This week’s Affiliate Thing was all about the ladies. Stephanie Agresta, a 12-year veteran of the affiliate marketing space, who recently merged her consulting business to become one of the founders of the Conversation Group, stood in as co-host for Shawn Collins. Thanks Stephanie. You did a great job.

Shawn was busy co-hosting (with Missy Ward) the first-ever (sold out!) Affiliate Summit London. Stephanie and I talked about the glut of online marketing trade shows, events and conferences this fall. Stephanie is on a panel at BlogWorld Expo that will focus on affiliate strategies (from both a publisher and merchant perspective) in a Web 2.0 world. Meanwhile, I’m moderating a panel at Online Market World about e-commerce innovation and if there is a silver bullet for online marketers.

We also chatted about what’s in the September/October issue of Revenue magazine, the current episode of the Next Internet Millionaire and the importance of social media strategies for online marketers.

Heather Paulson, also a seasoned online marketing vet joined Stephanie and I as our guest. Heather spoke about recently starting her own company – the Paulson Management Group. Heather’s new agency deals with search, so we explored changes happening in the search space, what affiliate marketers should have their eye on right now to maintain a competitive edge, and being a women in a male-dominated industry.

Stephanie and I also discussed the new weekly payment system from LinkShare and a recently-released study from UK researcher e-Consultancy and Buy.at about Affiliate Marketing Merchants that shows more money, effort and time being spent on affiliate marketing.

Thanks to Stephanie and Heather for making it a great show. Shawn, I look forward to a full report about the affiliate space from across The Pond for next week’s show.

Here’s the link to the Affiliate Thing archive. If the show isn’t already up, it should be very soon.