I’m in the throws of editing stories for the upcoming issue of Revenue. While the new edition of the magazine will be filled with tons of great articles on a variety of topics, one standout story is about how affiliate marketers can leverage the social networking phenomenon. It’s a great article written by one of our frequent contributors, Alexandra Wharton.
If you’re wondering just how influential social networking sites are check out the email that Alex sent me when she filed her story:
“In the past month, online social networks influenced more than $2,000 worth of my household’s spending and I didn’t even realize it until I sat down to write this article.
Based on comments about lodging experiences on the travel website, TripAdvisor.com, I changed my upcoming vacation reservations in Tybee Island, Georgia, from a B&B to a hotel.
Then, acting on postings made to Yelp.com, a site that offers user reviews of a variety of establishments - from hair salons to dentists - I changed my first ever acupuncture appointment to a different practitioner.
A couple days later, based on unfavorable reviews at Chowhound.com, a restaurant review site, I shifted the reservations for my husband’s work dinner from one restaurant to another.
And lastly, after discovering some old friends on the social networking music site, Mog.com, and reading their raves about recent My Morning Jacket performances, I downloaded their new album.”
She goes on to note that because all these sites have one thing in common - the content is written by consumers - not editors or marketers – that carries much more weight in her decision making.
“Sites that are user generated allow consumers to get opinions and advice from each other rather than from the influences of traditional media and marketing and this will effect a radical change on how businesses conduct their business,” she writes.
She cites eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey, who cautions “that lack the understanding of this new paradigm where consumers have the control” will leave many companies behind.
Jim Nail, chief marketing officer for the market influence analytics company, Cymfony, says, “There is tremendous power behind consumers connecting with each other rather than merchants – that’s been the power behind the Internet - first with email and bulletin boards – and now with blogs, social networking and wikis.”
Look for Alex’s article, plus others on marketing green products, branding, eBay, and CJ’s Link Management Initiative, in the upcoming September/October issue of Revenue.
I’ll start right off by saying that I’m a somewhat of a fan of Mark Cuban’s. What’s not to like. This guy is the ultimate entrepreneur. He started off as a value added reseller and built several successful businesses. In 1995 he eventually sold his Broadcast.com to Yahoo for an insane amount of money.
Way back in the day while Cuban was a systems integrator and founder of MicroSolutIons (which he later sold to CompuServe), he wrote a column for a reseller trade publication where I worked. I liked his in-your-face style then and I still do. Plus, this guy owns a NBA team, which is my dream. Cuban and I have exchanged emails over the years as I did a lot of writing about how technology was shaping the NBA and other sports.
Okay, I wasn’t a huge fan of his reality TV show, but whatever. I still love to read Mark’s very candid blog and I usually learn something. Even other great bloggers reach out to Cuban.
What I learned this time from reading Cuban’s blog is that he is looking to use affiliates to help his business and if you can help him, he may just give you a job.
As founder of HDNet, Cuban is now looking to solve the problem of getting audiences out to see movies without spending more than he makes on each theater ticket. His company is already doing typical movie marketing, buzz marketing, putting up video on the Net, setting up movie websites, buying ads, and participating into movie forums.
Now they want to try affiliate marketing.
In his most recent blog entry, Cuban writes, “We are looking at affiliate programs. So people with lots of myspace or other social network friends could get a buck or 2 or 3 if someone goes from their myspace page directly to fandago, moviefone, movietickets.com etc and buys a ticket to a film of ours prior to its release. Get 100 friends to buy tickets to a movie, get a 100 bucks from us.”
If you have any great ideas, contact Cuban and you may get a job.
He writes, “So if you want a job, and have a great idea on how to market movies in a completely different way. If your idea works for any and all kinds of movies. If it changes the dynamics and the economics of promoting movies, email it or post it. If its new and unique, I want to hear about it. If its a different way of doing the same thing you have seen before, it probably wont get you a job, but feel free to try.”
With so many smart people in this industry, Cuban is likely to be overwhelmed with more great ideas than he can handle. lisap@revenuetoday.com
Oh yeah, I believe you may have heard a that video is huge. Here’s some Affiliate Summit footage from Revenue’s sales director, Tobias Siegel, and others in the affiliate community and of course, Affiliates Gone Wild.
Clearly, you won’t want to miss the fun in Vegas. Register early.
By the way, I want to extend a big thank you to all the affiliates from Florida that I recently met at the Affiliate Summit. This is an amazing bunch of folks with huge hearts and tons of state pride. Each time I mentioned I would be spending a few extra days after the conference traveling through Florida and ultimately heading to Miami for some fun in the sun, these folks offered up tips on where to go and what not to miss. Some even volunteered to play tour guide or just grab a drink or dinner if I was in their area. Wow. That’s some hospitality.
I didn’t take anyone up on their more than generous offers just because I had the Mr. in tow and really needed to completely chill out, but the offers were kind and touching. I’ll be more than glad to reciprocate when any of you visit the Bay Area. My tour guide prowess can be confirmed by a long list of friends and family members from the East Coast. lisap@revenutoday.com
The Affiliate Summit is over. It’s late Tuesday night - though it seems early compared to the past three evenings of wee hours fun and frolicking . A lot of people have already boarded flights for home, but there are still some folks here. Many had small quiet dinners, gathered in the bar area and once again, ended the night signing tunes to the piano stylings of Brian Littleton.
Today was a very long day. The morning kicked off with some general session confusion. The Remarks and Rotating Roundtables seemed disorganized. Jeff Molander, the Summit’s emcee, didn’t do much to help. His explanation of who was supposed to rotate when and where only added to the confusion. Eventually, it all worked itself out and people where able to get to the speakers they wanted to hear.
Next up for me was a panel on Affiliate Marketing Legal Issues. I love hearing lawyers speak when I’m not paying them and I haven’t sworn to God to uphold anything.
There was nothing ambiguous about what this panel of three lawyers and two tech people had to say. FTC compliance regarding the laws of Internet advertising is mandatory. Everyone in the chain is being held responsible and that means publishers/affiliates. Steven Richter, president and general counsel for OptinRealBig.com, says the affiliate space needs a trade group or association so that there is a single body working to resolve issues.
Panelist Mark Rosenberg, an attorney with Sills, Cummis, Epstein & Gross, also chimed in on how trademark issues – especially bidding on key words – is one of the hottest issues.
So is fraud. Richter claims “Fraud is here to stay.” And offered some advice; “Know thy customer.” Don’t simply rely on software to catch the bad guys. “Click fraud will bite you in the butt and it will be a serious bite,” he says.
And here’s a real shocker, all the lawyers were in agreement that should any legal issues arise hire a good lawyer.
Linda Goodman, a partner at The Goodman Law Firm, went on to say that one simple way to test the Internet knowledge of any potential lawyer your looking to hire is to ask the question: “What is your dealing with spamhaus?
After lunch (what no Krab today?) I went to hear Jim Lillig, director of business development for LobsterGram, speak on Co-optetion, Comparison Sites and Conversions: Lessons Learned from the Adult Online Playbook. I really enjoyed this one. Lillig is a charismatic speaker that also seems to deliver the goods - lots of specific advice for what works. I couldn’t take notes fast enough. In addition, to passing on the information to the reporter working on a Revenue story about this very topic (for the Nov./Dec. issue), I thought there were some extremely valuable nuggets that I could use as we redesign our own site (RevenueToday.com).
The conference wrapped up with many of the show’s speakers offering a minute or two of their insights from the show. A common theme was how communication has increased and even gotten better.
My observations from the show:
*Ninety-eight percent of the people I polled about their jobs said they were meant to do be online marketers and couldn’t imagining doing anything else or having a better jobs. Wow. What lucky folks.
*Crocs with socks – so wrong.
*Getting a video jam packed with footage from the show is a very good thing. Thanks Shawn and Missy. You guys rock.
*There is no substitute for meeting face-to-face.
*LinkShare President Steve Denton’s ability to slip into parties and then vanish from conferences without a trace is almost superhero-like.
*Faux Mickey Mouse costumes are truly frightening.
*Blogging software needs a Breathalyzer attachment.
I made it though day one of the Affiliate Summit, which is technically day two, but really the first official day with a keynote and session. It’s not really all that confusing unless, you haven’t eaten in three days and have consumed lots of adult beverages.
The sessions were informational and educational and very well attended. It was standing room only in many. The exhibit hall also had a lot of foot traffic. One booth, I forget the company name, was attracting a lot of attention with its group of hired blonde both bunnies wearing red spandex racing short/outfits.
The keynote was a hit. I wasn’t quite sure that the attendees would love hearing from an old major league pitcher, despite his entrepreneurial success with Big League Chew. However, everyone I talked to afterwards seemed to enjoy Jim Bouton’s inspirational messages of persistence and loving what you do – or at least finding a way to do what you love.
There was no lack of parties last night. Digital River’s big party sounded like blast. I never made it over to there even though Revenue Magazine was a sponsor. But the rest of the Revenue crew was on hand to spread the love in my absence.
Instead, I hung out at the ShareASale party at Howl at the Moon. The company’s CEO Brian Littleton, who is widely regarded as one of the good guys in affiliate marketing and is extremely well liked and well respected, is also a hell of a piano player. He took the stage to show off his stuff and had everyone dancing and many of the ladies swooning.
There were also some other affiliates that belted out tunes. One, Scott Hazard, rocked the house. His singing was far better than the guys the club pay to be there. I was very impressed.
The night ended (at least for me) with Brian Littleton playing piano in the lobby of the Hilton with 30 Summit attendees belting out tunes and peppering him with requests.
Earlier in the day, I suggested to Affiliate Summit co-host Shawn Collins that the next event include a jam session, where the talented folks of this community could bring their instruments and rock it out. After seeing many of these people perform last night, I’m even more convinced that it’s a good idea (even if I say so myself) and I’m going to remind Shawn about it.
I heard there were also some people that jumped into the pool fully dressed around 4am. I have not confirmed it, but one of them is reportedly a shoe-loving, sassy Canadian, whose lucky number might be 436,797.
I know there’s more to share (Networking Bingo - congrats to Zac Johnson, Performic’s “I heart Affiliate Marketing” t-shirts, etc.), but I have to get to today’s sessions.
I’m here at the Affiliate Summit in Orlando. So far there’s been lots of networking, hanging out poolside, World Cup action, and of course more networking.
There’s a real upbeat vibe having so many affiliate marketing folks in one place. It’s great. Everywhere I turn someone is chatting about the industry.
The Revenews.com guys and gals are out in full force. Brad Waller beat me to the punch on blogging about the CJ LMI issues. I heard the same info last night at a party. Not sure if person who told me was in the know or someone who simply read Brad’s entry. Also, take a look at one of Scott Jangro’s recent posts on the situation. This is all very interesting. I’ll hunt down a CJ person today and see what “official” word I can get, if any.
Everything at the show seems to be running smoothly so there’s not too much to report – yet. But here are the highlights, the lowlights, and the guylights (my new favorite word. Thanks Jim).
*A company that I can’t remember it’s name held a party and there wasn’t one guest that I spoke with who knew anything about this company – other than it was hosting the event and there was an open bar.
*Very few people can pull off looking dapper in a Cuban straw party hat. Affiliate manager extraordinaire Andy Rodriguez is one of them. I have pictures, but seem to have misplaced the cable to upload to the computer. You’ll just have to imagine it.
*Speaking of dapper….Jeff Molander and his new partner David Delisle held a cocktail party to casually inform some people about their new venture - Partner Maker. The duo’s pressed dress shirts and cufflinks were anything but casual – especially amidst a sea of casual shirts, cargo shorts and flip-flops.
*Every Affiliate Summit there is a prank played on someone. I know who will get pranked this year, but can’t say right now. It will all be revealed, in it’s Titanic proportions, in this morning’s sessions.
*Wayne Porter is by far the most interesting person I have the pleasure of speaking with at any of these conferences. If you don’t learn at least three things from him in the span of 10 minutes, then you’re not listening. That guy is fascinating.
Okay, I’m off to the morning sessions to hear if former big league baseball pitcher Jim Bouton can inspire a bunch of hung-over attendees. It might be an even tougher crowd than the Yankee fans he’s used to.
Over the last day and half there has been all sorts of blogosphere hubbub about a dispute among Revenue Magazine, an advertiser, and an affiliate. I’m choosing not to throw fuel on the fire or waste too much more time on this issue.
However, for the record, I will state the facts and only the facts.
*Jeremy Shoemaker did not pull his article from Revenue, because there was never an article to pull.
*No one associated with or representing Revenue Magazine has interviewed, spoken or contacted Jeremy Shoemaker for an article in our publication.
*An Azoogle employee (Bryant Hussey, Azoogle’s Media Buyer) interviewed Shoemaker for an advertisement that the company created and paid to run in the July/August issue of Revenue Magazine.
*Revenue opted not to run the proposed ad saying that it looked too much like editorial content and would confuse and mislead readers.
*Instead, a single-page ad from Azoogle appears Revenue’s July/August Issue. It is the same advertisement Azoogle paid to run in the previous issue of Revenue on page 21.
Also, if you’re wondering what happened to my blog entry from Thursday (7/6/06); I took it down after lengthy internal conversations. It was decided that, although the post was factually correct, it only added gas to the already combustible situation. lisap@revenuetoday.com
