Live blogging from Affiliate Summit East, please refresh for up to date content

This is the 3rd session I am attending today and live blogging.

Presenters at SEO Site Clinic:

• Rae Hoffman, Owner, Sugarrae, Inc.)
• Michael Gray, Owner, Atlas Web Services
• Michael Streko, Owner, Streko Media LLC
• Chris Pearson of Pearsonified

Important Notes from the SEO Clinic Session:

• Rae Hoffman of Sugarrae, Inc. is giving an example from their site TheBinocularSite
• Michael Gray is mentioning Quarkbase.com
• Chris Pearson mentioned the “The Blender Guy” example for getting free backlinks

Experts are reviewing ShopforMuseums.com (somebody’s site from the audience).

Audience is asking some kindergarden level SEO questions . I think experts are kind of disappointed.

There are some really funny examples going on, OMG. Why would people pay and come to a conference about affiliate marketing without even knowing the a,b,c’s of the industry?

Anyways, amusing session is continuing…

Link Building Tip of the Day

Be creative to get tons of quality backlinks.

Tips about Article Directory Submissions

You can submit the same article (without re-writing) to many article directories, but it’s a good idea to change the titles and the article summary. It helps a lot with article marketing. Keep in mind, best way is to have unique articles for each directory (article spinning anybody?).

3.40 pm: SEO Experts are reviewing Cooking.com.

Experts agree that the html is not clean, and they talk about the importance of clean markup. Also missing alt tags for images is a problem.

SEO Site Clinic session is over

Live Blogging from Affiliate Summit East, please refresh for up to date content.

This is the second session I’m attending at Affiliate Summit, and it is” Creating Lasting Publisher and Advertiser Relationships”

The session will be starting in 5 minutes…

Presenters:

• CEO & Founder of of Cashbaq, David Lewis
• Steve Schaffer, Publisher, Offers.com
• Chris Symons, Senior Account Manager at Travelocity.com
• William Martin-Gill, internet marketing dept. director of eBay

Steve Schaffer of Offers.com has started the session with a few Q&A.

• Steve is talking about the types of publisher business models in general
• Types of Actions in affiliate marketing.
• Three Primary Business Relationship Models; In-house programs, Affiliate networks, sub-affiliate networks
• Commission Rates & Cost/Order Stats
• Retailers spend more per new customer in other channels compared to affiliate channel.
• Steve believes affiliates are getting underpaid for what they do.
• Performance marketing works, because the merchant decides what to pay per lead, and the advertiser makes his/her decision.
• What’s the right amount to pay to affiliates? Some companies do not do their homework.
• Performance marketing is a multi-billion dollar industry (estimated over 3 billion dollars.) Steve believes, this does not include lead gen. This is interesting data. I will dig into this more tonight
• Steve starts the introductions for the presenters

William Martin-Gill, eBay, head of internet marketing

• Importance of relationship with affiliate marketers.
• Compensation. Some of eBay’s smaller affiliates are some of the top affiliates (due to customer quality, etc.)
• Face to face communication with affiliates is very important
• eBay has an affiliate day where day invite top 50 affiliates and do a whole day conference. eBay wants to get the top affiliates feedback as much as they can.
• William is talking about the message boards (forums) on eBay. He thinks, they have a love & hate relationship with message boards. It is understandable with the high level of censorship on eBay message boards.

David Lewis of Cashbaq

• Talks about how Zappos.com has recently terminated relationships with all incentivized affiliates. (not cool for cashbaq)
• Importance of relationship, and listening the affiliates
• Prefers communication with affiliates via email
• We don’t like seeing flashing banner ads (cashbaq is not a casino site).
• We prefer to communicate via phone with the larger affiliates.
• Good tip here. Don’t let affiliate networks get between the advertiser and the publisher. Communicate with your affiliates no matter what

Chris Symons of Travelocity.com

• Importance of relationship between Travelocity and the affiliates. He mentions contacting top 50-100 affiliates to get feedback

1.50pm Steve Schaffer of Offers.com talks about the importance of increasing conversion rate for merchants.

William is talking about eBay’s dynamic payment structure for eBay Partner Network ACRU’s (newly registered users).

Very important note for me: William Martin-Gill said; eBay is working on perfecting their system, so they can pay more to affiliates who bring in traffic from product review type sites (also mentioned the quality word). I will have to clarify this with William after the session.

Second session is almost done at Affiliate Summit.

Today is Sunday, August 10th 2009 and I am at Affiliate Summit East in New York City.

This year, instead of taking offline notes, I have decided to take all of my notes right here at kirtok.com. This is going to be my first live blogging event. Let’s see how this will go. (I will be adding pictures and videos later on).

It’s 12.08pm, and the first session of Affiliate Summit is starting in a minute.

Mike Allen, President of Shopping-Bargains.com will be presenting, and I believe Kris Jones of Pepperjam will be managing the session.

Dynamic Shopping Session Has Started

After opening remarks by Kris Jones, Mike Allen has taken the stage.

Important points from Mike’s Speech:

• Creating a brand and equity as an affiliate marketer
• Using ready to use tools or creating and customizing your own tools
• Deliver something unique
• Continue to innovate and try out new things
• Failing is part of this game

Anthony Bajoras of AffiliateReporting.com Takes the Stage

Anthony is the CEO and co-founder of Affiliate Reporting.

• Managing multiple affiliate campaigns, networks, traffic channels, etc. He’s talking about the importance of statistics in affiliate business
• You have to be able measure and understand what is working and what is not working in affiliate game.
• How important it is to analyze the data in depth
• Measure Everything (PPC, SEO, Channels, etc.)
• Review Often… (3 minutes a day at least, do it more often if you are serious)
• Use the right tools that fit with your affiliate business.
• Listen what the data tells you. That’s something I always mention to new beginners.
• Inaction is costly Cool wording. Take action !!!

12.31 pm: Anthony is done with his presentation, Kris asks a couple of questions to Anthony about his affiliate software.

Sal Conca, Senior Media Manager of Net Exponent takes the stage

• Talking about understanding the needs of the affiliates before serving them
• Content is king. Social Media, reviews, podcasts, blogs, etc.
• Duplicate content problem for product feeds. Content syndication is different than duplicate content.
• Affiliate Managers are teachers. Constant communication and education is the key to affiliate manager success.
• Quality of Orders from affiliate manager’s perspective. This is the key to a long term successful relationship between publishers and advertisers.
• Importance of conversion rates. Testing significant changes for success.

12.40pm Kris is asking a question to Sal for additional tips to advertisers about optimizing product data feeds for search engines.

Sal is explaining the importance of customized feeds, and helping the affiliates for taking the right route.

Jessie Jones, CEO & Founder of PopShops.com takes the stage

• She’s worked for Expedia.com and Microsoft before starting PopShops.com
• She has started building niche sites and needed to automate the process, and decided to get her own tool built.
• She’s started PopShops.com to help her build niche websites, it wasn’t planned as a business (a software/tool to sell)
• She’s giving an example. Search Google for “Budget bridesmaids” and see an example of a PopShop store.
• Do you have an idea? Launch ASAP. You can build on top of it later on.
• Focus on A/B Testing

12.50pmKris takes the stage back from Jessie Jones. I will be adding pictures and videos later on today.

Kris is starting the Q&A Session

• Question to Jessie Jones about number of external links on a web page. Jessie mentioned the importance of following Google guidelines.
• Question about a PopShops.com API. Jessie says, you can integrate popshops with wordpress via API or use a plugin.
• Presenters are talking about both free and paid tools available to affiliates in the market.
• Anthony Bajoras talking about how important the passion is in affiliate business
• Mike mentions the “low hanging fruit”. Go for it first, then harvest the rest of the tree later on
• Sal Conca says 80-20 rules applies to affiliates if not the 90-10 rule. There will be top affiliates and others, just like in any business.

Last question was taken…

I think the session was ok for beginners in affiliate marketing, but unfortunately I didn’t take anything out of the session.

I totally understand that Affiliate Summit and similar conferences usually focus on beginners, but IMO, there should be some advanced and in depth discussions.

It was my first live blogging. I will be live blogging, during the Affiliate Summit East till tuesday evening. I will be adding pictures and videos later tonight.

My brother Volkan and I were invited to Azoogle‘s Publisher Appreciation Day on Thursday. We wanted to go to Azoogle’s office early and spend some time with our affiliate manager Michael Boghosian. It was my first time meeting Michael face to face. He turned out to be a great, down to earth guy and we had awesome time.

We have met Michael at Azoogle’s office around 3.30pm, then some other affiliates started coming in around 4pm. We have spent some time in Azoogle’s kitchen chatting with other affiliates and met some smart people.

Then, we had a chance to meet Epic Advertising’s CEO Don Mathis. He also had a surprise drawing for a free ticket to Azoogle’s Playboy Mansion Party. After the short meeting, we have headed out for happy hour in Manhattan. Azoogle was a great host and had bunch of food and drinks for the whole night.

Our final stop was a bar in the city where Epic Advertising COO Charles Nowaczek was playing with his band.

It was a great event. I met many affiliates and affiliate managers. Here are some names I still remember after several drinks;

Kyle Paterson, an affiliate from New Jersey, great guy, we have talked bunch of things through the night.

Jon Fisher of Wickedfire.com, met him first time, seemed like a very nice and quiet guy.

Kyle Antoian, we have met with Kyle last year during the Adtech but never had a chance to catch up. Kyle is a great guy, if you do email marketing, you should contact him for some exclusive offers. We will drink Turkish Coffee together soon (p.s. Kyle is the guy eating the wings on the video).

Tim Antoian, Kyle’s brother, who’s also an affiliate manager at AzoogleAds. It was nice meeting you Tim.

Brett Lofgren, Epic Advertising SVP, Global Ad Sales. It was great meeting and talking to you Brett.

Moufid Al-Joundi, Epic Advertising Director of Distribution Development. It was great meeting you Moufid.

Wes Downey from PublisherRev and his friend David. It was great talking to you guys.

And my affiliate manager, Michael Boghosian. We had fun, we should definitely get together soon. Thanks for having us yesterday.

I have also met several other great affiliates and affiliate managers.

AzoogleAds was the first affiliate company I’ve signed up with when I was starting affiliate marketing. They have been so nice and helpful since day 1. I’d highly recommend AzoogleAds to anybody who’s getting into affiliate marketing.

Some Pictures from the AzoogleAds Publisher Appreciation Day

My affiliate manager Michael Boghosian and me

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Michael Boghosian, my brother and business partner Volkan KIRTOK and myself

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Another great guy and affiliate, Kyle Paterson and myself

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Party Time

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Thanks to Azoogle for hosting a great event and having us.

I have a hell of a busy schedule in April, but New York City Entrepreneur Week is coming soon, and I can’t resist to attend some of the sessions.

There’s a huge list of great speakers at the event.

If you will be in New York City between April 20th and 24th, you shouldn’t miss this event. I will update my post with which sessions I’ll be attending after registering.

Leave a comment if you will be at the event. I will be happy to meet and network.