The Ties That Bind

January/February 2007 Issue: Page 120

Print | Email | Digg This

It's all about relationships - good and bad.

For the first time, the Affiliate Summit conference will hold a full-fledged award ceremony. In the past the conference has given out a legend-type honor. Wayne Porter (for whom the award is now named) and Fat Wallet's Tim Storm were past winners. This year the awards (called the Pinnacle Awards) will be given out in multiple categories, including Affiliate of the Year, Affiliate Manager of the Year, Exceptional Merchant and Best Blogger.

I'm most curious to see who takes home the Legend award. Will it be AbestWeb.com's founder and CEO, Haiko de Poel, who is highly visible online but rarely spotted at industry events, or ShareASale's affable CEO Brian Littleton? Or perhaps, the third nominee – former Commission Junction executive Todd Crawford – which would be interesting since he's also the host for the ceremony, and his new employer Digital River is the sponsor of the awards bash.

Several of Crawford's colleagues have also been in the forefront recently. Lisa Riolo, former CJ SVP of biz dev, will be emcee for the Affiliate Summit extravaganza in Vegas. Meanwhile, her former CJ boss, Jeff Pullen, recently announced his new company QFour Digital. It's an investment company, looking for ventures in the performance marketing space. I wonder if Pullen plans an office next door to CJ co-founder Per Pettersen, who is now with LeadPoint.com on State Street in lovely downtown Santa Barbara. It might make for interesting run-ins at the local coffee shop.

This industry is a soap opera coated with a liberal dose of forensic drama à la CSI. Recently, an industry notable was accused of being the unnamed creator of a site that spewed some nasty stuff toward his longtime rival and very public industry nemesis. The alleged creator was outed on a couple of blogs written by savvy affiliate types who did some reverse domain name ownership sleuthing.

I'm no Matlock (thank goodness) but I think it's pretty damning evidence that hours after the cyber-fur started to fly, the site was taken down. The person accused of creating this site (which was not funny) is pulling an OJ and claiming he was set up.

If you can't handle the drama – stick with the cartoons. Several people forwarded me a piece of promotion from Mercado Software. It's a cartoon that is supposed to feature five adventures of its character Mandy Mercado. Apparently, Mandy's got a big secret. I'm betting that Mandy is a really a man that got her sister- in-law pregnant and that the child was adopted by her evil nemesis who is the only person who could donate life-saving bone marrow to Mandy. Either that or Mercado is simply pimpin' out Mandy to sell its e-commerce search and merchandising solution. Hmm. I wonder which one it is?

More proof that targeting others in the industry is suicide: ReturnOnAffiliate.com is dead. The social networking site for affiliates launched with big endorsements from industry luminaries, but then in March started popping ads on the sites of those that supported it. The first time it happened, site creator Richard Lewis was forgiven. The second time, not so much. Now the site is no longer.

So, when you're looking to capture the attention of someone important, don't use adware (that's the wrong kind of attention), use a blog. It turns out that Jim Kukral, founder of BlogKits and publisher of ReveNews.com, finally got the attention of billionaire Mark Cuban. Back in April Kukral tried an experiment whereby he simply created a blog called www.markcubanpleasecallme.com.

Kukral was the only person who knew about the blog. Then he sat back and waited for the call. But months passed and Cuban was too busy pondering which moron would buy YouTube.com and then the Mavericks basketball season kicked into high gear.

Then last fall, Cuban contacted Kukral and the two have been secretly working (with Cuban's movie studio Magnolia Pictures) to test out affiliate marketing techniques to sell movie tickets online through blogs. The dynamic duo rolled out the first set of ads on about five movie-related blogs on December 1. They were for a movie called "The Architect," starring that jailbait cheerleader from the TV show "Heroes." If all goes well, Cuban and BlogKits will be working exclusively together to promote all Magnolia Pictures movies in the same fashion.

You didn't think I was going to leave you without some mention of the Big O, did you?. Eileen Stout, who headed third-party service provider relationships, key business partners and major accounts for the auctions division of Overstock.com, left the company in November to join Bid4Assets in the newly created position of vice president, strategic partners, for the online auction marketplace, which focuses on personal property and real estate from the government and private sector.

Forget the diet and exercise and the promise to quit smoking – just resolve to give me the scoop. Send some hot industry gossip or juicy information my way. I want the real dirt and if I use your tip in the next column, I'll send you a Revenue T-shirt. You can also email me at TheSpider@RevenueToday.com or call the hotline directly at 415-732-7456.

Print | Email | Digg This