that you should be considering.

Why Freemiums Aren’t the Future Path

Interesting piece by Tac Anderson on the concept of Path as an Upstream Social Network (USN below) compared to traditional networks like Twitter and Facebook which he terms Downstream Social Networks (DSN below) and how USN’s could affect the engagement of marketers with lucrative data-rich networks:

What Path Teaches Us About The Future of Social Networks | @NewCommBiz: “Lets assume for a minute that as social networking evolves the social graph is filled with private USN and more open, commercial DSN. And what if most of those USN didn’t allow brands and advertising in? (Most of them will but humor me for a minute.) If marketeers and brands want to reach people inside their private USN, they need to be brought in by the members of those networks. Brands need to create experiences worth talking and sharing. A small example is when I shared my new Star Wars Moleskine I was going to be using on Path. You can see the reactions I got on Path as well as those I got on Instagram. Both of those went to Twitter and received their own reactions there.”

Basically, he ponders what if these Downstream Social Networks could thrive with a fermium model where brands and ads weren’t allowed to participate.

I’m not certain this will ever happen for a couple of reasons.

1) Social networks, unlike apps, don’t necessarily proliferate based on individual user experiences. Freemiums work on iPhone apps or even cloud based services that are more single user in nature. Social networks are, by their nature, commons that we don’t have complete control over and we’re more willing to make compromises on design, ads and privacy (hence Facebook).

2) The data-based nature of social networks is so lucrative that even new networks that are beautifully designed and based on the idea of limits (150 friends only, limited sharing etc) will certainly find more and better funding by relying on brands and marketers to subsidize the costs of running a network.

Path (and Facebook) can and should do all they can to encourage marketers to think above the “All Traffic is Good Traffic” blasting approach that many marketers use to get passive and relatively unqualified (and thereby low quality) traffic to their sites/offers/links and think towards better engagement based on some qualitative value in the exchange.

However, freemiums aren’t in our future for social networking.

This may all sound like it has more to do with brand advertisers than direct or affiliate marketers, but I’d argue affiliate marketing has the most to gain from the idea of interacting in these rich spaces of real human interactions and frictionless sharing.

Last Minute Affiliate Summit Hotels #asw12

If you’re like me, you forget to book things early. I use TripIt and Evernote to keep me organized with travel info (love that you can just forward a travel receipt email to plans@tripit.com and you’re all set), but I always forget to book planes, trains and hotels.

I finally got my flights to and from Vegas for Affiliate Summit all scheduled using Hipmunk on the iPad, which is fantastic and painless last week.

However, I’m still looking for a good hotel room for Affiliate Summit since I waited so long. I might just wait until noon on Saturday the 7th when I fly in now that I’ve found Hotel Tonight…

Hotel Tonight: “Last Minute Deals on Hotels”

Nah, probably not (don’t want to sleep in the desert again). However, next time you get somewhere and need a room (and have an iPhone), this looks like a winner.

Mobile, Social Media and Curation Marketing

Marshall Kirkpatrick has a nice retort to a thought piece published in the Washington Post today proclaiming social media’s growth over…

Dead? Social Media’s Explosive Growth is Only Beginning: “Social media in the age of instrumentation and connected devices may be more about aggregate social activity than about the long voice blogging and Tweeting.

The intersection of people, machines and passively monitored objects (the cheapest input of all!) all combine to form an entirely new world of opportunity.

That may be the biggest opportunity yet.”

There’s a fascinating conversation going on in the comments section of a post here yesterday about my idea that all traffic is not good traffic. Scott Jangro adequately summarizes the point that Marshall is making above about in-and-out traffic through various spaces in relation to online marketing. His comment could easily be unpacked into a book or treatise about marketing in 2012.

For our purposes here, if you take what Scott wrote and combine that with what he, Damien and the team are doing with Shareist or what affiliates are doing with Pinterest, it becomes very interesting to ponder the conjunction of mobile traffic with aggregation and curation services on the web and their impact on affiliate marketing.

At least I think so.

The idea that curation will become a hot talent in the coming years as frictionless sharing and more aggregate traffic becomes ubiquitous is nothing new, especially in the world of education (part of the “Essential Skills” for our Middle School is curation).

However, wrap curation and its rapidly apparent place in the affiliate marketing industry and a particularly interesting new niche becomes a very viable space for hyper-targeted affiliates to explore.

Why is Affiliate Marketing Doing Well?

Nice overall piece on the current market position of affiliate marketing in the overall scheme of things and how our industry is poised to continue its growth into 2012…

How 2012’s Rise Of The Affiliate Channel Will Impact The $300B E-Commerce Industry: “There are several factors driving the increased interest in performance marketing. The three biggest drivers are the rise in affiliate deal sites, advances in technology and the overall evolution of affiliate marketing. These influences are prompting strategic online retailers to increase their intellectual and financial investments in the affiliate channel.”

I’d add “mobile” as a driver in that list.

Affiliate marketing is particularly well suited to help merchants and media buyers grow as mobile continues to become a primary mover rather than a secondary channel. Couple that with lackluster returns from social media marketing (due more to poor execution based on 20th century broadcasting techniques rather than required 21st century narrowcasting strategies) and affiliate marketing is shaping up to be the hot sector for online marketing in the coming years.

Free Progress Bars

I’m in the middle of working on an app for a client and came across this post/repository of awesome progress bars that are lightweight and don’t use images…

Josh Sullivan: Css3 progress bars: “I made CSS3 progress bars for a display of data inside localized leaderboards for the new analytics platform at G5.

They are light-weight, requiring no javascript. They look great on iOS devices and they’re incredibly simple to use and customize. No images are used.”

Click over for the images. Impressive and helpful.

Not sure if many of you are doing app development (why aren’t you?) but this is pretty helpful if you want to get around the stock iOS progress bar look.

I love github.