EQUTE — If you’re even slightly involved with internet marketing, or affiliate marketing as it’s more commonly known, you’ve probably heard of the Affiliate Summit. Way back in 2003 is when the conference started out in New York City. That year the show saw around 200 visitors, mostly affiliates. Fast forward to 2009 where there were 3076 attendees. Don’t forget that’s not counting the number of people who brought friends and didn’t register for the actual summit.

Of course this attendance isn’t just affiliates by any means. People attending the conference vary from year to year but generally there will be any number of Vendors, Affiliate Marketers or Publishers, Agencies, Merchants or Affiliate Networks to stop and talk with or sometimes even sign up with right on the spot so you’re ready to start running traffic as soon as you return to the office, or from your iPhone later on in the evening if you’re that gung-ho.

Now, there are there are two Affiliate Summits held every year, one on the east coast and one on the west coast. The west coast ones are always held in Las Vegas while the East Coast ones vary between New York City, Boston, Miami and Orlando. The location for ASE is based on user feedback generated throughout the affiliate community with coordinators of Affiliate Summit.

These shows are a great opportunity to meet other people involved in a similar business, to find the latest offer to run with on your campaign, or just to put faces to names of all the people you’ve been speaking to online on popular forums like WickedFire.

Attending any of these conferences is a great idea for new, and experienced affiliates a like. Regardless of your experience, just showing up will psychologically tell people that you’re interested in the business and industry and aren’t just some faceless ‘internet person’. Creating these types of relationships can have a lasting impression on your business for a lifetime and are not to be passed up.

The New York conference is more about business than pleasure, with many deals going on both behind closed doors and open doors in restaurants, pubs and sometimes even late at night during the network parties.

Did we mention the parties? Yes, many of the networks have parties for their affiliates, whether you’re a seasoned professional or new to the entire industry as long as you’re hooked up with a few networks you will be sure to be invited along to some of them. These parties are great social events, and definitely worthwhile for meeting other affiliates in the scene. While business can’t always be conducted at these parties – thumping bass and copious amounts of alcohol, it’s still a great way to meet more people in the industry and get introduced to others you probably never would have met or talked with otherwise.

Some of our best ideas have come out of attending Affiliate Summit East and without it we wouldn’t be where we are today, and know what we know now.

Attend Affiliate Summit East and see for yourself what it can do for your business too. See you there!

Yahoo! has announced that the Yahoo! Publisher Network program — which has been in beta for five years — will shut down at the end of April.
In the same breath, Yahoo! directed users of the ad network to head over to Chitika for a pain-free transition.

… We have decided to close the program effective April 30, 2010. We expect to deliver final publisher payments for the month ending April 30, 2010 to publishers no later than May 31, 2010. All publishers eligible for 1099s for the 2010 tax year will have those mailed by January 31, 2011.

Because our content will no longer be delivered to your ad unit spaces after April 30, 2010, we recommend removing all YPN ad code from your pages by that date.

For the opportunity to continue earning revenue, we suggest using Chitika, a leading advertising network that syndicates Yahoo! Content Match and Sponsored Search ads. Chitika has set up a special process for YPNO beta publishers to participate in its platform.

Though there don’t appear to be a lot of people still using the ad network, one wonders why Yahoo! didn’t direct its users to the Bing/Microsoft ad center instead of a third party competitor.

Advertisers on the network would be well advised to check out Chitika before the deadline to see how well it works out for them. It’s always nice to have ads in as many places as you can, but if Chitika doesn’t work out, Yahoo! users would be wise to switch completely over to the Microsoft Ad Center and Google and grow or hone their efforts there.

For the first time on a routine week, Facebook has outpaced Google to become the most visited site on the internet.

According to research from Hitwise, Google’s share is still growing, but at only a fraction of the pace of Facebook.

The market share of visits to Facebook.com increased 185% last week as compared to the same week in 2009, while visits to Google.com increased 9% during the same time frame.

Together Facebook.com and Google.com accounted for 14% of all US Internet visits last week.

So what does this mean for marketers? Well, it’s a slap across the face — any marketer that is advertising on Google should put their efforts into finding a good Facebook strategy stat.

[Via Hitwise]

EQUTE — The Wall Street Journal says that Google has been testing a new set-top box to create their own schedule and find videos from around the internet and TV shows — and deliver Google ads to everyone.

Google Inc. is testing a new television-programming search service with Dish Network Corp., according to people familiar with the matter, the latest development in a fast-moving race to combine Internet content with conventional TV.

The service, which runs on TV set-top boxes containing Google software, allows users to find shows on the satellite-TV service as well as video from Web sites like Google’s YouTube, according to these people. It also lets users to personalize a lineup of shows, these people said.

This could be huge, huge, huge for Google, funneling people to its vast media pool from anywhere — YouTube especially. It also means Google ads online and on TV could get heavy rotation. Advertisers not pushing YouTube or preroll ads should take note and start planning for the device.

It surely could flop like many set top boxes, but if it takes off with the same precipitous rise that Tivo did, advertisers without a plan will have to race to catch up.

[Via Wall Street Journal (Subscription required)]

The partnership between Yahoo! And Microsoft hit another big milestone as the companies give some hint of when major changes to advertising will actually happen.

Details are few, but one thing is certain, Yahoo’s advertising center will migrate over to the Microsoft Ad Center when the process is finally complete.

Currently, according to a news release and the companies new search alliance web site, the deal is set to go through before the 2010 holiday season. The timing sure to annoy just about every advertiser currently using Yahoo, so the duo left the window open for early 2011 after the holiday search season.

Once the deal actually goes through, Microsoft says advertisers using their Ad Center will reach up to 577 million searchers; which converts to better ROI and making it easier to segment campaigns among a large group of many niches.

While Microsoft is taking control of the advertising side of the partnership, Yahoo! continues to push its content and human support system.

Yahoo! and Microsoft will each provide customer support to different advertiser segments: Yahoo!’s sales team will exclusively support high volume advertisers, SEO and SEM agencies, and resellers and their clients. Microsoft will support self-service advertisers. In addition, Microsoft adCenter will be the platform for all search campaigns.

Everyone remembers the great Google snafu that saw search results change dramatically right before the holiday season, so my bet is on this partnership actually taking off in early 2011 — despite the fact that Microsoft surely wants to demonstrate Bing in a complete form for the holidays.

Microsoft and Yahoo! promise to give a three-month warning before the actual change and provide more details about making the switch to Ad Center or how advertising will change for either company. Until then, the partners’ Search Alliance Web site has some good details mixed with the self promotion

[Via Search Alliance]

When Foursquare first came out, it seemed like just another silly social app for iPhone geeks, but now that it has had some time to grow, it’s becoming a must have for just about any business.

Major players like Zagat have signed on and will be doing more than just providing badges (the way users boast to each other on Foursquare). The foodie staple will be interviewing the mayors (biggest visitors to a venue) of Zagat-rated restaurants and will also suggest local Zagat restaurants to users.

Foursquare has also penned deals with Bravo that correspond with network shows; with the new star vehicle “Valentine’s Day;” with HBO’s “How to Make it in America” — even Harvard University.

If you aren’t already on Foursquare, you should be. No matter what kind of company you have, the old adage of marketing is “meet your customers where they live.” And your customers are on Foursquare.

A lot of companies will get on Facebook and Twitter and say they have a diverse social media portfolio, but these secondary social sites are key to getting to as many people as possible. So instead of playing on Facebook for far too long and calling it work tomorrow, get on Foursquare, Mobile Spinach, Whrrl, Loopt, GraffitiGeo, Hotlist, Yelp, Qype, Brightkite, not to mention Google Maps.

This winter we saw an extremely good show at Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas. If you’re not familiar with Affiliate Summit, check out our previous articles on Affiliate Summit. These conferences are specifically designed for individuals involved in the Affiliate Marketing industry and aims to help them gain connections, learn new business strategies and network with like-minded individuals in the same general industry.

Let’s face it Las Vegas is a party city. If you haven’t been to Las Vegas you’ll immediately notice the lights, glitz and glamour everywhere you look – even some of the alleys. Not to mention the rampant use of alcohol and all sorts of other nefarious activities one can get up to. What better place to hold a conference for a bunch of people who spend copious amounts of time on their computers setting up campaigns or researching the latest trending keywords.

Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas is huge. The exhibition floor caters to more advertisers, networks and merchants than you will often see at the Eastern Conference, but that’s not to say it’s better – just different. Because of the nature of the city, it’s common for individuals to stay out late and party with friends they haven’t seen since the last conference and maybe not conduct as much business, as they are establishing longer term social relationships.

In our experience Vegas saw more attendees probably because it seems many affiliates, and their friends are from the west coast so it’s easier to travel to and often cheaper than it is to stay in New York or Miami. The parties in Las Vegas are much different than the events in New York, with many smaller and more private parties held in expensive hotel suites or similar venues. Often with bands or other forms of live entertainment to keep affiliates and friends sufficiently entertained.

Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas provides more opportunity to meet new networks, vendors and merchants. This is the place to visit if you’re looking for new offers to run in your campaigns or just for new ideas on what you could be running.

Attending the Western conference is different than the eastern sibling, but mostly because of the 24/7 party nature of Las Vegas, and many attendees haven’t visited the town before so they want to get the full experience from it, as well as from the conference. Which undoubtedly leads to a little bit less business conducted in some cases, but in others more business or networking conducted so it does balance itself out and help any affiliate whether new, or experienced implement new ideas and ultimately dollars to their business.

We attribute some of the relationships we’ve made at Affiliate Summit West with helping us double our income in the past 4 months since the event, and our entire team has made lasting friendships with people from around the world that we wouldn’t have otherwise met. We hope to see you there next winter for Affiliate Summit 2011.

Get Marketing!

The Search Engine Strategies conference is one of the greatest conferences to hit up for the SEO worker. Experts and novices alike can get some good information out of the show.

The conference features a lots of great speakers from big New York powerhouses such as the New York Times company SEO staff, the ABC News SEO staff, the author of World Wide Rave and of course a Googler.

The main page of the SES site said it perfectly:

Your customers, colleagues and competition will be in attendance — will you?

It’s always something to ponder, going to these type of events. Sometime you’ll come home thinking you didn’t learn anything. But even if you didn’t learn anything new, a whole slew of other people did. So if you learn one thing, it’s exactly what your competition knows.

I don’t think I’ve been to a conference where I didn’t take at least a small helpful nugget of advice. It’s always good to see what the big dogs are doing — even if they are far behind the smaller agile SEO experts.

See you at SES New York!

EQUTE — The Affiliate Summit is the place for anyone in the affiliate marketing space for one big reason — the people.

If you are working as a full time affiliate marketer, it’s sometimes hard to remember that it is still a major business with major business people on top of the scrappy small to mid-sized players.

Networking can sometimes be a pain, but the Affiliate Summit is the place to do it. Even if you don’t like networking, two or three days of chatting with everybody in the business and you’re done for the whole year.

I just got back from Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas (ASW10) where I had the great opportunity to speak with and meet affiliate bloggers such as PPC.bz, Bryn Youngblut, John Chow, Andrew Wee and catch up with friends from past events — all big players and all veritable fonts of information. They are all also great sources of information, and if you can give them a bit of information or a novel way at looking at things, they will return the favor.

The smaller players are also great sources of information you might not have thought of, and perfect partners for the future. I always make sure to give a few tips or best practices, and I cannot say how many new ideas they have given me — drop the whole crowd in a party and the ideas flow like the free liquor.

Speaking of those parties, and there are many, it’s a great way to build a base with the hosts and the guests for the future.

The parties are always a great experience — and there were countless people who really got me thinking and taking sloppy notes! The Buy.at party was a thumper, maybe I didn’t do much networking, but met up with Heather from the Paulson Management Group, who was having quite a time with Paul Oakenfold at the DJ booth.

Oh yeah, the summit was great too! The keynote from Dr. Robert Cialdini was outstanding; you could look around the room and see light bulbs going off across the audience. To have such a mind focused on such a small niche of marketing, it was quite a privilege.

And just walking the summit floor, you have the opportunity to meet just about anyone you’ve met in the business.

Stopping and talking with the managers at the booths can also be invaluable, I can’t remember how many better commissions, secret offers or future plans I got just by talking with the people in the networks. That little interaction is just another way the summit can change the way you do things for the next year.

At the end of the 2010 Affiliate Summit, I’ve got a stack of business cards and a notebook full of ideas. And if I gained nothing solid from the summit, it gets the mind working in a new way, searching for new ideas and new ways to engage our customers.

EQUTE — While press releases have been key to getting into the media, but it was murky how they affected search traffic once they made it online.

PR powerhouse PRWeb said before that it pushed search traffic by a large margin.

“Search engine rankings are arguably the most important small business marketing tool available today because it drives Web traffic — and potential prospects — to a small business’ Web site,” a PRWeb spokesperson once told WebProNews. “However, because improving search rankings is desirable, achieving results can be both challenging and highly competitive.”

A study showed that sites got 50 percent increase in traffic, and up to a 400 percent boost. The company involved in the study also said that the traffic spike lasted for days. When linked to social media, a press release creates a slew of links back to a site. Even though the site may not rank as well, those press releases will rank because of their authority and get great placement in news aggregators and news searches.

Every press release has a chance to grow beyond the initial campaign. If a noteworthy site makes it into a story or a top blogger grabs onto it can spread like wildfire.

So there it is, the cat’s out of the bag. One of the oldest sources for press and public exposure still works on the Internet.