I never knew how much I valued free time until now that I barely have any of it. I know most of us in our industry can empathize and are in the same situation as I am. I literally haven’t stopped or had a night off for the entire month of April..not sure how it’s already April 25th by the way. So tonight will be my first night with “free time” and I plan on doing absolutely nothing. I can’t wait for it it start! Most people would think I’m crazy when I say it’s tiring sitting in front of a computer all day but it has finally caught up with me plus the travel really did me in. So it’s time for a little “me” time without my computer. I hope everyone else can have a little of the same this weekend.

Anyway, here’s a quick list of what I’ll be doing with my free time:

1) Nothing
2) Staring at the TV
3) Nothing
4) Sitting by the pool
5) Nothing
6) Sipping sangria on Lincoln Road

Ok, I won’t be able to stay away all weekend…of course Ill be checking revenue numbers but only once a day instead of obsessive compulsively like usual!

I’m sure our industry is no different than most others but it’s getting increasingly hard to find the optimal balance between my “work” life and my “personal” life. So of course I chalk it up to just an online media thing. I find myself constantly checking my emails on my iphone late into the night and always working late in the evenings on the east coast just because I know everyone is still working in our LA office. The internet never stops so I guess maybe it is more relevant to our industry. I feel like I’m playing tug of war with work and my own time…and work has been winning lately!

Kim gave me great advice when we started AKMG. She said: “just know that you’re never going to finish everything that you want to each day”. I never know how true that would actually be when she said it! I may finish 15 things every day but there are always 5 other things just staring back up at me from my day planner. So it’s easy to get caught up and just continue working into the evening to finish…although as Kim said, you never really finish each day! I’m sure most of you struggle with this especially anyone who has worked for a start up company. It’s a completely different mentally. But believe me, I prefer start up mentally to corporate B.S. and red tape.

Anyway, now isn’t the time to dwell on this…I have lots to do! I look forward to meeting/seeing you all at Affiliate Summit West. Please be sure to stop by our booth (#128).

Ok that’s a tongue twister, I know, and way too much to deal with on a Monday morning. But it’s something that we all face on a daily basis. Choosing the right payout is not an exact science and is sometimes a combination of luck, a great landing page & offer. But for the rest of us, the payout is something that really needs to be analyzed and considered on a larger sense rather than just thinking about it in terms of a specific industry. For example, we may have a debt offer that pays $18 on a 1st page submit with 6 fields which is directly competing with an auto loan offer that pays $14 on a 1st page submit with 6 fields. Even if $14 is the highest “auto loan” offer payout out there, we’re going to have a hard time gaining traction on the offer because our emailers will want $18 for a 1st page submit with 6 fields, regardless of the vertical. Emailers really only care about payout, number of fields collected (or in more general terms, what is expected of the consumer) and metrics. The vertical means very little to them. This is sometimes hard for an advertiser to realize and accept. But if this is taken in consideration, picking the perfect payout may be easier than we think.

I’m increasingly working with advertisers who are coming to AKMG because they are interested in affiliate marketing but don’t necessarily have an offer, landing page, creative, payouts, etc. already available. So I’m working with them to structure their offer and obviously the payout is one of the items that advertisers are most concerned about. It’s hard to make people understand that they have to compete with what other verticals are paying out and that affiliates don’t care what they are promoting - they just want to promote offers that convert! Each day is a learning process for all of us which is what keeps this business interesting.

By the way, I wrote an earlier post called “Addicted to Technology” but technology isn’t my favorite thing today considering I wrote and published this blog posting last Friday. When I was browsing our site this morning, I realized my posting wasn’t there and only a draft version with 1 sentence was saved in our admin system. So I had to re-write this from scratch…oh well, life goes on!

Ok back to the grind - have a great week! For those of you in the snow, now is the time to come and visit me in Miami…it’s 75 and sunny here!

How pathetic am I? My iPhone went down for 1.5 hours today and you would have thought the world was ending. When it finally unfroze (is that even a word?!) itself, I had a bunch of emails, text messages and voicemails…I felt so far behind. You would have thought I was out of touch with life in general for weeks by the way I felt. Yes, I’m dramatic and I have to admit that I’m addicted to technology. But I’m fine with that addiction, could be worse (use your imagination).

Anyway, technology is our friend this week at AKMG. We’re moving over to a new online system which will hopefully be much better than our current system for everyone involved. Poor Trey is having to manually transfer each advertiser, affiliate and campaign one-by-one into the new system…he’ll be happy when the weekend comes I’m sure. We apologize for any delay in your campaigns but know that Trey is doing everything possible to make the transition as smooth as possible. More to come once we’re finally up and running in the new system.

Enjoy the rest of your week!

Who would have thought that my life post-MBA and struggling to get out of grad school in one piece, would be defined on a daily basis by fighting over $1?? I certainly wouldn’t have imagined that and to tell you the truth, I couldn’t be happier. I’m fully prepared to fight for that last $1 on the CPA…who am I kidding, I spent half of this week fighting for $.10…and I’m not ashamed to admit that! When in grad school, you try to imagine how you’re going to use what you learn in your next job and I don’t think they had a lesson in fighting for dimes - or maybe I just missed that day! In all seriousness, I’m happy to do it if it keeps our affiliates happy which in turn makes our advertisers happy. I’d rather forge long term relationships with a smaller number of key people and keep everyone happy than give low CPAs to a huge group.

On another note, Trey, our production person, and I had a conversation this week about the kinds of offers are run in our space and what we think about on a daily basis. If you take a step back and look at some of the campaigns, they are SO bizarre and hysterical - colon cleanse systems, get rich quick biz opp offers, psychic readings…and the list goes on! It still amazes me what people will buy online and freely give away their data to receive something, anything for free (which as Michelle pointed is really nothing - “click here for a FREE sample”… oh and please read the fine print carefully because you’ll be auto charged $39.99 every other week for this FREE sample!!). Don’t get me wrong, thank God people do this or else where would we all be? I don’t even want to imagine…

OK, back to the grind…the more I work, the closer it is to the weekend here in sunny South Beach!

The LA girls - Kim and Michelle - arrived in Miami last Sunday night and the festivities began immediately with a client at dinner at the fabulous Touch Restaurant on Lincoln Rd. It’s now Friday and we’ve barely stopped since that dinner for more than 5 minutes at a time. We’ve all been like automated machines working late until around 8 pm ET, having dinner at 10 pm, followed by drinks until the wee hours of the morning (I won’t reveal the actual time we’ve been getting home but use your imagination…it’s South Beach after all!) and doing it all again the next morning. We were lucky enough to see a show at the Speigel World tent called Absinthe which I highly recommend if you get the chance to visit either Miami or NYC in the next few weeks.

All in all it’s been very productive and great having Kim and Michelle with me since we’re able to toss around ideas much easier and get things handle so much faster than when we’re split between coasts. It’s the unfortunate position we’re put in - splitting our time between South Beach and Santa Monica…poor us! We had reason to celebrate this week because we hit a milestone with our highest daily revenue amount to date and our growth percentage is going through the roof! So thank you to the advertisers and affiliates that believed in us as a new network last fall and were willing to take a chance with us!

First off, I’d like to say Happy New Year to everyone! 2007 was an exciting year for AKMG which was when everything began. What started off as a great idea over a dinner conversation to start an Affiliate Network turned quickly into the team researching domain names, tossing around possible company names and contacting our lawyer to draft papers for a new company. Then Advertising Kings Media Group (AKMG) was born…and thankfully the domain name AKMG was available!

The launch of AKMG seemed to be good timing for the state of the industry as a whole. According to feedback we’ve received, there seemed to be room for another affiliate network and people (both advertisers and publishers) were looking for someone new to work with. We kept hearing this repeatedly during ad:tech NY and felt fortunate to be that something “new” in the industry. This fall feels like years ago and AKGM is in full swing with plenty of great offers and quality affiliates.

As things evolve and change in our industry, it is interesting to hear what works for some clients but not for others. As most of us know, email pubs drive huge volume and high quality traffic but so many advertisers are still afraid of email. One of my wishes for 2008 is that advertisers will continue to educate themselves on the value of email marketing and be willing to test different ideas that are “out of the box” from what their company normally does. It’s exciting to see that many more advertisers are embracing affiliate marketing as a part of their online marketing plan. I’ve spoken to a lot of people that used to do affiliate marketing but have stopped over the past few years and are finally getting back into it again. It’s encouraging to see that our industry may have overcome a lot of the stigmatism with spammers, etc that has been associated with affiliate marketing. So my other wish is that many more advertisers will embrace our ideas for successful campaigns and just start including affiliate marketing as a piece of the online puzzle for each campaign.

Here’s wishing you a great 2008!

Advertising Kings Media Group (AKMG) is pleased to announce our launch! Having actively worked with some of the highest profile online brands through CKMG (our sister company) we have decided to venture into the advertising network space to fill the very prominent void we presently see. While there are many successful “networks” in the market today experiencing great success, there aren’t many who can truly accommodate the needs of a client beyond CPA marketing. This is where we feel AKMG is remarkably different. We intend to actually listen to our clients, providing a unique perspective to them in an effort to give them factual, unbiased information on how to best maximize their brands online.

Some may say we are a little late in the game in the launching an ad network in late 2007. We disagree. There is always room in any market for company to come and provide a different take on an already proven business model. We intend to bring the same high energy, fast paced, results oriented organization to the industry as we did with CKMG when we revolutionized content, SEO and brand development a little less than 2 years ago. But, actions speak louder than words. We will let our actions speak for themselves! We urge you to check back often to see what we are up to.

Welcome to AKMG. Providing unique perspectives…. since today.