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.

Are you attending the Commission Junction University next week in beautiful Santa Barbara California?  WE ARE!  Stephen, our Director of Affiliate Management and Jamie, our President and CEO, will be there along with several of our clients.  And we would love to meet you!

We will also be accompanied by Ned Farra of 6pm.com and Zappos, Steven Greenwood of drop.io, Brandon Delgrosso of Doba.com and Sumit Bhanote of Luggagepoint.com.  So let us know when you are available to meet with any or all of us and we’ll be sure to accomodate your schedule and even buy you a cup of coffee at the Fess Parker!

Jamie and Stephen will be available on the 15th, 16th and the morning of the 15th to discuss the following programs:

• 6pm.com
• drop.io
• Doba.com
• LuggagePoint.com
• QualitySmith.com

“This year’s CJU promises a fresh take on the entire event: we’ve created new ways to make it easier than ever to create the business connections you need and new ways to get social and have some fun. As “The Place to Affiliate,” CJU 2009 will provide unparalleled networking opportunities for advertisers and publishers, the chance to learn from thought leaders in online marketing and an insiders-only occasion to swap tips and strategies with the best affiliate marketers in the industry.”  -CJ.com

We hope to see you there.  LuggagePoint.com and Doba.com will both have booths at the Expo on the 15th from 1-5pm.  Make sure you swing by to arrange an appointment or email us at jamie@jebcommerce.com or stephen@jebcommerce.com.

Look forward to seeing you all there!

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.

Get the latest information on all the affiliate programs managed by JEBCommerce.  I talk about the manyoffers available at 6pm - check them out here.

LuggagePoint.com 15% off April offer here.

Doba March Madness Championship match up announced here.

I was so excited when I learned of my nomination in the Best Blogger category.  I couldn’t wait to get to the summit and see if I could pull off a win.  I had stiff competition.  Scott Jangro has really put together an awesome blog for our industry and Angel has always been a leader in this area, so I wasn’t too confident, but honored to be amongst this group.

And the moment came:

I was sure they said Jamie Birch, but alas, Scott won the award.  It was well deserved and now it seems that I may have slipped into the “Susan Lucci” role of Pinnacle Award nominees.  Two nominations and two, well, nominations.  I searched forever for that video as I promised many I would try to tie in Susan Lucci not winning into this blog post.

The even was great and the winners truly deserved the awards.  It was a truly amazing list of individuals and everyone really should be proud just to be nominated.  My hat’s off to you Mr. Jangro, but watch out for me next year :).

Here is a list of all the winner:

• Affiliate of the Year - Mike Allen
• Affiliate Manager of the Year - Angel Djambazov
• Exceptional Merchant - CelebrateExpress.com
• Affiliate Marketing Advocate - Melanie Seery
• Best Blogger - Scott Jangro
• Affiliate Marketing Legend - Kellie Stevens

Congratulations guys!  You all do an amazing job and I am proud to consider many of you close friends.  Keep up the good work!

Shawn/Missy - you should bring back the formal awards ceremony like the first year!  I loved that one.

In October I was fortunate enough to attend one of the most informative and fun conferences I have been to in several years - BlogWorld.  The conference overall was fantastic. They had an affiliate track for the first time and it was very well attended.  Many of us in the affiliate community noticed that “affiliate marketing” was relatively new to this audience of bloggers.  Some even said that 90% of the attendees had no idea what affiliate marketing is and how to get involved, let alone that they can use these relationships to monitize their blogs.

Because of this, I wanted to put together a very top level run down of what it is and how they can get started.  NOTE: if you are a seasoned affiliate marketer, then you won’t get much from this article.  This is intended for those that are completely new to this area of performance marketing.  It is meant as a primer into the world of affiliate marketing and doesn’t demonstrate any advanced practices.

Ok, now that that is out of the way, let’s get going.  I’ll start at the beginning.  Wikipedia definition: “Affiliate marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts.”

Here is my definition:  Affiliate marketing is an internet-based marketing practice where businesses reward partners for a required action.  These actions may be clicks, impressions, sales, email signups, lead form completions, RSS subscriptions and more.  It is a performanced based relationship, the business only pays when something is performed.

Retailers typically reward affiliates for a sale.  For example:  Customer John Doe comes to your blog and reads your newest post.  You have a banner (ad) on your website for Zappos.com Shoes.  John clicks on that banner, goes to Zappos and purchases a $100 pair of shoes.  Zappos then rewards you a % of that $100 for referring that sale.  Most retailers work that way.

Mortgage companies, debt consolidation and other types of companies offer a bounty for referring someone who becomes a lead.  That typically means they fill out a form to get more information, sign up for the site, become a member of a site or other lead generation activities.  The bounties can range from $1 to $300 depending on the industry and the company offering it.

Make sense?  It’s pretty simple, instead of paying for impressions up front, the affiliate (you) doesn’t get paid until something happens (a purchase, signup, click). At first you may be thinking, well I won’t get paid unless something happens, but that is out of my control.  Correct, but after doing this for 10 years and managing over 35 programs, I can tell you that many affiliates make hundreds of thousands of dollars through affiliate programs.  The money is there and it the opportunity can be much higher with affiliate programs if you are able to match the affiliate program with what your users are looking for.

Why is this so much easier, at times, then finding your own advertisers?

Affiliate Networks.

Companies such as Commission Junction, Linkshare, Google Affiliate Network, Share A Sale and AvantLink provide a marketplace where affiliates (bloggers, content developers, web site creators) can partner with many different businesses (merchants).  These networks also provide a method to track any transactions that may result from you working with a merchant.

Basically, here is how it works:

You join the network, apply to the programs you think will be successful on your site, and then grab some links.  You will be able to grab banners and text links and many merchants and networks provide some advanced linking that I will talk about in another post in this series.  The code you grab for your banners or links contains all the necessary tracking information to associate that user to your account.  Any purchases that user makes will be registered into your account.

That is basically it.

Here are some things to look at when you are evaluating an affiliate program:

• Commission Rate - each network will allow you to see the commission rates for similar programs.  Use this as one way to evaluate the programs you want to work with.
• EPC - this is earnings per one hundred clicks and reflects the amount you can expect to earn from a program for each set of 100 clicks you send.  This is a good way to see how they are converting, but not all merchants show this.
• Tools - look at the set of distribution tools they offer.  Do they offer a datafeed, any contextual tools?
• Return Days/Cookie Days - The more of these the better.  These are the number of days from the initial visit to the merchant’s site from yours, that you will get credit if that user makes a purchase.  Wow, a mouthful huh? For example, John from our previous example, clicks on a Zappos.com (a new client of JEBCommerce ), on Monday.  Zappos.com, for this example, has a cookie day of 3.  John doesn’t purchase until Wednesday.  Because they offer 3 cookie days, you will get credit for that sale

There are many other things you need to look at when evaluating a partner to work with and promote through their affiliate program.  I want to take a more in depth look into each affiliate network.  I’ll do that in my second post of this series.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our feed!

Read more in #2 of our Series - The Affiliate Networks.

On November 11th through the 14th, I  will be speaking on a panel at PubCon in Las Vegas.  The conference, put on by WebMasterWorld, is being held at the Las Vegas Convention Center.   I’ll be speaking on a panel discussing the ins and outs of working with the large affiliate networks like Linkshare, CJ, Performics (Google) and ShareASale.  I’ll be joining a great group of industry leaders and I’m excited to check out this conference for the first time.

What is PubCon?  “WebmasterWorld’s PubCon is an educational conference and industry trade show programmed specifically for web professionals and website site owners. Although our center piece is Search Engine Marketing, Whether your primary role is in web site marketing, corporate IT development, or as a technology business management, you will find something of value at PubCon (aka: Publishers Conference). It is also designed to be fun and entertaining with ample opportunity for quality networking.”

Here is their speaker list.

Register for PubCon.

Blog World Expo 2008 proved to be one of the best conferences I have been to in a long time.  I’m not sure what made it the best?  Was it the depth and breadth of the content?  Was it the openness of the presenters to share an incredible amount of information?  Was it the friendliness and willingness to chat of the attendees?  Or was it the opportunity to meet Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park?  Ya know, I’m really not sure but I think it could be a combination of each of those things.

I learned so much and met so many great people.  Here is a quick recap of some of the big points:

• Being assertive and asking for what you want is not the same as being an a$$hole.  Thanks Tim Ferris.
• Well read and successful blogs post 10 times or more a day.
• Did you read that last one, holy cow!
• Most bloggers are not aware of affiliate marketing and that there are other ways to monetize sites than Google Adsense. I’ll be writing a series on monetization for bloggers soon.
• Google Adsense is webmaster welfare.  That was one of the funniest lines.  But it’s true, there are so many other ways to make money on your site.
• Bloggers are as diverse a group as you can imagine.  I walked to the conference with some wonderful horse people and sat in the press room with a well known aussie blogger.

I’ve written a bunch of recaps over at Revenews such as:

Blog World Expo 2008 - I’m one step closer to the edge, and I’m about to blog!

Blog World Expo 2008 - Ten Things You Need to Know About Search Engines & Findability session recap

Blog World Expo 2008 - Making Money Online with a Blog - recap

Blog World Expo 2008 - Making Money Online with a Blog - recap

On October 5th, the organizers of the Affiliate Summit will be hosting a Social Media Conference in NYC.    Don Crowther is delivering the keynote.  Tickets are $399 and $499 at the door.  Check out the agenda here.