9 Archives - Affiliate Marketing with Missy Ward, Affiliate Summit Co-Founder & Co-CEO

Just Give Me My Proper Respect

by Missy Ward

“I'm not concerned with you liking or disliking me… All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.” – Jackie Robinson

Brian Littleton, CEO of Shareasale.com and the winner of the 2008 Affiliate Summit “Wayne Porter Affiliate Marketing Legend” Award, posted a great blog entry today, which really hit home with me. His overall theme in his post deals with treating others with respect – something that I believe can definitely be improved within our industry.

Now I’m not saying that we are ALL deficient in our abilities to show consideration for others. That is certainly not the case. However, over the many years that I have been in this industry, I have witnessed a fair share of insults, inconsideration, disregard for other people’s opinions and a general lack of sensitivity for other people’s feelings. A couple of cases that come to mind that I have seen recently include:

– While I was at several parties that took place at Affiliate Summit 2008 Las Vegas, I witnessed a lot of networks in attendance at their competition’s parties. Now that’s cool. That’s the kind of spirit that embodies our industry. What wasn’t cool was that several of them actually had the audacity to try to poach affiliates, merchants and OPM’s, while they enjoyed drinking their host’s booze and eating their host’s food. How did they not know what the proper etiquette would be?

– I saw an affiliate raise-up their hand, turn around and walk away from a CPA Network employee while that employee was in mid-sentence. There are a lot nicer ways to say that you don’t want to do business and excuse yourself than that.

– A former Affiliate Manager, turned “network owner” who apparently doesn’t like the Affiliate Summit show (although hasn’t attended the last few) decided to flame Shawn and I on various forums and blogs, citing that he could do it better, although he has never actually ran a conference before. (Dude, have at it. Any additional exposure for Affiliate Marketing is awesome for the industry – just make sure I get an invite to attend.) Since when did it become acceptable to publicly bash other people in an effort to make yourself look good? Don’t most people still see right through that?

Here’s the way I see it. We work in a diverse industry made up of many different business models, business sizes, work ethics and experience. It is this kind of diversity that can make all our business and professional lives much more enjoyable, interesting and worthwhile – but only if we get along with each other. And to do that we have to respect each other.

As I’ve said many times before, people need to treat others as they want to be treated, because what goes around comes around. Besides, no one will really care how wonderful or brilliant you are, if you respect nothing.

‘Nuff said.

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For The Heck of It

Ditch Your Desk Chair – Work That Body!

by Missy Ward

I’ve worked at home for the last 5-1/2 years and while it definitely has its perks, I find that one of the biggest downers about it is that I seldom walk away from my desk. Let’s face it, it’s not like I have a whole lot of options to go somewhere else. There is no “other department” to walk into, no water cooler in which to share juicy gossip, no long list of co-workers to go to lunch with. It’s just me, my PC and my ergonomically-friendly, yet strangely uncomfortable swivel chair.

So a few weeks ago I was expressing my frustration to my trainer and he suggested that I try sitting on a stability ball (aka swiss ball, yoga ball, exercise ball), instead of my chair, so that I can do something good for myself while I’m just sitting around all day.He explained that stability ball works your body, even when you’re not working out. Because the ball itself is not steady, your body needs to make adjustments using its muscles, in order to obtain stabilization and prevent you from falling over. The muscles used during these adjustments known as the “core muscle group” (abdomen and back) need to constantly work and as a by-product get stronger.

He further explained that while I was not likely get that great 6-pack that I’ve been looking for just by sitting on the stability ball for a solid 8 hours a day, strengthening my core will help support my back and stop me from further destroying what’s left of my good posture and possibly alleviate my backaches.

I have to admit, I thought the idea was silly and also dangerous, especially for me given the fact that I’m such a klutz (see post from yesterday). How on earth was I going to sit on this ball and try to type and speak on the phone at the same time? I don’t know about you, but I’m still trying to master the “texting while walking” scenario. But, I figured that a $20.00 investment would at least provide entertainment to my husband who sits in his office 300 yards away, a couple of days per week.

So I gave it a shot and hopped on about 3 weeks ago. Day one was not easy. Not only did I roll off the ball several times, but at the end of the day, my abs hurt. So did my quads and my hamstrings. Day two: I only fell twice, yet those same body parts were sore plus now, my gluts and calves were tender. During the rest of the week, I remained ON the stability ball all day and started feeling good about the minor aching that I had in my lower body. The pain meant it was working.

I debriefed my trainer on Monday on how it was going and he let me in on one additional perk about sitting on the stability ball. Apparently people that sit on a stability ball vs. an office chair burn 8 more calories per hour on average. While that doesn’t sound like a lot, over the course of the week, it adds up to the calories needed to metabolize one cup of Starbucks Mud Pie ice cream.

Extra calorie burn and tighter abs, legs and butt by just sitting at my desk? Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.

Give it a shot and let me know how it works for you.PS – I typed this entire blog post while sitting on my stability ball.

If I've inspired you to give the stability ball a whirl, send me your picture. I'd love to post it here.

Scott Jangro on his stability ball.

Todd Crawford's ball on the way to his office

Todd Crawford on his stability ball

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Affiliate Marketing

I Busted My Butt at Affiliate Summit

by Missy Ward

Literally.Thanks to those of you who have aimed and emailed me to check in on my butt. Yes, it’s a fractured coccyx and yes, it still hurts. Apparently it will be hurting for several weeks to come.

If you were in Las Vegas, but not at the Advertising.com’s Buy.at Network party at the Ghost Bar in the Palms, last Sunday night, you may have felt a slight tremor around 1:00am.

No, it was not the after-effects of the Nevada earthquake that hit earlier in February, it was me taking the worst digger of my life – in front of 400+ people.

Roughly somewhere around midnight-ish, I was dancing with a blogger/affiliate marketer that shall remain nameless (the only clue is that if his last name was an animal, it would likely sound like a cute and fuzzy marsupial). I was so excited to dance, since I seldom get asked, that I may have gone slightly overboard.

To this day, I’m not sure why I don’t get asked to dance… I Q/C my breath, I don’t dance like Carlton any longer and I check my overbite at the door. But I digress…

To be honest, I’m not exactly sure what happened. I’d like to blame it on a wet floor or the fact that someone might have tripped me accidentally. But as I go through it over in my mind time and time again, none of those conditions existed.

Maybe it was the 4 glasses of wine?

In any event, I guess my dance partner will forever be fondly known to me as my “Pain in the Ass” at ASW08.

If anyone was there that saw what happened, can you please give me a play-by-play recount?

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Affiliate Marketing

Jason Calacanis is Bulls**t during Affiliate Summit?

by Missy Ward

I say not.

You know, there were a number of Affiliate Summit attendees that came up to me immediately following Jason Calacanis’ keynote last week furious with Shawn and I for inviting Calacanis to speak at the conference.

Their initial reaction was one of shock and bewilderment. WTF was this guy coming into our hood, smack-talkin’ directly at the audience who paid good money to see him? More importantly, why would Shawn and I invite him to do so?

Well, as my Dad always said, “humbling experiences can open the door to life’s greatest insights, if we are willing to learn from them.” And yes, Jason humbled us.

We as affiliate marketers, sing the praises about folks that have grown the profile of our industry – the white hats, if you will – the ones who have cultivated their businesses by being innovative and by doing the right thing. Yet, I don't believe we spend as much time working on ways to shut down the ones that give affiliate marketing a bad name.

If you were an attendee and peeked into your Attendee Guide, you will see that Shawn and I (interviewed separately) still believe that the largest obstacle to the growth of affiliate marketing is the fact that we are unable to squash the black hats who still continue to piss on our reputation and feed the opinions like the one that Jason has about us.

But, is his way of thinking a way in which I want to live my life? Absolutely not.

He’s got that typical 30-something Silicon Valley attitude. I dated guys like him.. zzzz. Boring. Dude wants to own gazillion dollar companies, where I’m at my happiest working for myself, making a comfortable living, hanging out with my kids, going to the gym when I want, and goofing off on AIM with the rest of my affiliate marketing friends. He wants to pay hundreds of people, have huge infrastructures, deal with investors and all that crap. I’m happy with my 800-foot commute where the only things I worry about is whether I can find a pen on my cluttered desk and whether my dog will get off my lap in enough time for me to answer my phone.

I've been where Jason is. I once spent a lifetime there during my 20's and 30's and as G-d is my witness, there is no amount of money or fame that would ever send me back to that hell again. There is no pricetag for the peace and freedom that affiliates have and cherish. Maybe when he grows a little older, he'll realize that.

While I didn’t agree with his delivery, there were pearls of wisdom and shining moments in his gig. I did relish in the fact that he recognizes that affiliate marketers are likely the smartest marketers around. (For the folks who are still letting me know that they felt that Jason was degrading an entire industry, I urge you to re-listen to his schpiel if you still feel that way.)

That said, there’s a whole lot of things we can teach him if he sticks around – and it looks like he is given the fact that I’ve seen him post several comments on blogs and forums including ABestWeb. I give him props for this. He could have simply cleaned his pipes and ran. After all, he doesn’t owe us anything.

So here it is in a nutshell. As an industry, I refuse to let Calacanis view this as a case of Hit Dog, Hollar. Let’s use his comments (although somewhat skewed based on his admitted ignorance of the industry as a whole), to motivate us into doing better and continue to grow this former red-headed-step-child of the online advertising industry to the Prom Queen that it can be.

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