Affiliate marketing posts from seasoned affiliate marketing pro Missy Ward.

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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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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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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