Today was a big day in the affiliate marketing industry. I posted earlier with a video from Sam Harrelson, founder of AffSpot.com talking about the launch of the new AffSpot affiliate marketing forum site.

I have known Sam for a while and respected his work and insight on his blogs CostPerNews, AffiliateFortuneCookie, and as the editor at Revenews. I bonded originally with Sam when he asked if “pinko lefties” like him were welcome at my Gospel Brunch at Affiliate Summit West a couple of years back. Come to find out that Sam is working on wrapping up his MDiv degree. I may just have to ask him to be our official CAMA Chaplain.

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Sam and some others including long time ABW’ers Billy Kay, Ron Bechtold, Kellie Stevens and Aunesty Jannsen came to the conclusion that the affiliate industry needed another place for discussion where all topics and areas of the industry (cost per sale, cost per lead, cost per action) were up for discussion and where opinions could be really freely expressed.

Sam and I chatted about the goals of AffSpot and the fact that this is not meant to be a replacement to other valued affiliate gathering spots like ABW, 5 Star Affiliate or noted “Black Hat” hangout Wickedfire.com , but another resource for people involved in all facets of the performance marketing industry.

I have launched a forum for my OPM company GTO Management as well as a forum for the Christian Affiliate Marketing Association there - I hope to see you on the threads.

God Bless,

Wade

I am really excited to be involved with the launch of a new forum for the affiliate marketing industry at www.affspot.com

Here is a video from AffSpot founder Sam Harrelson on AffSpot and what the goals of the forum are:

Forums like this are important because they are gathering places for the industry and places where people can exchange ideas in a public forum. As an affiliate, merchant, or service provider, there is much that can be learned from watching and more importantly participating in the discussion as you become comfortable and have something to share, whether this is insight on someone else’s question, or a question of your own.

You will notice that my company GTO Management and the Christian Affiliate Marketing Association have forums set up at AffSpot now. I hope you will join us there.

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 (203)