Affiliate marketing posts from seasoned affiliate marketing pro Missy Ward.

Free Affiliate Summit Webinar: Advanced Affiliate Recruitment Tactics that…

by Missy Ward

Join Affiliate Summit for another free webinar, Advanced Affiliate Recruitment Tactics that Work, with Mike Nunez and Jon Nunez of Affiliatemanager.com on Thursday, December 1st, 2011 at 2:00pm EST.

What is the webinar about:
This special presentation will feature several advanced tactics on how to find and communicate with prospect affiliates.

About Mike Nunez:
Mike Nunez began his affiliate marketing career while taking Computer Science classes at the University of Central Florida. Upon graduation, he leveraged his newfound knowledge to launch the Wyndham Vacation Ownership affiliate program, which quickly became the the highest converting lead source in the company. Mike was then recruited to launch the LastMinuteTravel.com affiliate program, where he grew sales from $0 to $500,000 in under 3 months. Upon realizing that affiliate management was in high demand with a low supply of quality managers, Mike co-founded AffiliateManager.com. After our first year, the firm won “Best New OPM” (outsourced program manager) on the most popular affiliate marketing forum. The company quickly grew to over 15 clients, where we currently maintain a solid client to employee ratio. To better serve our affiliates, Mike spearheaded the creation of BounceLinks.com, a tool to monetize user generated content as well as streamline product level link creation. Mike has served as a member of the Linkshare Advisory Board, and currently serves as a member of the Affiliate Summit Advisory Board, the largest affiliate related convention. Lastly, Mike often speaks at industry events and meetups to educate current affiliates as well as those new to the space.

About Jon Nunez:
Jon Nunez began his affiliate marketing at LastMinuteTravel.com in 2002. After identifying the need for a quality outsourced affiliate management service, he Co Founded AffiliateManager.com in 2004, which has become one of the leading Affiliate Program Management companies in the industry and has since expanded managing programs for more than 20 major brands that span across many product verticals. AffiliateManager.com has also won many awards in the affiliate marketing industry. Jon Nunez has managed the affiliate programs for several of the leading brands in the nation such as FootballFanatics (Best Affiliate Program – 2009), Golfnow.com, GolfChannel/NBCUniversal/Comcast.

Be sure to register for the this FREE Webinar: Advanced Affiliate Recruitment Tactics that Work – space is limited.

If you are interested in presenting in the Affiliate Summit Webinar series, please contact Mary Poiley by email.

Also, you can see a list of all past and present webinars.

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Put Your Logo on the Affiliate Summit West 2012…

by Missy Ward

The Affiliate Summit staff wants to wear your company’s logo on their shirts at Affiliate Summit West 2012, taking place January 10-12, 2012 in Las Vegas — and it's all for charity.

missy_shawn_shirts — Shawn Collins and Missy Ward modeling the Affiliate Summit East 2011 Staff Shirt that DIYThemes sponsored. Their sponsorship money was donated to the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer.

Once again, in conjunction with Affiliate Marketers Give Back, we teamed up with Avon Walk for Breast Cancer to help raise money for breast cancer research, treatment and community programs.

The cost of the sponsorship is $7,500 and will be donated in full, to the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer.

By booking this sponsorship, the entire Affiliate Summit team will wear your company’s logo on the FRONT of our conference staff shirts for all three days of the event. [Just like this picture to the right.]

Even though Affiliate Summit lasts for just three days, your company logo on the shirts will continue to receive exposure in the Affiliate Summit photos and videos.

Book the staff shirt sponsorship today and check out other remaining sponsorships for Affiliate Summit West 2012.

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VigLink Launches LinkWeaver to Transform Content Monetization

by Missy Ward

Viglink just announced a new offering called “LinkWeaver” offering publishers another way monetize their content, and site visitors a faster way to get more information about a product or service.

According to Viglink's release today,

VigLink, the leader in next generation content monetization for website publishers, today announced general availability of its LinkWeaver^TMtechnology. LinkWeaver, which powers VigLink’s link insertion solution, detects product and merchant references within content in web pages and automatically creates a custom set of simple links embedded uniquely within each page. LinkWeaver technology allows readers to instantly click to learn more about a particular product or service, or even make a purchase, without leaving the website to search elsewhere.

LinkWeaver augments VigLink’s automated link affiliation, delivering a highly effective dual approach to content monetization for website publishers of all types. The end result is a service that is tightly integrated with content. It delivers value to readers by enabling them to access the information they want at the moment they’d like to act, and it gives publishers an additional revenue stream.

Read the full press release here.

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Debunking the Top 25 Performance Marketing Influencers List from…

by Missy Ward

Performance marketing technology provider Impact Radius announced the publication of a “Top 25 Performance Marketing Influencers” list. Here is the infographic they provided in their press release:

According to their release,

“Designed to help advertisers, agencies and media companies seeking expert guidance in improving their revenue from performance marketing, the list, based on an Impact Radius independent analysis of the influence of more than 400 prominent performance marketing thought leaders, identifies the top people whose blogs, tweets and social metrics provide the most influential insights and advice for the industry.”

While I appreciate being included in the list, I'd like to go on record with my thoughts about this list, and lists such as this. This is not meant to be disrespectful to the folks at Impact Radius (and I know that they won't take it as such) but in my opinion, it's lists such as these which can lead to confusion, especially to those outside of the performance marketing/affiliate marketing industry, as well as to folks new to the industry itself. And, the last thing we need is more confusion.

Heck, we still can't even agree on what we call ourselves in our own industry.

As I've been an affiliate marketer since the late '90's, I've been around the block a few times, so I'd like to share some points that I strongly believe should be taken into consideration when interpreting this list.

Caveat Emptor When it Comes to Folks that have “Made the List”.

I do not mean this as an insult, but there are people on this list that are simply NOT influential in the affiliate marketing/performance marketing space. They know who they are and they are likely wondering to themselves why they've been included. That does not mean to say that they are not impressive in their respective areas of expertise; it's just not affiliate marketing. Just do your due diligence. OK?

Ranking People Using Social Scoring Does Not Give You the Whole Picture

Sadly, this list only used online social metrics to determine authority ranking. Big mistake for many reasons:

Using social scoring immediately discounts the long term effects that the truly influential people have had for many years before Twitter, Klout and Peer Index existed. And trust me, when these leaders do speak, their message is not only heard, it's respected.
This list does not take into account a person's offline influence or authority in alternative online sharing platforms, such as forums. Just because these people do not choose to participate in Twitter, etc. does not mean that their influence is any less powerful.
Klout, Twitter and PeerIndex can all be manipulated — easily. [Bots, frequency of posting instead of quality of posting, etc.)
Social scoring does not segment a person's ability to influence within an industry, but rather provides just a single number to rank them across the board. So folks with large Twitter followings, high Klout Scores and PeerIndex scores in general, will likely outrank people that are truly influential in a specific industry.

For the reasons above, I'd like to recognize a few people who should have been included in this “Top 25” list, as they actually have driven action and continue to drive the affiliate marketing / performance marketing industry.

Brian Littleton, ShareASale.com
Kellie Stevens, AffiliateFairPlay.com
Todd Farmer, AffiliateMarketingPlan.com
Scott Jangro, MechMedia.com
Pat Grady, RhinoFish.com
Eric Nagel, EricNagel.com
Todd Crawford, ImpactRadius.com (Yes, the Co-Founder of the company that put this list out, who has propelled this industry for many years, didn't even make the list.)

Who do you think is missing from this list?

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