Thirty-three years ago today the Rolling Stones gave their first public performance. It took place at the Marquee Club in London. The band’s lineup has changed some since then, but singer Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards are still hanging in there for the group’s tour this year.

While many (including me) claim the band’s decision to tour yet again is more about the money than the music, it’s hard to deny the Stones their rightful place in rock n’ roll history. Still, in spite of the obvious jokes about needing walkers, wearing Depends and collecting social security, the Stones continue to be one of the top grossing bands whenever they go on tour.

So, what does any of this have to do with affiliate marketing? Not much – except that I have spent a lot of time thinking about top performers in a variety of different industries over the last few days.

There are two reasons that the concept of top performers has been on my mind: first, Commission Junction just launched a new program to reward its top performing affiliates; second, there has been a huge uproar surrounding a list of top performing affiliates put out by consultant Jeff Molander.

Let’s start off with the less controversial of the top performer topics. On Monday Commission Junction announced its CJ Performer program, whereby top-performing publishers get access to enhanced support and resources and recognition within Commission Junction’s network as a premier publisher.

According to CJ company officials, about 200 of its more than 70,000 active affiliates are expected to be invited to join the program. These Web publishers will identified at CJ Performers with the Commission Junction Marketplace.

For publishers this means they get assigned a CJ account manager who will work with them to o improve their results and to develop relationships with advertisers in the network. CJ Performers also get expedited responses to technical inquiries, free access to product catalog data and customized reporting.

And just in case you’ve managed to avoid the hoopla regarding The Affiliate List, let me get you up to speed.

About a month ago at the Affiliate Summit 2005 in Las Vegas, Molander released a ranking of approximately 200 top affiliate websites. It is compiled using data from several databases (Alexa, Whois, Googspy and MarketLeap and possibly others). Molander sells this list for $399.

At the crux of the controversy are publishers that are up in arms about being included on the list. They don’t want all their information (information they consider private and proprietary) being sold. Many have asked to be taken off the list. Molander is not removing publishers from his list claiming that the information included is all publicly available and he simply compiled in it in a useful fashion.

I’m not taking sides on this one and will let you be the judge. Check out Threadwatch to follow ongoing hoo-ha. Some of the entries are hilarious and the entire thread makes for really interesting reading.

Meanwhile, let me know your tricks for becoming a top performer. lisap@revenuetoday.com