Many of you have may have already met one of our affiliate managers, Jeff Nilges, at Affiliate Summit West last month, but I would like to formally introduce you to him. Jeff joined JEBCommerce in spring of 2009 as an intern and after showing great potential; he was promoted to affiliate manager. His strong background in social media and web development make him a valuable asset to our team. He was extremely helpful with my transfer from PC to Mac.

He hit the ground the running by successfully growing the OverstockDrugstore and Luggagepoint affiliate programs to record sales. A focus on merchandising as well as an aggressive approach to recruiting through building key partnerships has been critical to the success of the programs Jeff manages. Additionally he manages iFloor and has assisted in recruiting and strategy on our other accounts including drop.io and doba.

I recently sat down with Jeff for an interview to get his thoughts on the recent Affiliate Summit West Conference and to get to know him better. Check out the video below:

I realize I may be partial, but Jeff is a rising star here at JEBCommerce and he’s definitely someone to keep an eye on throughout 2010. Follow Jeff on Twitter at: @jnil.

Stephen at our booths at CJU Expo

Last week I went to CJU in Santa Barbara with our owner and CEO Jamie Birch. This was my first trip to CJU and the event certainly lived up to all of the hype.  This was an exciting conference since it was my first since accepting a full time position with JEBCommerce.

If you were there, you may have noticed that we take a different approach to these conferences by inviting our clients to join us.  We do this for a couple of reasons; it allows us to spend more time with them and they are also able to meet the publishers that promote their products and services.  This increased level of transparency has paid off for us in strengthening our partnerships.

Jamie and I went to CJU with several goals:

• Meet new publishers and potential partners
• Meet with our current partners to continue to grow these relationships
• Spend more time with merchants that joined us at the event and introduce them to our affiliate partners
• Look for new potential merchants

In addition to a full slate of meetings, we also hosted four of our merchants, Ned from 6pm, Brandon from Doba, Sumit from Luggagepoint.com and Steve from drop.io. We found that our affiliates really enjoy meeting our merchants and we really enjoy hanging out with them.

Brandon from Doba talking with mycoupons

Tuesday afternoon Sumit hosted his table for Luggagepoint.com and Brandon hosted Doba’s table at the CJU Expo. This was a great networking event and we even gave away some luggage courtesy of Luggagepoint. We were excited to see some of our current publishers as well as meet some new ones that have a lot of potential to do well for us.

After the CJU Expo, we hopped on buses and headed over to the Dell Welcome reception where we enjoyed some delicious appetizers and drinks while continuing to network. Pictured below on the right is Steve from drop.io giving a brief demonstration on the stop to TrialPay. Who needs wifi when you have an iPhone and a Mac?

Steve from drop.io walking Trial Pay through a drop.io presentation

Wednesday started interestingly enough when  Jamie woke up and realized he had no voice.  No matter how many times I told him to stop talking, he just kept on talking.  He was a real trooper.  Too bad Jamie doesn’t have an iPhone or he could’ve just used the “bump” app to network.  (A special thanks to Sumit from Luggagepoint for showing off this really cool app).  In fact, I suggested a 5 minute Bump networking session for CJU 2010.

We had a busy day full of sessions and meetings. Sumit, Brandon and I split up and covered some ground at CJU Connect, this was a unique networking opportunity where the publishers had tables and we came to them. I think Brandon and Sumit would agree that we had some very fruitful meetings during this event. The CJYou Awards Dinner was a classy event, great food and excellent conversations.  After dinner it was time to relax at the Cocktail Party at Tonic in downtown Santa Barbara.

With a full agenda of goals for this event, we wanted to be as efficient as possible. Therefore we created a special drop using one of our merchants, drop.io, to help us stay organized for this event. This drop allowed us to access our list of potential targets at anytime during the event. We also utilized the voice mail feature to leave voice notes after every meeting we had to make sure we didn’t forgot any action/follow up items. This proved to be a vital asset to the success of this event for us.

Sumit from Luggagepoint and I meeting with Marie from CJ

Thursday we wrapped up the event with a few meetings and lunch with our great team at Commission Junction. Thanks to Marie and Laura for treating us to lunch. This event wouldn’t have been as successful if it weren’t for the hard work of Marie and Laura who spent their days tracking down affiliates on our target list and introducing them to us. We are fortunate to have such a great account team at Commission Junction.

I came away very impressed from the event and anxious to follow up with many new publishers and old friends I met at the event.  This year’s event was a great success for us and we are definitely looking forward to CJU 2o10.

Monday 9:30pm - Affiliate Program Launch Party

The Affiliate Summit is right around the corner! Are you ready for 3 days of networking, learning and dare we say some fun? Well, we’d like to help you with all of those things!

So, on Monday night (August 10th), starting at 9:30, drop.io will be hosting an exclusive invite-only party  in downtown Manhattan. This party is sure to be one of the premier events of the Affiliate Summit with an open bar from 9:30pm - 11pm.

Come meet the founder Steve Greenwood and learn all about the exciting features of drop.io and their affiliate program while networking in an intimate surrounding close to the Affiliate Summit.  Jamie and Stephen from JEBCommerce will be there too!

As mentioned, this is an invite-only event with a limited amount of openings. If you’d like to attend, please email us at affiliates@dropio.com or call Jamie or Stephen at 208-635-5164. But don’t delay, the invites are going fast!

We’ll send all confirmed attendees information and directions as soon as you RSVP.

The Affiliate Summit in New York City is just around the corner.  Will you be going?  Jamie Birch and Stephen Robinson will be there representing not only JEBCommerce but all of our clients as well.

Jamie also has the great privilege of speaking at this years conference.  He will be participating in a panel titled “Keeping Your Affiliate Program Clean”, moderated by David Naffziger of BrandVerity.  We work with BrandVerity on a number of accounts and we are also a reseller of their keyword monitoring service.  It’s a great service and Jamie is excited to join David on the panel.

They will also be joined by Graham MacRobie of Alias Encor and Jashua Sloan of Sloan Tech.  If you are a merchant and have struggled with maintaining the integrity of your affiliate program, whether from downloads, software or ppc poaching, this will prove to be a useful panel for you.

We will be speaking on Tuesday, August 11th at 11:30 AM in Classroom A - Gibson.  You can read more here.

If you have questions that you’d like addressed during the panel, please feel free to email them and Jamie will do his best to get them to David.  You can reach him at jamie@jebcommerce.com.

We have a few surprised up our sleeves for this conference too.  If you want info on one of the hottest parties, then stay tuned to the JEBCommerce Blog, we’ll be announcing some cool shindigs here soon.