My good friends and I were on a webinar (recorded as a podcast to replay) recently, where we all talked about how we got started — and we shared a few fun memories to share.

“Who are these good friends of yours, Todd?”, you ask?

They are:

• Brian Littleton (ShareASale Founder and CEO)
• Scott Jangro (MechMedia Founder and CEO, and former BeFree Executive)
• Connie Arnold (a.k.a. Connie Berg, and Founder of FlamingoWorld.com)
• Todd Crawford (Co-Founder of Impact Radius, and former CJ Founding Executive)

As you can see – I was in some impressive company.

…and we really did have fun!

Special “Thanks!” goes out to my good friend Deb Carney, for taking the time to coordinate and host this event.

http://affiliateabcs.com/blog/affiliate-marketing-then-and-now-roundtable-discussion-affiliate-abcs-59/

This is a unique format for our Affiliate Strategies Sessions Podcast.  We are reviewing the year, and discuss a TON of developments since our last real podcast.

And, since we genuinely LOVE this industry, we discuss some of the people who make — and have made — this industry what it is.

The worst of Affiliate Thing
Shawn and Lisa sounded so young!  What a great blast from the past.

MyContentPro – Free Membership
Lisa and I are building out a site dedicated to helping you make your content rock.  Get a free membership now.

Tools and Resources for Affiliates
These are the things that we endorse for affiliates to make their business more effective, efficient and fill a need.

University of San Francisco
I’m teaching some classes here.  I love it!

Attention This Book Will Make you Money
Wait — Jim Kukral wrote a book?!?

Impact Radius
Todd Crawford and Lisa Riolo founded this new platform

Affiliate Summit
If you can attend only 1 conference this year – this is the one you need.  Please let us know if you’ll be there, so we can connect in person!

Affiliate Tax
Want to know where things stand with the Ad Tax?  The PMA keeps us informed.

Performance Marketing Association
Support our industry with a membership to the PMA.

Buy.at
AOL Sold this company to a well-respected UK Firm.

Schaaf Partnercentric
Brook Shaaf bought PartnerCentric to become a HUGE Agency / OPM Firm.

Buy.com
Not only does our friend Melissa Salas provide awesome video content at Buy.com TV, but they were bought buy LinkShare.

Thesis Theme
I use Thesis Theme on almost ALL of my sites.

Feedfront Issue #12
Read Lisa Picarille’s article in this issue!

ShareaSale RoadShow
If you lived in Texas this year, I hope you had a chance to meet up with Jason from ShareASale during his roadshow.
@jasonrubacky

Affiliate Marketers give back
They raised a TON of money for breast cancer!  Plus, they keep raising money for other charities.  This is yet another reason why I love this industry so much.
@missyward

Suze Orman “Approves” Missy Ward
Missy gets some love from the famous Suze Orman, as a result of her exceptional fund raising efforts.

GeekCast.fm
Shawn Collins and Missy Ward’s podcast network.

Velocity NYC
Shawn Collins and Missy Ward’s publishing company

Jim Kukral’s Keynote Speech
Jim gave a very inspirational keynote at Affiliate Summit East 2010.  Watch this.

Affiliate SuperFriends
Karen Garcia of GTO Management hooked us up for Jim’s Keynote!

Jim’s Controversial Video
Jim Kukral got some “Attention” for this promo.

Interview with Jim Kukral
This is a video of me asking you to join MyContentPro.com to get Jim’s interview.  (embarrassing!)

Peter Shankman’s HARO Acquired
Great idea, great speaker at Affiliate Summit.

Linkshare Symposium
Linkshare’s annual event.

CJU
CJ’s annual event.

Skimlinks
Great technology for helping publishers implement affiliate marketing in their sites – and so much more.

ShareASale
If you’re looking for an affiliate network with the highest of integrity, great people, and an impressive roster of merchants and affiliates — you need to work with ShareASale.  I have nothing but love for ShareASale and their Founder / CEO, Brian Littleton.  (Seriously, amazing people.)

Tim Storm, finalist for Entreprenewur of 2010
Couldn’t have happened to a better guy…

Fatwallet is a great place to work
Great work, Fatwallet!

Affiliates Indicted for Cookie Stuffing
Every industry has bad actors, and Kelly Stevens discusses her investigation of ours.

Affiliate FairPlay / Kelly Stevens
If you want to know the “inside scoop” on best practices in our industry — Kelly Stevens is your woman.

ShareASale Think Tank
I know you’re jealous.  Being invited to the ShareASale ThinkTank is a huge honor, and is one of the best events for affiliate marketers of the year.

ABC’s Plus
Deb Carney’s new, great forum for Affiliates and Merchants alike.

Affiliate Summit UnConference

But, due to demand, we yielded to our fans. So despite our busy schedules, we have produced our first new Affiliate Strategies Session (a.k.a. “ASS”) — Reborn.

This episode is very quick, and Lisa Picarille has graced us with her never-ending professionalism and amazing podcast-voice. It is brilliantly produced by our own audio-geek and overall cool guy, Todd Farmer.

Disclaimer 1: The sponsor links are real, live affiliate links to both WishlistMember (seriously awesome membership software) and Thesis Theme (everyone knows how awesome Thesis Theme is). If you wisely choose to purchase through the links, we will earn a commission.

Disclaimer 2: Please don’t take us too seriously today folks. Just having some fun, and gearing up for some amazing (serious) podcasts soon.

What do you think of the intro format? I was trying to follow in the footsteps of an amazing podcast master, Daniel M. Clark of GeekDads Weekly.

What do you think of the intro music? Lisa says it sounds like bad 70′s “you-know-what” music.

Welcome to another episode of the AffPlan Strategies Session, a podcast where industry leaders share their expert advice to help you with all aspects of creating and refining your affiliate marketing plan.

Thankfully, the talented Lisa Picarille moderated this episode about Affiliate Marketers and the Value of Blogging.

Joining Lisa, were Rosalind Gardner and Shawn Collins.

In previous episodes, we’ve focused exclusively on Merchants, Advertisers and Outsourced Program Managers. But not today.

Effective immediately, starting with this episode, we’re breaking out and expanding AffPlan, by covering the “Affiliate Side of Affiliate Marketing“.

…And this podcast is an impressive first “Affiliate Focused” episode of the Affplan Strategies Session. Listen now for some serious tips for profitable, efficient affiliate marketing with Blogs.

Rosalind Gardner has been a leader in the affiliate marketing industry since 1998 and is recognized best through her “Super Affiliate Handbook: How I Made $436,797 in One Year Selling Other People’s Stuff Online”, the NetProfitsToday blog for webmasters and her many articles as a columnist for Revenue magazine.  As a speaker, consultant and prolific blogger, Rosalind teaches affiliates how to build sustainable online businesses and merchants learn how to structure their affiliate programs to attract and retain loyal Super Affiliates like herself.

www.RosalindGardner.com

www.NetprofitsToday.com

Shawn Collins has been an affiliate marketer since 1997. He’s the co-founder of the Affiliate Summit conference.  He is also the Co-Editor-in-Chief of FeedFront Magazine and the Founder of podcasting network GeekCast.fm.  His book, ‘Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants‘ is the best selling book in the space, and it is considered to be required reading by affiliate managers. He publishes the annual AffStat Report, a research, analysis, and benchmarking report for the affiliate marketing industry. The data in the AffStat series is widely quoted by trade publications, including Internet Retailer and Jupitermedia properties. Shawn writes a daily blog on affiliate marketing news and opinion at his Affiliate Tip site, and posts regularly to his Affiliate Tip TV channel on YouTube.

http://www.affiliatesummit.com
http://blog.affiliatetip.com
http://www.feedfront.com
http://www.geekcast.fm
http://www.twitter.com/affiliatetip
http://www.facebook.com/shawncollins

The discussion kicked off with talk about the benefits of blogging (additional traffic, automation); how to write copy for your audience; where to get free content; do to come up with ideas for posts; the best ways to monetize; what common mistakes affiliates are making when it comes to blogging; personal versus professional blogs and more.

Resources and Show Links

Twitterfeed.com
www.twitterfeed.com

Facebook
www.facebook.com

Twitter
www.twitter.com

RSS feeds
www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55

Aweber
www.aweber.com

WordPress
www.wordpress.org

Thesis
www.DIYThemes.com/Thesis

E-zine Articles

http://ezinearticles.com

Clickbank

http://www.clickbank.com

FTC Policy on endorsements and bloggers
www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm

Social Oomph (formerly TweetLater)

http://www.socialoomphblog.com

Thanks for listening to the AffPlan Strategies Session. For more information and resources to take your affiliate marketing plan to the next level go to www.affplan.com

Welcome to another episode of the AffPlan Strategies Session, a podcast where industry leaders share their expert advice to help you with all aspects of creating and refining your affiliate marketing plan.

Once again, the wonderful Lisa Picarille was the moderator for this discussion about trademark bidding with our guests, Deb Carney and Joe Sousa.

Deb Carney, president of Team Loxly.

Deb Carney is the president of Team Loxly, an outsourced program management firm. Deb has been creating websites for more than 15 years. She is currently an affiliate as well as an OPM. She enjoys teaching affiliates how to optimize their sites.  You can hear her tips on Affiliate ABCs and Make Your Mark (art marketing) podcasts on Geekcast.fm. In addition, Deb has also been a professional photographer for 30 years.

www.twitter.com/loxly
www.teamloxly.com

Joe Sousa, Affiliate Marketer and all around awesome guy.

Joe Sousa is an affiliate marketer. He started doing SEO work for clients back in 1998 and shifted to full time affiliate marketing around 2002. He has worked in both organic search and PPC with hundreds of merchants and built hundreds of sites over the years. Joe also works with his dad and brother and their company has developed many different marketing tools including the Traffic Geyser Video and Social Media Marketing System.

www.twitter.com/drcool73
www.whatdoejoethink.com

Today’s Topic:  Trademark Bidding and PPC Policies in Affiliate Marketing

In the wide ranging discussion we defined trademark bidding; discussed when it’s a good thing for affiliates and when it’s good for merchants; gave examples of when it makes no sense; the motivation behind merchant’s decisions to forbid trademark bidding; how some affiliates game the system; what it takes to police these policies; how to educate merchants and affiliates on the topic; software that helps affiliates do trademark bidding and more.

Resources

Google Keyword Tool

http://www.google.com/sktool/

Keyword Spy

http://www.keywordspy.com

Wordtracker

http://www.wordtracker.com/

Datafeeds podcast, Affiliate Strategies Session #4
http://www.affiliatemarketingplan.com/podcast/strategies-session-4-datafeeds-galore

Joe Sousa’s Post

http://whatdoesjoethink.com/2009/09/merchant_restrictions_on_their_affiliates/

Welcome to another episode of the AffPlan Strategies Session, a podcast where industry leaders share their expert advice to help you with all aspects of creating and refining your affiliate marketing plan.

Lisa Picarille moderated this episode. She was joined by Karen White and Lisa Riolo to talk about leveraging conferences as a great learning and networking experience.

Lisa Riolo is an online marketing veteran and an active member in the performance marketing community. As a consultant, she helps online businesses transform potential and opportunity into profits and results. Lisa’s previous experience includes a senior vice president of business development role at Commission Junction and managerial roles at Peet’s Coffee & Tea and Bank of America. Lisa is also a co-host on The Spew podcast focusing on women in online marketing.>

www.LisaRiolo.com

www.twitter.com/lisariolo

Karen White is Vice President of Marketing at SquirtGun Media Group, a performance marketing agency that specializes in outsourced program management.  As a Performance Marketing Strategist and Consultant, Karen works with corporate brands to define, develop and execute performance marketing initiatives; her current clients include Qwest Communications and Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino.  Prior to SquirtGun Media Group, she was Vice President of Business Development & Marketing for Partner Fusion, her role there was to develop new agency accounts and oversee strategic development of client initiatives.  Over the years, Karen has worked with clients such as Qwest Communications, The Blue Man Group, and TaxBrain. In 2006, as Affiliate Program Manager for Wynn Las Vegas, she received the Commission Junction “People Horizon Award” for her excellence in affiliate program management. Karen is also a co-host on the popular Internet marketing podcast called The Spew, which broadcast weekly on GeekCast.fm.

www.twitter.com/karenwhite_LV

The group discussed the growing number of conferences and shows; how to pick shows that are right for your business objectives; factors used to determine whether you’ll attend a show or not; looking beyond the big shows for affiliates; how to find other conferences of interest; how to determine ROI at a show; tips for following up; and where to find out about events.

Lisa Riolo’s microphone was a little fuzzy at the very beginning, but the problem was fixed quickly and she sounds great throughout the vast majority of the podcast!

Resources

Affiliate Summit
http://AffiliateSummit.com

PubCon
http://PubCon.com

Interactive Advertising Bureau

http://www.iab.net/events_training

Direct Marketing Association

http://www.the-dma.org/eventcalendar/

LinkedIn
www.linkedin.com

EventsListed.com
http://www.eventslisted.com/

Las Vegas Convention Authority
http://www.lvcva.com/meetings/convention-calendar.jsp

Events in America

http://www.eventsinamerica.com/index.html

Event Resources
http://www.tsnn.com/

Pokens
http://www.JustPokens.com

Thanks for listening to the AffPlan Strategies Session. For more information and resources to take your affiliate marketing plan to the next level go to www.affplan.com

Welcome to another episode of the AffPlan Strategies Session, a podcast where industry leaders share their expert advice to help you with all aspects of creating and refining your online affiliate marketing plan.

Lisa Picarille moderated a discussion about the CPA space with special guests Mark Roth and Jim Lillig.

Mark Roth, CEO of OfferVault.
Mark got involved with Internet Marketing as a PPC Affiliate in June 2005, focusing mainly on CPA offers. In March of 2006 he was able to get into affiliate marketing full-time and simultaneously developed Affiliate Radar and Offervault in 2007.  In addition to PPC and CPA, Mark’s expertise also includes split testing and landing page optimization, landing page design and SEO.
OfferVault.com
Twitter.com/markroth

Jim Lillig,  Director of Networks at ClickFusion
Jim is a long time Performance Marketing industry veteran.  He started his own consulting company in 1997 and over the last decade has held posts at various CPA networks. His latest venture, ClickFusion is a new CPA network that combines post transactional monetization with CPA network distribution. He recently authored a detailed report, called The State of CPA and is the director of network at DotComSecrets.
Clickfusion
JimLillig.com
Twitter.com/jimlillig
DotComSecrets.com

We talked about how CPA differs from CPM; why using CPA can be beneficial for affiliates; which affiliates CPA is right for; the tainted reputation of CPA networks and how to go about selecting one that adds value; what are the questions merchants need to ask when thinking about using a CPA network; how CPA is going to overcome issues about fraud, compliance, lack of transparency; FTC scrutiny; whether or not the big rev-share networks are going to get into CPA; industry consolidation and more.

Resources

• DirectTrack
• The State of CPA

Thanks for listening to the AffPlan Strategies Session. For more information and resources to take your affiliate marketing plan to the next level go to AffPlan.com.

Welcome to another episode of the AffPlan Strategies Session, a podcast where industry leaders share their expert advice to help you with all aspects of creating and refining your online Affiliate Marketing Plan.

Lisa Picarille moderated this episode about datafeeds in Affiliate Marketing, featuring Deb Carney and Eric Nagel.

Deb Carney, president of Team Loxly.

Team Loxly is an outsourced program management firm. Deb has been creating websites for more than 15 years. She is currently an affiliate as well as an OPM. She enjoys teaching affiliates how to optimize their sites.  You can hear her tips on Affiliate ABCs and Make Your Mark (art marketing) podcasts on Geekcast.fm. In addition, Deb has also been a professional photographer for 30 years.

Eric Nagel, president of Eric Nagel & Associates.

Eric Nagel is an affiliate marketer specializing in PPC and SEO. He started his career as a freelance web designer in 1998.  In 2005 he became a fulltime programmer for an affiliate in London. Four years later he left that job to become a fulltime affiliate.

Today’s topic is “DataFeeds and Affiliate Marketing“.

We started out by defining datafeeds as a database or digital catalog of a merchant’s products that can come in a variety of forms (including .xml). These datafeeds can be subscribed to by affiliates, who would then use that information to help them build their website.

We also discussed the benefits of datafeeds to affiliates and merchants; how hard it is to implement a datafeed; why datafeeds are not standardized (Deb would like them to be standardized. Eric took the opposing view); the challenges of dealing with them such as categories and broken links; using datafeeds as a tool for keyword generation and more.

Here are some of the tools mentioned in the show that help with datafeed process including creation and management:

• DataFeeder

  http://www.datafeedr.com/

• DataFeedFile

  http://www.datafeedfile.com/

• PopShops

  http://www.popshops.com/

• Golden Can

  http://www.goldencan.com/

• Web Merge

  http://web-procreate.com/wm-about.htm

• ShareASale Make a Page

  http://www.shareasale.com

Thanks for listening to the AffPlan Strategies Session. For more information and resources to take your affiliate marketing plan to the next level go to www.affplan.com.

Welcome to another episode of the AffPlan Strategies Session, a podcast where industry leaders share their expert advice to help you with all aspects of creating and refining your online Affiliate Marketing Plan.

Lisa Picarille moderated and was joined by two very well-known and well-respected OPMs:

Karen Garcia, a partner at GTO Management

GTO Management offers nearly 20 years of combined experience in developing and managing successful programs in affiliate marketing. They have expertise in Web and graphic design, SEO and SEM, conversion analysis, and recruiting. They work with over 200 of the top producing affiliates from various networks and have thousands of affiliate relationships. Karen also a big foodie and blogs at www.ultimatefoodie.com. In addition, she has spent countless hours helping grassroots efforts fighting the advertising tax in California and other states. http://gtomanagement.com/

Jamie Birch, owner and principal at JEB Commerce

JEBCommerce is a full service, online marketing agency specializing in performance marketing. It services both large and small organizations with a heavy focus on affiliate marketing. Almost ten years ago, Jamie began his career as a Search Engine Marketing professional and has extensive experience in all aspects of Internet Marketing.

http://jebcommerce.com/

Today’s topic is “Working with New Clients as an OPM“.

We discussed the importance of evaluating if a client is a good fit for your company; if there are types of merchants that these OPM don’t want to work with; setting realistic expectations for merchant’s about their affiliate programs; what merchants need to put in place internally to make a program work; the importance of picking the right network; measuring a program’s success; tools that help in the process and more.

Karen and Jamie gave Lisa an “under the hood” look at life as an OPM, including some comedic anecdotes and many profound insights during this lively and entertaining discussion.  (And, for the first time in AffPlan Podcast History:  The audio quality is great!)

Another big “Thanks!” to Jamie Birch, Karen Garcia, and Lisa Picarille for providing us, and our entire Affiliate Marketing Industry such excellent content and an overall excellent podcast.

Recommended Tools:

• Drop.io

  http://drop.io/

• HootSuite

  http://hootsuite.com/

• PoachMark (from BrandVerity)

  http://www.brandverity.com/

Welcome to another episode of the AffPlan Strategies Session, a podcast where industry leaders share their expert advice to help you with all aspects of creating and refining your online Affiliate Marketing Plan.

For our second AffPlan Strategies Session we tackled another key component of your Affiliate Marketing Plan:  Recruiting Affiliates.

Recruiting Affiliates into an Affiliate Program takes a lot of time, energy, relationships and effort — and is, for better or worse, a key metric used in determining the success (or potential success) of an Affiliate Program.

During the discussion, our expert guest panelists, Brook Schaaf and Stephanie Lichtenstein, help us uncover some fundamental rules of engaging a new affiliate, the importance of “activation” vs. “raw recruitment”, using social media for recruiting affiliates, wooing super affiliates, the role of networks for recruiting — and the age-old adage of “quality vs. quantity”.

Also, as Affiliate Marketing is “all about relationships”, we spend time discussing strategies for building and developing relationships for long-term success.

Again, the amazing Lisa Picarille moderated this episode and was joined by these two very respected OPM’s (Outsourced Program Managers):

Stephanie Lichtenstein, Affiliate Program Manager, Andy Rodriguez Consulting

Stephanie Lichtenstein is a proud affiliate program manager with Andy Rodriguez Consulting, one of the top outsourced program management firms in the country. She has managed numerous affiliate programs in the ShareASale Top 100 PowerRank and Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide. To grow an affiliate program, she believes in maintaining open communications with her merchants and affiliate partners. Her company has been running successful and ethical affiliate programs since 2001.

Stephanie’s other passion is social media. She consults and educates her clients on best practices in social media. She teaches techniques that strengthen personal branding, grow businesses, improve customer service, and gain a competitive advantage. She also uses social media to share her industry knowledge and bring the community together on important matters such as the advertising tax.

Stephanie has become an industry advocate, public speaker, and blogger for what matters in affiliate marketing and social media. She recently spoke at Affiliate Summit on the panel Getting Noticed Fast: networking and social media techniques on how to get noticed in the industry.

http://stephanielichtenstein.com/

http://andyrodriguez.com/

Brook Schaaf, CEO, Schaaf Consulting

Brook Schaaf has been the Affiliate Program Manager for multi-million dollar programs at Zappos.com, Shoes.com, and Edmunds.com, growing one from $25,000 to over $1,000,000 in monthly sales in less than two years. In 2006 he and his brother, Forrest, founded Schaaf Consulting. He has been actively involved in the affiliate marketing community since its early days and most recently was elected to the board of directors of the Performance Marketing Alliance.

http://schaafco.com/

Stephanie and Brook gave us great examples and insight on a number of recruiting tips, including the tools and sites listed below.

Recruiting Tools

• Affiliate Summit http://affiliatesummit.com
• Twitter http://www.twitter.com
• Arelishttp://www.download3000.com/download_730.html
• Compete http://www.compete.com/
• Syntryx http://www.syntryx.com/
• PPC Bully https://sales.ppcbully.com/
• Sugar CRM http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/