Performance marketing technology provider Impact Radius announced the publication of a “Top 25 Performance Marketing Influencers” list.  Here is the infographic they provided in their press release:

According to their release,

“Designed to help advertisers, agencies and media companies seeking expert guidance in improving their revenue from performance marketing, the list, based on an Impact Radius independent analysis of the influence of more than 400 prominent performance marketing thought leaders, identifies the top people whose blogs, tweets and social metrics provide the most influential insights and advice for the industry.”

While I appreciate being included in the list, I’d like to go on record with my thoughts about this list, and lists such as this. This is not meant to be disrespectful to the folks at Impact Radius (and I know that they won’t take it as such) but in my opinion, it’s lists such as these which can lead to confusion, especially to those outside of the performance marketing/affiliate marketing industry, as well as to folks new to the industry itself. And, the last thing we need is more confusion.

Heck, we still can’t even agree on what we call ourselves in our own industry.

As I’ve been an affiliate marketer since the late ’90′s, I’ve been around the block a few times, so I’d like to share some points that I strongly believe should be taken into consideration when interpreting this list.

Caveat Emptor When it Comes to Folks that have “Made the List”.

I do not mean this as an insult, but there are people on this list that are simply NOT influential in the affiliate marketing/performance marketing space. They know who they are and they are likely wondering to themselves why they’ve been included.  That does not mean to say that they are not impressive in their respective areas of expertise; it’s just not affiliate marketing.  Just do your due diligence. OK?

Ranking People Using Social Scoring Does Not Give You the Whole Picture

Sadly, this list only used online social metrics to determine authority ranking.  Big mistake for many reasons:

1. Using social scoring immediately discounts the long term effects that the truly influential people have had for many years before Twitter, Klout and Peer Index existed.  And trust me, when these leaders do speak, their message is not only heard, it’s respected.
2. This list does not take into account a person’s offline influence or authority in alternative online sharing platforms, such as forums.  Just because these people do not choose to participate in Twitter, etc. does not mean that their influence is any less powerful.  
3. Klout, Twitter and PeerIndex can all be manipulated — easily. [Bots, frequency of posting instead of quality of posting, etc.)
4. Social scoring does not segment a person’s ability to influence within an industry, but rather provides just a single number to rank them across the board. So folks with large Twitter followings, high Klout Scores and PeerIndex scores in general, will likely outrank people that are truly influential in a specific industry.

For the reasons above, I’d like to recognize a few people who should have been included in this “Top 25″ list, as they actually have driven action and continue to drive the affiliate marketing / performance marketing industry.

• Brian Littleton, ShareASale.com
• Kellie Stevens, AffiliateFairPlay.com
• Todd Farmer, AffiliateMarketingPlan.com
• Scott Jangro, MechMedia.com
• Pat Grady, RhinoFish.com
• Eric Nagel, EricNagel.com
• Todd Crawford, ImpactRadius.com  (Yes, the Co-Founder of the company that put this list out, who has propelled this industry for many years, didn’t even make the list.)

Who do you think is missing from this list?

Affiliate Marketing – Then and Now
Join us for a Live Podcast via GoToWebinar on October 27 at 4 pm EST

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/730913250

Join host Deborah Carney in a roundtable discussion about how affiliate marketing got started and how it has evolved with some of the people that have been in it since the beginning. Are they in the same place they were when they started? Where do they see the industry going? We invite you to post questions below or to send questions to dc@merchantabcs.com be asked of the panel if you can’t attend or if you are shy

Panelists are Todd Farmer, Todd Crawford, Connie Arnold, Scott Jangro and Brian Littleton for lively discussion, history you probably don’t know, and ask them your burning questions about the beginnings of our awesome industry. Our industry is so young that we want to capture the thoughts about it’s growth some of the leaders in the industry. No one currently in our industry wanted to grow up to be an affiliate or affiliate manager, the jobs didn’t exist. But now, there are many young people whose parents are in the industry and they kinda would like to do what Mom and/or Dad does.

This will be recorded!

Title: Affiliate Marketing – Then and Now
Date: Thursday, October 27, 2011
Time: 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM EDT

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees: Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server
Macintosh®-based attendees: Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer

When I run into affiliates, merchants, networks, agencies, OPM’s, bloggers, SEO’s and others; that have never been to Affiliate Summit, the “Think I should go?” question usually comes up at some point.

To answer their query, I typically let them know what they would expect to learn and who they’d expect to run into, if they decided to attend.

But rather than hear it from my mouth, (because you know… I’m the Momma and as such, we all know our babies are gorgeous!) we had some footage shot during Affiliate Summit East 2011, this past August.

The video below will give you an inside look at the Affiliate Summit Conference & Trade Show and you’ll hear what some of our attendees have to say about it.  {Disclosure:  When I first saw this video I got a bit choked up….}

Affiliate Summit Insider Video on YouTube.

Still have questions? Shoot us off an email at http://www.affiliatesummit.com/contact/ and we’ll get back to you ASAP. Promise!

Will I see you at Affiliate Summit West 2012 in January?

“It’s All About the Cookies… and brownies and pies and cakes….”

An Affiliate Cookbook!

Since the 90’s, affiliate marketers have had a love affair with cookies – not the chocolate chip, or oatmeal variety – but the pieces of code that ultimately tracks affiliates’ sales and commissions earned.

These affiliate marketers are a diverse group. Some work part-time and earn enough to subsidize their income while others have created extremely lucrative businesses.

Ultimately, success is defined by the affiliates themselves.

To that end, I’ve asked affiliate marketers from around the globe to share their recipe for success and favorite cookie (or other yummy dessert).

The result is a business book filled with
mouth-watering recipes and thought-provoking insights learned on their road to success – an interesting read and a wonderful addition to your own kitchen.

Get Featured in It’s All About the Cookies…

As of today, I found out that I still have more room to include additional recipes before we go to print.  So, if you’re an affiliate marketer, please consider submitting your recipe here: http://allaboutthecookies.com/submit-your-recipe/

A Big Round of Applause!

A tremendous amount of thanks goes out to all of the affiliate marketers and advertisers who have contributed to the success of this book.

I’d like to also thank Jen Goode, Doodler in Charge of JGoodeDesigns.com Mary Poiley, founder of InternetCareerHunt.com; and Jen Goode, and Neil duPaul, my fantastic assistant who helped make this project a reaility.

Supporting “Affiliate Marketers Give Back” Efforts

“It’s All About the Cookies” is being produced to help Affiliate Marketers Give Back (“AMGB”) efforts to raise money to support breast cancer research, treatment, awareness and community programs.

100% of the net profits will be donated to Team AMGB’s 2011 Avon Walk for Breast Cancer.  Since 2007, with the help of countless affiliate marketers, AMGB has helped raise over $245,000.00 to help #SaveTheBoobies through various fundraising efforts including 40 and 60-mile walks, silent auctions, not-so-silent auctions, corporate sponsorships and lots of (sometimes) goofy promotions.

This book is no exception.

Jim Kukral was on the scene at Affiliate Summit West 2011, which took place January 9-11, 2011 in Las Vegas, NV to talk to people about the opportunities in the affiliate marketing industry and the Affiliate Summit conference.

If you’re looking for a place to point people that want a quick understanding of affiliate marketing, point them to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdZyAfuVeRs.

Thanks to Jim Kukral, Kim Riedell, Chris Brogan, Rosalind Gardner, and Todd Farmer!

Video: What is Affiliate Marketing?

This release went out today on behalf of Affiliate Summit.  I’m a proud mamma

AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 18, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Times are tough: rising unemployment, foreclosures, recession. Things are uncertain for many in the current economy, but not all.

Last week in Las Vegas, a record number of affiliate marketers got together to learn, network, and take control of their careers.

Affiliate Summit West 2011 brought together over 4,600 affiliate marketers at the Wynn Las Vegas, which marks eight years of consecutive growth for the conference.

The crowd of marketers was more than 10% larger than the previous year and more than 140% the size of the attendance from two years ago.

Affiliate marketing works like this … a website on a topic like a sports team or hobby features relevant ads. When a visitor clicks through to purchase the product being advertised, the website owner earns a percentage of the sale.

It’s old-fashioned commission-based sales with an online twist.

According to comScore, the U.S. online holiday shopping season reached a record $32.6 billion for the November-December period – that’s up 12 percent vs. a year ago.

Affiliate Summit East 2011, the premier affiliate marketing conference, is taking place August 21-23, 2011 in New York City.

Affiliate Summit launched a new discussion forum today at http://affiliatesummit.com/networking/ for marketers to meet, network and learn for free throughout the year.

About Affiliate Summit

Affiliate Summit was founded by Missy Ward and Shawn Collins in 2003 for the purpose of providing educational sessions on the latest industry issues and fostering a productive networking environment for affiliate marketers. More details at http://www.affiliatesummit.com.

Contact:

Shawn Collins / 512-522-7123 / shawn@affiliatesummit.com

Missy Ward / 585-GO-MISSY / missyward@affiliatesummit.com

***

I was recently digging into Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2010 report, which surveyed over 7,200 bloggers, and provided great insight as to who is blogging, what they are blogging about, why they are doing it, how often, and where they are blogging from.

There were some interesting key trends this year, including the growth of mobile blogging, the influence of women and mom bloggers on the blogosphere, and the growing trust consumers have for bloggers over traditional media.

But no other trend was more exciting to me than the compelling statistic that 36% of bloggers surveyed reported making money from their blogs. That number, while still low, indicates a significant increase from 2009, meaning that more bloggers than ever are attempting to make money from their blogs. Additionally, the data also revealed that bloggers who received revenue from blogging generally blogged more this year than ever before.

According to the survey, while self-expression and sharing expertise still lead as blogger’s primary motivations, a significant portion of part-time and self-employed bloggers admit to blogging to make money or supplement their income.

Overall, only 18% of bloggers surveyed reported a non-salary income from their blog in 2010. The most common ways of generating blog revenue were from display ads, affiliate marketing links, paid postings and search ads.

Unfortunately, the mean income reported was $9,985, which, in my opinion, indicates that (A) bloggers still view blogging as a way to subsidize their hobby, to some extent, or (B) they just don’t know how to monetize their blogs properly, but want to learn.

Over the last year, I’ve run into a whole lot of more (B)’s. This is very exciting to me, whether the newfound open-mindedness to content monetization was economy-driven or because bloggers have finally realized that it is OK to monetize one’s blog.

Either way, the affiliate marketing industry wins a brand-new crop of passionate content providers, who are outpacing other social media and many traditional media outlets, in terms of generating consumer recommendations and purchases, according to the survey.

Affiliate Summit recognized this shift early this year and subsequently created Monetize Summit, which makes its debut on the Sunday of Affiliate Summit West 2011 in January. This series of beginner educational sessions will focus on turning a blog into a profit center, making money using pop culture content, providing tips and tricks to increase conversions, and teaching attendees how to use a datafeed to monetize a site.

With more than half of the bloggers surveyed planning on blogging even more, and 43% planning to expand the topics they blog about, it is our goal to help those bloggers be able to afford to spend more time to do just that.

Affiliate marketing shares in the blogger’s optimism for the future and we welcome you to our growing family.

Technorati’s state of the Blogosphere 2010 Report can be read in full here.

The above blog post was written by Pace Lattin and appeared on IndustryPace.com

While I don’t necessarily agree with the fact that the “Affiliate Marketing World” and the “Brand World” operate as mutually exclusive as the author suggests, I do concur that as budgets get tighter, the latter will need to work with innovators who know how to connect with their audience to ultimately generate an action.

Affiliate marketers are those trailblazers… and we’re hungry. It is the combination of savviness and moxie coupled with the retailer’s belts continuing to tighten on non-proven ad spends that offer up a huge opportunity for the affiliate marketing industry to continue to flourish in 2010, which I previously wrote about here.

To read the full article, “Marketing War: Affiliate World vs. Brand World, who will win? Missy Ward Knows!”, that appeared on IndustryPace.com, click here.

Let me know what you think.

It’s that time of year when everyone is trying to predict how consumers will react in 2010 and beyond as we emerge from the recession.

But, there is no crystal ball needed to see that online marketing tactics are going to need to change in order to keep up with the new consumer buying habits and brand awareness that have developed since the downturn of our economy. However, with these changes comes tremendous opportunities and those that innovate will continue to thrive in the year to come.

Through technology, consumers are becoming more connected and the world is becoming much smaller. In 2009, I observed affiliate marketers invest in social media marketing and other relationship-building techniques on a much larger scale in order to communicate efficiently and in a more transparent manner, to subsequently build trust and consequently, increase sales.

I also spoke to numerous affiliates who were now focusing on creating their own content to add to their sites including words, images, audio and video in an effort to personalize their customer’s shopping experience and garner incremental sales.

For 2010, I see new technologies such as pay-per-call and other off-line tracking initiatives becoming more mainstream, and as such, new marketing opportunities will emerge. Additionally, with the popularity of smartphones increasing (along with download speeds), I believe 2010 may finally be the year where mobile marketing takes off and affiliate marketers really leverage this virtually untapped market.

I believe this will also be the year where smart online merchants, both big and niche that have weathered the 2009 storm will concentrate on solidifying the relationships they have with their affiliates.

See, they know that us affiliate marketers have the advantage over so many other companies and industries. We know how to leverage trends. We’re used to bootstrap-marketing. We know how to fail and rebound swiftly. And yes, we know how to hustle.

These strengths coupled with retailers’ belts continuing to tighten on non-proven ad spends offer up a huge opportunity for the affiliate marketing industry to continue to flourish.

So, what say you? Please share your affiliate marketing industry predictions for 2010.

Today’s AskMissyWard.com affiliate marketing question comes from Chris Gar who asks:

“What WordPress template would you recommend for a new affiliate that allows it to be used for multiple sites and includes all the bells and whistles like seo opt, and all of the social media links, etc. I’m not necessarily looking for a free template, just a good one.
Thank you.”

Hey Chris,

There’s only one solution that will fit your needs that I wholeheartedly recommend and that is Thesis For WordPress, by DIYThemes.

Now, that being said, I must disclose that I used to oversee their affiliate program for charity. However, before I worked for them, I was an extremely satisfied customer and recommended the Thesis for WordPress theme, to anyone who was in the same boat as you. I currently use Thesis Theme on MissyWard.com, FeedFront.com and GeekCast.fm.

The main reason why I am a happy Thesis for WordPress user resides in the fact that while I know enough about designing, coding and SEO to be dangerous, any tool that can help me spend less time doing this kind of stuff and let me concentrate on marketing, is a godsend.

The skillfully-coded HTML + CSS + PHP framework that Thesis for WordPress runs on makes optimizing each page of your site for the search engines, super easy.

Here is a video showing how easy it is to control every page of your site using Thesis for WordPress:

The Thesis option panels also allow you to make design changes very easily. Whether you’re looking for a 1, 3 or 3-column option, you can test out tons of different layout and font options with just a few clicks of your mouse.

Most recently, Thesis 1.8 was released boasting new design controls making it even easier to construct your site exactly the way you want it. Here is a quick video showing how simple it is to design a site using Thesis.

Most importantly, the support staff is terrific and always there in a pinch if you get stuck on something. Additionally, there are dozens upon dozens of Thesis for WordPress users that post tutorials on how they’ve made things happen on their blogs. Couple this with the video tutorials that the DIYThemes staff creates and you’ll find that the learning curve for using Thesis is fairly small.

There are two options for purchasing Thesis For WordPress. First, there is a Personal Copy which is only $87. This will allow you to use Thesis on one website. Based on your question though, it looks like you’re wanting to use it on multiple websites, so I’d recommend that you pick up the Develolper’s License which will allow you to use Thesis on as many sites as you want. This option is only $164.

I hope this helped you with our decision, but I’m here if you have any other questions.

If you decide to purchase DIYThemes’ Thesis for WordPress, please consider using my affiliate link. (Hey, I am an affiliate marketer after all, ya know.)