As a reminder, the 10th annual AffStat survey of affiliate marketing statistics is now open through May 31, 2012.

We’d like to encourage all affiliates to take part in the survey by rewarding three lucky respondents with a VIP Pass ($879 value) to Affiliate Summit East 2012.*

This AffStat survey is focused on affiliates, so please do not complete the survey unless you are an affiliate.

Data from the AffStat survey will be published in future editions of FeedFront Magazine (get a free subscription), and the full report will be available for free.

Take the survey now.

Affiliate managers and networks – please encourage your affiliates to take the AffStat survey.

If you’re interested in the 2011 edition of the AffStat report, it is available to download or read online.

*Three winners will be chosen randomly and will be contacted by email provided after the survey has closed.

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Early bird pricing for Affiliate Summit East 2012, taking place August 12-14, 2012 in New York City, ends May 11, 2012.

Affiliate Summit East 2012

The keynote speakers will be Sara Levinson, Ntiedo (NT) Etuk, and Dave Cupples.

The Early Bird registration rates for the Networking Pass ($99), Networking Plus Pass ($279), VIP Pass ($879), and All Access Pass ($1,879) are going up after May 11, 2012.

Starting May 12, 2012, the rates to register for Affiliate Summit will be Networking Pass ($249), Networking Plus Pass ($549), VIP Pass ($1,249), and All Access Pass ($2,249).

For a description of the available pass types see registration options for Affiliate Summit East 2012.

Some Affiliate Summit sponsorships, booths and Meet Market tables are still available. See http://www.affiliatesummit.com/12e-exhibitors/ for details.

Rooms at the Hilton New York are available at an Affiliate Summit group rate starting at $229 a night until July 5, 2012 or the group block is sold-out, whichever comes first. After that, the hotel will charge the prevailing rate.

More details at http://www.affiliatesummit.com/12e-travel/.

Register now and save!

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One of the most common questions that I receive from new affiliates pertains to their indecision over the products and services they plan on promoting using affiliate marketing.

While there are numerous methods of selecting affiliate offers to promote, I’ve stuck to a three-pronged approach, which has done me proud over the years.

Promote Products & Services That You Are Passionate About

Let’s face it, affiliate marketing isn’t easy. Promoting products and services that you already use and believe in will help you pump out great content on a consistent basis. If you’re marketing a product that you don’t care for, nor have an interest in, it can easily lead you down the path of affiliate site abandonment. {Raise your hand if you have one or more abandoned affiliate sites. I know I do!}

Don’t Market What Everyone Else Is Marketing

If you plan relies on simply copying the products that other successful affiliate marketers are promoting, you should just give up now. These successful affiliate marketers got successful for a reason and they are light years ahead of you. You’d be hard-pressed to generate the same amount of traffic to your affiliate sites that they can for the same product. It’s just not worth it.

Find the Next Big Thing in YOUR Niche

If you’re a smart cookie in a particular niche, use that to your advantage and create content around it. Look to tools such as eBay Pulse and Google Insight which deliver a good snapshot into popular products that people are already searching for. Find the next big thing in your niche and get a jump start on marketing it.

Monitoring Google Alerts, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and TV advertising are other good avenues for finding products that people are talking about.

Trying to figure out what to promote through affiliate marketing does not have to be frustrating. With a little “sleuthery” and diligence, you can be well on the road to finding a winning affiliate campaign.

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A few months ago, I started Women Online Marketers United (joinWOMU.com) so that women could get the peer based education and the networking opportunities that they need to help them become successful online marketers and entrepreneurs.

We’ve since added a few brave men to the mix, who have been wonderful contributors to our community.

Recently, in an active forum thread of joinWOMU.com, some of the members discussed their favorite WordPress plugins that had been the most effective for them. JoinWOMU Moderators like Colette Marshall, Tricia Meyer, Deb Carney, Karen Garcia and I joined in the conversation with other commentators including Patrick Allmond, Meg Geddes and Lloyd Brown.

Based in part on the conversations that took place on this forum, we were able to put together a list of the top 20 plugins that marketers cannot live without. Whether you use one or all twenty of these, they will, in most cases, give your WordPress sites the extra boost that they deserve.

1. Exec-PHP
By using shortcodes, this plugin executes all of the reusable PHP code that is on your page. It allows you to organize, test, and and reuse all of your PHP code including that code in posts and widgets.

2. Google Analyticator
With this plugin, your site gets the JavaScript that it needs to enable Google Analytics logging. It also contains widgets that allow you to display Analytics data in the admin and on your blog.

3. Pretty Link
Pretty Link lets you display links how you want them to look. You create the look of each link and can even use your own domain name while Pretty Link tracks the stats behind the hits on each link.

4. WP-Polls
This is the ideal plugin for anyone who wants to have a poll on their site.

5. phpBay Lite
If you rely on Ebay for any of your business, this plugin will help you to maximize every aspect of targeting Ebay traffic.

6. Facebook Like Thumbnail
When Facebook changed their like button so that it acted more like a share button, they also changed how they displayed the thumbnails. Now, you can control the thumbnails that people see just the way that you want to.

7. Subscribe to Comments
With this plugin, you give your readers control over which comments, which posts and which notifications they want to receive emails about.

8. W3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache improves the performance of your server so that your readers get a better experience. The plugin relies on tools like caching and content delivery network integration and support.

9. WordPress SEO by Yoast
If you are ready to optimize your site’s SEO, this is the most complete plugin for the job. It optimizes everything from the page’s content to its images to its meta descriptions and more. (My favorite plugin!)

10. ManageWP
If you have more than one site, this is the tool that will keep them easily organized and accessible.

11. Gravity Forms
This allows you to create, build, and make live your WordPress forms easily in minutes. Its built-in tools allow you to configure your choices and embed your forms easily.

12. Dynamic Widgets
You make a few selections about when and where you want your widgets to appear, and this plugin makes sure that your widgets are only where you want them to be.

13. GD Star Rating
Now, you can let your readers rate and review your articles with this plugin that includes optional sidebar widgets that allow you to display stats created by this plugin.

14. Duplicate Post
With Duplicate Post, you can clone any page and make it into a completely new draft.

15. Intense Debate
Make the most of the comments and conversation on your site with this plugin that includes easy moderating tools, tools to integrate the conversation with sites like Twitter, and much more.

16. Microdata for SEO
This installs a button that allows you to create a Microdata Code within your post or page.

17. Simple Social Plugin
The icons that come with this plugin allow your readers to share your content on Twitter or Facebook with the touch of a single button.

18. WordPress Database Backup
As the name suggests, you can back up all of your data with this plugin.

19. WPTouch Pro
You can create unique sites for mobile browsing with this plugin.

20. Use Google Libraries
You can take some pressure off your server and increase your chance that someone has cached your files with this plugin that is linked to Google’s AJAX Libraries API.

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Affiliate Summit is sponsoring a team of runners for the Runyon 5k, which is taking place Sunday, August 12 at Yankee Stadium. This is the first day of Affiliate Summit East 2012.

I ran the Runyon 5k a few years ago, and it was a fantastic experience.

The Runyon 5k is a unique cancer research fundraising run/walk that uses Yankee Stadium as its course. You can run or walk the concourses and ramps, climb stairs between levels, and take your own victory laps around the warning track that circles the field.

Affiliate Summit will cover the $40 registration fee for anybody who joins the Affiliate Summit team. Runners are responsible for their minimum of $60 in fundraising.

We’ll also get shirts for anybody running on the Affiliate Summit team (I wish I could, but there’s too much with Affiliate Summit that morning for me).

100% of all donations raised in support of your run/walk will go to innovative cancer research by today’s best young scientists, funded by the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation.

If you’d like to participate, please join our team for the Runyon 5k and then email your confirmation to us, and we will reimburse you.

Let us know how to make out the check, where to send it, your phone numbers, and your shirt size.

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Back in February 2011, I wrote about an Illinois “anti-affiliate” Bill that if enacted would force out-of-state retailers to collect Illinois state sales tax for Internet sales, based on the premise that affiliate marketers create nexus in Illinois.

In the following month, Illinois Govern Quinn misguidedly signed into law HB 3659, which essentially abolished Affiliate Marketing in Illinois.

Affiliate Marketing Finally Gets a Break

After many months of diligent work from folks involved within the affiliate marketing industry, Judge Robert Lopez Cepero of the Illinois Circuit Court issued a ruling that finds the Illinois Affiliate Nexus Tax unconstitutional. He went on to declare that nexus wasn’t established by the activity outlined in the statute.

At this point, it is not clear whether Governor Quinn will challenge the decision, but it is a giant leap in the right direction for the affiliate marketing industry.

Here is some coverage from Illinois ABC station discussing the situation:

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Back in February, TubeMogul moved its video syndication and analytics service to its own site, OneLoad.com. 

If you’re not familiar with OneLoad, its a tool that gives folks the opportunity to upload their videos to multiple sites (like YouTube, Vimeo, MetaCafe, Facebook, Twitter, Blip.tv and more) at one time and track the results from all of the sites, in one place. I’ve been using the service since 2007 and found it to be a great time saver. It’s free (for non-commercial use) and offers different pricing tiers for its commercial use customers.

After receiving notification of the name change, I didn’t think much of it (other than having to remember the new website address) until I read a blog post on Daniel Clark’s QAQN blog, where he discussed his dissatisfaction regarding OneLoad’s policy as it related to affiliate marketers.

At the time, their sign up page indicated:

and Section 4e of their Terms of Service stated:

“…upload, post or transmit unsolicited commercial email or “spam”. This includes unethical marketing, advertising, or any other practice that is in any way connected with “spam”, such as (a) sending mass email to recipients who haven’t requested email from you or with a fake return address, (b) promoting a site with inappropriate links, titles, descriptions, or (c) promoting your Content by posting multiple submissions in public forums that are identical. Also defined as “spam” are any videos involving affiliate marketing, network marketing, cash gifting, multi-level marketing, phishing, or any videos that a reasonable person would consider to be a scam or misleading. Further, “spam” can include any content that TubeMogul deems not entertaining or informative;”

After reading that post, I reached out to the folks at OneLoad, and although sympathetic, they were not ready to change the language in their Terms of Service. That was a problem for me, because many of the presentations that I’ve done in the past as well as one scheduled for an upcoming conference in June, promoted the service as an efficient way for affiliate marketers to upload their quality videos to top video and social networking sites and track their effectiveness.

But, what was most upsetting to me was the fact that OneLoad was still wary of the affiliate marketing industry overall, despite its dramatic growth and positive forecast. I knew I had to reach out to Brett Wilson, their CEO to get a better understanding of their past issues, to see if there was a way that his company and affiliate marketers could work together in the future.

Oddly enough, TubeMogul had a booth down the same aisle as Affiliate Summit during SXSW in March. This afforded me the opportunity to talk with Brett quickly and follow up after the show. To sum it up, some of the issues that they were experiencing with a portion of the affiliate marketing videos, directly related to policies the video sites had themselves — they just don’t want overtly commercial content.

I get that. I don’t want to watch overly commercial content either.

Brett mentioned that OneLoad would be happy if affiliate marketers used the service with well-produced videos that have some entertainment value. (More commercial use customers means more $$ for OneLoad.)

I explained that in order for that to happen, they’d have to modify the language in their Terms of Service so that legitimate marketers could feel confident that their accounts were not going to get shut down just because they tagged a video as “affiliate” or “affiliate marketing”.

And so, they did. Here’s the new, re-worded section, which offers protection to affiliate marketers who are producing quality videos that are not scammy or misleading.

“…upload, post or transmit unsolicited commercial email or “spam”. This includes unethical marketing, advertising, or any other practice that is in any way connected with “spam”, such as (a) sending mass email to recipients who haven’t requested email from you or with a fake return address, (b) promoting a site with inappropriate links, titles, descriptions, or (c) promoting your Content by posting multiple submissions in public forums that are identical. Also defined as “spam” are any videos involving network marketing, cash gifting, multi-level marketing, phishing, affiliate marketing with low quality content or any videos that a reasonable person would consider to be a scam or misleading. Further, “spam” can include any content that TubeMogul deems not entertaining or informative;”

I’m glad that OneLoad.com was open to changing their policy because their service really saves marketers a lot of time and definitely helps with getting a better idea of what their customer base wants.

If you’re new to OneLoad or need some help getting started, they offer a New User Webinar every Friday, which you should check out.

Let me know your thoughts.

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Back in October 2011, when Rae Hoffman and I launched itsaWAHMthing.com our mission was to help work at home moms create better lives for themselves, their families and communities by providing them with networking opportunities and business tips from other successful WAHMs.

Our goals were simple:

• We wanted to create a site that featured tips from successful WAHMs and Mompreneurs, so that aspiring work at home moms could find real information to help them run their business – whatever they may be.
• We wanted to build a non-typical WAHM site; one that was drama and scam-free where Moms can focus on building a business, rather than getting freebees or discounts.

Fast forward, 5 months and 150 posts later, it’s truly wonderful to see our dream come to fruition; with the website exponentially growing in page views and comments and our search engine rankings moving up quickly for really tough terms (hat tip to Rae).

But more than that, I’m consistently impressed by the talents of our featured WAHM writers, Deb Carney, Liz Fogg, Liz Gazer, Jen Goode, Lisa Martin, Tricia Meyer, Loretta Oliver, Mary Poiley, Carrie Rocha, Eva Rosenberg, Lynn Terry, Shannon Weidemann and our token WAHD, Michael Gray. Each day, they share their first-hand experiences on dozens of WAHM-related topics including productivity, business tools, marketing, balancing family, tax issues, finances and more.

I should also share this secret…. The wealth of information our writers are providing benefit work at home dads, too. In fact, anyone that works from home or is growing their own business from their home can benefit greatly from the content provided on itsaWAHMthing.com.

One of my favorite features is our Success Stories, in which we feature successful work at home moms who are juggling their family and careers. Their stories are fascinating and very inspirational. Here are a links to a few of them:

WAHM Success Story: Lynn Terry of ClickNewz

WAHM Success Story: Sara Sutton Fell of FlexJobs.com

WAHM Success Story: Rae Hoffman-Dolan of Sugarrae, Inc.

(and me) WAHM Success Story: Missy Ward of Affiliate Summit

So, if you’re looking for a daily dose of WAHMspiration or some business and family balancing tips from other work at home moms, swing on over to itsaWAHMthing.com and join our community. Don’t forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter while you’re there.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

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Affiliate Summit has partnered with Vivastream to provide a platform for Affiliate Summit Central 2012 attendees to network before, during, and after the conference.

If you’re registered for Affiliate Summit Central 2012, take advantage of the agenda planner and networking site.

Once your account is set, you will have a customized, interactive guide to help you plan out your conference experience, as well as assistance in finding fellow attendees who match your highlighted interests.

Be sure to get the Vivastream app from the iPhone, Android, or Blackberry app store, or go to http://www.vivastream.com/m on your mobile device.

We will be sending access codes via email to registered attendees. Anyone can join and access the main parts, but only Affiliate Summit Central 2012 attendees will be able to access the area to network with speakers, exhibitors, and other attendees.

Join the Affiliate Summit Central 2012 virtual community.

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I was recently asked for definitions of some common affiliate marketing terms.  Affiliate marketing definitely has a language all its own. Below is a collection of some of the frequently used affiliate marketing terms which we’ve included in previous AffStat reports through 2010.

If you think of other terms you’d like to include in this post, please leave a comment.

Affiliate: a Web site owner that earns a commission for referring clicks, leads, or sales to a merchant.

Affiliate Agreement: terms between a merchant and an affiliate that govern the relationship.

Affiliate Information Page: a page or pages on your Web site that explains clearly and concisely what your affiliate program is all about.

Affiliate Link: a piece of code residing in a graphic image or piece of text placed on an affiliate’s Web page that notifies the merchant that an affiliate should be credited for the customer or visitor sent to their Web site.

Affiliate Manager: the manager of an Affiliate Program who is responsible for creating a newsletter, establishing incentive programs, forecasting and budgeting, overseeing front-end marketing of the program, and monitoring the industry for news and trends.

Affiliate Program (also an Associate, Partner, Referral, or Revenue Sharing Program): a merchant pays a commission to an affiliate for generating clicks, leads, or sales from a graphic or text link located on the affiliate’s site.

Affiliate Program Directory: directory of affiliate programs, featuring information such as the commission rate, number of affiliates, and affiliate solution provider. Associate-It, AssociatePrograms.com and Refer-it are among the largest Affiliate Program Directories.

Affiliate Solution Provider: company that provides the network, software, and services needed to create and track an affiliate program.

Auto-Approve: affiliate application approval process where all applicants are automatically approved for an affiliate program.

Commission: income an affiliate receives for generating a sale, lead or click-through to a merchant’s Web site. Sometimes called a referral fee, a finder’s fee or a bounty.

Cookies: small files stored on the visitor’s computer, which record information that is of interest to the merchant site. With affiliate programs, cookies have two primary functions: to keep track of what a customer purchases, and to track which affiliate was responsible for generating the sale (and is due a commission).

Contextual Link: integration of affiliate links with related text.

Conversion Rate: percentage of clicks that result in a commissionable activity (sale or lead).

CPA (Cost Per Action): cost metric for each time a commissionable action takes place.

CPC (Cost Per Click): cost metric for each click of an advertising link.

CPM (Cost Per Thousand): cost metric for one thousand banner advertising impressions.

CPO (Cost Per Order): cost metric for each time an order is transacted.

eCPC: stands for ‘effective Cost Per Click’. Affiliates that earn on a CPA or CPO will back their numbers into an eCPC. It is calculated by dividing total earnings by their number of clicks. For example, if an affiliate earned $1500 from 3000 clicks, the CPC would equal $1500/3000, or $0.50.

eCPM: stands for ‘effective Cost Per Thousand impressions’. Affiliates that earn on a CPA or CPO will back their numbers into an eCPM. It is calculated by dividing total earnings by their number of impressions in thousands. For example, if an affiliate earned $1500 from 75,000 impressions, the CPM would equal $1500/75, or $20.00.

Hybrid Model: affiliate commission model that combines payment options (i.e. CPC & CPA).

In-house: alternative to using an affiliate solution provider; building affiliate program architecture within a company.

Lifetime Value of a Customer (LVC): the amount of sales in dollars that a customer in his lifetime will spend with a particular company.

Manual Approval: affiliate application approval process where all applicants are manually approved for an affiliate program.

Merchant: an online business that markets and sells goods or services. Merchants establish affiliate programs as a cost effective method to get consumers to purchase a product, register for a service, fill out a form, or visit a Web site.

Pay-Per-Sale: program where an affiliate receives a commission for each sale of a product or service that they refer to a merchant’s Web site. Pay-per-sale programs usually offer the highest commissions and the lowest conversion ratio.

Pay-Per-Lead: program where an affiliate receives a commission for each sales lead that they generate for a merchant Web site. Examples would include completed surveys, contest or sweepstakes entries, downloaded software demos, or free trials. Pay-per-lead generally offers midrange commissions and midrange to high conversion ratios.

Pay-Per-Click: program where an affiliate receives receive a commission for each click (visitor) they refer to a merchant’s Web site. Pay-per-click programs generally offer some of the lowest commissions (from $0.01 to $0.25 per click), and a very high conversion ratio since visitors need only click on a link to earn the affiliate a commission.

Predatory Advertising: method that creates or overlays links or banners on Web sites, spawns browser windows, or any method invented to overwrite or redirect affiliate links.

Residual Earnings: programs that pay affiliates not just for the first sale a shopper from their sites makes, but all additional sales made at the merchant’s site over the life of the customer.

ROAS: stands for ‘Return on Advertising Spending’. This is the amount of revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising. For instance, a ROAS of $1 means you’re generating $1 in sales for every $1 in advertising spend, and a ROAS of $5 means you generate $5 in sales for every $1 in spending.

ROI: stands for ‘Return on Investment’. This is what all marketing managers want to see from the money they spend on their marketing and advertising campaigns. The higher the sales, the larger the number of shoppers and the greater the profit margin generated by sales – the better the ROI.

Super Affiliates: that small percentage of sites – the top 1% of affiliates, based on performance and earnings – that generate the lion’s share of the revenue for your program. They are born marketers and are very successful with the affiliate program they promote from their sites.

Two-tier: affiliate marketing model that allows affiliates to sign up additional affiliates below themselves, so that when the second tier affiliates earn a commission, the affiliate above them also receives a commission. Two-tier affiliate marketing is also known as MLM (Multilevel Marketing).

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