Make Money Online

It’s been nearly 2 months since I promised more insight on the future of the mobile web that I gained from my week with Nokia. Well, most things are better late than never, so here goes…

This is an interview with Jeremy Belostock, the director of sales and marketing for Nokia’s Near Fields Communication (NFC) department. NFC is something like a hybrid of Bluetooth, RFID, and WiFi, and it looks poised to play a huge part in how the mobile web develops. Not only does it seem to be key to mobile communities, but also to the next level of mobile transactions — one that is apparently more secure than the RFID technologies currently offered on mobile phones. I’ll let Jeremy do the rest of the talking, though.

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Mobile: The Future of Ecommerce

Thinking about heading to ad:tech next week? The conference is being held in NYC from November 3^rd- 6^th at the Hilton on the Avenue of the Americas, and the Share Results team will be there. Only 3 sleeps left!

The NYC show is just the latest installment of the 11 shows ad:tech holds in seven countries around the world each year. With more than ten years under its belt, ad:tech has continually provided us media, marketing, and technology professionals with the tools and techniques we need to succeed in our ever-changing digital world.

A few examples of the innovative sessions covered in NYC include topics on brand management and emerging platforms such as video and mobile marketing. Some of the all-star speakers lined up include Nike, Kraft Foods, CNN, NYTimes.com, MTV and more.

While the sessions are highly informative, it’s the networking opportunities that are often the biggest incentive for attending ad:tech. If you are based in NYC, you should seriously consider coming down to the event. Individual exhibit hall passes are only $125.

If you’re heading to the conference and would like to meet up with Louis, Daniel and myself, just send an email to info@shareresults.com with a time when you’ll be available. We’ll be onsite Monday – Wednesday.

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If you’ve been following our various blog posts at all in the past several weeks, you’ll know that one of Share Results’ newest merchants is GoNannies. The beauty about this merchant is that they fit directly into our popular family category and are great for affiliates who already have content sites or blogs, or run a PPC campaign in this vertical.

We decided to ask the folks over at GoNannies (Carol Francis and Monta Fleming) some questions that affiliates have been dying to know about their affiliate program, and all the benefits that come with promoting. Here are six quick questions with Carol and Monta of GoNannies.

1. Tell us a little about GoNannies and how you differ from your competitors. How did you start your business and why did you decide to launch an affiliate program?
GoNannies is an online service that helps families find household help efficiently and affordably. We offer the largest number of domestic personnel types including nannies, sitters, housekeepers, senior care, personal assistants, personal chefs, doulas and more. In the pursuit of finding a nanny for her own use, President & Founder, Monta Fleming was frustrated with overly priced and unsuccessful nanny agencies, as well as not-so-reliable online services. Monta combined her own 17 years of IT and Management expertise with the need she had to find reliable childcare into a company founded on family values, integrity, reliability, and trust. GoNannies offers comprehensive background check services, never compromising our families’ safety with unreliable database only background checks offered by other competitors.

GoNannies launched our affiliate program because we saw a great opportunity to expose our popular services to an even larger audience.

2. It may appear to members of affiliate marketing that with the state of the economy, perhaps nanny services are not as high in demand. Do you find that there is less demand for nannies because of the economy? What are the various services that you offer?
Fortunately, nannies are still very much in demand because families will always need childcare. Additionally, GoNannies is a low cost alternative to traditional, high-cost placement agencies, so in a depressed economy, ours is the type of service that will often see increases when money is more scarce. Also, GoNannies is unique in that we offer a free nanny share program, which is a creative affordable solution in this challenging economy that allows families to locate other families in their area interested in sharing a nanny, cutting nanny costs into a fraction of what they would pay otherwise. And lastly, our services are far more extensive then nannies, also offering senior care, housekeepers, sitters, personal assistants, personal chefs, and more.

3.Background checks are key elements to hiring nannies and elder care professionals. What are some ways affiliates can promote this type of service in their campaigns?
Background checks are certainly very instrumental in finding the right care. That’s why GoNannies not only provides access to free background checks, but also offers supplemental background check services so that families can be as thorough as they need to be in their hiring process. To better help affiliates promote our background check services, we are in the process of designing new creative which will nicely promote our free background check offerings, as well exclusive affiliate discounts.

4. We wrote a blog post a while back about parents’ needs for nannies in the US and the methods used to find them. It’s interesting to see that various geographical regions seem to have more of a demand than others. What geographical trends are you seeing occur with GoNannies?
We definitely see a trend of high demand in major metropolitan areas.

5. Affiliates are always interested in the benefits of joining an affiliate program. What are the perks of joining GoNannies? Who is your ideal affiliate you would love to see promote your services?
GoNannies offers a very competitive affiliate program. We offer the largest payout amount in our industry for our Membership services and even offer additional payout opportunities through the background check services we offer. Additionally, we offer services in a larger geographical region, including both the U.S. and Canada. While Affiliates who offer some level of either family or female directed site content can be naturally outfitted to succeed in our Affiliate program, Affiliates who are effectively able to target to our niche audience within a larger general population can also be quite successful.

6. What can affiliates expect to see from GoNannies for the holiday season and eventually the new year? Are there any special tools and resources affiliates can look forward to in your program?
GoNannies will continue to be very supportive of our affiliates. We have a dedicated affiliate manager whose priority is to facilitate our affiliate’s success. We will continue to offer exclusive discounts and incentives for our affiliates. New resources to look forward to include widgets that we believe will be very successful for promoting our services.

For additional information about GoNannies, have a look at their co-branded merchant page via http://www.shareresults.com/local_affiliate_desc.php?mid=13964. Feel free to also send us any questions you may have to info [at] shareresults [dot] com.

Credit:
Everything Affiliates need to know about GoNannies

A recession can also be a chance to meet a wholly new set of market opportunities. After all, while consumers are going to want savings, merchants will want more control over their marketing dollars, and anyone who can deliver those may not only survive, but possibly grow. For example, there are recession proof niches, such as coupons affiliates.

Of course, not everyone’s business model is primarily about offering savings. Fortunately, there are a number of marketing strategies you can pursue to help recession-proof your ecommerce business, and they’re all about focusing on the opportunity that a recession represents. These opportunities, moreover, are about (1) offering value to consumers, and (2) generating tangible results from your efforts. After all, results are what ROI in a recession is all about. As the CMA blog points out:

Past recessions have shown that marketers who have taken the approach of “going through this together” with their customers have been more successful at maintaining share and revenue during a recession than their competition. Not surprisingly, value driven brands tend to do better than brands positioned as premium.

[…] The pressure for proven returns on marketing expenditures will increase. Marketers are likely to take a shorter term approach to advertising investments.

This, of course, begs the question of how can you focus on immediate results. Well, the CMA outlines seven different tactics.

1. Deeper, more frequent customer research: understand how consumers are redefining value.
2. Maintain marketing spending: there may be an opportunity where your competitors are cutting back.
3. Adjust product portfolios: consumers will be looking for more value, so focus more on reliability, durability, safety and performance and less on gimmicks.
4. Stress market share: if you do have room to cut pricing, doing so may help you capture the market share of competitors.
5. Support your distributors: by securing a reliable supply, you’ll be able to more proactively determine your pricing and manage your market share.
6. Retain core values: demonstrate how the company is working to cut expenses and not quality
7. Strategic pricing tactics: determine whether you have room for more price promotions or other customer incentives, such as quantity discounts previously reserved for your best customers.

Now, the original post goes into much more detail on each of these points. So if any one of them have caught your eye (and most of them should have), you should probably go check it out.

More importantly, though, consider how compatible affiliate marketing is with these strategies. It allows you to maintain marketing spend, but keep a focus on generating actual results. This means that merchants who maintain their affiliate marketing strategy are going to be able to capture market share that their competitors cede, and the affiliates who help them do so are going to be able to earn commissions throughout an economic rut.

Merchants, then, should be considering affiliate marketing. And affiliates should be looking into merchants who are demonstrating a proactive approach to marketing.

Read the rest here:
7 Recession Marketing Tips

Lately we’ve been blogging about recession blogging and making a profit in a recession. The underlying point has been that as more and more consumer pinch their pennies, there’s an opportunity for those that can help them do that.

The point is that bean-counting is taking over decision making, and as far as marketers are concerned, that means that ROI is going to eclipse branding. This is why things look okay for affiliate marketers: they’re performance -based marketers. Well, wine vlogger Gary Vaynerchuk gets it, and in this clip, he explains how this is going to effect the marketing industry as a whole (hat tip Pat Phelan).

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ROI in a Recession

So we’re all aware that the economy is in a bit of a rut. Just because consumers are tightening up their budgets, however, that doesn’t mean that there are less opportunities for affiliate marketers. In actuality, the opportunities just look a bit different than they usually do. Just yesterday I blogged that:

With this recession looming, you not only have the chance generate some extra traffic, but potentially get a piece of that shrinking economic pie. The best part is that you can do it by helping other people make the most out of their shrinking budgets.

The trick is to reach out to consumers who are trying to make their budgets go a lot further, and you can do that by promoting coupon sites. As eMarketer reported back in May:

As consumer spending budgets tighten, […] coupon Web sites are seeing increased traffic, according to Hitwise Intelligence.

[…] the market share of visits for a Hitwise custom category of 11 printable coupon Web sites was up 85% year-over-year for that week. […]

Meanwhile, searches for the term “coupons” were up 45% year-over-year for the week ending May 3, 2008.

If coupon sites were getting that kind of traffic before financial markets went completely haywire, just imagine what kind of appeal they’ll have now!

Of course, not all affiliates have sites dedicated to finding deals and discounts, but that doesn’t mean you can’t promote such savings. Thinks about it: almost everyone has family. And when times get tough, people start thinking about how they can help their families out. That’s why family coupon sites are perfect to promote as an affiliate. As the same eMarketer article pointed out:

[…] the most popular coupon searches were “grocery,” “printable” and “free.”

So even if affiliate ads for coupon sites don’t quite fit with your overall theme, they’re still going to appeal to your visitors. So you’ll be helping someone out and get rewarded for it at the same time. Who says that Karma doesn’t work?

In fact, a ShareResults program that you might want to check out is the PlanningFamily affiliate program. PlanningFamily.com offers free baby samples, baby coupons and baby offers to new and expectant families.

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Affiliate Strategies for a Recession

It was reported in early September that NFL’s reigning MVP, Tom Brady will be out of the rest of the 2008 season side-lined with a massive knee injury. Surgery will likely be needed as Tom torn both his ACL and MCL.

Until doctors feel Tom’s MCL has healed enough to perform a surgery, Tom will be sitting pretty at home with his super model Gisele. Not too shabby for a down and out footballer.

Tom being out doesn’t mean that the Patriots can’t make it to this year’s Superbowl, no sir-ee Bob.

Matt Cassel has filled in as quarterback and could be the man to lead the team to another Championship ring. If you are rabid fan, it’s time to pony up your support and great way to do it is with Tundra Gear’s bevy of NFL Winter hats. Tundra Gear was founded by Aras Baskauskas, a former collegiate athlete and the winner of CBS’s Survivor: Exile Island.

Tundra Gear offers winter hats that are cozy, warm and truly New England worthy. The sample on the right is worn by an obviously loyal fan and though he may not be a Victoria Secret model but he’s definitely strutting his stuff. See how his belly paint matches the Patriot colors? Tundra Gear also offers an affiliate program, and really is no time like the present to join up and promote your favorite team. Whether it is New England or New York. Yes, I love Eli Manning too. Did you know that when Giant receivers catch his passes, they usually break their fingers? Yes, he’s throws them that hard. Cool hun?

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Covering politics, social media, search, ecommerce sites and venture capitalists, Business Week have released a list of whom they consider to be the movers and shakers of the web 2.0 era.  These men and women have been chosen because they embrace the culture of the web (or their own versions of it) and have contributed to the borderless society that many of us like to indulge in on a daily basis.   

What I have found most interesting about this list is that they are not all about instant success stories or originality.  They include people who have challenges to face in the coming year, individuals who have recreated themselves or who have embraced social media to extend their reach to consumers.

Some of the distinct personalities that stuck out include:

• Steve Baller from Microsoft – he has got some interesting challenges ahead of him to the say the least, the failed Yahoo takeover, consumer annoyance with Vista, and hemorrhaging ad platform – (MSN)
• Paul Graham the start up guy from Y Combinator
• Maria Thomas the creator of an arts community Etsy where users can buy and sell homemade arts and crafts
• Sheryl Sandberg former employee of Google is now the COO of Facebook and faces the immense challenge of monetizing Facebook.
• Rupert Murdoch always re-inventing and influencing media. Is this man ever going to retire?

Given the recent changes in the economic climate it will be interesting to follow these people and their companies to see where they end up and how they continue to influence the web.

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The top 25 influencers on the web

The first ESPN/WSOP Academy golf & poker clinic is going down in few weeks, are your clubs packed and ready to go?

The event is taking place at the Rio All Suites Hotel and Casino and Primm Valley Golf Club from October 30 through November 2, 2008 in Las Vegas, Nevada. – The whole package is beautifully priced at $2999. Space is limited and the event is booking up fast.

Greg Raymer (2004 WSOP Main Event Champion), Alex “The Insider” Outhred and Joe Navarro FBI ret. (leader in non verbal communication/reads/tells) are confirmed for this event with a few surprise guests in tow.

Help someone win the WSOP seat of their poker dreams and join the WSOP Academy program today. Every package you book as an affiliate earns you a cool $600.

For more info watch the video below or visit: http://www.wsopacademy.com/golf.html

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WSOP Academy & ESPN team up for first golf and poker academy in Vegas

Did you know that 64% of nannies hired in New York look after one child? This is according to a new survey conducted by Park Slope Parents. Their new survey offers plenty of information about nannies and other details pertaining to this industry such as average work hours, the lead-time parents take to find a nanny, as well methods parents use to recruit nannies.

Among the top methods used to find a nanny is Craigslist. Apparently, it’s considered to be a trusty nanny resource all over the US. See for yourself. If you go to San Francisco or Los Angeles Craigslist, use the keyword “nanny”, and choose jobs from the drop-down menu, you’ll garner less than 75 ads related to nanny jobs. New York Craigslist offers just under 200. However, nanny services in Atlanta are even more popular than LA and SF yielding as much as 160+ ads for nanny services over the last 30 days.

Obviously there’s plenty of benefits here for affiliates. Clearly parents are looking online more often for nannies, and although it’s a niche market, there are online campaigns available that affiliates can bring to parents in need of these services. Here are a couple of examples:

GoNannies is one of Share Results recently launched merchants and not only offers quality nanny services via membership packages, but they also cater to cautious parents who desire background checks. Besides additional services like elderly care, and personal assistants and chefs, this exclusive affiliate program offers a fantastic CPA commission for each paid membership referred. They are also offering a great bonus for the fall season!

Well-known brand Sittercity is not a also a popular choice for parents. Nanny services are available as are babysitting services for children, the elderly and pets. If you’re familiar with Sittercity, you’ll also remember that several months back they branched out and began offering tutoring services. Though summer school is over, you can bet that those tutorial services are coming in handy for a lot of parents now that kids are back in school.

Finally, a word of caution. Some people commit the ultimate offence and interchange the terms “nanny” and “babysitter”. Any professional will tell you, that this is not the same thing, so try not to make this faux pas when networking with the public be it on and offline.

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Parents do surf the net for Nannies

On the weekend I went with CT to PodCamp Montreal and was amazed to learn about the challenges that bloggers faced when monetizing their blogs. For many bloggers, their dialogue is their brand, their identity, and they have an intense passion about their content area that they wish to share with a select few or few hundred readers (or plus plus ) on a regular basis. As a group, their passion for their craft instills them with this integrity to do the right thing and be transparent with their community of readers. This sense of community was inspiring.

In sessions and out in the halls there was contention and debate over if, why, how, should a blogger monetize their site. In most blogs, it is natural for bloggers to mention products and services related to their content area. As such, it would be reasonable to be paid or endorsed for promoting a product or service that was a natural fit for your blog. In the cases where this was a reasonable assumption, bloggers felt the need to let their audience know that they had received a product sample and found it to be a good product to use, which would allow their user base to understand why they were writing about it.

Conversely, some bloggers are strictly about their own content. Nothing is more outrageous for a blogger than being approached by some thoughtless marketing machine approaching them with products that do not suit their blog and community. Or worse still, one that offers them compensation that is not reflective of their time and community influence.

Really, in my mind the happy medium is affiliate marketing. Bloggers can continue to talk about products in their blogs, and if that product has an affiliate program then they can make money by sending traffic to that site.

This is not a unique thought by any stretch of the imagination. Just today I read an article from the BBC by a reporter that just went to Blog World in Vegas. The theme of the article was Making Money from Blogging, and the main conclusion was to do so through affiliate marketing.

There will be many bloggers who will not be interested in making money from their blog. But for those that want to explore this option a little more, they should check out the following resources.

• Blogging Tips
• Chris Brogan

Go here to read the rest:
Blogging – Making Money from Your Craft

Welcome to the first day of fall! As many affiliates and merchants are aware, this is the time everyone dives into Q4 to enhance earnings one last time. With the forthcoming Canadian Thanksgiving and Halloween in October, the fall season is an optimal opportunity to promote to potential customers who are actively looking to shop to adapt to the change in weather and, more importantly, for the holiday season.

With many consumers being affected by high gas prices, affiliates could see online shopping activity on the increase. Some studies offer conflicting reports regarding the effects of high gas prices on online shopping, but according to InternetRetailer.com, “87% of consumers agree that they like to shop online because it saves them money on gasoline, second only to the 89% who say that shopping online makes available a wider variety of products than they can find in stores.” Online shopping presents a great opportunity for consumers to bypass their high-priced gas blues. It also presents an opportunity for affiliates to launch campaigns early to enhance their Q4 performance and fill the void for early shoppers who desire bargains, especially for Christmas

Among the merchants in Share Results that have helped affiliates benefit from Q4 is Imaginary Greetings (IGCO). Creator of the highly popular Letters from Santa, IGCO offers memorable letters for children who are excited by the thought of receiving a message from good Ole Saint Nick. The letters are engraved and are personalized for every recipient. IGCO affiliates experienced successful campaigns in 2007. Conversions were especially high (25% rate) for affiliates who placed banners and content on their Christmas-themed sites, virtual holiday shopping malls, and special occasions portals.

If you think that it’s too early to promote IGCO’s Letters from Santa, you might miss out on a great opportunity, especially with the growing popularity of Black Friday and Cyber Monday following American Thanksgiving.

Even if Letters from Santa is not your cup of tea, another option to consider for Q4 is Tundra Gear. This merchant’s affiliate program gives sports fans the chance to show off their true colours.

Tundra Gear has carved out a great position for itself via seasonal sports events throughout Q4, including football, hockey and snowboarding. Affiliates in the program have earned up to 25% in revenue share commissions on sales of the unique Russian fur hats. The fact that the merchant has officially licensed NFL, NHL and College Pins allows sports fans to bring an exclusive design to their merchandise.

So, while promoting during Q4 will require unique strategies to stand apart from other affiliates, it doesn’t look like saturation will be a factor for niche performance-based campaigns like IGCO and Tundra Gear. Both these merchants are examples of clients within the Share Results network who sell unique products. Furthermore they are open to working with email marketing networks. The same can be said for PPC affiliates and publishers with excellent holiday or sports themed content.

If you would like more examples of affiliate programs for Q4, or if you would like additional information on the aforementioned merchants, feel free to send us your inquiries at info@shareresults.com. Also, take a browse through the Featured Merchants section on the Share Results website.

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Affiliates can earn more this Q4

We have new exclusive telephony affiliate program – Mobivox, launching soon in the Share Results network and we wanted to give everyone a sneak peek before they go live.

Here’s a little background on Mobivox:

Mobivox is the first-ever service to bring VoIP to mobile phones – and software or PCs are not required to use their service. There are no connection fee or contracts. Users simply purchase credits to top up their Mobivox account when needed.

Mobivox services also includes:

• Voice-to-text SMS delivery
• Works with all mobile, VOIP and landline phones
• Instant conference up to 9 people
• Mobivox users can call their Skype buddies on their mobile for free
• Recognizes and authenticates accounts through Voice Dialing
• Sync Outlook, Gmail and Skype contacts with Mobivox address book
• Reach anyone in the world with Mobivox’s points-of-presence in 40 countries
• Mobivox users save up to 98% on long distance calls

Mobivox’s service is great for road warriors; keeping in touch with family abroad and just to save on long distance calling on a mobile phone.

If you are an affiliate in the communications, education and travel categories with US, CAN and International traffic, you are an ideal partner for Mobivox.

Come give the program a go and visit their merchant page for more info and to pre-register here: Mobivox

Also by pre-registering today, you can take advantage of the special launch promo of 30% commission on your customer’s first purchase and 5% commission recurring on all purchases for 12 months! The payout will return to 20% commission + 5% recurring for 6 months on October 1, 2008.

If you have questions please write us at: mobivox@shareresults.com

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Exclusive Mobile VoIP Affiliate Program Coming Soon

It’s no secret that lead-based affiliate programs are quite popular. Share Results has its fair share of programs such as Maternity Advantage, Planning Family and IPSOS that have been quite popular with affiliates for this reason. Real Arcade is another lead-based program that is a big hit with affiliates looking to convert their age 40 and over, female-based traffic into actual sales.

Real Arcade recently gave a boost to newer affiliates who joined the program through the August 2008 Affiliate Summit show in Boston. In addition to giving away some cute novelty beach chairs for mobile phones, they offered an affiliate sign-up promotion to new affiliates which is currently running right up to September 30: a $15 CPL payout (see their merchant page for more details).

Though this offer expires in less than 30 days, it’s a wonderful opportunity to benefit from promoting this merchant. Even better, here are three ways you can earn from Real Arcade’s affiliate program in Share Results:

1. Use Real Arcade’s brand new creative and watch your number of referred leads increase. Real Arcade has just added 8 new banners tailored to their customer promo of 2 free games. These banner creative are bound to increase conversions, as they are now directed to a more targeted landing page.

2. Combine some text with your banners. Stats show that online users respond better to text and in the case of Real Arcade’s games, it helps inform your potential players of what games they can sign-up for in addition to any free trial offers.

3. Use keywords for your campaigns. Whether you’re working with SEO or PPC/search marketing, using keywords like “free trial”, “online games” or “PC games”, can increase traffic to your site. Need some suggestions? Contact realarcade@shareresults.com and ask for a full list to help you with your efforts.

If you haven’t started promoting Real Arcade as yet, don’t hesitate to get started now. Remember that Share Results is happy to give you the heads up on the latest offers and negotiate deals to help you earn the most bang for your buck for Real Arcade or any of your other campaigns. To learn more about this program, visit www.shareresults.com/local_affiliate_desc.php?mid=7996. Also, feel free to send us an email with your inquiries: realarcade@shareresults.com.

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Real Arcade helps Affiliates earn from its Lead-Based Program

The Share Results crew has arrived in Boston for Affiliate Summit East, and so far things are off to a fantastic start.

After arriving yesterday, the festivities started off with a fun and relaxed opening party put on by Buy.at, where we caught up with old friends and our usual summit buddies and met some great new contacts. Personal highlights included a chat with Peter Glaeser of AffiliateTracking.de about the future of mobile marketing (Peter will be speaking in the ‘Ask the Experts’ session on Tuesday morning), and an impressive spin on the dancefloor with the charismatic Asif of GoldenCan.com.

Today, once our booth was set up we hit up the meet market which was really buzzing with activity and had what looked like it’s best turnout to date. I attended the afternoon session on NY Tax Law which was very informative, and came away with some effective solutions for supporting both merchants and affiliates in the taxation process. The evening was capped off with an awesome party put on by Share-a-sale on a boat docked in the Boston harbour. We got to catch up with our fellow Montrealers from OneBigPlanet.com, take full advantage of the Oyster Bar and chocolate fountain, and as I left the karoke was getting into full swing.

Looking forward to day 1 of the expo tomorrow, from the looks of things it’s going to be a very successful show!

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Affiliate Summit Update – Day 1 Recap