Getting Editorial Coverage: The Inside Scoop presentation from Affiliate Summit West 2008, which took place February 24-26, 2008 in Las Vegas, NV.

• Lisa Picarille, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, Revenue Magazine (Moderator)
• Jim Kukral, Owner, ScratchBack.com
• Anik Singal, CEO, Affiliate Classroom
• Valerie Stevens, Director, Sales and Marketing, Insight Magazine Online
• Andrew Wee, Principal Consultant, Nexus Concepts

A panel of journalists, bloggers and media professionals will detail specific, proven strategies for working with the press and will focus on how to interact with the media to maximize your message.

Note: the companies and positions listed above were current as of the time of the conference. Some of this information may have changed since then.

Video: Getting Editorial Coverage: The Inside Scoop

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Q: My name is Darrius. I am a former college men and women basketball coach that wrote a booklet called the “Scholarship Game”. I sold the booklet on my website for $5.00 to athletic camps, aau, and soical group example boy & girl clubs. But now I intersted in adding affiliates to my site. I plan to use the topic in my booklet to attract my audiance to the the affiliate program such as recruiting services, eduactional services(sat,act), retail different product for six team sports. I had the opportunity to reading your articles and know the process is slow to develop. Please give me some advise on how to set up my blog, affiliate programs and exmple of website that have affilates displayed.

A: There are a couple different platforms you can use for a blog. I would suggest going with WordPress.

There are many hosting companies that will install WordPress for you at no additional cost. I have a shared hosting plan with bluehost for some of my affiliate projects, and then a dedicated server at Liquid Web for my main sites.

As far as some examples of affiliate sites, the only one I have that had an athletic angle is FatShawn.com, which is a WordPress blog.

On that blog, I use the Thesis theme (a theme is an easy to install design for your blog), which is a premium theme, meaning that you’ve got to pay for it. There are lots of free themes, too, but I really like the features that come with Thesis.

Anyhow, while you’re asking for examples of affiliates, I understand from your question that you want to be a merchant or advertiser to sell your booklet/ebook.

There are a couple places to sell an electronic product – the main one would be ClickBank.

If you’d prefer to go direct with affiliates, rather than a network, you could sell via PayPal. But if you go that route, you won’t have affiliates ready to promote you like you will in ClickBank, and you’ll have to also find a solution for the affiliate tracking.

Video: Setting Up an Ebook Affiliate Program

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Affiliate Summit will be at booth #311 at the 2010 ERA D2C Convention, taking place September 21-23, 2010 at Wynn Las Vegas.

If you’re going to be at the 2010 ERA D2C Convention, be sure to stop by and visit.

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Everything I Know about Marketing I Learned From Google by Aaron Goldman was recently published, and I had a chance to sit down with him to ask some questions about the book.

Shawn: Google can teach us a lot about how to market effectively, but are there any examples from Google where we can learn from their failures, too?

Aaron: Absolutely. Chapter #9 is Track Everything and I cover a lesson that Google learned the hard way about how important it is to capture signals about how your marketing is working.

When Google launched its print platform, it had all these fancy ways of trying to measure performance of print ads — unique URLs, 800 numbers, even a 2D bar code. This was great for advertisers to see if people actually responded but Google itself couldn’t track these responses.

With search and display ads, Google can not only track if an ad was delivered but it can see clicks and, in some cases, conversions. These signals are crucial for Google to tweak which ads get delivered, in what positions, at what times, etc. Google didn’t have these signals in print (nor audio ads, for that matter) and that’s why it had to shut it down.

The lesson for marketers is that it’s not enough to just know that your ad ran as scheduled. You need to track responses as far down the funnel if you can and always look for new ways to smoke out signals.

Shawn: Do you think Google’s tactics can also be applied well to strictly brick & mortar operations?

Aaron: Definitely. In my last example about tracking, it may be more difficult to connect the dots between an online interaction and in-store purchase, but it can be done. In my book, I talk about how comScore uses panels to link offline purchases to online activity.

And, even if a brick and mortar isn’t doing any online advertising, it can (and must!) still track performance of all marketing efforts, even If that means just asking, “How did you hear about us?” at the register.

Many of my other lessons have more obvious implications to the offline world. Keep it simple, stupid. Altruism sells. Etc. These are tried and true marketing principles that can be applied to businesses of any size and scale.

Shawn: What is the single, most important thing we can take away from Google’s marketing?

Aaron: Oy vey. That’s like asking me which of my children I like best.

I guess I’d say the most important thing that Google taught us is that marketing does not just mean advertising. Google spends very little on paid advertising (Super Bowl commercial notwithstanding). Rather, it finds unique and innovative ways to earn brand affinity, usage and loyalty.

In Chapter 19, I preach about making your company a great story. Google gets tons of great PR every day just by being, well, Googley. Great employee perks. Elaborate April fools pranks. Goats mowing lawns. It just goes to show you don’t need to spend money on ads to get noticed.

Shawn: You talk about how a company should distribute their brand everywhere… don’t you think that could be a wasted effort for brands that already know their audience?

Aaron: Knowing your audience isn’t enough. You have to reach them in their environment and engage them.

In Chapter 17, “Show off your assets,” I talk about breaking your brand down into bits that can be distributed everywhere. But the key is that the “bits” you create are relevant, meaningful, and valuable to your target audience.

An example I cover in the book is Time Warner, which took its entire Life photo archive and digitized it so that the images would live on long after the magazine folded.

Another example is Intel which created “Centrino boots” to allow gamers to run two times faster in World of Warcraft. Here, too, the key was developing (and digitizing) a key brand asset and seeding it out in the community.

But let’s not forget the lesson of Chapter 5 which is “Be Where Your Audience Is.” Distributing your brand only makes sense in places where the people you’re trying to reach are hanging out and spending time.

Shawn: How often do you Google yourself and/or your brand?

Aaron: At least once a day. And I’m not shy about it. I do it at home, in my office, even in public. Sure, it’s embarrassing when I get caught but I just keep telling myself its normal and everyone does it.

Thanks to Aaron for taking the time here. Check out his excerpts on SlideShare and the official site at http://googleylessons.com/.

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Highlights from Affiliate Summit East 2010, where more than 3,500 affiliate marketers got together to network and learn in New York City on August 15-17, 2010.

Video: Affiliate Summit East 2010 Recap

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Commission Junction has announced the finalists for their CJYou Awards, which will be presented Wednesday, September 22 at Commission Junction University (CJU) in Santa Barbara, CA.

Here are the finalists for the 2010 CJYou Awards:

Rookie of the Year, Advertiser: Awarded to a new advertiser who has achieved the highest total revenue:

• BodenUSA
• Discover Bank
• HomeEverything

Rookie of the Year, Publisher: Awarded to a new publisher who has achieved the highest total revenue:

• Blue Door Media
• Natural Intelligence
• TheCouponScoop.com

Advertiser of the Year: Awarded to an advertiser who has achieved the largest year-over-year increase in revenue and greatest percentage of growth:

• Expedia
• HP Home and Home Office Store
• The Home Depot

Publisher of the Year: Awarded to a publisher who has achieved the largest year-over-year increase in revenue and greatest percentage of growth:

• Offers.com, Published by Vertive, Inc.
• Polyvore
• SurfMyAds.com

People’s Choice, Advertiser: Chosen by the publisher community and awarded to an advertiser who demonstrates the best partnership qualities and excellence in supporting publisher needs:

• BuySeasons (BuyCostumes.com & Celebrate Express)
• Priceline.com
• The Home Depot

People’s Choice, Publisher: Chosen by the advertiser community and awarded to a publisher who demonstrates the best partnership qualities and excellence in delivering value to an advertiser’s affiliate program:

• DealTaker.com
• Savings.com
• ShopatHome.com

Innovator of the Year: Awarded to an advertiser or publisher who demonstrates the most successful use of emerging technologies:

• Freshpair.com
• ShopStyle
• SurfMyAds.com

Agency of the Year: Awarded to an agency that has excelled at fostering relationships between its clients and Commission Junction:

• Blue Cherry Group
• Gen3 Marketing
• Schaaf-PartnerCentric

More details about the finalists at http://www.cj.com/cjyouawards2010/index.html.

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The Affiliate Summit unConference, brought to you by SeaWorld, is taking place Monday, September 27 in Orlando, FL and tickets are sold out.

The event is taking place at SeaWorld in the same spot IZEAFest was in last year – Ports of Call.

If you’re not familiar with an unConference, it’s a whole different format from a typical Affiliate Summit.

The Affiliate Summit unConference will be in a format that creates an opportunity for peer-to-peer learning, collaboration and creativity. This is an event for folks that want to actively participate. (what is an unConference?).

More details on the unConference, hotel group rate, and more at http://www.affiliatesummit.com/unconference/.

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I noticed that I am listed as the most influential affiliate marketer on Twitter, according to WeFollow.com, though I have no idea how they determine influence.

Anyhow, I thought I’d share the current list of the top 10, so you can find some affiliate marketers to follow on Twitter.

1. affiliatetip
2. MissyWard
3. matthewwood
4. AffWin
5. a4uexpo
6. mediatrustpete
7. affbuzz
8. JoaquinPena
9. sugarrae
10. jangro

They also sort affiliate marketing by most followers. It’s a largely different list, so they apparently don’t equate followers with influence.

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Jim Kukral, author of the bestselling book, Attention! This Book Will Make You Money, delivered the keynote address at Affiliate Summit East 2010 on Tuesday, August 17, 2010.

Jim gave a really inspirational talk that focuses on building a business around a lifestyle.

During Affiliate Summit East 2010, we posted the live feed video of Jim Kukral’s keynote at Affiliate Summit East 2010 at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/ase10.

Now, it is also available on YouTube. Watch the Jim Kukral Keynote at Affiliate Summit East 2010.

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I was just looking over the various countries represented at Affiliate Summit East 2010 and was surprised and excited by the number of different countries.

There were attendees from 37 countries at Affiliate Summit this time around.

Below are the countries represented at Affiliate Summit East 2010, which took place August 15-17, 2010 in New York City.

• Argentina
• Australia
• Belgium
• Brazil
• Canada
• China
• Costa Rica
• Cyprus
• Czech Republic
• Denmark
• Egypt
• Estonia
• France
• Germany
• Gibraltar
• Hong Kong
• India
• Ireland
• Israel
• Italy
• Japan
• Malaysia
• Malta
• Netherlands
• Netherlands Antilles
• New Zealand
• Poland
• Puerto Rico
• Spain
• Sweden
• Taiwan
• Turkey
• Ukraine
• United Arab Emirates
• United Kingdom
• United States
• Virgin Islands (British)

This is a testament to what a truly international industry we have in affiliate marketing.

Note: this list is based on countries of residence when registering for Affiliate Summit, and it doesn’t account for expatriates that attended.

I chatted with folks that were originally from Hungary, Pakistan, and South Africa, too, but are currently located in the United States.

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