AffiliateSummit West 2008 Day 2

The Opening remarks & Keynote were made by Jim Kukral of ScratchBack.com. He gave a warm intro to Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo.com amongst others. Jason gave an honest and direct view of what he felt the Affiliate community as a whole needed to hear. Jason praised affliliates who work hard to develop a brand and produce good quality content rather than going for the quick money. Thin Affiliate Sites (TAS’s) Jason warned, are polluting mainstream search engines again, and the trend will be toward “curation”. Jason’s bottom line question for all to consider seemed to be “Are we being good to our user’s”.

I attended a morning session called “Domaining and Address Bar Driven Traffic” held by Monte Cahn, CEO of Moniker.com with Jothan Frakes of Oversee.net. They gave a good overview of the Domain marketing world, both in new registrations and in “resale” domains and layed out how important it is to consider the right domain for your website. Monte stressed that even paying a premium for the perfect domain on the aftermarket is better than registering the wrong name and losing untold revenue long term because of a bad name. He compared the domain market to the real estate market where with over 73 million .coms registered as of yesterday, good names will be much harder to register and will need to be purchased. Monte and Jothan also touched on how powerful address bar driven traffic can be, citing that direct navigation has about a 4% conversion rate compared to about a 1-2% rate for links. An interesting stat Monte gave is that the UK (.uk) now ranks 4th and rising in top-level domain registrations (ccTLDs) only following .com, .de, and .cn. Way to go Brits!

At lunch I spoke with Aunesty Janssen, VP of Marketing for Rolet Internet Services (rolet.com). Her company’s business model seems to be catching on more in the US as a one stop shop for hosting, web development and marketing services for smaller and medium sized companies looking to keep current but are ready “hand it over” to a knowledgeable marketer like Aunesty. She is at the Summit to see how she can better incorporate Affiliate Marketing into her client’s websites.

My afternoon session was on “Managing your Affiliate Manager”. Steve Schaffer of Veritive, Inc. and Dan Murray of RavenwoodMarketing.com presented. A good basic overview for the person who deals with Affiliate Managers or may not understand the challenges they face or what they should expect of them. There was an extended Q&A session between the two presenters to create discussion on topics like knowing the goals of your program, clear communication of terms and commissions, and who is responsible for reporting/tracking. Dan stressed the importance of “educating” the merchant on the long term benefits of longer cookie rates and paying the highest commisions for stellar affiliates. Instead of Affiliate Marketer, Dan prefers the term “Performance Marketer”. Bottom line: both speakers emphasized good open communication before the relationship begins and both sides will be pleased with the results.

The day was capped off with food and cocktails at the Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards Gala. Shawn Collins and Missy Ward present (in formal attire!) the winners:

1) Affiliate of the Year – Connie Berg
2) Affiliate Manager of the Year – Melissa Salas (cj.com)
3) Exceptional Merchant – CSN Stores
4) Affiliate Marketing Advocate Award – Haiko de Poel, Jr. (ABestWeb)
5) Best Blogger – Sam Harrelson
6) Wayne Porter Affiliate Marketing Legend Award – Brian Littleton
“Congrats from all at AffiliateProgramAdvice.com “