I had the pleasure today of sitting down for a chat with one of my oldest friends in the business - Rachel Honoway - the VP of Marketing at Affiliate Classroom. Rachel and I go back to about 2001 when I joined Kowabunga Technologies as the original manager at Team Affiliate - KB’s outsourced program management division. Rach was awesome to work for and is one of the sharp minds in the business.

We talked quite a bit about the Affiliate Classroom Live event coming up on the Saturday preceding the Affiliate Summit East in August. I attended the initial Affiliate Classroom Live event in Las Vegas and it was well put together in terms of speakers and was well organized as well. My only complaint was that there were no tables for laptops and notebooks and that the chairs were not the most compfortable. Rach has promised more comfortable accomodations. The event was a full day event with more classroom content than networking time and was definitely intended as a pre-sell for the Affiliate Manager Certification that Affiliate Classroom was releasing at the time.

Rachel mentioned that this event will be more networking focused. There will be some classroom sesstions this time lead by Heather Paulson and Rebecca Madigan as well as a number of Round Table discussions lead by industry luminaries like:

• Peter Figueredo
• Trisha Lyn Fawver
• Lee “The Lead Man” Gientke
• Sam Harrelson
• Lisa Riolo
• Brad Waller
• Karen Garcia
• Wade Tonkin

Lisa Riolo’s presentation sounds really interesting as she is focusing on how to sell an affiliate program internally as this can be tricky. Affiliate marketing and the techniques involved can be a bit tricky to sell in some companies and I am sure that Lisa will have some awesome metrics that we can use to help make the case to either launch an affiliate program for the first time with a client, or to help garner more resources for the affiliate channel.

You can find more information and register for Affiliate Classroom Live at www.affiliateclassroomlive.com

 

 Rachel Honoway of Affiliate Classroom [18:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (122)


Today was an awesome day as I had the chance to Skype it up the one and only Gary ” Gary Vee” Vaynerchuk

Gary is “The Man” when it comes to video casting - his video site at www.winelibrarytv.com is a definite must see for anyone who either likes wine… or just wants to see an example of a passionate human doing what he loves… or both.

We talked about a ton of things… wine being the least of them. Gary talked about the history of the Wine Library and how he was inspired to jump into the world of video casting, social networking and new media. He talked about his goals (buying the New York Jets and having a healthy family) and the obvious disparity there.

We talked about some of his recent appearances on major talk shows (Conan, Ellen, The Big Idea, Nightline, etc) and he talked a lot about how all of this media attention is great … he’s most blown away the the number of people’s lives he’s been able to impact and the feedback he receives every day because of what he does.

Gary also talked about what a day in the life of Gary Vee is like - (there is a TON of email interaction with fans happening) and just encouraged everyone to go out and live life to it’s fullest. Life is a blessing that is fleeting and we have to go out and put our passions into play.

We also talked about wine a bit including getting a tip on some tasty wines from Portugal and a Pino Grigio to avoid at all costs.

Gary is a really inspirational guy… an immigrant from Russia who loves America and the opportunities it has brought to him and his family. My favorite thing Gary said in the call was this:

“When I was about 30, I woke up and realized that I just wasn’t happy with my life… I was about 99% happy… but that was unacceptable”

So- he decided to “Bring the Thunder” and step up his efforts to take his message of togetherness built on a platform if wine to the masses.

Gary has stated that his one major public goal in life is to buy the New York Jets (you’ll see their logo on his spit bucket in his video casts) and I honestly don’t put it past him. The guy has a passion for life and for his family and for wine ( and no doubt for the Jets) that just oozes out of him. I’m fired up just Skyping with Gary.

Gary has done some awesome things in his business, building his family business from a $4 million a year business to a $50 million dollar a year business by attacking every day with a passion for life, and with a passion for impacting other peoples lives and bringing them together via his business and via his personal brand.

So - for all those folks who have emailed or commented here asking how to get started - I repeat the question I posed to you. What is your passion? What can you do to “Bring the Thunder” in your life?

You can learn more about Gary Vaynerchuk at www.garyvaynerchuk.com or check out his absolutely awesome wine ramblings at www.winelibrarytv.com

 

 Podcast with Gary Vaynerchuk on Passion [13:37m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (145)


Last week, I spoke with longtime friend and partner in crime (not so much lately) Ian Larsen about content.

Ian was most recently the Director of Affiliate Relations at oneNetwork - the affiliate network operated by Digital River. He has recently moved into consulting and working on some affiliate side ventures and has been doing a lot of work lately on different methods for sourcing content for his web ventures.

Why the focus content? If you are going to make money on the web via affiliate marketing, CPA marketing, or increasingly, even paid search, you need to have content to draw viewers, engage them and add value to the conversation. Once the viewers are engaged they are more likely to interact positively with your advertisers and to come back to be marketed to again.

We talked about several ways of producing site or blog content:

• self generated - if you are an expert - write your own
• outsourced - this doesn’t mean stealing other peoples content - it means paying experts to write it for you
• user generated - let blog or site visitors provide reviews, etc.
• merchant generated - many merchants provide product info or reviews via a data feed

Ian spoke a bit about what he is doing on his site at www.cascadegear.com as well as some of the techniques and resources he is putting into play with the affiliates of his client Doba.com

 

 Ian Larsen on "Content" [25:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (70)


I’m definitely recharged after the long weekend, and I was excited that I had an early appointment this morning to chat for a while with Josh Wexelbaum of PositionLeap and the Scrappy Business Blog.

Josh is a Believer and an affiliate who makes his living promoting merchant offers via paid search with Google, MSN and Yahoo.  His affiliate work has enabled him to see the world through some really far flung travel that will be continuing shortly as he heads off to Shanghai for 6 months (have laptop, will travel)

I met Josh through some of his travels - he had actually rented a room with a former employers sister in Cape Town. South Africa.  We had the chance to meet in person at Affiliate Summit - with Josh joining us at one of the Christian Affiliate Marketing Association events.

Josh and I spoke today on a range of topics surrounding affiliate marketing using paid search - here are some bullets on what we covered:

• Josh’s entry into the business
• The travel friendly lifestyle affiliate marketing has made possible
• The basics of paid search based affiliate marketing
• Some of terms and conditions he likes to see from merchants and networks
• The importance of merchants placing conversion tracking code for Super-affiliates using paid search
• Some of the techniques he uses to test offers, then profit big from the ones that work
• Why merchants shouldn’t fear paid search affiliates if well regulated

I had a great time and we chatted for about 30 minutes - I hope you enjoy.

If you’d like to follow Josh and his writings and videos on online and affiliate marketing, you can check out his blog at www.scrappybusiness.com

 

 CAM Blog Podcast #8 with Josh Wexelbaum [32:01m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (176)

On Tuesday this week, I connected for a chat with Alejandro Reyes of Successfool.com. Alejandro is a Christian brother with a background in youth ministry (a passion of mine as well) who has a passion for helping people find success through exposing them to successful entrepreneurs who are willing to share their techniques and inspiration.

We chatted for about 30 minutes on a number of topics including:

• marketing with social media including Twitter and how he has been able to build a nice following for SuccessFool in a short time.
• the connection between ministry and marketing and how they are not exclusive, but complimentary
• the Illuminate Conference (July 29-August 1 in San Francisco) that looks to connect Christian affiliate marketers in fellowship and great content on SEO, social media, Affiliate Marketing as well as worship and fellowship
• the affiliate opportunity for Christian marketers to promote the Illuminate Conference

It was a cool discussion and I hope you enjoy it - please give me some Grace on the itchy throat

If you’d like to follow Alejandro on Twitter, you can do so at http://twitter.com/successfool

 

 CAM Blog Podcast #7 - Wade Tonkin with Alejandro Reyes on social media and Illuminate Conference [29:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (64)


I got the chance to chat with blogger, author, SEO stud and consultant Andy Beal recently.

Andy is the blogger behind MarketingPilgrim.com, the brains behind the Trackur reputation monitoring service and we actually worked “together” for a bit back in the day while he was at Websourced right after Think Partnership acquired Kowabunga Technologies. It appears we both left about the same time and it was actually out of his time at Websourced that his interest in reputation management and monitoring was kindled.We had a really good chat that focused on online reputation, how to monitor it, and why it’s important to do so.

We also spoke quite a bit about Andy’s new service Trackur- a really feature rich and easy to use reputation monitoring system that is also priced really affordably. Are you curious what is being said about your site on the web, in blogs, and in the social media? Give Trackur a try today.

To Andy’s credit, he also knew the answer to the last CAM Blog Twitter Giveaway question.

Enjoy!

 

 CAM Blog Podcast #6 with Andy Beal [25:16m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (23)

NOTE: This post contains affiliate links to Trackur - I recommend it because I use it myself and believe in the product.

I took some time last week to site down with Shawn Collins of Affiliate Summit and talk for about 25 minutes.

We covered a ton of topics including:

• Recap of Affiliate Summit West where a record number (~3000) of affiliate industry folks gathered in Las Vegas
• Look ahead to Affiliate Summit East in Boston in August including discussion of some new educational tracks that are being offered.
• Talkin’ Baseball - Shawn and I are both degenerate baseball fans and we’re excited to be in Boston and hitting a game in Fenway Park
• Talked at length about some new innovations including the new Amazon MP3 Widget and MyWedding Favors video integration with Qoof.com
• Quick discussion of Shawn’s video review site at WeViews.TV
• Talking a bit about how to get started in video blogging
• More talk on Affiliate Summit and what newbies to the business can expect out of the show.
• Talked about Affiliate Summit Twitter Giveaway
• Talked about the “Jim Kukral is ruining Twitter” controversy
• Shawn’s wife’s new blog at AsktheMama.com that has outpaced Shawn’s traffic out of the gate.

Read more »

 

 CAM Blog Podcast #5 with Shawn Collins: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (199)

 

 Jim Kukral on Finding your Voice in Online Video [19:57m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (42)


Last week, I had the chance to connect with longtime friend and mentor Jim Kukral to chat about online video and specifically, how people new to making user generated video can “find their voice” and use this to their advantage as marketers.

Jim and I discuss some of our favorite video bloggers as well as Jim’s new project OnlineVideoToolkit.com where he shares his techniques for generating quality online video on an entry budget of $200 or less.

Some of the video bloggers that we mentioned are:

Jim Kukral

Gary Vee

Tim Carter

If you are looking for a Christian example of awesome use of online video, search for “Mark Driscoll” on YouTube. Mark is the Senior Pastor at Mars Hill Bible Church in Seattle and is an awesome user of video to get both his sermons out, as well as some really fun shorter teachings and rants.

The main point of the discussion is that marketing with video is the wave of the present and near future. If you aren’t in the game, your competitor is or will be soon. The barriers to entry are low and you should not be afraid to jump into generating online video with passion on your area of interest.

To help folks who are new to the online video game, Jim has released a new free course at www.onlinevideotoolkit.com - check it out today.

God Bless,

Wade

I took some time last week to sit down with Anik Singal of Blog Classroom on Skype and chat a bit their launch that happened about an hour ago

As you can see in my previous post, I am pretty excited about the potential that Blog Classroom has in the affiliate space, and the Christian affiliate marketing realm as well. I think that blogs are an awesome platform for getting started in the affiliate business because they are easy for a non technical person to get into and they offer some distinct advantages in terms of Search Engine Optimization over building a site from scratch in HTML etc.

Enjoy the audio!

 

 Part 1 of PodCast focusing on impending launch of Blog Classroom [4:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (48)

 

 Part 2 of PodCast focusing on impending launch of Blog Classroom [4:59m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (43)

I am pretty excited about next week on the CAM Blog as I am going to be sitting down on the Podcast with Jim Kukral. Jim is a long time online marketer and blogger who I have worked with for a number of years on a couple different projects. Jim was the Affiliate Summit Blogger of the Year and recently was the MC of Affiliate Summit West 2008. He also hosts a daily video cast called “The Daily Flip” that features video’s Jim shoots with his Flip Cam that he has now infected nearly the entire secular affiliate industry with. In 2007 Jim launched Scratchback a fun “blog tipping” widget that makes it possible for bloggers to accept “tips” from followers and reward them with a link. Jim is a blogging and social media mentor to me and I am excited to chat with him.

We’re going to be chatting about “Finding Your Voice in Online Video” which is a topic that I think is really topical and awesome. Online video is very hot and destined to get hotter, and can be a powerful tool in both developing a following through Viral Marketing, but also when used to promote and review products and services as an affiliate.

Jim and I are chatting on Monday afternoon, so expect the podcast to be updated Monday night or so.