Every email sent to an affiliate threatening them with “termination” unless they do something (and here it doesn’t matter what the affiliate manager is asking for — putting up links, traffic referrals, or lead/sale generation) is a big thick nail in the coffin of the affiliate program. Even in traditional management contexts threats are demotivating. How could anyone expect them to work in performance marketing contexts? I just don’t understand it…

Here’s a video from one of my Affiliate Summit presentations where I spoke on the topic:

Speaking in Alexander Hiam’s words, we want to present affiliates “with opportunities to succeed instead of telling them what to do”. Merchants should always remember that affiliates were the ones who have chosen to work with them — to invest their effort, time, and money into the promotion of the merchant’s product/service. And that step of theirs should be valued. It — as well as the very idea of performance-based remuneration! — should also dictate our approach to affiliate motivation.

I’m sure that in the past you have come across blog posts about affiliate marketing being “dead”, “dying”, too crowded, too risky, too dependent on this or that, and so on, and so forth… However, over the past few days I have witnessed a few signs that point in a completely opposite direction — namely, that affiliate marketing isn’t even just “alive and well”, but it is thriving, and working really well for those who take it seriously.

3 Signs of Affiliate Marketing Thriving

1. Largest Affiliate Summit to Date

Two days ago Affiliate Summit, the industry’s central conference, has completed in Las Vegas, NV. This has been the largest one to date, gathering nearly 5,100 attendees (yes, an almost tenfold growth in 7 years!) under one roof. More about the conference’s spectacular growth in the newest issue of FeedFront magazine here.

2. Wide Interest in Affiliate Management

Right after presenting at the above-quoted Affiliate Summit, I uploaded my 64-slide PPT deck to SlideShare. Yesterday I learned that it made its homepage. And at the time of this post, it is already nearing 1,000 views (in under 3 days). There certainly is great interest in serious affiliate program management.

3. Affiliate’s Hard Work Pays Off Big

Not sure if you’ve caught my yesterday night’s tweet, but as you can see above we’ve had an affiliate in Compete.com’s program make $1,000 from one sale; and this isn’t the first time it’s happening. Hard work certainly pays off.

I hope these encourage you as much as they’ve inspired me.

As always, if you have anything to share with regard to this post’s subject, the Comments are all yours.

[Liveblogging from Affiliate Summit West 2012]

Every year at Affiliate Summit West (in early January) we find out the names of the newest recipients of the conference’s annual Pinnacle Awards, “affiliate marketing’s most prestigious, competitive honor for the leaders in the space” [source]. I’ve been covering this news steadily over the past few years (2009, 2010, 2011), and today is the day when this year’s winners have received their trophies (last one awarded, literally, seconds ago).

Here are the 2012 Pinnacle Awards winners:

• Affiliate of the Year — Coupon Cabin
  
• Affiliate Manager of the Year — Kim Salvino
  
• Exceptional Merchant — Tiny Prints
• Affiliate Marketing Advocate — Tim Storm
  
• Best Blogger — Tricia Meyer
  
• Affiliate Marketing Legend — Kim Rowley
  

Of course, I was bummed not to even make the list of the finalists this year (after being on it for two years in a row), but it encourages me to press on, looking up to some of the above folks, and learning from them. Congratulations to all, and here’s to another exciting year of affiliate marketing achievements ahead!

Earlier today I’ve held my Advanced Affiliate Program Management & Analysis session at Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas, NV.

I do realize that with the four sessions running consequently some people, who may have liked to attend, couldn’t be in more than one place at the same time. Also, some of my blog’s readers emailed me that they aren’t going to the summit, but would love to at least see the slide deck for my presentation. Finally, due to the fact that some of the slides intentionally contained long text, I promised everyone who was present at the session that I’ll make my PowerPoint slides available in my blog by EOD today (I know that it will also be uploaded to Affiliate Summit’s SlideShare account later, but want to make it available to people while things are still fresh in everyone’s mind). So, here it is:

In five days I’m flying off to Las Vegas for my already-customary speaking gig at Affiliate Summit West. I am very much looking forward to this, and, as always, honored to have a new opportunity to present at this vibrant conference. This one is going to be the largest Affiliate Summit to date — with nearly 5,100 attendees present. My schedule is already pretty packed, but if you’d like to meet, do drop me a line as I still have a number of 15-20 min slots available throughout January 8, 9, and 10.

Sneak Peak Into My Presentation

As you may have already seen elsewhere (both in my blog, and on Affiliate Summit’s website), the topic I’m going to tackle is Advanced Affiliate Program Management & Analysis. In my presentation I will address a number of affiliate program optimization and policing questions. The specifics of the ones that I’ll tackle are that they are the issues that program managers (and merchants) don’t bump into until they’ve run their affiliate program for a few months or sometimes even longer. At the end of the presentation we’ll arrive at 5 profound action points for the audience to implement. As always, it’s gonna be a lively and examples-rich session, where everyone will learn something new.

So, I do hope to see you at 11:30 am PST on Monday (Jan 9) in Caesars Palace Las Vegas.

Free Books At Three Locations

As you may remember, half a year ago, I was giving away 5 copies of my Affiliate Management Hour book at the Affiliate Summit in New York City. The only place where you could get these was my session at the conference. This year/time two things will change: (i) I will have even more books, and (ii) they will be available in 3 locations. These will be:

• My above-described session (Jan 9, 11:30am-12:30pm ◊ Emperors II)
• During my “office hour” at the Advice Booth (Jan 9, 1:00-2:00pm ◊ Booth #107)
• At Go Mobile or Go Home! session (Jan 10, 2:00-3:00pm ◊ Emperors I)

All of the above locations are at Caesars Palace hotel.

See many of you soon, and, again, should you wish to meet in person, either come to my session, or drop by the “advice booth”, or email me to see if we can sync something up.

Affiliate Summit West 2012 is only some two weeks away, and today I’d like to draw your attention to the five breakout sessions that appear to be of immediate relevance to all affiliate program managers out there. These are also the sessions that I plan on attending.

Here they are (in chronological order) with original descriptions and links to speakers’ Twitter pages (where available):

1. Are Your Affiliates Adding Value?
Speaker: Adam Riemer
Description: This session will help you determine if your affiliates are adding value to your company or poaching sales from your site through adware, PPC, SEO, email, coupons, and more.
Date/Time: Sunday, January 8, 12:30pm

2. Recruiting Non-Traditional Value Added Affiliates
Speakers: Robert Glazer and Angel Djambazov
Description: Getting low value affiliates to join you program is easy. We’ll give you examples of outside the box recruiting ideas to find non-traditional affiliates to add value and drive incremental sales.
Date/Time: Sunday, January 8, 2:00pm

3. Advanced Affiliate Program Management & Analysis
Speaker: yours truly
Description: What is parasitism and channel cannibalization? What KPIs and metrics are important to analyze? How can competitive intelligence help you grow the program? We’ll tackle these & other vital questions.
Date/Time: Monday, January 9, 11:30am

4. 12 Out-Of-The-Box Affiliate Promotions
Speakers: Lindsey Savoie, Jamie Reardon, Jared Saunders, Missy Ward
Description: Inspire affiliate loyalty with unique, out-of-the-box affiliate bonus campaigns. Discuss the development, implementation, and analysis of these promotions!
Date/Time: Monday, January 9, 3:30pm

5. Advanced Affiliate Recruitment Strategies
Speaker: Mike Nunez
Description: Advanced techniques that Affiliate Managers can use to recruit affiliates into their program.
Date/Time: Tuesday, January 10, 2:00pm

The full Affiliate Summit’s agenda may be viewed here. Hope to see you in my session. As always, beside the content, I’ll also be giving away books.

Earlier this week Shawn Collins posted about an Affiliate Summit session I did nearly two years ago at Affiliate Summit West 2010 in Las Vegas, NV. That session was entitled 20 Affiliate Program Management Mistakes To Avoid, and you may now view it in full, and free of charge, on YouTube here (with the corresponding slide deck uploaded to SlideShare here).

Today, however, I’d like to draw your attention to a quick illustration/summary — of how to and how not to manage your affiliate program, your online or offline business — I provided at the very end of that presentation. If you’ve heard me speak before, you know how much I love unexpected parallels. So, this particular one came from my experience with USSR-made pasta… It won’t take more than 100 seconds of your time:

Yes, by all means, do think several steps ahead in your management, but don’t feed your followers “Soviet pasta” in the process. It just doesn’t go down well.

On Tuesday (October 18, 2011) the newest issue of FeedFront, the official magazine of Affiliate Summit, has become available for online viewing and download. In it, on page 18, you will find my new article, which answers the question in the title of this blog post — what money should an advertiser/merchant should be prepared to spend when starting an affiliate marketing program.

There are 3 major components to keep in mind:

1. Platform — whether an affiliate network, or affiliate program software on which your program will be run
2. Creatives, Feed, Landing pages — banners, video, product data feed, landing pages (make sure you also budget for ongoing optimization of these)
3. Management — whether it’s gonna be someone in-house, or an OPM agency, you do want to budget for it too

My article concludes:

The sum total of all of the above … expenditure points can vary anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. In the past I have launched programs with as little as a $300 investment to as much as $9,000… much will depend on your or your company’s own involvement in the affiliate program’s setup, launch and management.

You may read the online version of FeedFront Magazine issue 16 by clicking the image of my article below:

Yesterday evening I received a confirmation that one of my proposed sessions has been selected (yes, thanks to both your votes, and the votes of the conference’s Advisory Board and Founders) for Affiliate Summit West 2012 which will be traditionally held in Las Vegas, NV on January 8-10, 2012.

This will be my 6th and 3rd consecutive time speaking at an Affiliate Summit, and I’m truly excited. To me Affiliate Summit is the most important affiliate marketing conference of the year. When planning it in advance (booking exhibit space, picking sessions to attend, scheduling one-on-one meetings, and networking events), one can really take a lot out of it [see this post of mine for tips on making the most of it].

Also, while — per a quick poll I ran 4 months ago — the majority of people attend conferences to network with colleagues and prospective clients/partners, the second most popular answer chosen was education [more here]. As a conference attendee, I personally try to draw two things from every conference I go to: inspiration/motivation and education/training. As is always the case with my solo presentations, it is with these two in mind that I’ll be presenting at Affiliate Summit West 2012 too.

My session’s official session title and description are as follows:

Advanced Affiliate Program Management & Analysis

What is parasitism and channel cannibalization? What KPIs and metrics are important to analyze? How can competitive intelligence help you grow the program? We’ll tackle these & other vital questions.

We’ll focus on the topics and questions that inevitably spring up a few months into the launch of every affiliate marketing program. So, if you have an affiliate program, this session is for you. In an already customary manner there will be time for questions at the end of my presentation. I will also make sure to bring some of my books to give away this time too (just as in New York, but maybe more than one title). Hope to see you in Las Vegas!! Session date and time should be posted at this page some time soon.

Yesterday Affiliate Summit announced public voting on sessions proposed for Affiliate Summit West 2012, which is going to be held on January 8-10, 2012 in the already-customary Las Vegas, Nevada. They let prospective attendees cast their votes for a week, then the conference’s advisory board votes, and then there are also votes from Missy Ward and Shawn Collins, the conference’s co-founders. Based on all these judgements the Las Vegas Affiliate Summit sessions are selected.

Inspired by the feedback I received after my Affiliate Summit East 2011 session in New York City this August, I proposed two different sessions for the Las Vegas show:

and

I thought it’d be good to propose both — to let the prospective attendees (who are voting now and through October 17), the Summit’s advisory board and founders decide which one will fit better into the overall agenda of the conference.

It is always a privilege to speak at Affiliate Summits (over the past 3+ years I’ve spoken at 5). If you want to hear me speak at the upcoming Affiliate Summit West 2012, please vote either for my beginner level session or for my advanced management one. You’ll need to register to cast your votes; but that doesn’t take longer than 10 seconds. Plus, you’ll also be able to vote on other sessions — I could count ninety-two in total — that were proposed.