As I am preparing to leave for New York this weekend to attend Affiliate Summit, I am reading through all of the planning and packing and party posts. I’m going through my usual motions of getting a hair cut, picking out some new clothes, and figuring out where I left my Poken again. It all of a sudden occurred to me that I am not sure why I am going to Affiliate Summit this time. I don’t mean to suggest that I don’t know what the benefits are. It’s the one conference that I never miss. Rather, I need to figure out why I personally am attending this particular Affiliate Summit.

When I first started going back in 2006-2007, I was attending in large part to educate myself. I visited almost every single booth and attended sessions all day every day. I was also starting to network but was so overwhelmed with the basics that I didn’t do as much networking as I would have liked.

From 2008 to 2009, I stopped attending as many sessions and started focusing more on building and strengthening my network. The “parties” (mainly non-conference activities) became more important for me because I spent time caring more about the people involved in the business. I’ve found that even if someone isn’t a “business partner,” some type of business eventually comes out of most of the connections I have made at Affiliate Summit. Even if it doesn’t, my network of affiliate marketing friends is such a huge support to me in life in general that they are a priority to me now.

In the last year, I’ve spent more time on establishing my own place in affiliate marketing. Writing some articles for Feedfront, speaking at Affiliate Summit, and being a part of the mentor/newcomer program have allowed me to get my name out. In fact, I spent a good part of my time at the last few Summits just focusing on trying to be helpful to everyone else in the hopes that good karma would come back to me at some point.

Now it’s time for Affiliate Summit East 2010. I need to go into the conference with a purpose so that I can come out of it with a feeling of whether or not I achieved that purpose. My first instinct is that I need to do a little bit of everything that I have done in the past–attend some sessions to learn to be better at what I do, network with new people to expand my business, and strengthen my relationships with current friends and business partners. Maybe I have finally gotten to the point where I can take advantage of the full potential of Affiliate Summit?

What’s your purpose in attending Affiliate Summit? Is there anything that I am missing?

Affiliate Summit is almost here again and many affiliates and merchants are getting prepared. From clothes to business cards to travel plans, a lot goes into preparing for the conference. I’ve been attending Affiliate Summits regularly since 2007 and am finally starting to get the hang of it without too much stress. Here is a basic time frame of what you should be doing if you are serious about making the most out of the Summit:

Anytime: Start following the #ase10 hash tag on Twitter. In addition to seeing who else is attending, you will get good tips about transportation, sessions, parties, and more. Also join the Affiliate Summit Social Network to begin your networking.

One month out: Finalize your travel plans. You’ve missed the Early Bird rate to stay at the conference hotel, but you may still be able to get rooms at the Hilton at regular prices. You should also be nailing down your flights so that you are sure to get in and out at the dates and times that are most convenient for you.

Three weeks out: Order business cards, a Poken, or both. Decide how much information you want to share with everyone, including cell phone, email, and address. There are pros and cons to all of the above! I tend to only share my Twitter, email, and blogs with everyone and give out my phone number more sparingly.

Two weeks out: Read through the agenda on the website and determine which sessions you would like to attend. Read the various posts on blogs (you’ll likely see them on Twitter) that give more information about the sessions and the speakers. You’ll even find podcasts that may give you information that you won’t find anywhere else or give you a sneak peek into hearing more from the speakers. Determine your sessions first so that you know when you will have free time. (I’ll post my thoughts on sessions next week). Then start contacting your merchants and setting up individual meetings with any of them that you will not see at the Meet Market or in the Exhibit Hall. You should also start seeing a lot of information about parties at about this time. Many of them will overlap, so you will have some tough decisions to make! Order electronic items that you need like a backup battery for your laptop or cell phone.

One week out: Start gathering up your clothes, shoes, and jewelry. Shop for things like mints, gum, and eye drops as well. Read my previous post “Real Scoop on Preparing for Affiliate Summit” to see what I think about packing.

Final days: Make a list of all of the merchants and networks that you want to be sure to meet up with, including ones that you already have relationships with and ones that you want to meet. Set your business on auto-pilot or delegate as much as possible because you will want to spend every minute possible taking advantage of the conference and not doing your normal work.

I love Affiliate Summit and always get so much out of it. I hope that you will, too! Are you planning on attending? I’d love to meet you. Do you have other tips for those preparing to attend?

As the owner of a rewards site, I do not have a choice but to work with many different affiliate networks. That said, if I had the choice I probably wouldn’t work with a few of them. Affiliate managers and merchants often ask me which networks I like and which I do not like. Rather than complain about what I don’t like, I decided to put together my “dream network,” or what it would look like to take the best components of each and put them all together.

(As a bit of background, I’m not a “Super Affiliate” by any stretch of the imagination, but I do have some good niches and databases. I don’t market to a million people or do paid search at all. I’m pretty much your average content affiliate.)

Personal Communication: Hands down, ShareASale and buy.at do the best job of communicating on a one-on-one basis with affiliates. They make it easiest to talk to them via email, forum, Twitter, Facebook, and just about any other way that I could possibly want to talk to them. I know that I can get in touch with at least one person with either of these networks 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Troubleshooting and Problem Solving: In a way this goes along with communication, but ShareASale definitely stands out for this. I’ve sent messages via ABW forum or Twitter and gotten responses from the management team there within an hour. Actual responses to my questions and not just passing the buck. Some networks make you wait 1-2 business days for responses. That isn’t acceptable when our industry never stops. Even worse, some of the networks hide behind “help desk” email addresses and names and you can’t just communicate with someone until you get an issue resolved. It’s infuriating and it can result in lost revenue for all of us (Linkshare, I’m talking to you specifically on this one). Trouble ticket/help desk systems can work well when there is accountability behind them but they aren’t helpful when you have emergency situations or not actual point of contact.

Finding and Applying to Merchants: While no one network stands out for this, some are definitely better than others. Commission Junction makes it easy to search for and apply to a whole list of merchants at once. I also seem to get good results on my search terms, even if I do not know the exact merchant name that I am looking for.

Coupons and Discounts: This is huge for us at Sunshine Rewards and we need to automate as much as possible. It doesn’t do us any good when we get hot coupons but can only download them once a day. We end up loading the coupons manually from the emails before we can download as much as 24 hours later. Because of this, I favor the networks that allow coupons to be downloaded as they are added such as Linkshare and ShareASale. The one way that Google excels in that they allow you to decide which types of coupons and discounts you want to download.

Reporting: Obviously most affiliates are going to favor real-time reporting over batch reporting. I like when I can manipulate the data in different ways easily. ShareASale and buy.at are the best for transactions coming up quickly. Commission Junction is great for allowing easy downloads that can be manipulated in different ways. Linkshare has the easiest way to find individual product sales, which can be important for some of my niche sites.

Credit Disputing: Often we have to report when we do not get credit for a purchase. Some networks do not have a mechanism for this at all. Both Linkshare and Commission Junction make it easy to file disputes for credits, and Linkshare even lets you “escalate” a denial for further review. This helps keep track of outstanding issues and ensure that they are actually getting to the merchants.

Newsletters: I would much rather get links in a newsletter than have to click on the “Get Link” in an email to generate the links. I don’t know how much this depends on the affiliate manager, but it seems like the Google, ShareASale, and Linkshare links are most likely to come right in the newsletter. I also like the ability that some networks have to send the newsletters to multiple people in my company because I am not the one who pulls the coupon links from the newsletters.

Video: I haven’t been using too many videos through the networks lately, but ShareASale makes it easiest for me to add their links to my own videos and many of their merchants have video links now. buy.at has a new video tool but I honestly haven’t used it because I haven’t come across any good videos for merchants that I am running with them. Video on the networks doesn’t matter too much to me because I find people click on the links around the embedded video anyway.

Advanced Tools: I love the Linkshare LinkGenerator and CouponSnap. As a blogger, there is nothing simpler than navigating to a page and then clicking on the little box on my browser to generate my link. If every network had these, I would do a lot more product reviews. ShareASale offers a pretty easy way to generate a link to a specific page as well, although you do need to go into the interface and do it. I like that deep linking functionality to pages where I want to refer my visitors to a full category of products. All of the networks are hit or miss to me on how easy it is to pull links for individual products. It seems that a lot of that comes down to the merchants as well.

I could go on for hours about other features and each of the networks specifically, but you would get pretty bored. These hit the high points for me. What would your dream network look like?

I initially got into running because of the Race for the Cure. After walking it for a number of years, I decided to start running it. I didn’t run fast, but I could run a 5K. After a couple of those, I decided to run my first half marathon last May. For some crazy reason, I signed up for it again this year. Just as I was starting to tire of my training, a great new opportunity came along to turn my runs into money for charity.

Affiliate Summit has started a Nike+ Challenge in which they will donate $1 to the Avon Breast Cancer Crusade for each mile run in the challenge (up to $5,000). When I saw this, I immediately hit my local running store to buy a Nike+ tracking sensor and wristband. I then visited the Affiliate Summit East 2010 Challenge page on Nike’s website and set up my account.

Now when I run, I have a higher purpose. I logged a little over 13 miles last week interspersed with my Zumba days. During each run I kept telling myself that each mile was more money being donated to help fight breast cancer. Hopefully this challenge will keep me running well past the Indy Mini and into the summer up through Affiliate Summit in New York in August. If you are an affiliate marketer and are up for a little fitness challenge (whether you walk or run, the sensor works the same), you should definitely check it out. If nothing else, help cheer the rest of us on!

The advertising tax/affiliate tax/Amazon tax is threatening to kill small businesses just like mine, and it is time that I join the fight. I’ll be honest and admit that I am new to this. When the legislation first started popping up, I figured if it wasn’t my state, it didn’t impact me. Then I really started paying attention and listening to what was happening. I listened in to the entire Colorado proceedings and followed along with my friends on Twitter. By the end of the night, I knew that regardless of whether the fight was about Indiana, I needed to be better educated and get involved.

States are attempting to use legislation to get around federal laws that prohibit them from collecting sales tax from out of state businesses unless there is a “nexus” within that state. The states are passing legislation that would make an affiliate a “nexus,” despite the fact that we do not take any money or send out any goods. States think that they will increase their revenue. Conversely, the merchants are just disaffiliating with the affiliates and the affiliates are losing their businesses. How is that good for anyone involved?

Following the advice of the Performance Marketing Association, I made a quick video about how you can get involved in fighting the advertising tax. It doesn’t matter which group you join or if you even join a group. The bottom line is that you need to 1) get educated, 2) get connected with others involved, and 3) spread the word. While big businesses may have the money to fight these fights, we have the voices and the personal stories that can stop states from taking our businesses away from us.

Okay, so I’m not really a star. But I kind of felt like it when I got home from Affiliate Summit and started reading the book that was in our conference bag: Internet Marketing from the Real Experts. Why did I feel like a star? I found that I have two different articles in the book and I am among such amazing company! There are articles from so many people who are truly amazing in affiliate marketing: Geno Prussakov, Jamie Birch, Scott Jangro, Brian Littleton, Lisa Picarille, the list goes on and on (and apologies to the other 80+ people I didn’t mention!). The book is edited by Shawn Collins and Missy Ward.

If you are looking to learn about affiliate marketing, this book gives you a couple of things that the others do not. First, it is written from the perspective of many different players. By that I mean that you can read articles by affiliates, affiliate managers, networks, and consultants. You’ll get a 360 degree view of the industry. Second, it touches on many different areas of affiliate marketing from SEO to video to blogging. Lastly, it is broken down into 3 minute segments so you can pick it up and put it down whenever you have time. You can also jump around to the area that impacts you.

If you are the least bit interested in affiliate marketing, this book will be money well spent for you. Whether you are just starting out or have been in affiliate marketing for years, you will absolutely learn something new from this book. It’s not a “get rich quick” book; it’s legitimate information on how to help you grow your business and maximize your returns. And if you care to check out my articles, they are on pages 94 (Merchants, Bring on the Videos) and 102 (Rewards Sites: Asset or Liability?).

I’ve been using Aweber for the newsletters on a few of my websites for quite a while and like it for a number of reasons. I don’t pay for any traffic to those sites, and my lists are building slowly. I happened across a post on Facebook recently (and can’t even remember how!) where they were talking about using Lightboxes. I started investigating and discovered that the Lightbox option is where you get a pop up of sorts that isn’t really a pop up asking if you want to sign up for a newsletter. I had mixed feelings about implementing it but have been pleasantly surprised so far.

Here’s a chart that shows daily signups over the course of a month. It’s easy to see when I implemented the Lightbox:

The blue show people who unsubscribed (luckily not many!). Green are people who subscribed and verified their subscriptions. Yellow are those who subscribed but did not verify. I can understand why the yellow increased so much. Some people just entered an email address in the box to get it to close rather than hitting the “close” button. However, you can see that my verified subscriptions have tripled. Interestingly, this is from a site that actually has much less traffic now than it did in December, and the December subscription numbers were consistent with those first eight days shown in the chart.

Clearly I am getting more newsletter signups. However, there are two potential downsides. First, are people hitting the back button on the site after the Lightbox pops up? I have it set to a delay so that they will find the content and start reading before the Lightbox pops up. Conversions on merchandise are definitely down a little bit, but it is also not a month in which I would expect to see high conversions. The second issue is the number of people “complaining” about the newsletters. My “complaints” (which can be defined as many different things in Aweber) have gone up from about .08% to .24% this month. Could it be that people are signing up just to close the box but then also verifying and not really wanting the newsletter? That seems odd, but possible.

I’ll be continuing to watch the trends over the next month or so regarding newsletter signups, site visits, and merchandise conversion rates. The one thing that I want to stress is how easy it was to create the Lightbox in Aweber, including modifying the template as well as the appearance itself. Next up I will be doing some A/B testing on Lightbox differences (graphic v. text).

I’ve had the privilege of serving as a mentor at the last two Affiliate Summits. Each time I was paired with an affiliate who was very new to the industry. In both cases I was able to see Affiliate Summit through their eyes and remember back to my first time, when I was so new to affiliate marketing that I didn’t know CPA from CPS or a toolbar from a network. It can be confusing and overwhelming, especially when you are a blogger and do something else full-time.

Last summer I participated in a panel at Blog Indiana with two women who are both educated about and instrumental in affiliate marketing– Carolyn Tang and Kristen Kinsey. We were lucky enough to be chosen to give a similar presentation at Affiliate Summit West. If you are relatively new to monetizing your blog or affiliate marketing in general, here is a little taste of what you can learn from our presentation:

• Affiliate marketing basic terminology such as “merchant,” “network,” and “affiliate”
• Ways to evaluate potential merchants for your site
• How to use PayPerCall technology
• Different ad types including banners, text links, and specific products
• Widgets and plugins that help add content to your site while monetizing it
• How best to work with your affiliate manager
• General resources for affiliate marketing

As I said, this is meant to be a basic session geared to those who are new to affiliate marketing and/or monetizing their blogs. We’ll show you some examples and also give you an opportunity to have your blog looked at by the panel live for feedback on how you can better monetize it. If you are interested, our session is at 3:00 on Sunday and is titled Start Monetizing Your Blog Today. If you are already a seasoned affiliate marketing veteran, please help spread the word to those who might be interested and would find it valuable.

Thanks to Marty Fahncke for moderating for us!

I’ve been hearing a lot of talk amongst my friends about the alleged “Free Shipping Day” coming up in December. As someone who has worked in online shopping for years, I am here to tell you that you are asking for trouble if you wait for “Free Shipping Day” to do your online holiday shopping.

First of all, many merchants do free shipping year round. Even more merchants will be running free shipping as their holiday promotions starting on Black Friday. At Sunshine Rewards alone we have hundreds of free shipping deals. And we only have about 700 merchants total that we work with. Take a look at the companies that are already offering free shipping of some kind. Which other ones could you be waiting for?

Second, check out the shipping schedules for most merchants. Free Shipping Day is supposed to be December 17. That’s just 8 days before Christmas, including a weekend. Most merchants will tell you that if you want to use standard shipping, you need to place your order before December 17 (especially if the order is personalized in any way).

Third, even assuming that the store you are wanting to order from will still be shipping Christmas gifts by the 17th, do you want to a) take the chance that the items you want will be sold out, or b) take the chance that UPS or Fed Ex will be even a day late in getting them to you and your gifts will not arrive by Christmas? Been there, done that. I’ve even done the “guaranteed to be delivered by Christmas” thing and ended up getting the gifts a day or two later. It just isn’t worth the risk.

Lastly, free shipping often comes with strings. A free shipping coupon won’t do you any good if it only applies to a minimum order and you won’t be placing that minimum order. You would have been better off with a percent or dollar off coupon that applied to your minimum purchase.

There’s a lot of hype surrounding holiday shopping and every year there’s something new added to it– Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Green Monday, now Free Shipping Day. The bottom line is that there will be good deals from Thanksgiving through the end of the year and some deals that will be extra good because they are loss leaders or in limited supply. Do your homework and scope out coupon sites, cash back shopping sites, etc. rather than getting caught up in when everyone says you should be shopping. And don’t wait until the last minute unless you like taking risks with your gifts.

I’ve been watching Tweets come in this afternoon from a lot of mom bloggers and savings/deal bloggers promoting the download of various toolbars. When I check out their blogs, I notice that a lot of them have affiliate links on their sites.

I’m concerned that many affiliates do not even understand that the toolbars that they are promoting are essentially ensuring that they will no longer make any money off of the links in their blogs. Do you know which toolbars are responsible for overwriting affiliate cookies? Even if the toolbar seems like a great idea (i.e. you get cash back shopping or donations to charity), it doesn’t mean that the toolbar is not stealing from you.

One of my affiliate managers actually blogged about one particular plugin this morning (see Geno Prussakov’s post entitled Toolbars, pop-ups and parasites in Affiliate Marketing). However, there are hundreds more out there that no one is even talking about. Actually, people ARE talking about them…they are PROMOTING them!

If you are an affiliate who wants to make any kind of money off of your site or blog, it’s imperative that you check out more closely what you are promoting. You need to understand the affiliate marketing industry and what lies behind those toolbars and plugins. Otherwise, you are not only losing money yourself, but you are helping people take money out of the rest of our pockets as well.