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Attending the yearly conference circuit makes me sometimes  feel like conference organizers learned their trade by watching ranchers herd sheep. Rather like little “woolies” shuttled from pasture to pasture, each attendee is branded with the conference tag then guided to a designated corral where people cluster about in glassy-eyed clumps while the conference speakers drone on, unheard, about their heads until it’s time to break for the food trough or the after party.  It’s irritating that even the after party  inevitably involves more milling about and speeches which could be borne if it was felt that organizers actually gave  a damn about attendees.

Because of this I, for one, will miss Gnomedex. Now that Chris Pirillo has announced that after a decade, Gnomedex as a conference has come to end. As a community we are the poorer for it, since few conferences are smart enough to understand that the show is about the attendees.

Year after year Chris has put on events that not only highlighted cutting edge trends, but featured speakers you wouldn’t hear elsewhere, and did it all while erasing the perceived gap between star and attendee. As Dave Winer put it, this was the kind of show you wanted to pay for,

personal loyalty to Chris and Ponzi, or knowing that it’s not a big corporation putting on the show, not sure what it is but it never occurs to me to ask for a comp.”

From someone like Dave Winer, who has made his name on harsh, opinionated critique, this is high praise indeed.

In the past when colleagues have asked me about Gnomedex I found myself saying it was a conference where no business happened; almost as a way to discourage them from attending if all they wanted to do was the usual “conference thing”.  Then I would quickly add that unlike SXSW, which is a sort of Spring Break for Geeks, Gnomedex was more than simply a social event. Instead, this was a conference with a strong creative streak that always left me feeling re-energized, brimming with new ideas.  While  session topics may not have been related directly to business they provided the type of fuel that feeds the spirit, entrepreneurial or metaphysical.

I attended every Gnomedex since 2007, four in all. As a small thank you to Chris, here are my top five examples of sessions that made Gnomedex great:

1)      I Want to Drive the Mars Rover Robot

Geeks have a fascination with space, and I am no exception. When Scott Maxwell, Mars Rover Driver Team Lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, stepped on stage he had the audience in the palm of his hands. Scott playfully informed the audience that NASA simply doesn’t have enough mathematicians and that through the use of social media it hopes to engage enthusiasts who literally wanted to help  solve NASA’s problems. When he asked who wanted to help him drive the Mars Rover robot, the audience nearly raised the roof.

Click here to view the embedded video.

2)      At Derek K. Miller’s Bedside

As a society we are not good at talking about illness. Often, either consciously or not, those who are ill become sequestered by those who are because people are unsure how to talk around the elephant in the living room. Which is why when Chris Pirillo, after informing the audience that long time attendee Derek K. Miller was too ill in his fight with cancer to attend, turned to the big screen,  and transported everyone to Derek’s bedside live, it was just an amazing moment. Watching Derek interact with the audience and the audience with him was the kind of intimacy most conferences are too self-conscious or unaware of to attempt.

Click here to view the embedded video.

3)      The Calacanis and Winer Tango

Prior to attending Gnomedex I was used to audiences being overly polite to speakers, even if they feel a speaker is feeding them a load of bull. Which is why it was so refreshing to witness Dave Winer pick up on the audience sentiment and yell out at Jason Calacanis, who was simultaneously denouncing spammers on one hand and pitching his product with the other, “Jason what about conference spam, aren’t you spamming us?” (Watch below at about the 7:45 mark) This incident lead to a variety of drama online but  it was thrilling to witness the audience not just sit there passively while the speaker broke the tenant of Gnomedex “don’t pitch”.

Click here to view the embedded video.

4)      Invisible People in the Auditorium

It is easy to dismiss Mark Horvath as a hustler. Perhaps there is a little bit of him that still feels like he is still panhandling, albeit with a larger audience, and occasionally some jive slips in. It is easy to judge Mark, but I dare anyone to deny the efforts he has gone through to help the homeless find a voice. It’s a daunting task, making people sitting in cushy chairs sipping Starbucks and feeding off of wifi, think  about the plight of  the homeless, even for a moment. So, in 2009, when Mark introduced James, a homeless man who lived in Nicklesville, Seattle’s homeless “tent city” (video below of Mark’s interview with James at the camp for InvisiblePeople.tv). Mark did what he does very well which is wake up the audience and get them to re-evaluate what’s important.

Click here to view the embedded video.

5)      I Like Cyborgs with My Cultural Anthropology

There have been so many great geek moments at Gnomedex, like Nathan Wade’s Serial Cyborg project, that I was hard pressed to round out the top 5. But Amber Case’s look at prosthetic culture and cyborg anthropology was simply a lot of nerdy fun. She won me over with her  comparison between trilobites shedding their eyes to the way we shed computer screens as part of our visual input.

Fond Farewell

For my part I am as proud that ReveNews was able to provide coverage for Gnomedex 2008 as well as be a sponsor of Gnomedex 10. I am also honored that in 2009 I got a brief unforgettable 10 minutes  to discuss the impact of the Amazon Tax.

I hope that Gnomedex as a conference isn’t gone forever but morphs into something that we the audience can continue to plug into.

To Chris Pirillo (featured to the right sporting the latest in geek fashion) and the dedicated staff of Gnomedex, I say thanks for the memories.

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A Fond Farewell: Five Reasons Gnomedex Will Be Missed

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As city and state governments scramble to make up for growing budget shortfalls we’ve seen the passing of some fairly ludicrous legislation. From the Amazon Tax passed by New York, Rhode Island, and North Carolina to Colorado Governor Bill Ritter’s “Dirty Dozen” which included a tax on bull semen, we’ve seen a lot of ridiculous legislation in 2010.

Enter the city of Philadelphia whose government seems to think that blogging is the next big untapped treasure trove of tax revenue. Philadelphia has imposed a privilege license on all bloggers who reside in the city limits. Cost of the tax, $300.

According to tax attorney Michael Mandale as long as a blog is engaged in an “activity for profit” for example taking any advertisement including Google AdSense, the city of Philadelphia’s “blogging tax” applies to them. By such a definition blogs or sites on communities like Squidoo, Livejournal and platforms like WordPress and TypePad would be subject to such a tax.

The thing is a lot of people who blog do so as a hobby or a form of self expression. They may put up an occasional link to Amazon or to Fandango because of a book or movie they have seen but most are not making a living off of blogging. In fact both local bloggers interviewed by the Philadelphia City Paper made less than $50 over two years. But as Michael Mandale points out the law applies whether or not the blogger “earned a profit during the preceding year.”

Interestingly the way the law is written it would exempt most corporate blogs from being taxed separately because most corporations do not display advertising on their blog.

Now, I don’t fault the Philadelphia city government for searching for new tax revenue resources especially when faced with the crisis of a budget shortfall. In fact, I would classify myself as generally pro tax. But this law is just misguided for many reasons.

1. Jurisdiction: The law is targeting the blogger who hopes to earn a profit through advertising. Fine. But what if a blogger living in Philly blogs on a third party site, say they setup a Squidoo Lens, but chooses not to run their own advertising. Let’s say the third part site then decides to run advertising triggered by the blogger’s content. Seems wrong that the small blogger would be taxed but the larger business (the site) would be allowed to make a profit untouched.  Philadelphia having no jurisdiction over matters outside of its city limits could never impose the tax on a site outside of its city limits. Yet, in the scenario above it could not tax the site for the very same content and potential profits that it is trying to tax the blogger for.
2. Enforcement:By the city’s own admission they do not keep track of how many bloggers reside in their city limits. In fact it might be an impossible task at least from a resource standpoint, not just for Philly but for any city, to actively enforce such a law. So the only people this law taxes (punishes) are those honest enough to come forward and pay it.
3. What Content is Taxable?: The supposition here is that the blogger is seeking out advertisers and the revenue from ads should be taxed. But I’m sure that the city officials are thinking about traditional display style ads. What about in-text ads or outright advertorial? Are those taxable? If so, how will the city enforce? What about, as mentioned earlier, blog content from a large business or corporate entity? Such a blog isn’t likely to have advertising but essentially does serve a marketing/advertising purpose for the company that created it. Is that taxable? Will companies then be required to pay two taxes: one for their business license and one for the privilege of having a blog?
4. Small Business Growth: In a city that is trying to encourage small business growth, as Philadelphia claims to, aren’t such tax measures a great way to hamper such growth? Bloggers who become successful enough through their writing will naturally evolve into businesses that bring in new tax revenue. Government should be cultivating business growth not burying it before it has a chance to flourish.

In Philadelphia there is already an effort to reform the current business privilege tax put forward by local City Council members Bill Green and Maria Quiñones-Sánchez so that the law wouldn’t apply to business that had not generated over $100,000 in revenue. While I applaud that effort, government tends to be a bit of “monkey see, monkey do.”

Among the repercussions of New York’s passing of the Amazon Tax, was that various states lined up to follow New York’s lead without really looking at the impact of the legislation. Don’t be surprised if a city near you follows in Philly’s footsteps.

Here is the original:
Blogging Tax Coming To A City Near You

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Three things are always on my agenda when I visit New York: the arts, the museums, and the food. This year there is a surprising addition: funny puppets. Whom do I have to thank for such an odd itinerary item? That razor tongued curmudgeon of the webs Loren Feldman, who flicks his Flip camera on anytime he wants to watch Michael Arrington duck. Affiliate Summit Co-Founders Shawn Collins and Missy Ward have teamed up with Loren for a night of humor and yes, puppets that is the Audience Conference. That precursor to Affiliate Summit will take place at Caroline’s on Broadway (it is technically a separate event and tickets are still available).

Usually I tend to be attracted to panel sessions because I find the dynamics and the possibility for intelligent discourse and debate compelling. This year Affiliate Summit East features a lot of very strong individual presenters around a range of innovative topics. There is simply not enough focus within the affiliate industry on innovation. I don’t feel the networks do enough to cultivate innovative publishers. That is unfortunate because the flexibility of the affiliate marketing can be applied to many emerging models and sometimes I feel we are missing the boat on social media, mobile commerce, and local marketing. This is why I am glad Shawn and Missy have compiled the line-up they have.

So before you get lost hunting for some restaurant you saw Bobby Flay throw down at, here is my pick for the top ten sessions you can’t afford to miss:

1) Innovate! New Exciting Applications of Affiliate Marketing
Session 1c
Location: Sutton Complex (Beekman & North)
Session: 12:00pm-1:00pm, Sunday, August 15th

A lot of innovation has becoming out of the UK. I’m glad to see Joe Stepniewski who has been doing some amazing things over at Skimlinks, fresh off the 2010 Technology Genius Award at LinkShare’s Golden Links, present this session focusing on new ways affiliate marketing is being used in web startups, services and applications. Here’s hoping he mentions PopShops (I’m proud to be part of their original team).

Panelists for the Innovate! New Exciting Applications of Affiliate Marketing session include:

• Joe Stepniewski, Co-Founder, Skimlinks (Twitter @digijoe)

2) New Lead Generation Models: Social-Mobile-Viral
Session 2b
Location: Murray Hill Suite
Time: 1:30pm-2:30pm, Sunday, August 15th

Continuing the innovation theme off-beat veteran Declan Dunn will be taking folks interested in the lead-gen space into the new media game. Focusing on how to turn fans into leads via various social and mobile tools without becoming the equivalent of that insurance sales guy no one wants to invite to parties anymore. A valuable balance to strike in lead-gen.

Panelists for the New Lead Generation Models: Social-Mobile-Viral session include:

• Declan Dunn, CEO, Dunn Direct Media (Twitter @declandunn)

3) Affiliate Freakonomics: Market Quirks at Work
Session 8a
Location: Gramercy Suite
Time: 12:10pm-12:30pm, Tuesday, August 17th

This has potential of being a session with some fireworks. Like Skimlinks, VigLink is also an extremely innovative company. Oliver Roup, CEO, of VigLink devised an intriguing title to this session and it will indeed be interesting to take a look at how wildcards in click data can help give affiliates an edge. So what about the fireworks, you ask? I’m curious to see whether Oliver addresses the blogger fallout over supplanting tracking code inside Lijit. That indeed was an unexpected variance for bloggers using Lijit. If he doesn’t, someone should ask him.

Panelists for the Affiliate Freakonomics: Market Quirks at Work session include:

• Oliver Roup, CEO, VigLink (Twitter @oroup)

4) Android Affiliate Mobile Marketing
Session 5d
Location: Sutton Complex (South & Regent)
Time: 2:00pm-3:00pm, Monday, August 16th

For a long time we’ve been hearing how mobile is the next big thing, that it would soon arrive. Well, if you’ve been watching the market, thanks to the rise of smartphones mobile commerce has arrived. Like the web, the platforms you can choose from in mobile are fractured with very specific nuances. This session by Michael Martin will focus on Android, arguably one of the most exciting of the current mobile platforms.

Panelists for the Android Affiliate Mobile Marketing session include:

• Michael Martin, Owner, Mobile Martin (Twitter @googleandblog)

5) Curation. Can You Filter Free Content?
Session 7c
Location: Sutton Complex (Beekman & North)
Time: 11:30am-11:50am, Tuesday, August 17th

In the debate over the value of content, I’ve always been squarely on the side that holds that “content is king”. But with so many information streams the value of the content produced is often diminished because it is impossible to filter through all the distracting noise. The concept of curation isn’t new, but with the rise of social media it is getting far more attention these days as the need to filter quality content from the chaff increases. With over 42,000 sites featuring a wide variety of topics all with a video distribution backbone, Magnify.net knows a thing or two about effective curation.

Panelists for the Curation. Can You Filter Free Content? session include:

• Steve Rosenbaum, CEO, Magnify.net (Twitter @magnify)

6) How to Eliminate Affiliate Fraud 100%
Session 7d
Location: Sutton Complex (South & Regent)
Time: 11:30am-11:50am, Tuesday, August 17th

If VigLink session doesn’t provide fireworks this one should. I am always wary when someone promises to eliminate 100 percent of anything. It’s too bad eBay didn’t know of Rey Pasinli’s secrets. That being said I am pro any tool or sharing of techniques that can help reduce the high rates of fraud inherent to the industry even if that reduction rate doesn’t quite reach zero. Maybe Rey will make a believer out of me.

Panelists for the How to Eliminate Affiliate Fraud 100% session include:

• Rey Pasinli, Executive Director, Total Apps, Inc.

7) Affiliate Platforming: How to Attract & Retain Audiences
Session 9a
Location: Gramercy Suite
Time: 2:00pm-3:00pm, Tuesday, August 17th

It took only a few minutes at SOBCon to realize that Scott Stratten is one of the smartest people in the marketing industry. He is an idea factory of sorts but one whose laser focus actually churns out ideas that are practical to implement. Add to that rare talent the fact he is a karaoke rockstar and you have a can’t miss session. Thus I encourage you to forgive the fact he has the most boring title of any session this year and tune in to the UnPresident. It will be worth it.

Panelists for the Affiliate Platforming: How to Attract & Retain Audiences session include:

• Scott Stratten, UnPresident, UnMarketing (Twitter @UnMarketing)

Master of Your Domain?
Session 4c
Location: Sutton Complex (Beekman & North)
Time: 11:30am-12:30pm, Monday, August 16th

The legal labyrinth of the Internet has grown in complexity over the years. Snagging a URL doesn’t always mean you have the rights to use it free and clear. Trademark law often impacts domain owners, especially if another business claims you are infringing on their rights. The constant twisting evolution of the legal space, makes such sessions a must. Plus I have a weakness for panels where one of the members is from a committee that advocates the mirage of self-regulation.

Panelists for the Master of Your Domain? session include:

• Gary A. Kibel, Partner, Davis & Gilbert LLP (Twitter @GaryKibel_law) (Moderator)
• Sara Freixa, Brand Protection Manager, Americas, Melbourne IT DBS Inc
• Peter C. Marinello, Director, Electronic Retailing Self-Regulation Program

9) Avoiding the Google Slap
Session 5b
Location: Murray Hill Suite
Time: 2:00pm-3:00pm, Monday August 16th

Google has been traditionally unfriendly towards affiliates. That has changed slightly since Google bought Performics and has stepped into the space. While I would have rather had a representative from GAN than an AdWords evangelist; having representatives from ClickBank and Google should shed a lot of insight on the impact of quality scores in-channel.

Panelists for the Avoiding the Google Slap session include:

• Dush Ramachandran, Vice President – Sales & Business Development, ClickBank (Twitter @DushR)
• Frederick Vallaeys, AdWords Evangelist, Google (Twitter @siliconvallaeys)

10) Why Q4 is the Year Long Season
Session 6c
Location: Sutton Complex (Beekman & North)
Time: 3:30pm-4:30pm, Monday August 16th

Everyone plans to think ahead but merchants inevitably find themselves scrambling for placements in Q4. This last minute mentality often fails to capitalize on potential placements with publishers. Publishers, as well, can be equally blamed for not pressing merchants often and early enough. The end result is wasted potential and money left on the table. Planning beyond the current season is always smart, and CJ should have some interesting insights on how to leverage such plans.

Panelists for the Why Q4 is the Year Long Season session include:

• Kim Riedell, Vice President, Client Development, Commission Junction, a ValueClick Company (Twitter @CJnetwork)

Special Note: Watch for a rare Jim Kukral post on ReveNews following his keynote at Affiliate Summit East.

That’s the rundown of my picks for Affiliate Summit East 2010 in New York. What sessions are you looking forward to?

See the rest here:
Top 10 Must See Sessions at Affiliate Summit East 2010

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Unless they are prefaced by dollar signs, numbers are not sexy, which is why social media experts have spent years avoiding them. Like the cool kids, they often seem more interested in being invited to the party than delving into what the party is for. The argument is often that numbers and metrics only serve as distractions to engagement and dialogue.

As a model matures in order for it to maintain a business role, make no mistake social media is about business, its impact needs to be quantifiable. Forrester Research estimates that social media will make up 3% of overall interactive marketing spend in the US in 2010 with the highest delta of growth in any channel over the next four years. As social media’s channel grows so will the pressure to quantify.

Brian Solis, author and principal of the FurtureWorks agency, recently posted a well written piece about the Maturation of Social Media ROI on Mashable. In it he tackles the main crux behind the issue that many CMOs are spending against social media without being able to quantify a return on those efforts. Brian believes this is:

“A direct result of not tying activity to an end game, the ability to know what it is we want to measure before we engage. Doing so, allows us to define a strategy and a tactical plan to support activity that helps us reach our goals and objectives.”

Warm and Fuzzy Metrics

It used to be that simply being invited to or crashing the social media party was enough. Companies hired interns to catalog content and rushed to create Facebook Fan Pages and Twitter accounts, often because everyone else was doing it.

Then came what I like to call “warm and fuzzy metrics”. Words like engagement, participation, and involvement became key terms for defining online interactions with consumers. Similar to views in CPM, these terms are measured in volume of followers or retweets. Influencers sprouted from this tactic as a way to amplify that volume; after all you wanted to have the best DJ at your party.

Then came terms like trust and affinity; these were less fuzzy in nature and involved a brand’s core group of followers.

Of the warm and fuzzy metrics of social media ROI, only customer service is tangible. Both in terms of the increased ability for people to rate and review products, as well as the opportunity for customer service teams to engage and provide proactive response.

If your company is just participating in social media than maybe the fuzzy metrics are enough. If your company is running social media campaigns and considers social media a marketing channel than fuzzy metrics are a great way to get your budget slashed. It is no coincidence that, according to MarketingSherpa, inability to measure ROI, lack of budget funding, and management resistance are barriers to companies implementing social media campaigns:

For those who insist that “marketing is not sales”, I invite you to use that exact statement with your CMO and see how quickly your budget is diverted elsewhere. As David Vellante, co-founder of ITCentrix, Barometrix, and The Wikibon Project, cautions:

“I’ve seen multimillion-dollar print and television advertising initiatives get the green light because CMOs understood the media — and I’ve seen $10,000 social-media efforts scratched because execs didn’t get it.”

The Key is Return on Ad Spend

ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is what many CMOs will look at when considering budget allocation against a marketing channel. By definition it has a tighter set of parameters than ROI because it doesn’t consider less fuzzy elements like branding or engagement. This metric for success is specifically looking for a direct dollar value generated as compared to the actual budget being spent.

If, as a study by Bazaarvoice indicates, 80% of CMOs expect upwards of 5% of their revenue to come through the social media channel then the spend against generating revenue better be tracked.

According to Fast Company, Dell made over $3 million in revenue through the Dell Outlet account on Twitter.  But, considering much of what happens in Dell’s Twitter account is coupon or offer driven, what was the true ROAS of hitting that $3 million? Never mind the additional cost of coordinating social media tactics and messaging within a company as big as Dell which, as Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger for Dell Inc says is challenging, “Executing against all those [social media] strategies will take a lot more effort and collaboration between many departments within the company.”

More telling is a recent report by Omniture on the impact of a social media campaign for National Geographic. While the campaign was seen as a success, in the report the Omniture analyst states that traffic from social media is 20x less likely to purchase than average visitor.

Laying the Foundation

What rings true for Dell is true for both large and small business interested in participating in social media.  Collaboration between all stakeholders is necessary in order for a campaign to reach its potential.  Here are the steps you need to take to lay a proper foundation for launch.

1. Know Your End Game: As Brian Solis said defining your end game is necessary in order to be able to quantify results.  Know what are you trying to accomplish and how you want to try keep track of it all.
2. Define Your Metrics: What metrics do you need to track to quantify results: Leads, Registration, Sales?
3. Check Your Tracking: I can’t tell you how often a new client doesn’t have the right pixel/cookie set on the right confirmation page. If your success metric is sales make sure you’re not just tracking leads. This requires testing.
4. Set Expectations: Benchmarking is great way for you and your CMO to have realistic expectations from a campaign. Fireclick and Coremetrics are two tools that can provide benchmarks based on industry averages related to conversion rates, cart abandonment, and other valuable data. They also allow you to pull data from a specific vertical.

Intelligence Gathering

This is where you gather the numbers that will let you know how your campaign is doing and where the dollars are. There are a lot of tools out there that will provide pretty dashboards but few that provide useful data. Here are some of the tools I recommend:

1. Google Analytics: Google Analytics is the defacto analytics system in most companies. You can track visits, page views, bounce rates, etc. Be sure, if sales are a key metric, that the ecommerce portion is activated.
2. Hitwise: Owned by Experian, Hitwise relies on ISP data of approximately 10 million users in the United States alone. Although an expensive solution, their Clickstream data provides some of the best intelligence on upstream and downstream traffic to your website.
3. Coremetrics: Along with their benchmarking services Coremetrics offers an analytics suite whose main differentiator rests in what they call their LIVE (Lifetime Individual Visitor Experience) Profiles. This is essentially an analytics expansion on the concept of customer types.
4. Fireclick: Owned by Digital River, is a streamlined version of many of the tools available for free through Google Analytics but in an easier to customize interface. The main advantage here is their Advanced Marketing Suite which ties you into other vendors and components in the Digital River portfolio.
5. Radian6: Radian6 is a buzz monitoring software that allows you to monitor certain keyword sets and capture data round them. The data includes such things sentiment, engagement, reach, and inbound links. It also allows you to port that data to your CRM.
6. HubSpot: In some ways HubSpot is more of a site optimization tool than an analytics tool. It does compile interesting sets of data around competitors and around reach as well as lead identification tools.
7. Omniture: I have a love/hate relationship with Omniture. Used correctly, with sufficient internal technical resources as well as buy-off from the marketing team on consistent use of campaign hierarchy, SiteCatalyst along with the other Omniture, is an amazing if overly complicated resource. It is however a very expensive one and there is a reason that Omniture holds yearly conferences on how to use their product.  They have a great Facebook app measuring toolset.

Making Sense of it All

Having the tools to capture the data you need is great but numbers are of little value if they are not actionable.  Here are some guidelines to avoid drowning in the data:

1. What to Do When the Numbers Don’t Match: First of all get the notion of the numbers matching out of your head. The numbers between two analytics systems will rarely, if ever, produce an exact match. The objective is to look for trends in the data and ignore anomalies that are not statistically relevant. If the data matches within 10% or less variable then consider the data to be inline. If the variant is 11%-49% then it might be worth doing some due diligence. For instance are all the pages that should be tagged, tagged correctly? If the variant is greater than 50% then something is wrong with the setup itself or with one of the systems you are using.
2. Spotting Trends is Vital: One of the most common mistakes I see is when business get excited about high sales numbers while completely ignoring the fact they overspent to get those numbers. Sales matter little if ROAS is in the negative. Trends are a great way to spot deltas which often provide indicators of the health of campaign. Sample key trends are:
   1. number of new to file customers
   2. number of transactions
   3. changes in repeat customers
   4. number of customer referrals
   5. uplift in other marketing channels
3. 3) Looks for Wildcards and Outliers: Sometimes you are so focused on the campaign data that you become blind to important clues. My favorite personal example of this was during the measurement of a campaign that Jones Soda ran with I Can Has Cheezburger in 2008. If you looked just at the number of sales that directly came from the I Can Has Cheezburger website the campaign numbers barely broke even.  However, when we looked closer at the analytics data we saw 12,000 additional posts created because of the campaign. When attributable sales from those posts were factored in sales showed 172% month-over-month growth and 42% year-over-year growth!With the amount of distribution sources available in social media always take time to see if elements of your campaign have been distributed beyond the initial sites you targeted. It will allow you to spot new opportunities to expand your campaigns.
4. Cross-channel Cannibalization and the Last Cookie in Debate: Most advertisers use cookies to know which ad network to pay and which marketing channel to credit for sales. Shannon Paul, community manager for PEAK6 Online and OptionsNewsNetwork, had a great post on this debate here. Cross-channel cannibalization is when the marketing costs/efforts of one marketing channel are not considered because a different marketing channel is being given credit for them. This impacts both budget allocation and proper allocation of costs. Since social media buzz often serves to uplift other marketing efforts they are most impacted by improper allocation.For example, a social media click originating from a Twitter focused campaign refers a customer to the site but a coupon affiliate closes the sale by providing a coupon to the customer. In a “last cookie in” system only the affiliate in this example would get credit for the sale. In an ideal world both the first and last referrer of a customer would be cookied so that you would know which channel is referring new customers and which is closing them, thus properly giving credit to both channels and minimizing cannibalization. Awareness of the complexities of tracking multi-channel efforts is key in order to properly coordinate award of credit to all involved channels.

Final Thoughts

If you are managing a social media campaign or are a business eager to launch into social media, remember to embrace the numbers. Numbers are sexy -they help spot costs and inefficiencies you could avoid; help identify opportunities you could be missing; and often determine which budgets will be renewed.   The dollar signs are there, you just have to know where to look.

Read the original here:
Sexy Numbers: Measuring ROI in Social Media Campaigns

Search Engine Keywords:

• Make money with sexy marketing

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One of the benefits of having a strong parent company is the ability to reap the opportunities being tied to such an organization can provide. As a parent company, Rakuten is certainly no slouch, boasting Japan’s largest internet shopping mall, the Rakuten Ichiba, with over 60 million registered users and $2.7 billion in US dollars in sales in 2008.

Like its distant second competitor Google, Baidu has been searching for ways to expand its profitability. Thus the appeal of tapping Rakuten’s infrastructure to create a ready-made proven ecommerce model custom built for China.

As Kentaro Hyakuno, Senior Executive Officer of Rakuten, put it, “Baidu, with its vast reach and deep user loyalty, is the perfect complement to Rakuten’s extensive experience in the online B2C sector.”

The mall, which at an estimated cost of at least the equivalent of $50 million in US dollars will be the largest of its kind in China, is scheduled to launch in the latter half of 2010 with Rakuten owning 51% and Baidu owning 49% of the venture.

The timing of this news coincides with LinkShare Symposium West which starts tomorrow, January 28 in San Francisco. With the launch of the Google Affiliate Network, LinkShare’s market space has been slipping. Being able to leverage its strong affiliate relationships in Q4 of 2010 to help back the launch of such a mall is definitely just what the doctor ordered. Conversely this has the potential of making LinkShare more appealing to US advertisers who are eager to find inroads to a Chinese audience.

According to Mark Kirschner, Chief Marketing Officer for LinkShare, the opportunity is real as “LinkShare is the affiliate marketing platform of choice for Rakuten, so everywhere they go, we go with them.”

It will be interesting to see what announcements LinkShare has in store for the industry at Symposium.

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LinkShare Maybe Affiliate Network of Choice in China as Baidu forms Joint Venture with Rakuten

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One of the benefits of having a strong parent company is the ability to reap the opportunities being tied to such an organization can provide. As a parent company, Rakuten is certainly no slouch, boasting Japan’s largest internet shopping mall, the Rakuten Ichiba, with over 60 million registered users and $2.7 billion in US dollars in sales in 2008.

Like its distant second competitor Google, Baidu has been searching for ways to expand its profitability. Thus the appeal of tapping Rakuten’s infrastructure to create a ready-made proven ecommerce model custom built for China.

As Kentaro Hyakuno, Senior Executive Officer of Rakuten, put it, “Baidu, with its vast reach and deep user loyalty, is the perfect complement to Rakuten’s extensive experience in the online B2C sector.”

The mall, which at an estimated cost of at least the equivalent of $50 million in US dollars will be the largest of its kind in China, is scheduled to launch in the latter half of 2010 with Rakuten owning 51% and Baidu owning 49% of the venture.

The timing of this news coincides with LinkShare Symposium West which starts tomorrow, January 28 in San Francisco. With the launch of the Google Affiliate Network, LinkShare’s market space has been slipping. Being able to leverage its strong affiliate relationships in Q4 of 2010 to help back the launch of such a mall is definitely just what the doctor ordered. Conversely this has the potential of making LinkShare more appealing to US advertisers who are eager to find inroads to a Chinese audience.

According to Mark Kirschner, Chief Marketing Officer for LinkShare, the opportunity is real as “LinkShare is the affiliate marketing platform of choice for Rakuten, so everywhere they go, we go with them.”

It will be interesting to see what announcements LinkShare has in store for the industry at Symposium.

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LinkShare May Be Affiliate Network of Choice in China as Baidu forms Joint Venture with Rakuten

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As part of the ReveNews 2010 Affiliate Industry Preview Series, I interviewed industry leaders to get a sense of their plans and goals for 2010. Today’s interview is with Jonathan Levine, Co-President of LinkShare.

How do you feel about the affiliate industry’s current health overall?

I think 2009 was the first year where our industry was the only online marketing channel that was that showed growth year-over-year.  Everybody else is basically flat or down.  If you looked at the sales figures you’ll know that traditional retail sales were terrible this past year.  Online retail sales overall were sort of marginally okay in terms of year-over-year numbers.

What we saw in the performance marketing space was completely different.  We are way, way, way up above the stated ComScore numbers for the year in terms of retail sales.  I reckon that’s true across the networks.  Because as an advertiser, if I have lots of money to spend I’ll spend it everywhere; but if I only had a very limited amount of money to spend, I’m going to spend it where I know I’m going to get a return on it. And that’s what affiliate marketing is.

I think the industry is healthy. I think the reason the industry is healthy is because this kind of marketing works.  In a world where you’re scrutinizing every dollar that you spend on marketing, if you’re measuring the results, you’re in much better position here than any other marketing industry.  That’s the feedback we’ve been getting over and over again from our advertisers that the affiliate channel is the bright spot in the marketing mix.  And the fact that we have been able to facilitate a large year-over-year growth in this economy is indicative to the fact that we’re healthy.

How has the affiliate industry evolved?

Benjamin Franklin always talked about how easy it was to build a reputation and how hard it was to great rid of it.  I think that we as an industry built a reputation around being the “coupon guys”, the “deal guys” or the “cash back guys”.  I think that reputation ignores the innovative stuff that affiliates are doing. Like you’re doing with Popshops for example, a lot of the innovation is content based and not simply deal based. I think superficially everybody still thinks of affiliate marketing as coupons and deals. Here at LinkShare, and I think our competitors are as well, we are trying to facilitate expanding the scope of the channel. The goal is to make affiliate marketing into the engine that can power the economics behind innovative publishers with innovative distribution models that cross a wide spectrum of ways to reach the consumer.

Is the industry leaving coupons behind?

I don’t think we’re leaving coupons behind and I don’t think we’d want to leave coupons behind.  The coupon vertical is certainly still the core of affiliate marketing.  Coupon as a vertical had a huge amount of natural growth this year as you’d expect in a recession.  I think the coupon sites were looking at 30% per year-over-year natural growth.  I love our coupon publishers they are really important for us as a network and for our advertisers.

What I do think is that everything that can be measured eventually will be measured.  Because of that, more and more kinds of types of marketing are becoming amenable to CPA.  If you think about the wedge of the online marketing pie it used to be that a huge amount was CPM and the other amount was CPC and the smallest wedge was CPA.  I think over time the CPA wedge will grow and overtake both CPC and CPM. I think 2009 was the year we started seeing exactly why.

One thing that obviously had a big impact in 2009 and the later part of 2008 was the so-called Amazon Tax.  Being based in New York, LinkShare has been in the epicenter of it. How did that tax impacting things in 2009?

We had a number of online only merchants pull out of all the states where they worried that they were going to have taxes from affiliates.  So it really hurt New York affiliates, I’m not the first person to tell you that; and it’s going to hurt the North Carolina affiliates.  I think in California the affiliates were able to get their act together enough to stop the bill which we were really happy about.

As a citizen I totally get that folks have to pay for roads and schools and all other stuff sales tax goes to support.  I also get the fact that all the states are hurting for revenue.  It is however really arbitrary to put that type of tax burden on the backs of the affiliates in just a couple of states. As I hear other people talk about it I really feel that whole online sales tax issue is going to have to move to some sort of national solution in the relatively near future.

One thing for LinkShare is that we do have a disproportionately large number of brick and mortar guys in our network.  So we have a lot of department stores with online presences, so that makes the problem a little bit smaller for us.  Many of our advertisers already have nexus in New York even without affiliates.  We value our online-only advertisers who are in no or low tax jurisdictions who don’t have nexus in New York.  At LinkShare we have worked very hard and will continue to work to help in the lobbying effort against these kinds of laws on behalf of our advertisers and affiliates.

How do you see do you see the Amazon Tax issue playing out in 2010?

We’ll continue to work with other networks and the Performance Marketing Association, as well as on our own, to lobby against these bills wherever they crop up.  We will do whatever we can to help our advertisers and our publishers in those states, keep those states from hatching those bills and we’re going to have to do what our advertisers need us to do to help them keep doing business if those laws are passed. And that is really all we can do.

It seems that one of LinkShare’s inherent advantages in mobile due to your parent company Rakuten.  If I had to place my bets on any particular network in the affiliate industry poised to take advantage of that it’s you.  Is 2010 the year for mobile?

If I could get the crystal ball to work (laughs)… I’m a big proponent of mobile; this is probably because I spent a lot of time in Japan. I’ve bought big ticket items on mobile devices in Japan before, so I know it’s possible to sell big-ticket items.  Rakuten is doing 15% of its overall sales now through mobile.  We have seen that the lifetime value of a customer who uses both mobile and PC is nearly an order of magnitude greater than the lifetime value of a customer who uses just one.

Where I think we’re really poised, here in the US, to leap-frog Japan is in coding. In Japan you still really have to code your websites using proprietary HTML variants.  Of the three big mobile phone companies in Japan, each have they’re own flavor of HTML.  And you wind up designing four websites for every site.

With Safari on the iPhone working basically like Safari on a Mac or a PC with the internet browser basically being a browser; I think what you’re going to see is it’s going to be a much simpler task for a merchant to put up a website that works in mobile and that is going to make it that much easier for advertisers to get on mobile.

Now the thing that nobody’s figured out yet, in the US, is the common wallet or payment system. Something we have figured with Rakuten in Japan.  Because as a consumer if I have to enter in all my personally identifiable information using that on-screen keyboard on my iPhone over and over again, I’d be like “I’m going to kill myself.” (laughs).

I think the company that figures out how to broker the common wallet hurdle is going to do very well on mobile.  It could be as simple as making auto fill work right in Safari for mobile and internet browser. That may be the breakthrough.

What are LinkShare’s goals for 2010?

We talked a lot at LinkShare Symposium last summer about how we really wanted our network to be easy, fast, and open.  When you look at what we did in 2009: with exposing Merchandiser and other functionality through API’s; with improving the publisher interface significantly; with improving the timeliness of the data provided to advertisers; with facilitating better reporting;  I think all these things make us much easier to work with then we have been historically.  Going into 2010 we really want to build on the foundation that we started in 2009.  We’ll continue making our interface easier to use and give our advertiser user interface the same facelift the publishers’ got.

We’ve been working a lot on our deep linking capabilities and we’ll be unveiling some interesting new functionality built around that this year.  Due to our success in the UK in 2009 we have very high goals in Europe for 2010. I think in some ways the UK affiliate networks have been more historically innovative than the US networks.  We want to be as innovative in all of our regions and take some of that learning back into the US.

As I said earlier I feel this will be the year where the paradigm of what we think of as affiliate marketing will change.  Currently as a publisher you setup up in your vertical, go to the network and you pull down a link and you pray that it works.  Repeat.  Pull, pray, and repeat.  That is just not scalable for anybody.

At LinkShare we’re doing a lot of work around whether we can make it more practical for people who want to run performance based ads but are not in the industry to have easier access.  We are working to broaden our tool sets to make it easier and easier for content aggregators and providers as well as social media providers to participate in affiliate marketing.

What I’m saying is if you are a coupon site it’s relatively easier for you maintain the content, creative, and merchandising on the site through the affiliate model. The barrier is much greater, if your business model is finding interesting things to write about for your blog because your advertising is incidental to your main focus.  It has to be an incidental cost to you in terms of time and resources.  We have been and will continue to do a better job providing tools for everyone to be able to participate in the CPA world.  As we do that you will see that paradigm shift.

Well, let’s piggyback on that. What is the key to shifting the paradigm and rebranding the industry’s image?

Every year we talk about rebranding the industry from affiliate marketing to performance marketing.  I really want 2010 to be the year people are thinking about us as performance marketing rather than simply affiliate marketing.  There’s nothing wrong with affiliate marketing as a model it’s just that the term “affiliate marketing”  has certain associations with it that really limit our growth as a industry.  Those associations are just associations.  They are not reality.  If we can rebrand affiliate to mean innovative publisher models that facilitate performance marketing that would be perfect.  We can then keep calling it affiliate marketing.  Otherwise I’m going to call it performance marketing because that is what it is.  You know, you pay for performance and you get performance.

I want to thank Jonathan Levine  for taking time out during his busy schedule to take part in our 2010 Affiliate Industry Preview Series. Stay tuned for our next conversation with Brian Littleton, Owner of ShareASale.

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2010 Affiliate Industry Preview Series: Interview with Jonathan Levine of LinkShare

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I attend a lot of conferences. Affiliate Summit, due to co-founders Shawn Collins and Missy Ward’s efforts, is one of the few shows on the conference circuit that improves every year. This year there seems to be even more in-depth sessions than ever. If there is something missing it is the lack of the one controversial session. Initially I had thought it would be the Killer Facebook Advertising session, but BlitzLocal Founder Dennis Yu a recent lightning rod for controversy has stepped down from the panel. So this year at Affiliate Summit West don’t expect any fireworks, at least in the panels.  You can, however expect to learn a lot about the affiliate industry.

So before the inevitable mixers and Vegas chaos distract you completely, here is my pick for the top five sessions you can’t afford to miss:

1) Oprah, Flogs and FTC: Hot Topics 2010
tied with
Law Enforcement Risks for Advertisers, Affiliates, Networks

Along with the ongoing battle against the so-called Amazon tax, there were so many legal changes in 2009 that it is crucial for advertisers and affiliates to be aware of how those changes impact them. Thus despite the better title of the first session I felt it necessary to include them both.

Panelists for the Oprah, Flogs and FTC: Hot Topics 2010 session include:

• Bennet Kelley, Founder, Internet Law Center
• Pete Wellborn, Managing Member, Wellborn, Wallace & Woodard, LLC

Panelists for the Law Enforcement Risks for Advertisers, Affiliates, Networks session include:

• Thomas A. Cohn, Of Counsel, Venable LLP (Moderator)
• Dean Graybill, Assistant Regional Director, Western Region, Federal Trade Commission
• David Katz, VP Corporate Development and General Counsel, Cyberplex Inc.

2) Killer Facebook Advertising Tactics

As hinted in the introduction, even without Dennis Yu this is sure to be an interesting session. Simply put Facebook is the social media community closest to becoming a viable market space for advertisers. Now is a good time to learn what these early adopters have done to make their programs work. Plus Facebook is represented on the panel and will hopefully provide insight on how to best engage with their audience.

Panelists the session include:

• Jim Kukral, CEO, JimKukral.com (Moderator)
• Mark Colacioppo, President, Globalizer, LLC
• Markus Frind, CEO, Plentyoffish
• Dr. David Klein (dk), CEO, Purpose Inc
• Jeremy Schoemaker, President, ShoeMoney Media Group, Inc
• Alex Schultz, Manager, Internet Marketing, Facebook

3) Creating Lasting Publisher and Advertiser Relationships

This panel represents a powerhouse group with three of the largest affiliates in our industry engaging with two of the largest advertisers, Target and Overstock. Affiliate marketing is relationship based, but building lasting relationships with large corporate advertisers provides many challenges. It will be interesting to hear their take on methods of affiliate outreach and activation.

Panelists the session include:

• Steve Schaffer, Founder & CEO, Offers.com (Moderator)
• Eva Klein, Director of Business Development, FatWallet
• Jillian McGary, Affiliate Manager, Target.com
• Stephen Siphron, Señor Marketer, Cashbaq
• Ryan Sorensen, Affiliate Program Manager, Overstock.com

4) MommyBloggers: Changing the Face of Affiliate Marketing?

So called “MommyBloggers” swept through the social media space in 2009 and even started their own conference BlogHer. It makes perfect sense that as their blogs grow in popularity “Mommy bloggers” will want to ad variety and depth to the way they monetize their content. With the flexibility affiliate programs allow, get ready for the MommyBlogger revolution to hit the affiliate channel as well.

Panelists the session include:

• Deborah Carney, CEO, Team Loxly (Moderator)
• Wendy Limauge, Blogger, Sweeties Swag
• Carrie Rocha, President, Pocket Your Dollars
• Kim Rowley, President, Key Internet Marketing, Inc.
• Heather Sokol, Proprietor, Inexpensively

5) CPA Affiliate Marketing Opportunities in Europe

It is important not to assume that what works a particular way in one country will work the same every where. Consumer habits, affiliate expectations very from country to country. There are both opportunities and challenges in expanding your affiliate program to Europe. With Matthew Wood, the founder of A4UExpo which can be thought of as Affiliate Summit’s counterpart, there should be a lot of insight on how to make your affiliate program multi-national.

Panelists this session include:

• Dush Ramachandran, Vice President, Sales Marketing & Business Development, ClickBank (Moderator)
• Jim Banks, CEO, Unanimis
• James Little, Head of Affiliates, AffiliateFuture
• Matthew Wood, Managing Director & Founder,  a4uexpo

Special Mention

Although not officially an Affiliate Summit session, the Performance Marketing Alliance will be will have an open meeting covering the topics of current legislation and regulation challenges, fraud issues, and developing an industry code of conduct. Definitely worth attending.

That’s the rundown of my picks for Affiliate Summit West 2010 in Las Vegas. What sessions are you looking forward to?

The rest is here:
Top 5 Must See Sessions at Affiliate Summit West 2010

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Innovation, at its best, is something that changes lives for the better. This is why I don’t find 3D television sexy, although it is what everyone is all a flutter about at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. 3D television won’t improve life as we know it (even a movie junkie like me realizes that). It is simply an immersive distraction. If CES is about true innovation and not just cool devices then more attention should be given to those companies whose products embody that. So here are my picks for truly innovative technology you might have missed while wearing those silly glasses:

The BSL (Basic Service Level) Robot:

What it is: At first glance you might mistake it for furniture, but what Gamma Two, Inc has created is quite the amazing little robot. Currently available in custom production the robot, known as “Basil”, is designed for service around the house. Once turned on it is can respond to a wide array of voice commands. Basil’s most simple function is to transport items from room to room. A function perfect for folks whose physical condition impedes them from carrying such things as laundry baskets. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg of what Basil can do.

Using a combination of infrared sensors and sonar it can detect the difference between a person and normal household objects. It is self mobile, can “wander” and thus map out the layout of a room. It can be “taught” to remember areas of the house in order to go to or return to them. Whatsmore Basil is highly interactive. It can provide verbal question and answer responses to its owners; for example it could potentially remind someone to take their medication or remind them of an event.

What makes the potential of Gamma Two’s creation extremely interesting is the extensive capabilities of the Cybernetic Brain developed for Basil. Basil has the capability to “learn” (I use the word in a very non-scientific sense) tasks from simple “Basil carry the laundry” to complex “Basil alert if there is an intruder”. The potential of Basil’s brain is really quite astonishing.

Editor’s Note: Look for a more in-depth interview piece with the makers of Basil and its counterpart “Wilma” later this week.

The way I see it: In its service functions Basil has a lot of potential. Basil currently has the ability to have internal drawers put in to store items in the robots care. The Gamma Two team are also developing “arms” and “eyes” for the robot. But what is truly the most exciting is the wide variety of potential of the Cybernetic Brain Gamma Two has developed which would allow for a vast array of ability. And yes, Asimov’s Laws were taken into account in Basil’s development.

The Peregrine:

What it is: Representing one step closer to the screen interactive movements of Minority Report and one leap up from the debacle of the Nintendo Power Glove, the Peregrine was designed to help PC gamers’ ditch the keyboard…almost.

Developed by Iron Will Innovations the Peregrine is a gaming glove that can trigger hotkey commands. Sleek and comfortable it contains 18 touch points and three activator pads that in combination offer 30 different programmable commands. 5 different command configurations can be saved as profiles thus you can have one profile for World of Warcraft and another for Civilization. The Peregrine interfaces with the computer via a magnetic break-away “pod” that attaches to the glove at the back of the hand. Although designed for gamers, the glove can be used to implement any hotkey command. You can even type with it (although that kind of defeats the purpose). It is available now for preorder for $129.

The way I see it: In many ways the keyboard is obsolete. The technology is there to make it so but the demand isn’t. We’ve all grown up with and are accustomed to them. The folks at Iron Will Innovations have definitely taken a step in the right direction. Being able to initiate 30 hotkey commands is great. What would be better if the glove was wireless and if it could handle mouse functions specifically moving the cursor and clicking. If the Peregrine could do those things and function in tandem with a headset microphone you would never need your keyboard OR your mouse again.

DuoFertility:

What it is: From one wearable gadget we move to another, although one designed for an entirely different purpose. Developed by Cambridge Temperature Concepts Limited, DuoFertility is a non-invasive, female fertility monitor which offers a precise way of maximizing a couple’s chances of getting pregnant. While that, in and of itself, is a noble cause CEO Shamus Husheer feels the monitor can provide a deeper set of health diagnostic benefits as well.

The DuoFertility monitor works by measuring and recording skin temperature up to 20,000 times during a normal sleep cycle. This continuous monitoring determines when a woman is ovulating using a much more sophisticated version of the basal body temperature (BBT) method.

The monitor has two components: a small sensor the size of a button that is placed via adhesive strip under the armpit; and a reader that takes in the sensor’s data, works with a desktop software database, and provides a date indicator which shows the best date to increase the chances of pregnancy. What’s more the data the DuoFertility monitor collects can be used with a woman’s doctor to identify potential fertility issues and other related health issues as quickly as possible. That means there is quite a lot of potential of early diagnosis of common health problems.

Not yet available in the US the monitor is expensive at £495 but offers a lot of potential health benefits.

The way I see it: The human body indicates a complex variety of things through body temperature. Fluxes in temperature could indicate bacterial or viral infections, or the body’s reactions to other systemic problems. The trick is creating an accurate and consistent baseline for individuals. If Cambridge Temperature Concepts Limited’s technology can accurately be predictive to problems with a woman’s reproductive system through temperature date, it could also be potentially used to provide early warnings to other medical issues.  After all early detection is key to surviving many life threatening health issues.

Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies “Off the Grid” Portable Units:

What it is: Green technology is finally building momentum. Not simply in the ways corporations are trying to be more green because it is in vogue. But with real innovations that revolve around developing, storing, and transporting green energy. Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies featured a set of portable units at CES designed to work in tandem for users who wanted to be or needed to be off the grid. They are:

• HydroStik: Shaped like a battery the HydroStik stores hydrogen gas in a safe solid form. The Stik contains metal hydride alloys that absorb hydrogen into crystalline structures and release it at low pressure. What this allows for is the highest volume of energy capacity of hydrogen storage. It takes 10 liters of hydrogen to charge one Stik and each Stik has a 12Wh capacity. It is designed for use with the MiniPak to power devices and with the Hydrofill to be recharged.
• MiniPak: A pocket sized universal charger and power extender for any USB device. It is powered by the HydroStik and can power anything from cell phones, to cameras, to small LCD screens. It has an output of 5v@o.4A
• Hydrofill: Is what truly makes the MiniPak and HydroStik system off the grid. It is a water based extraction system that through an electrolysis membrane produces 10 liters of hydrogen per hour at a minimal cost of 60W DC in power. It is AC, solar, and wind compatible system. The water has by be de-ionized or distilled.
• HydroPak: The heavy duty cousin in the Horizon Fuel Cell portable family this pack is designed to be self charging and can output 5x the amount of energy than a lead based battery of equal size (3.5kg). It has a 60W DC output and can invert to AC. It has two USB outlets and a 12V cigar lighter style outlet. Since it doesn’t have emissions it can be used indoors

All are slated to be released this year for consumer sale.

The way I see it: Beyond its substantial off the grid / emergency applications, what’s most interesting about the direction Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies is going is that it is providing the end user with the ability to develop infrastructure without having to wait to utility companies to adopt a technology. There are lots of innovative green companies whose goal is just that. Horizon was easily the most interesting one at CES this year.

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From Robots and Gaming to Fertility and Green Energy: The Coolest Tech at CES 2010

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It’s rare that one day of shopping has the ability to impact Wall Street but financial forecasters are focused on this year’s Black Friday’s numbers as a gauge of how close to recovery our economy really is.  That $10.66 billion dollars in estimated retail sales only represents a scant 0.5% growth is a worrying sign.  Thankfully, online sales are the highlight.

According to Reuters and ShopperTrak, this year’s Black Friday sales underperformed.  Comparatively, in 2008, sales increased 3% year-over-year during a holiday season at the apex of one of the worst financial climates in US history. This makes this year’s 0.5 % growth year-over-year worrisome.

Consumers said they were planning to spend nearly 8% less on average, or about $343 per person, over the Thanksgiving Weekend, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF).

Surprisingly department stores trumped discount retailers with 49.4% of shoppers visiting at least one. Discount retailers reached 43.2% of holiday shoppers with outlet stores grabbing 7.8%.

“In an economy like this one, every retailer wants to be a discounter,” said Tracy Mullin, NRF President and CEO. “Department stores have done an admirable job touting both low prices and good quality, which are important requirements for holiday shoppers on a budget.”

Online fared much better with a healthy $595 million dollars in estimated retail sales, according to comScore, which represents an 11 % increase year over year.

According to the NRF, over one-fourth of Americans shopping during the Thanksgiving Weekend (28.5%) were shopping online. There was little surprise in the online leaders with Amazon, Wal-Mart, Apple, Target, and Best Buy representing the top 5 most visited retail sites.

“Black Friday, better known as a shopping bonanza in brick-and-mortar retail stores, is increasingly becoming one of the landmark days in the online holiday shopping world,” said comScore chairman, Gian Fulgoni. “The $595 million in online spending this Black Friday represents the second heaviest online spending day of the season-to-date and a double-digit increase from last year.”

The relative strength of online sales supports data from Compete which forecasts a 14% increase in consumers who will  spend at least some of their holiday budget online this year. At the start of the year advertising and sales online were down overall. The success of online sales  indicates that advertisers who invested their budget online and drove the growth in online advertising during Q3 of 2009, as reported by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers, certainly got their money’s worth.

For online retailers the big question is whether tomorrow’s Cyber Monday totals will be equally positive. For traditional retailers the question is whether shoppers, burdened in an economy with an unemployment rate above 10%, will continue to spend throughout the holiday season.

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Online Sales Bright Spot in Lackluster Black Friday

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There are few events that knock an 800 lb. gorilla off its particular perch. Sometimes laziness, atrophy, the lack of ability to adapt will do the beast in. Sometimes a competing gorilla that is younger, more aggressive, has access to better technology will usurp the spot. On rare occasion two 800 lb. gorillas will meet and marriage will do the trick.

Such is the case with Amazon’s purchase of Zappos.

A Tale of Two Gorillas

Amazon’s marketplace is a juggernaut. In Q1 of 2009 Amazon posted $4.89 billion in net sales an increase of 18% over Q1 of 2008 which should be considered an epic feat in a down economy.

Amazon not only owns the book vertical but seeks to replicate Google’s clout in search within the online retail space. Thus it has aggressively gone after every leader in a retail vertical: Ebay, Buy.com, Overstock, and of course Barnes and Noble. Amazon has paired its aggressive strategy with the production of cutting edge consumer products like the Kindle and a near zealous acquisition of numerous patents (they own the patents to 1-click checkout and 404 error pages).

Now in its 10th year Zappos owns the shoe vertical with over $1 billion in sales reported in 2008. Think about that; $1 billion dollars on a product where fit is crucial. You don’t just wear shoes one size too large “just around the house”.  Zappos achieved such growth through two key tactics: 1) aggressive purchasing of product lines from shoe manufacturers; 2) unique approach to customer service keenly focused on repeat sales.

On the purchasing side of the business Zappos buyers are often known to buy whole lines of popular products from shoe manufacturers or at least all the most common sizes of a particular shoe line.  On the customer end Zappos alleviates the worry about fit by offering free shipping both ways and unheard of 365 day return policy. More importantly personal touches as the recent BoxBreak promotion with Magnify.com, earn customer loyalty. According to a BrandWeek interview with Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, approximately 75% of sales come from repeat customers.

Driving Forces behind the Purchase

Amazon was able to smother many competitors like Ebay’s Half.com or outright buy them like AbeBooks, but; they were never able to make much of an in-road into the shoe vertical.  Zappos’ presence was just part of the issue. The shoe vertical is a very competitive and crowded space where consumers often have a hard time differentiating between retailers (Shoes.com and Onlineshoes.com for instance).

Amazon amplified their effort with the launch of Endless.com in 2007. Boasting a far more elegant site than either Zappos or Amazon, Endless featured a UI design that made it feel like an upscale boutique. Endless also launched with a tactic right from Hsieh’s playbook, free overnight shipping on all orders. The tactic was designed to gauge into some of Zappos’ market share.

The result? While it did prompt competitors in the vertical to  redesign their own sites to improve the browsing experience for their customers, Endless gained relatively little market share. .

The problem was that Amazon now had skin in the game and the costs associated with building and advertising Endless were not cheap. It was perhaps Endless’ failure to dethrone Zappos that  made Amazon think of buying. What’s more, Zappos made themselves an appealing target because they were not just beating Amazon at selling shoes; Zappos was beating them in creating buzz.

Zappos had become the corporate darling in the Web2.0 world of transparency. The company had almost co-opted Twitter with hundreds of Zappos employees actively participating in conversations about themselves and the corporate brand. Hsieh was like a rockstar at the forefront of the media blitz from SXSW to Affiliate Summit. Hsieh even started a consultancy targeting the Fortune 1 Million  to teach other corporations the benefits of developing an open corporate culture. Best Buy, Southwest Airlines and dozens of others got in line.

What buzz did Amazon have going? Well they did earn tremendous growth in ‘09 but most of the media focus seemed to be on iterations of the Kindle or on the various affiliate nexus laws, nicknamed the Amazon Tax.

What a Deal

According to TechCrunch,  Amazon brokered a deal with Zappos consisting of $880 million in shares with an additional $40 million in cash. Now $920 million may sound like a lot of money but really is quite a deal with Zappos having posted sales of $1 billion in ‘08. Now Amazon President Jeff Bezos and Hsieh may have struck a meeting of the minds when they met earlier in the year as Mashable claims, but; even so why wasn’t the purchase price significantly higher?

Well, it comes back to those tactics key to Zappos’ customer success. The fact is free shipping both ways and a 365 day return policy, as Hsieh puts it mildly in the BrandWeek interview “gets very expensive”. It’s been long rumored among Zappos’ competitors that the company must be hemorrhaging money. Whether that’s true it is apparent that Zappos’ net earnings were significantly lower than its’ $1 billion gross sales.

Perhaps the biggest winners are the venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Venture Frogs whose investment in Zappos’ “quirky” strategy paid off.

Potential Impact on the Affiliate Channel

Initial outlook of the deal indicates that things will remain the same in many ways. Zappos will remain in its Henderson, NV headquarters with its brand, operating methods and leadership intact.

Both companies can credit a large portion of their growth to the affiliate channel. Zappos has had an affiliate program as part of the Commission Junction network since 2000 and has consistently been one of CJ’s top merchants. Amazon Associates is one of the first and largest affiliate programs claiming 900,000 members world-wide.

Lately Amazon seems to be systematically chipping away at the channel that helped it achieve its growth. In fact Amazon hasn’t been overly friendly to its affiliates as of late, from cutting commissions, to terminating referral fees for search, and most recently eliminating credit to affiliates using url shorteners in general with Twitter specifically as a target.

Amazon is also at the epicenter of the affiliate tax nexus debate  playing out in legislatures across the country. It has even used affiliates as leverage by preemptively terminating affiliates in some states  in anticipation of new tax legislation.

Zappos meanwhile has enjoyed a fairly positive relationship with its affiliates. The question is if  Zappos will begin to mimic Amazon’s actions in the affiliate channel? Will Zappos leave CJ and run an internal affiliate program like Amazon currently does? How will this impact the Endless affiliate program which is also currently live on CJ?

Final Questions

As with any such blockbuster merger the playing field will change significantly upon completion. There are practical questions to be addressed. Will Endless remain in business or be absorbed? Will Endless become the high end product retailer and Zappos the low end retailer as mandated by their respective UIs? How will they coordinate differing plans and messaging?

Then there are slightly more existential questions. As people, Bezos is very different from Hsieh and in the same way the cultures of their two companies are very different. Amazon is not used to being as transparent as Zappos or, at times, as human. Which culture will survive? Will they be able to incorporate each other’s strengths or wallow under each others’ weaknesses? Management is a big part of this and for the short term Hsieh is staying. After a year under Amazon’s corporate coils will he leave for some other business where he can be “quirky” again?

The fallout will be interesting.

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Endless Two-Step: Real reason Amazon bought Zappos

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The formation of an industry requires the development of a group identity. Often that development is neglected because group members are focused on growing their business. Over the last year the affiliate industry has been experiencing growing pains in the form of legal challenges brought about by such things as the so-called New York Amazon Tax. In the aftermath of that tax being ratified a group of New York affiliates pulled together to provide guidelines to those impacted by the tax. Melanie Seery was part of that group and found herself drawn into the role of advocate on behalf of the affiliate industry. As part of that advocacy effort she recently launched new industry organization Affiliate Voice.

Almost a year after the New York Amazon Tax was passed I sat down with Melanie Seery to discuss her involvement in the affiliate industry, her quick learning curve with political advocacy, and how she sees the tax issues evolving.

How did you get started in affiliate marketing?

I got involved in affiliate marketing about five years ago. Before affiliate marketing I had a business writing employee how-to manuals, which is really, really boring work. I would go into a business, take each and every position and write down step by step everything that employee had to do in the course of the day. Not fascinating and not interesting from a creative perspective. After that I got into multilevel marketing. What I liked about MLM was that I was selling vitamins and health food products. I really enjoyed that aspect of helping people be healthy. But when I started I didn’t realize how big a component recruitment was to MLM. Ultimately it kind of discouraged me. That’s when someone told me about affiliate marketing and sent me off to Commission Junction. After some exploring I found an interesting coffee merchant and that was the beginning of it.

Why is being self-employed and working at home important to you?

I am independent by nature and have been self-employed for the past 12 years. It’s real important for me to be home with my children and my family. My children have neurofibromatosis, so do I. Neurofibromatosis is a neurological disorder that can cause tumors to grow on nerve endings. There are lots of challenges to maintaining health with such a disorder, as you can imagine. I have to keep constantly on top of it with my family. Being self-employed allows me to maintain that balance.

At what point did you feel affiliate marketing was the right business for you?

It was two or three months down the line and all of a sudden I started getting some really good sales. I created sites around my interests. It wasn’t just things I liked to drink like coffee, tea and accessories. After the birth of my children I began reaching out to parents whose children had similar disorders. I would post topics like, “How do I get my child to sleep all the way through the night?” I found myself connecting with other parents and sharing information. The process of creating a support group of sorts became another website.  Before you know it I had several websites going and 10 more ideas.

Affiliate marketing seemed to pull the best of all worlds together for me because I could use my writing to educate while sharing my creativity and connecting to other people. It was like talking with my friends and community; only in this case I’m being creative and making a website. It’s amazing being able to grow a business out of that sharing. It’s very exciting for me.

Everybody seems to start with Commission Junction. At what point did you realize that there were other networks?
Through places like ABestWeb I found networks like ShareASale. The discovery of ShareASale was a major point turning point for me. It was a combination of finding a network that had smaller niche merchants and allowed for real personal contact with the network and with the merchants in the network.

I sort of came out of my shell and found myself becoming part of the industry when I received my first invitation to a ShareASale Think Tank. It was funny but I thought to myself, “They must have me confused with somebody else”. Because even though I was doing well I still didn’t think I was doing as well as everybody else out there. I had never met anyone in the industry prior to that or even spoken with anyone on the phone. The Think Tank showed me the importance of being an affiliate in direct touch with the merchant. It’s all about relationships in this industry.

When did you first hear about the Amazon Tax and how did it affect you?

We had heard rumblings prior to April. But we also heard from New York lawmakers that it would never pass. Suddenly when April came around we learned that Governor Patterson had signed it into law. It took us by surprise because of our “it could never happen here” attitude. I don’t think we ever truly realized how much it would impact our businesses.

Now I see the same process happening in other states like California, Minnesota and, Connecticut. It’s phenomenal how quickly things change.  It’s great to see the industry is actually being proactive and stepping forward to fight these bills before they become law. It’s a lot easier to fix things before they’re broken.

When the New York law took effect many merchants removed affiliates from their programs. This destroyed a lot of businesses.  But what was worse was the lack of communication between merchants, networks and affiliates. There were a lot of behind the scenes activities with program managers and their CEOs about that never brought the affiliates into the loop. That did a lot of damage. We would get terminations with little or no notice. Once they passed the law we started to receive sudden terminations in the mail.  Even retroactive terminations-it would be June 15 and you’d get this email from a merchant that told you were deactivated as of May 30.

Affiliates were kind of steamrolled and quickly our incomes and businesses were gone.

A group of us got together and said this isn’t right. We felt there had to be a solution we could work out. That’s when Kevin Webster and I started talking about holding a meeting among New York affiliates. When we announced it a lot of people stepped up to help, providing us resources so we could find a good corporate lawyer.

At the time I had set up a personal blog that I put together to help keep people up to date about what was going on. It was called New York Affiliate Voice, which is what many people think the name of the group is, but it’s really the Albany Group because that’s where we first  met. We managed to set a course of action and put together a plan for how New York affiliates and any remaining merchants who wanted to work with us could go from here. In many cases it still wasn’t enough because merchants were still terminating affiliates rather than attempting to comply with the new law.

My income was down 72% last year because of the knee jerk reaction of many businesses. From the affiliates I talk to that’s pretty average.

Were you frustrated with the fact that the industry was slow to respond to this threat?

At the time we were all frustrated because all we saw was a lack of action for New York affiliates. There was a sense of hopelessness or resignation in everybody. At the time when we were going through the horrible effects of this law upon our businesses, I kept thinking why doesn’t anybody care about us?

I think the whole industry was in a state of disbelief. I remember two things were said to me after the New York Affiliate session at Affiliate Summit. They were: 1) We didn’t understand how deeply this would impact your, meaning affiliates, business and livelihoods. People sometimes forget that for many of us this isn’t just a hobby. It is the income that we rely on to pay a mortgage, to pay our bills, to take care of our children and our families and, 2)  everybody felt they “didn’t know what to do”.

I think it had to be the affiliates who took control the situation in New York because that was the group directly affected. It empowered affiliates to take a course of action and pull together. It let everyone know this was a serious challenge to our industry. I am proud of the things the Albany Group put together.

Was that your first involvement with political advocacy?

Yes. (laugh) I learned a lot over this last year. I learned an incredible amount about the legislative process, not only in New York but in other states as well. I found myself thinking, I don’t remember learning the ins and outs of how this works back in school. I think people take so many things for granted, including how their local government works.

At the beginning of this year you won several awards including the Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Award for Affiliate Advocate of the Year. How did that impact you?

One thing it showed me was that we made a difference last year. And by “we”, I mean there wasn’t just me, there was a whole group of us that pulled this together. What the recognition also did was start me thinking about advocacy in general because I knew it was important. Basically, the work on the New York Tax Law took over the whole last 10 or 11 months of my life. Over time it became a larger part of my day whether it was answering emails from affiliates or phone call questions from a merchant. I realized that I had to make a choice of whether I wanted to be an advocate or an  affiliate. I came to the conclusion that the advocacy needed to continue and I couldn’t give it up.

How did Affiliate Voice come about?

When I made the choice to focus on advocacy I was simply going to change New York Affiliate Voice into a type of advocacy group. When people found out about my idea they kept asking why just New York? I ended up speaking to Haiko de Poel Jr. and Rhea Tannenbaum and they encouraged me to form a larger organization and call it Affiliate Voice to open it up to everybody. So I took the ball and ran with it so to speak.

After the beginning of the year there seemed to be a lull then suddenly there was a domino effect of new legislation that came out.   How have you perceived the recent changes?

Well, that’s a good way to describe it. There was that little lull and I was just beginning to think that I could go back to focusing on my business. Then legislators in my area that I had gotten close to working with the Albany Group, pointed me towards pending legislation in several states, including California. It seemed to spring up one after another. Equally scary is legislation on the books in some states that includes sales representatives, solicitors and other representatives in the definition of “nexus”. It is so open to interpretation and in my mind it could easily encompass affiliates as well.

What’s the biggest misunderstanding that legislators have about the affiliate industry?

I think it is important to understand both sides of the issue. See the states are faced with incredible economic challenges right now. They have to find new revenue resources. In the Quill Corp. v. North Dakota case it was ruled that in order for an interstate transaction to have sales tax applied to it, as opposed to a use tax, there has to be a substantial presence on behalf of the business providing the goods.

What’s happening is these tax bills you are seeing are not new taxes. The only thing that is changing is the method which the states are using to collecting the tax. That’s a not just something legislators are saying to make it sound better to consumers. That is in fact what is going on.

If you look at how quickly internet shopping and affiliate marketing have grown over the last couple of years it is easy to see why states want to collect this tax. It’s an incredible amount of revenue they’re losing out on.

But by the same token those states that are trying to enact these anti-affiliate laws have to understand how uneven this makes the playing field for affiliates and publishers in their state. In their current form these laws will prompt many merchants to simply avoid paying the tax by cutting loose all their affiliates or moving to a different advertising model. For those reasons it won’t bring the kind of revenues states are hoping for.

Also legislators have to understand the complexity involved for a merchant trying to deal with the more than 7,500 different US tax jurisdictions regarding interstate transactions. It’s not just a matter of installing some software and remitting sales-tax. Each of these 7,500 different tax jurisdictions has a different set of guidelines a merchant must comply with.  Can you imagine 7,500 different filings every quarter?  What business has those resources?

How do you see this playing out long-term?

I believe it will come down to some kind of federal involvement, maybe through the Streamlined Sales Tax Project, which is still gaining momentum. The Streamlined Sales Tax Project is a destination-based sales-tax which allows each state to designate one flat rate. All states that have sales and use tax will have to charge tax on the same items. Because right now items that are taxable in New York may not be taxable in California or vice versa. So the Streamlined Sales Tax Project wants to unify and streamline the process by designating which items are taxable in every state and allow each state to have one flat rate with the tax being paid by the receiving State. That’s the ideal situation. The governors in general are pressing for such a process but to enact it nationwide will be a slow process and require changes to multiple state laws.

Recently Scott Jangro wrote an excellent article posing the question of whether the affiliate industry needs two associations? Are you worried about an us-versus-them mentality creating a split in the industry?

I think having two organizations actually strengthens the industry. I don’t look at the Performance Marketing Alliance and Affiliate Voice as competing. I look at us as two slightly different entities but with the same relative goal which is to help change the direction of our industry, to help spur new growth, and not leave our destinies in the hands of legislators who have no clue what we are all about as a professional industry.

Prior to launching Affiliate Voice I reached out to the PMA to let them know we wanted to work together and complement one another’s strengths. I think Affiliate Voice is well suited to advocate for an Affiliate Bill of Rights and help affiliates maintain their business should these anti-affiliate taxes or other similar legislations be ratified. The PMA can do more with lobbying and organizing challenges to legislation.  They are very well equipped to do this.

I have no interest in wasting energy or time in petty politics or some kind of nonproductive competition.  Every industry has multiple organizations and the affiliate industry shouldn’t be any different.

What are the goals for Affiliate Voice in 2009?

We are working on establishing an industry Code of Ethics. We also want to formulate and ratify an Affiliate Bill of Rights to help improve relationships between all parties in the affiliate industry. In terms of keeping up with all the legislative efforts in various states, well, that will be an ongoing challenge throughout the whole year.

Since affiliates by nature seem to be fiercely independent and private.  Do you feel they will join an organization, any organization?

As people get used to the idea that you can be part of an organization without having to open your business model to scrutiny attitudes will change. Especially if we can demonstrate how organizations can achieve good things. Perceptions won’t change overnight but I think people will come to realize that they need organization.

Right now I feel the affiliate industry is a bit demoralized but, as people see two groups out there fighting for change they will become more encouraged at the efforts being taken. Personally I am encouraged with all the effort I’ve seen over the last couple of months with people rallying and stepping up, including the networks, to take a public stance against this type of legislation. I have seen merchants reaching out to their affiliates to help provide advice. All this effort is such a fabulous change compared to what happened in New York. It shows we have learned as an industry. I think this could be a rough year while we battle this legislation but ultimately we’re going to be able to adjust this industry and be all right.

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Seth Godin is a smart man. Partially out of necessity he has resorted to posting in sound bites: little well packaged morsels of pop culture references that he can spin out quickly and readers can digest easily.

His blog post “Which comes first, the product or the marketing?” is a prime example of this. Godin bounces from Captain Crunch, through a YouTube clip of Mad Men, before stumbling into the Toyota Prius and onto Jones Soda. The sound bites he delivers chime like the bumpers in a pinball machine.

The problem is that although the basic concepts Godin covers are correct (you need a product before you can advertise; marketing is not the same as advertising; thinking first about the market is key) his need to wrap things in a tidy sound bite ultimately leads the reader to the wrong conclusion.

It is true when Toyota set out to create a vehicle that was both “fuel efficient and environmentally friendly” that the mission statement of what the car was going to be and thus how to take the product to market were preconceived. The Prius was a product of born from marketing.

Of course rolling out a vehicle based on the pain points of pollution and fuel cost is far different than rolling out a beverage whose focus is brand affinity.

Godin implies that Jones Soda’s products were developed after the final marketing plan was well laid out. He’s wrong. To be fair and as a point of full disclosure Jones Soda is a client of mine. What Godin does overlook in his need to deliver a tidy package is the element of chaos. Sometimes there is no intelligent design to the launch of a great product. Products may start with a plan to fulfill a market need but they often evolve in unexpected directions based on unforeseen market forces.

Rather than the predictive marketing Godin attributes to its evolution the Jones Soda’s brand evolved by happy accident. When Jones Soda was launched by visionary founder Peter van Stolk it was with the idea that if you are open and responsive to consumer input they will feel ownership of the brand. In 1997, before anyone had coined the phrase, Jones Soda was the perfect example of a social media campaign.

Recently that brand affinity passed a participation milestone; over 1 million consumers have submitted photos to be part of the label. Even today some of Jones Soda’s most successful campaigns online, like with ICanHasCheezburger, evolve by happy accident.

Since that inception, consumers associate Jones with the photos on the label. As van Stolk said in his Fast Company interview, “People get fired up about Jones because it’s theirs.”  Allowing the consumer to own your brand is not predictive marketing. Yes the marketing is “smart marketing” that is “thinking first” but by its very nature it is not predictive. The roads that consumers can lead a brand down are chaotic and crowd sourcing directions are not always good for sustainable growth.

The key to developing a great long lasting product: allow room for your product and your marketing to evolve. Be nimble enough to take advantage of unforeseen market forces as they develop. Because as anyone who has truly turned over their marketing to their audience in a social campaign knows, the results are often not predictable, not controllable, and certainly not tidy.

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Seth Godin Mistakes Custom Soda for a Hybrid Car

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I always say going on a long drive with someone tells you a lot about them. When you walk 60 miles with someone it reveals even more. Last year I was shanghaied into walking such a distance with Missy Ward, founder of Affiliate Marketers Give Back, during which she fractured her foot but still persevered. But not out of some personal aggrandizing need to grab attention. Rather it was her passion for a cause that drove her forward. That cause is the fight against breast cancer and it’s one she is championing again this year.

I sat down with Missy to discuss what drives her.

What spurred you to take up the fight against breast cancer?

Every choice is personal. For me over a decade ago someone I know very, very well was going to her routine doctor’s exam. She didn’t know much about checking for lumps and while she was there her doctor found a lump in her left breast. Since she was young and there wasn’t a history of cancer in her family the doctor said it was probably nothing. Unfortunately when the tests came back it wasn’t nothing, it was breast cancer.

I watched this girl’s life totally change at that point. She had something that everyone is afraid of.  It’s the big C-word. When it enters your life directly or through a friend it changes things permanently. I watched her go through the fear, anxiety, and pain of treatment, just trying to keep it together with this thing, this disease, looming over her. It broke my heart; I just wanted to be there to support her. Since I couldn’t fix her, the only thing I knew how to do was to start doing some fundraising in hopes that one day no one else would be stricken with this horrible disease.

Over the course of years, while I have been involved in doing what I can to raise funds and awareness, I have seen other family members and friends stricken by the disease. Gosh, you know I have a nine-year-old stepdaughter; the thing that I want most in this world is to help eradicate breast cancer by time she gets boobies.

How did Affiliate Marketer’s Give Back start?

For the last ten years or so I’ve been raising funds for the Susan G. Komen and the National Breast Cancer Foundation on my own as well as through Avon sponsored events. I really didn’t have a good way to help raise a lot of money to be donated. When I started I was a single mom just trying to keep my head above water. I donated my time to the Avon walks and helped raise funds that way.

Shawn (Shawn Collins, co-founder Affiliate Summit), my business partner held similar beliefs as to why fighting breast cancer was important. Both of us have been impacted by breast cancer in our lives.  We felt it was an important cause and we wanted to step-up efforts and really generate support. We had a natural platform with Summit. Over the years we have done different things, like wearing crazy shirts or having goofy events, to help fundraise and increase awareness.

The one thing that affiliate marketers do really well is when there is a cause that everyone can get behind we band together in support. Whatever else bad that’s going on within the industry, whether it is personal rivalry or politics, gets put aside when affiliate marketers rally around a cause. So I figured what better way than to turn to the industry where I formed my career and see if I could get people together and really start turning up the fundraising efforts.

In 2007, I decided to do my first 60 mile breast cancer walk and it made sense to me to launch a site that could bring attention to the event.  When I launched Affiliate Marketers Give Back the idea was to make the site a central place where people and companies could easily participate.  I was also hoping I could get some people to do the walk with me.  I was having little bit of a recruiting problem at the time.

For that first walk one person stepped up to the plate: that was my friend Connie Berg from Flamingo World (pictured below, standing on left, with Missy Ward). All it took was a little poking, prodding, and pushing until I finally mowed her over and she said yes. We did the walk together and raised about $40,000 that year.

Last year I started drumming up forces early to do the walk again. Thanks to the site and Connie’s example we had more interest. 16 people originally signed up. We raised a ton of money doing the walk as a team and it was one of the proudest moments I’ve had in this industry. To see the folks from every aspect of our industry: affiliates, networks and merchants participate. We even had Laura Przybek from Buy.at come all the way from London to take part.  It was definitely one of my highlights and we raised almost $60,000 all totaled. It’s something I’m so proud of and I’m looking forward to drumming up our efforts again this year.

That’s three walks in three years, how do you keep yourself motivated both physically and mentally?

Well I do run after two kids every day. I try to take care of myself. I walk and run in the mornings.  I do a five mile run in the morning after I drop the kids off at school and I try to do some weight training. It’s been really cold here in Orlando this winter, in the 30s when I wake up in the morning, so I’ve had to hit the treadmill at the gym instead.

What’s funny is that sometimes people have no idea how tough it can be. They are just like, “Well it’s just walking; it’s not like you’re running”.  Well you’ve been there with me and you know that people have to keep in shape to complete it. It’s no easy task.

That’s why a team is important. You have to be able to motivate each other.  This is why I was so thankful to have had Connie with me during that first walk. When you’re at the 30 mile mark and you realize you’re only halfway there and that there is another day and a half of walking, it can take the wind out of you. To be able to rally with the people around you, knowing it’s for a great cause, helps you get over that hump. You say to each other that you’re going make it then grab a beer afterward or rub each other’s feet and of course you remind each other what you’re doing this for.

What was the most cathartic moment for you from the last walk?

Member of 2008 team pictured above, see more here.

When I wound up taking that stupid step off the curb while Tweeting because I wanted all of our people who donated to feel like they were actually taking part in the walk with us, I realized that my foot felt really bad. Of course at that moment I didn’t know it was broken. Then it started swelling up to the size it was when I was nine months pregnant. Still, despite all of our injuries the way the team pulled together to help each other make it through the walk was amazing. That moment at the end when, even though at some point we were all spread out throughout the walk, we stopped so we could cross the finish line together as a team was the most amazing experience for me. The love I have for you guys is never ending.

Do you ever find yourself getting frustrated while trying to motivate people around the cause?

I think that everyone has to find ways to put bread on the table for their family. Having been a single mom no one understands that better than me. What I’m doing with Affiliate Marketers Give Back is make an easy way for folks who may not necessarily have the time to walk for three days straight to pitch in. Here people who might not know how they can participate can have a central resource with all sorts of information. It also makes it easier for companies to give contributions. I want to be a facilitator. I am proud to do it and I’m honored to do it. I just want to have people participate in whatever way they feel comfortable.

Do you ever get frustrated with either the progress being made towards eradicating breast cancer or with people’s education levels about the disease?

It seems to me the treatment for breast cancer really hasn’t changed much in the last ten years.  The treatment of cancer through chemo, through radiation, through surgery remains the same. Hopefully with continuing efforts and funding we will create a treatment breakthrough and one day eradicates this disease.

What I have seen change are people’s attitudes towards the disease. They realize it is so much more rampant than they thought. I remember years ago when women didn’t talk about it as a general topic, much less bring it up if they had breast cancer. I honestly didn’t even know when I had family members pass away from breast cancer. It was a hush-hush thing. People just didn’t talk about it or weren’t aware of it. Nobody talked about boobies as much as they do now.

For me, if I could get all of our Affiliate Summit attendees to lift their arms during the keynote speech and feel their boobies twice a year then at least everyone there is doing a self-exam. Anyway I can be out there to promote awareness, to get folks to get themselves checked out, is extremely important because as we all know an ounce of prevention…

Someone was teasing me last year at Summit. They mentioned that Katie Couric went on TV and did a live colonoscopy. Her husband had passed away from colon cancer and that was her turning point, to raise awareness about colon cancer. The person who was teasing me suggested that I should take off my shirt and show everyone how to do a breast exam live at Affiliate Summit.

But seriously, it’s so important that people get themselves checked out whether it’s men or women.  For me, beyond fundraising, making everybody aware that they have to be vigilant, they need know how to check themselves out, is crucial.  And if they don’t know how, they need to ask their doctor to teach them how to self-exam the proper way.

Recently Jeremy Schoemaker, Owner Shoemoney, stepped up with an auction on eBay where he offered to wear a company’s shirt for the length of Summit as a fundraiser, which is very impressive. Is it difficult to get guys interested in supporting the cause?

Jeremy Schoemaker and Train Signal present check to Missy Ward at Affiliate Summit.

Back at Affiliate Summit East in Boston we were asking people to give $10 donations and passing out “I Gave Back” buttons in return. It was easy to get money from women but it was not so easy to get guys involved. So I started going up to the guys and asking, “What’s the problem, you don’t like boobies?” When you put it to the guys like that they suddenly found it very easy to give.

When Jeremy told me what he was planning to do I was taken aback. Our friendship has grown stronger over the last year and he came up with this idea without any prodding. I was so proud of him. And proud of the guys from Train Signal for matching the donation because as they told me they had employees and family members affected by breast cancer and wanted to really show their support. Together they raised $10,000 which was just huge.

You’re a guy why did you take part in walk?

Well, with people flying all the way from London to basically my backyard in order to participate in an event for such a great cause, there was just no way I could pass. Everyone’s passion was obvious and I couldn’t just sit back on the sidelines and say I hope it goes well for you.

So, am I am hearing rumors about you coming out of retirement?

Three years ago I said that I was done with managing programs. I needed to focus on the things that we were trying to grow, like Affiliate Summit. Plus there are so many awesome OPMs available that really the industry doesn’t need another one. Last December as I was laying out what I want to accomplish in 2009 realized I had a little bit more bandwidth. I figured a great way for me to approach fundraising this year and stay connected with the issues in the day-to-day affairs of the industry was to take on one client. The idea is that I would manage their program and in lieu of the fees that they would pay me to manage a program, all the proceeds would instead go to National Breast Cancer Foundation.

I’m excited about the responses that I’ve gotten, with over 50 merchants who are interested in participating. It’s nice to be able to kind of sit back and look at them strategically. To think about which one I can really help grow and still earn a ton of money for the National Breast Cancer Foundation. It’s an exciting win-win situation.

What would your advice be to people who feel they don’t have enough opportunity to make a difference whether it is for breast cancer or any other good cause?

I think there are a number of things that folks can do that really are painless giving. People come up to me all the time and say, “I am so over my head with my business that I don’t have any bandwidth to walk with you or to get involved with anything”. For me it’s very simple: if it’s a cause you believe in even something small like putting a penny from every dollar towards a cause is a painless way to give back.

The idea is to contribute what you can whether it is purchasing a button or a shirt or simply donating time to a cause. There are always a number of different events going on at Affiliate Summit that don’t take a lot of time. For instance, the last Affiliate Triathlon took about an hour; people signed up, and had fun with the events. Again it was painless giving.

Of course I welcome more walkers and they can always pop up an Affiliate Marketers Give Back banner on their site.

If anyone has any ideas for things they are doing locally to help take on breast cancer I would love for them to be featured on the website.  The site isn’t about me and what I am doing it is about featuring what the industry is doing to give back. I would encourage folks that are doing something wonderful locally and paying it forward to call me, e-mail me, heck Twitter me (just not while I am walking), and let me know what they’re doing. I would love for the site to be used as a central location to help people get going with their efforts.

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Championing the Boobies: Missy Ward and Affiliate Marketers Give Back

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I think of Monty Python when I think of the old guard of the newspaper industry. In particular newspaper upper management brings up images of Python’s “Upper Class Twit of the Year” skit. With the print media industry facing extinction the Los Angeles Times has announced with fanfare that online advertising might be the lifeline the industry needs. In 2009, only in the newspaper industry does this come as a surprise.

Los Angeles Times editor Russ Stanton made the announcement stating that the paper’s online advertising revenue was enough to cover editorial payroll. Credit for turnaround goes to Jason Oberfest, Product Strategy and Business Development for LA Times Interactive, whose vision was able to capitalize on the 5-11 million unique visitors to the company’s website.

For an industry in dire need of good news, Stanton’s announcement heralds an impressive achievement. The flexibility that an online presence allows a news organization from a content, distribution and advertising point of view holds a lot of promise for today’s newspaper companies, but only if  the hierarchy of the organizations themselves are willing to embrace this opportunity.

More of the Same

Ability to change is the crux of the problem. Stanton’s declaration perfectly illustrates the lack of imagination in leadership that journalists have to contend with. Stanton states, “Given where we were five years ago, I don’t think anyone thought that would ever happen.”

Really? You mean to tell me that five years ago no one thought that online advertising could support a large publication?  Apparently Stanton missed the first internet bubble completely and feels that 2004 was the Stone Age of online marketing.

Yest the fact that Stanton has managed to cover payroll is a sign of hope. But the achievement that came at the price of cutting nearly 50% of the news staff. There is far more cost to managing a daily than payroll.  Stanton feels that the LA Times should not turn off its presses but how will he pay for those costs? What about other costs like rent, equipment, and distribution? Selling combination packages of print and online display ads in a declining economy will not cut it.

If editors could not imagine turning to online marketing back in 2004 how can they be agile enough to meet today’s challenges still encumbered by the traditions of old red tape?

Adaptations Needed

Beyond hitting the target Jason Oberfest urged the focus on maximizing local opportunity online. Newspapers at their best serve as a local and regional voice, often for those who lack voice. Online news organizations have the ability to provide that sort of forum; Voice of San Diego is an excellent example.

In order to provide a local voice a newspaper must focus on unique content. This is where Oberfest has it wrong. Back in December ’07 when Oberfest first laid out his plan he stated that content aggregation is just as important as content creation. This is a mistake.

Yes, a newspaper should compile stories that are important to its readership, but they fail to engage their readership.   Their sites are “essentially invisible” and often papers simply parrot other content. A reader can find the exact same content online as they do in the print edition or the content is provided through sources like Associated Press which serve as aggregators of a sort.

Content is still key. If newspapers want engagement they need to provide unique content and a method for the readers to interact with that content (something they can’t do offline). Newspapers should create:

• Localized micro-content
• Unique editorial
• Provide Associated Press content but with fresh editorial perspective

And newspapers should give readers a sense of ownership by:

• Utilizing already established tools that provide readers a voice (via commenting, communities, etc.)
• Allow readers to help provide content (photos, etc.)

Beyond content the key is not to simply fall into traditional online monetization strategies. Advertisers have become extremely ROAS focused. The difficulty newspapers have encountered in finding advertisers is not due to the recent woes of the economy. Instead it can be seen referendum on the inefficiency of display advertising both online and offline. To survive, newspapers must adopt new models like CPC, and CPA.

Journalistic Legacy

I grew up reading comics like Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbes in the daily paper. Today few papers still relevant carry comics anymore. Despite how many times I have moved I remember each of the editorial standpoints of the city newspaper. When I studied journalism I looked up to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s investigation of Watergate. Today the majority of “real” investigative journalism is done by small local weeklies, independent bloggers, and so called citizen journalists.

Whether it be gaining the reader’s loyalty through providing access to something light and fun; or by providing editorial analysis on ongoing news; or fulfilling that cornerstone of mandate of journalism in the form of investigation; newspapers will only survive if they embrace the advantages moving online provides and shed the upper class posturing of editorial.

Failing to do will make readers respond to the LA Times cry of “I’m not dead yet”, with Monty Python’s rejoinder “You’ll be stone dead any moment”.

Read more:
LA Times Signals Industry is Not Dead Yet

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