So you’re an online marketer. You have a self-proclaimed “hot new offer” that converts on an email submit, with an EPC of $58 and a click through rate of 109%! You are sure it’s going to be the new Acai! Just one problem: You don’t know anyone to market it!

As online performance-based marketing becomes more and more competitive, leveraging your network of connections is of utmost importance. Without them, your chances for growth are stifled. With them, the world of online marketing is at your fingertips and opportunities are endless!

Here are a few networking tips from a self-proclaimed “social networking butterfly”:

1. Use LinkedIn. Use LinkedIn and update it often. Of all the social networks, it is the most professional, and has the highest caliber of professionals to choose from. You can find and connect with anyone from the marketing director for Wal-Mart to the CEO of Microsoft! LinkedIn also has great advanced search options that allow you to target by keyword, location, industry and even common groups.  It’s important to keep all of your info up to date as well so people can find you. If you’re looking for gold buyer leads, say so! Keywords are pulled from your profile in searches, so the more info the better.

2. Facebook, Facebook, Facebook. Facebook gets a lot of bad publicity these days, but nevertheless is an essential networking tool for the affiliate marketer. Not only does it give you the ability to be a fly on the wall to the inner workings of the CPA universe,  but you can also gain insight  as to who is connected with who in the space, look at comments and posts on the walls of all the players, and most importantly be able to put a face with a name. I can’t tell you how many times adding a potential client to Facebook has allowed me to better adapt to a potential business partner’s personality. If I notice that someone is interested in the same band or movies as me, a  commonality is created that would have never been discovered otherwise and virtual bonding is sometimes the best you can do if you work worlds away from each other!

3. Trade Show Bonding. We all go to them, they are the 4-5 times a year us industry girls go shopping for sexy black dresses, new shoes and cute hand bags to prepare for a week of meeting with clients, VIP status at parties, and you guessed it; booth duty! Since most of our work throughout the year is done behind a computer screen, the importance of face to face meetings is heightened and making a good and lasting impression is key. You should attend these shows as frequently as you can, and bring as many business cards as you can fit in your suitcase! Also, smile! People are more likely to remember smiling face than Crabby Patty. Find a common ground with whomever you are speaking with, people always remember someone who likes what they do. Pass out cards, shake as many hands as you can find, laugh at mediocre jokes, and whatever you do, SMILE.

Ciao!
Arikka Greene - International Sales Director
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/arikka

Facebook: www.facebook.com/arikka

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Whether you are playing the arbitrage game on a CPC or CPM basis I am sure most would agree that their ROI has dwindled significantly in the US or newcomers have found it nearly impossible to break in, specially in continuity. Setting your sights on other English speaking countries may still be a step behind the herd. We have begun marketing in some Western European countries and have found that to be a good place to focus on and market to a new audience, especially in the continuity space. Returns are sweet and old techniques such as direct linking prove to be as profitable as they were here in the US many years ago. Feel free to reach out to one of our affiliate managers to find out more details on the campaigns, we have new ones coming each day. Au revoir!

Let me start off by introducing myself –I’m Leily Abadi, Marketing Assistant and newest member to the AKMG team. Not only am I new to the team, but also new to the industry, and to be honest, it already beats all the other jobs I’ve ever had! Now I know you’re probably asking, “What can she possibly already know to come to such a conclusion?” Well, my friend, you’d be surprised…

Up to this point, I have always worked in very “Type A” industries – recruiting, IT consulting – you get the point. And if your blood wasn’t boiling and hair wasn’t falling out by the end of each day, then you weren’t doing your job. Needless to say, this is also the mentality I carried with me straight into the doors of AKMG…and finally exhaled. Not because of the lack of work or a slow environment. Actually, it’s quite the opposite. I work with advertisers all day long and have offers up to my ears to review, all waiting in line to be the next Acai Berry or Colon Flush. And believe me, I spent the first 2 weeks trying to take every offer thrown at me, doing all the paperwork, and making the offers live all in one day. So after about my 3^rd panic attack and a bit of advice from my colleagues, it finally dawned on me…I will NEVER finish my to-do list in one day.  Boy, was that epiphany a sigh of relief! I have since realized that if I leave the office at the end of the day with a stack of Insertion Orders and credit apps to approve, a list of advertisers to call back, creatives to upload, and pixels to get tested, then I’d consider it a pretty good day.

We all see some fairly clever ads or ad campaigns on a day to day basis.  I actually just saw a new Burger King ad the other day that was definitely not appropriate to even discuss here on my blog, but yet it was still funny. (Google ‘BK Super Seven Incher’).  Anyways, burgers aside - I was reading an article about Vodafone.  Vodafone is going to begin a campaign called “The Taxi Grand Prix”.  This very creative ad campaign ties along with Vodafone’s sponsorship of the 2009 McClaren F1 team.  Basically, this campaign will use Vodafone’s GPS and location based services to monitor and follow 10 specific United Kingdom cabbies in real time as they participate in the same number of miles that the F1 car would would do in a single race.

Contestants would pick a team of two Vodafone sponsored taxis from the total of 10 taxis scattered throughout the five major cities in the U.K.  The team that can finish the race distance first over the course of their working week will win.  And the users can track their team cabbies using the live GPS through the ‘Taxi Grand Prix’ site.

Vodafone really wants to have some stake in the location based realm of advertising and more recently, they have announced they would be testing a lot of location-aware ad products this summer.  Vodafone will probably have a lot of followers with this campaign because of the involvement with F1 racing, which has a large number of followers.  Not only will consumers be aware of Vodafone’s campaign, but also aware of their leeway into the location based technologies world.

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Let me start by giving a definition to this term ‘HoloCam Marketing’.  HoloCam Marketing could be defined as the process of using a webcam and a clever piece of programming to create the appearance of a three dimensional hologram that you can interact with.  I know it sounds a little weird that this technology is a form of marketing, but it true.  I am not sure if any of you have seen the new technology that XBox recently released, called Natal that allows you to interact in this exact way when you play video games.  You can scan your skateboard into the system and then ride in your favorite skateboarding game.  All with the use of no remotes, only a webcam.  (Trust me, google XBox Natal-it will blow you away).  And earlier this week the United States Postal Service created a new feature on their site called the “Virtual Box Simulator”.  Through the use of the webcam, this service recognizes a piece of paper that you hold, and makes an image of a box appear in your hands and you can movie it around in any direction as if it were real, and in your own hands.  This is nothing more than a toy but let me tell you that this form of technology does creep into the world of marketing, and it works really well!

There is one thing for sure, when you experience this technology for yourself, you will be talking about it. A lot.  You won’t be able to help but tell everyone you know.  The fact that there is an interaction with this technology makes it all more interesting and fun.  Also, there is no need for you to go buy any more hardware or software to be able to access this technology.  There is no real wall between this technology and the general public means that it will reach a lot bigger audience.   Even if it something that may seem a little ‘too much’ for a lot of people, there will always be that lingering curiosity as to how it actually works and may bring a lot of traffic to your site, regardless if it is of interest to someone.  This new method of technology will help marketers greatly for all of the reasons I previously stated.  I personally think it is pretty cool and I will definitely be checking and following how this marketing trend folds out!

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What a lot of people are beginning to talk about is the tax issue that could be in place for affiliate marketers.  The root of this tax issue is simply physical location -or nexus (nerdage alert).  Each state is attempting to make virtual storefronts taxable.  If you own a small business in Chicago, you must collect sales tax on all purchases.  The consumer is the one that owes the tax to the state, but merchants simplify this and collect the tax and give it back to the state.  Merchants don’t “pay” the tax, they just ‘collect’ it.

Now when you bring this model to the online world it get a little bit more tricky.  There are no physical store locations, so you would only collect taxes from consumers who live in the same state as you.  If your company is based in Chicago, and a shopper from Chicago buys something, you must collect the tax from them.  You are not required to have to collect tax from any other consumer from anywhere else on the planet.

Since you are based in Illinois, you have a physical presence there.  If you have an office in California, and a warehouse in Maine, then you have a physical presence in those two states as well.  Tax would be collected from consumers from all three states.

We all know (especially here in California) that every state needs money, and now they want to collect sales tax from their residents who shop online who technically owe sales tax on the purchases they make anyways.  The thing is, to get  this tax payment - it would have to come from the merchant.  Either way, this tax is not something the consumer or the merchant want to have to deal with.  With our current economy, consumers don’t want to pay more when they shop online.

As a merchant, you want to be prepared for something like this.  You need to be able to collect this tax from residents of more state than you may have previously planned for.  This is something you don’t want to let blindside you.

Currently, the anti-affiliate legislation bill would have to pass on a per state basis.  So far, according to the PMA, it has passed in Minnesota and Rhode Island.  To do your part to campaign against this tax bill, you can send in letters to your state representatives and help to make a difference. You can also post warnings about the legislation on your blog or send e-mails to your fellow affiliates in the state warning them.  You want to do whatever you can to spread the word.

The affiliate community, and some other anti-tax groups opposed to this and have been keeping up a good fight.  As affiliate marketers, you want to make sure that you keep a watchful eye on legislation and make sure that this doesn’t make its way into the affiliate marketing community.

For updates on your state on anti-affiliate legislation, click here 

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I just got back from another great weekend of soaking up as much sun as possible.  Sun up to sun down.  That’s how I roll (of course with the appropriate amount of SPF.)  So as this weekend comes to an end, I am just getting home trying to catch up on emails, Facebook, and checking a couple (or 20) of my favorite blogs.  One article in particular caught my eye.  The social news site digg.com has announced that it will offer advertising that is positioned in its stream of content.  Digg.com is a social news website made for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the Internet, by submitting links and stories, and voting and commenting on submitted links and stories. Voting is the site’s cornerstone function, respectively called digging and burying. Many stories get submitted every day, but only the most Dugg stories appear on the front page.  So apparently, you can now ‘digg’ the articles on this site as well as ‘digg’ the advertisements to offer feedback about the relevancy of the ad.   This sounds like it would be a great method to get your target audience, it seems to narrow in and almost plant a bulls-eye on your ad’s target audience.  Customized advertising at its finest!

Other forms of inline advertising drive the user to information relative to the information you were seeking.  For example, this inline advertising can be displayed as a banner at the bottom of a video as a user watches.  If the user clicks the ad, they’ll be directed to another site with more relevant ads from that particular advertiser.  So if you a huge baseball fan, reading up on news stories about the World Series and watching the highlight reels, chances are you would see an ad button for the latest book or movie about baseball. 

Either way, this targeted form of advertising on dig will definitely be beneficial to both the advertiser and consumer.  The advertiser will be able to know what ads are working, and which ones are not working.  The consumer will be able to personalize the content that is exposed to them.  I can foresee higher conversions with this ‘diggability’ because the user can determine what is relevant to themselves and almost choose the ads they want to see. Can you digg it?

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OK people, at what point did the over use of exclamation points and question marks??? Seems as though once the IM/email era hit, exclamation points started popping up after every sentence! Can you see how this can be annoying?!?!

Any copywriter will tell you that the over use of the exclamation point is faux pas. There are several reasons for this: As you can see they are a bit annoying as it feels like someone is yelling at you. Also the use of it lessons the effect of it - if everything is emphasized then nothing is. The use of multiple exclamation points looks immature.

So my suggestion for effective ad copy in email or text is to limit the use of exclamation points to one per page- yes we know you are excited about your product or how you can save me money, but there is an elegance in clean simply copy. Proof read your copy and have another look at it, are there colorful adjectives that better express the urgency or illustrate the point? One should only use the exclamation point for extreme emotion or command. Remember a well written ad copy portrays a legitimate, polished and professional image, thus resulting in more creditability and higher click rate.

I have to share this experience because it is like something out of a movie - something like Twilight Zone meets National Lampoon’s Summer Vacation. The last morning in Vegas I received a wake up call from Kim saying “we need to meet in 15 minutes in the lobby so we can beat LA rush hour!!”….(which later became quite a humorous statement). I literally throw all of my clothes and business cards in my suitcase, leaving behind a few trade show T-shirts, stress balls and other worthless swag strewn across the floor as I rush to try to beat the “traffic”.

This is where the fun begins…

For those of you who do not know - Interstate 15 is really the only route in (and out) of Vegas. As we approached the borders edge we notice a sign saying “road closed for blasting.” Apparently they are trying to blast away rock in efforts to pave a new path into sin city. How convenient or us there just so happens to be one last freak show of a casino at the state line - “Terribles Casino and RV Park” we have 3 more hours to kill before the road opens back up so Kim, Eleah and myself take this as a great opportunity to eat some B-fast. As we walk in we quickly realize this place has 2 themes - “The Wild West” and the word “Terrible” which they utilize in every pun imaginable. As I order my “Terrible” country fried steak I quickly realize I am trapped in a nightmarish western version of “Its a small world”. After breakfast is concluded we want to go back to sleep but instead begin a wondrous trek through this bizarre casino.

We find a wooden bridge look down and discover a serene river log ride that patrons are riding, laying down looking quite comfy. Its almost a no-brainer as to how we should spend our remaining time in this Disney-on-crank casino. We follow the river and purchase 3 passes for the “Adventure Canyon Log Flume,” a sweaty dentally challenged man built for 2 looks asks us if we had ever embarked on the Adventure Flume before, he wore a smurky half crooked smile as he looked us up and down. A little creeped out, we respond with a shake of the head and quick diversion of the eyes hoping the small talk would not continue with the Primm City local. He chuckled and said well then you’re in for a surprise, and winked.

Luckily our log arrived, we hastily climb in and quckily realize it was built for two. I holler “Eleah get in!,” certainly I would not leave her alone with the ogarish creepoid. As we pile in nice in snug we start to giggle as we realize how funny it is that three grown professional women are piled into a kiddie log ride stuck in a vortex somewhere in between Nevada and California. The ride starts off just as we had figured - calm and relaxing - just what we needed after a big meal and 3 days of non stop partying. The relaxing log ride soon took a sharp twist as it began to swiftly climb uphill. From my years of theme park experience I realize a hill is usually a prelude to a quick drop. All of a sudden we are screaming as we plummet into a pool of water outside in the freezing cold. The serene log ride quickly turns into a full on roller coaster with dips and curves and plummets. Once the log returns back indoors into a pitch black mine we suddenly become a little uneasy not knowing what to expect next.

The mine opens up back into the inside of the casino floating under bridges, just as we had initially found it….finally..we can relax…NOT!… as we are making fun of the miniature animated dolls singing we each suddenly get squirted right in the eye! I scream so loud we quickly draw a crowd and the water keep shooting from various dolls positioned all around us! AHHH! This is hell!! Kim gets her iPhone wet, cursing while Eleah and myself duck behind in efforts to not get squirted by the next psycho chucky miner doll. AHHHH!

As we get off the ride soaking wet we once again greet the toothless carny who is showing off his prize winning mug, laughing as we wring ourselves off. Funny. Real Cute. Actually we had a pretty good humor about the whole situation as we crack up almost to the point of rolling on the floor.

We decide to leave and pour into the parking lot filled with RV’s, mullets and beehives. I began thinking…who actually plans to come here? Being just 30 minutes from Vegas why not just go to Vegas and not this god forsaken bizzaro land?? Just as I am wondering this I see a sign that says “Dynomite Wednesdays!” where I realize that its probably just a trap - the blasting, the road closed- to make people get stuck in this “Terrible” casino zooland.

The line to get out of Vegas from the casino was about 200 miles long bumper to bumper and to top it off the 110 was a parking lot due to a bad accident and the 210 was also closed due to a chemical spill. 11 hours later I am in my bed reflecting on the days events, our “Terrible” road trip will surely go down in history.

Happy New Years! I hope everyone is well rested, well fed and ready to take on all the positive changes that one starts pondering with the coming of a new year.  We have a new president in place… gas prices are lowering… and the real estate forecasts are telling us the market will begin to upturn, changes are in motion… optimism is at its peak and for internet marketers, this is prime time for marketing.  

Aside from the fresh scent of optimism, there is still the heavy stench of reality - our economy is at low.   So with taking all this in, in the usual responsive manner, affiliate marketers find offers to promote even when the bricks and mortars are having “going out of business” sales instead of end of year closeouts.   Hence: the new year trends: diet, debt consolidation, anti-aging products, biz ops and mid January Valentines.  

Besides the standard, new trends are always refreshing, especially to affiliates (the ones who are actually driving the traffic). The most recent to come to mind is in the lead gen vertical: Loan re-modification. As with any emerging trend, oh come all ye marketers [enter chorus]… and the competition begins.  ’Avoid Foreclosure’ leads turn into ‘In Bad Loan?’ (which increases conversions by speaking to a larger audience, yet sacrifices lead quality potentially).  In the end payout prevails and everyone is working on smaller margins. 

While some continue to ride the gravy train and compete within a competitive environment others are already thinking of the next. So if “Experts” say this year is the time to buy real estate, then maybe “Buy Foreclosures” should be in popular notion.  The ones to be the first to capitalize on this will immediately have the market share. 

So in conclusion, to round this rant off… lets all be thankful (in affiliate marketing) that we are in the position to help those in time of economic crisis, help them lose weight and basically stimulate the economy while making money ourselves   Happy New Year!