I have a full plate this week, so let’s get right to it.

The LinkShare Summit is being held later this week in San Francisco. I love when the performance marketing folks converge on my home turf. Too bad, the weather is not cooperating. Oh well, I still expect the event to be packed with good information, have the chance to strengthen old relationships, make some great new connections and have lots of dinner and drinks with a great group of folks.

One of the most challenging issues facing online merchants is recruiting new affiliates. In fact, we have a feature article on that very topic in the latest issue (January/February) of Revenue. And while Senior Writer Alexandra Wharton talks to a wide array of publishers and merchants about the complex and often frustrating issue of affiliate recruiting, the show promoters of Affiliate Summit have come up with a unique approach to give merchants unprecedented direct access to top earning affiliates.

If you’re not checking out GeekCast.fm you are totally missing out on some very interesting audio content. The site just launched this week as a podcast aggregator. It is the brainchild of Shawn Collins, Jim Kukral and Sam Harrelson – three of the online marketing world’s heavy hitters. I love the concept and the t-shirts.

This week on the Affiliate Thing podcast my fabulous co-host Shawn Collins and I talked about the new MacBook Air at announced MacWorld, a hosted version of OpenAds, why relying solely on Google AdSense is not a good idea, Shawn’s continued fatblogging efforts, the Great Affiliate Road Rally charity event at Affiliate Summit West, and Pepperjam’s launch of new affiliate network. Listen to the show.

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I’ve been wanting to do more video, but I’ve been working from home for the last two weeks. I decided to bite the bullet and post someting anyway. I figured that since I previously posted a tour of my office at Revenue that I would put one up of the home office (okay kitchen). Enjoy!

Affiliate Summit co-founder Shawn Collins and I had another great episode of the Affiliate Thing podcast. This week’s guest was Loic Le Meur, founder of the video platform Seesmic.com. He talked about creating a video conversation platform. Shawn is already posting on Seesmic, which is currently in the alpha stage and accepting only a limited number of users. It will be launched to the general public at the end of January.

Check out our online only story about payment processing. It’s not available in the upcoming Nov./Dec. issue or in the digital edition of Revenue. You can only find it online.

The location for Affiliate Summit East 2008 has been set. I’m delighted to be going to Boston for the conference and with a little luck maybe my “World Champion” Boston Red Sox will be playing at Fenway Park, which would make my trip back home even sweeter.

Check out this contest to win a free pass to Affiliate Summit.

I’m rushing to get everything off my plate so I can head off the ShareASale’s ThinkTank conference in Scottsdale. When I saw the list of 80 or so attendees and the agenda I was really excited about the gathering of SAS affiliates and merchants. However, my excitement level rose even higher when I found out there might be some Texas Hold ‘Em played in a suite at the hotel on Saturday night. I’m no Jean-Robert, but I think I can hold my own as a gambler. As soon as I send the Nov./Dec. issue of Revenue to the printer today I’ll be practicing my poker face.

Has it been that long since I’ve actually written a blog? I guess so. I’ve been busy writing, editing and pulling together the November/December issue of Revenue. We send it to the printer this week, so it’s been crazy.

Yesterday I finished up (way past deadline) my Affiliate Advantage profile of super affiliate Scott Jangro, president of MechMedia. Whenever I write a longer piece (not a blog or editor’s letter, etc.) I have a very specific process. I wake up early – like 2am - put on headphones and crank some rocking music at full volume. Sometimes I listen to the same song over and over again until the feature is done. It’s like a calming thing and usually by the 40th time I can’t even hear what’s playing in my ear. But this time there was a twist on process and asked Scott via IM to tell me his favorite band so I could listen as I wrote. To bring the process full circle be sure to put on Ben Folds’ Rockin’ the Suburbs when you read Scott’s profile in the upcoming issue.