Marketing to Little Brothers and Sisters

Ever get scared that the marketing paradigm we operate within is just feeding a much bigger machine that isn’t a fan of human freedom?

I do.

Looking forward to reading Cory Doctorow’s new book:

Little Brother: “If you love freedom, if you think the human condition is dignified by privacy, by the right to be left alone, by the right to explore your weird ideas provided you don’t hurt others, then you have common cause with the kids whose web-browsers and cell phones are being used to lock them up and follow them around.

This book is meant to be part of the conversation about what an information society means: does it mean total control, or unheard-of liberty? It’s not just a noun, it’s a verb, it’s something you do.”

When I hear online (and offline) marketers talking about social media as a “channel,” my radar goes off. I suspect it will be even worse after I finish the book.

Am I creating a more freedom filled world technology wise for my daughter?

What do you think?

Richmond Race (Crown Royal 400)

Here’s the first lap of the Richmond Race from Saturday night May 3, 2008:

There’s also a set entitled “Richmond Race Pictures” on my Flickr page if you’d like to see how things went on Friday for the Nationwide Series race and Saturday for the Cup race.

I had a blast.

More soon (and Darlington pics coming next week after the race there followed by Charlotte)…

ShareASale Twitters

ShareASale has been a long time supporter of Twitter, but they are stepping it up with a new official account:

ShareASale Blog: “2.  Follow us on ‘Twitter’.  I have recently created a ‘ShareASale’ specific entry which is www.twitter.com/shareasale.  Also, feel free to follow me personally – I talk about ShareASale stuff as well as other things going on.  www.twitter.com/brianlittleton”

There’s a reason that ShareASale consistently ranks at the top of affiliates’ and publishers’ “Best Network” rankings when you consider how much they not only embrace but also take seriously mediums such as blogging or Twitter.

Other networks could learn a great deal from them or from @zappos or the growing myriad of advertisers finding a welcoming community on Twitter.’

Great job, ShareASale.

Anne Kadet’s Analysis Falls Very Short

Affiliate marketing is not about quick profits, sleazy promotions or fly-by-night operations.

Rather, affiliate marketing offers people the opportunity to make a living by producing web content. That content can be determined by a person’s passion, interest or savvy, but at the end of the day it’s a very democratic way to do marketing.

Instead of having to build a website that has the arbitrary watermark of being taken seriously (one million viewers), affiliate marketing offers anybody with enough passion and voice the opportunity to support their work and eventually grow that into a full time business.

So, I was frankly astonished when I read a piece by Anne Kadet about the last Affiliate Summit West and affiliate marketing in general in SmartMoney Magazine. It is a poorly written piece of journalism or opinion and is comparable to an 8th grade history report on the French Revoluition (having taught 8th grade, I think I can make that comparison).

Shawn Collins summed it up Kadet’s piece in video form better than I can in text:

Kadet‘s surface appraisal of the entire affiliate industry falls short of many of the criticisms or questions she could have raised about affiliate marketing had she dug a little deeper.

Videoclix.tv Is the Future?

VideoClix.tv is attracting a good deal of attention and for good reason. Basically, anything mentioned in a video becomes a keyword that leads to a clickable affiliate link. Even Revision3’s Diggnation is employing their technology…

I can’t imagine this sort of technology remaining independent for too long and expect to see a Google or someone snap them up or replicate the idea.

This is the future of affiliate marketing…

Are All the New Folks Gone Yet?

OK, good.

Let’s get back to business.

But seriously, I have had offers to buy CPN, offers to blog under my name, offers to roll CPN up into other marketing blogs… but I just can’t pull the trigger.

I’ve been blogging here since October ’06 (around the time I started on Twitter coincidentally). That’s not a good reason to keep anything going, but in this case I can’t leave the place that made me a Z lister.

This blog has been such a constant in my life and I strangely miss it when I take a week or four off.

So, from here on out I’m back to the 3-4 posts a day covering the strange and fascinating world of performance marketing and its intersection with whatever is next.

Thanks for playing along… it will be worth it, I promise.

Going Open Source (Again)?

So I’ve gotten really lax with my decision to open source as much as I can with my life as a form of my own little protest against corporate control of our content and art production.

I’m typing this on a Mac while listening to DRM’d music on iTunes, so clearly I failed.

However, I’ve been playing around with the new Ubuntu distro and it’s quite compelling. It’s compelling enough to make me consider going back to Ubuntu as my full time operating system (as it was for about 2 years during the 5.10-6.10 days).

But, as with all things, there’s a tradeoff. I enjoy the simplicity yet power of the Mac when it comes to podcasting, movie editing and even blogging (MarsEdit ftw). That’s not to mention great apps like Evernote, TextMate, Skitch, Pukka, Coda and wireless EVDO that I use on a hyper daily basis. I know there are analogs for all of these within Ubuntu or on any Linux distro, but they aren’t as polished and intuitive on the front end.

Not only that, but the “cloud applications” that I use and love such as GMail, Google Reader, Google Docs, Google Calendar, etc are things that I would need to give up to make myself feel more at ease. I could certainly use Ubuntu’s built in suite of apps or either move to platforms like Fastmail or 30boxes that don’t sare me as much as Google’s suite (I know, I know… tin hat).

Yet, Ubuntu keeps calling to me. Others have done it.

Anyway, just thinking out loud here.