Category Archives: Business – Affiliate Marketing

Business - Affiliate Marketing, Route 53 - Life is A Highway

All’s A-Twitter…It’s Always On.

April 4, 2009 erikhom@aol.com Leave a comment

“My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there” – Charles Kettering, inventor

This marks the 5th year of the Web 2.0 Expo (3 years of the Expo and 2 years prior under a different name). I have traditionally found this to be the best palce to meet the best minds in the tech social media industry. It’s evolution is indicative of its name as when it first started people took notes on pad and paper feverishly as speakers spoke. Some brought tape recorders. But over the past few years I’ve seen more and more laptops with people using voice recognition devices to help. Laptops were everywhere and it resembled more of a college conference than a business conference. People often held them like a cup of coffee and dropped them and kept the nearby Apple store busy with servicing requests. This year was a little different as more people are now holding up their iPhones and Blackberrys and taping the speeches and then with a click of a button sending those clips to Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and Myspace instead of posting to their blogs and taking notes.

To be honest, the show was a little lacking this year and as one friend put it, lots of features with little business. The question is what is Web 2.0? Well it has many definitions: It is the movement from static (non-interactive pages) into more interactive pages. For many of you that means instead of looking at news page or a single page, it is more about communities and aggregation of information and content that is shareable.

So what does that mean? It means for example that the newspaper that you used to have delivered to your house is no longer relevant not because it is killing trees but because the news is old by the time you get it. The news on your newspaper’s website is old too. For example, let’s say you wanted to see a show. You used to check the newspapers for a review written by some paid journalist who got free tickets and that review might be old anyway or be written by someone you share little taste with. You could also get that review on the newspapers website with comments from people who have also seen the show and maybe agreed or disagreed with the reviewer. But now web 2.0 is different. You can find a community such as Youtube where people have taped snippets of the show recently with their cell phone and made comment such as “the lead actor was out sick” and receive the latest updates about casting changes, etc. Just like this conference, people have already posted photos and comments and I don’t need to wait until tomorrow morning to read about it from some journalist who was not able to watch concurrent sessions.

Now back to my friend’s comment. One of the wonderful things about Web 2.0 in the past was meeting the innovative companies such as Facebook, Google, MySpace, Twitter, etc. Hearing from all of these companies which were aggregating communities of shareable content. Well, that was seriously lacking. All you found this week were those big named companies which were trying to show you that they had infrastructure and platforms to help you with that content. What is exciting about that? The irony is that the company that was most talked about and most utilized, TWITTER, was only 5 blocks away and nowhere to be seen represented at the conference. Granted, they only have 30 people in their company and their business was overwhelmed by the people at Web2.0 who were sharing videos, photos, and “tweets” in large volumes.

So people of my generation and older always say, “Hey, what’s with the Twitter? Why should I do it?” I’m not here to try and sell anyone on Twitter, but my response is usually that if you are texting, using Facebook, Myspace, an iPhone, a Blackberry (or other smart phone), or have toyed with starting a blog, just get the Twitter account now and “wait for it”. At the very least, protect your name. If your name is Joan Smith, got to Twitter.com and sign up so you can save your vanity domain, www.twitter.com/joansmith. At some point you might start to receive some “tweets” and become interested enough to find out how to make your “content aggregation” easier. In fact, if you find that I don’t update this blog enough, you can follow me on my tweets and you don’t even need to go to my Twitter to see it. You can just look over in the right margin of this blog to see my latest Tweets.So now you don’t have to stay up late waiting for me to update you on my life.

My cousin’s kids follow me all the time. In fact I learn a lot from them. Of course some of these things I shouldn’t even know. Seeing your cousins kids in sometimes compromising situations is some of the “bad” about this new social media. Having to tell your cousin that you think their son or daughter has been doing some underaged drinking and posting it to their website is not my intention but my duty. Anyway, they follow me to hear about the latest concerts and other news. In return I get to hear all the new slang. The latest one was, just 5 minutes ago, “Erik, you are so AO”. AO? Yes, that means “Always On”. Well that is what Web 2.0 is. It is always on and you can find what you are looking for all the time.

Now you are probably asking….but wait. Why are you telling me this? I thought you only wrote about hotel reviews, celebrity sightings and cancer. Well truth be told is that I do have a job. The last 10 years or so I’ve honed my skills as an affiliate marketer with traditional products and platforms. But now Web2.0 and social media have created a new challenge. Many of these social media businesses such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are trying to show they can make money and have been trying to do it through advertising. Today the average user of Facebook spends 2.5 hours on it. Pretty good advertising opportunity, don’t you think? Well, now I’m working on some cool projects that provide completely relevant advertising content that is embedded and unobtrusive to the user. Shopping via social media is like hearing about something cool from a friend. When you talk to your friend, banners aren’t thrown in your face. They usally tell you about something cool they saw or heard or di and then you follow up on it because it sounds interesting to you. To me that is what collaborative filtering in social media communities is all about.

So how does a beginner begin to work with Twitter? Just set up an account first and start playing around with it. It’s pretty addicting. I will follow up with another post on some great applications to make your Twitter experience more enjoyable.

Business - Affiliate Marketing, Route 53 - Life is A Highway

The Onramp Back To Work

February 25, 2009 erikhom@aol.com Leave a comment

A vacation is what you take when you can no longer take what you’ve been taking. ~ Earl Wilson, former MLB Pitcher

Getting back to work even after just a short vacation is tough. Life these days in the mass communication, mobile, depressed economy world never lets you truly get away unless you make a strong conscious effort to leave behind the Blackberry, the computer, etc. I found myself on our vacation clearing out my email box every night. I just didn’t want to get back all stressed out from hundreds of emails.

Don’t get me wrong though. I don’t take lots of vacations and I probably take on more than I should, but these days it is hard to get away from work for long periods of time and especially in this economy, nobody wants to leave their job for too long. I did though enjoy the time with my family, especially my wife, to just get out of our house and put ourselves around different scenery. Disneyland and Universal Studios can’t be more different than work.

Getting back to work these days is tough. The economy has everyone up in arms. Our company has had its own layoffs (some just basic performance and others merger and re-organization related) but more than anything everyone is always concerned about what they would do if they lost their job. In this day and age most of us haven’t live through the Great Depression. In fact, most of us had parents who were only children during that time, so we are only living through a time that is nowhere near anything that our own parents have never seen. Or is it? During the Great Depression unemployment was over 23%. At the beginning of Reagan’s administration it was 7% and then now we are approaching 8%. The difference is that we are also dealing with a decreasing value of the wealth that has been accumulated as well as a lack of clarity on how we are getting out of this mess.

Even more worry is that I listened to our new President’s speech last night and I can’t say I’m as optimistic about what he had to say. I really don’t see how what he is saying is going to create jobs. I could see unemployment hitting 12%-15% before any kind of real job creation gets started. The people need more relief and the local governments need more support in getting relief to everyone.

For me, with two kids in private school, mortgage payments, upcoming tax filings (oh and the California government is bankrupt), and a shrinking 401K, I know I’m not that different from everyone out there who are just looking for a little breathing room. I also understand and can see how the government might feel like I don’t need any help. The uncertainty of the overall economy makes us all feel like we are one bad break away from a mini-disaster. I hear about people losing their jobs and homes all around me. I ran into an old boss the other day who runs the global financial industry practice for a major IT consulting firm and when I asked him how he was doing he said, “25% of my clients are going to jail, 25% have been laid off or shut down, and 25% are being nationalized, other than that, I just have to give a discount to the other 25% to make sure they keep me working”. Did I mention that this guy is one of the most optimistic people I know? Yes, he was smiling when he said that, but it still sunk in enough for me to write it here.

With all of this doom and gloom, I somehow went back to work and hit the road running. I felt like I had pulled into one of those small rest stops off the interstate for about 10 minutes, tanked up, took a cat nap and jumped back into Los Angeles rush hour traffic without using my turn signal! People were honking, giving me the finger and I was having to go faster than the speed limit in bumper to bumper traffic. One day back in the office with a quick update from my colleague about the things she needed me to fix and I was back on the road. Ironically it was only 30 miles from where I went on vacation. Orange County is one of those isolated places. A Republican stronghold in Democratic California, it is pristine, everyone looks great, and people there still smile and ask, “How are you?” and say, “Have a wonderful day!” Is this Stepford? I mean these people seem to not have a care in the world.

I needed to speak at a conference on the Web 2.0. Ironically these days I’m already thinking about Web 3.0. When I got back from vacation I found out that I inherited the work of a couple colleagues who are no longer with the company. My first thought was, “oh damn, now I need to start performing or I’m swimming with the fishes too!” Suddenly all the relief I got from vacation was coming back like a head rush. I didn’t pull an all-nighter, but close to it. I sat in my room all night working on several new projects, putting presentations together and drinking Pepsi. Early in the evening I did manage to take a swim in the hotel pool (my new favorite thing to do since a bathing suit is easier to pack than running shoes, shorts, shirt, iPod, etc.). I took the photo above of a beautiful sunset. it reminded me of Hawaii.

I somehow managed to get 3 hours of sleep, downed a cup of Starbucks and woke up a sleepy hungover crowd for an 8:30 am panel discussion. My all-night presentations seemed to be received well and I was back to work presenting my overnight work. Somehow those presentations seemed to be pointing people in the right direction too. Yeah, it was a productive night of work, but I sure hope that my road of life allows me to slow down again at some point. I miss smelling the roses.

Oh, and yes, I will be writing a review of the Marriott Newport Beach. A magnificent spot if I must say.

Breast Cancer - A Loving Fight, Business - Affiliate Marketing, Route 53 - Life is A Highway

Affiliate Marketing And Its Fight

January 11, 2009 erikhom@aol.com Leave a comment

Our success is a direct result of knowing how to market a brand and having the right people representing the brand. – Greg Norman, golfer

Lost among all the well known conferences going on in Vegas right now is the Affiliate Summit, a marketing conference for online affiliates and their networks. So while on the other side of the highway, the Consumer Electronics Show, the Adult Video Network Consumer Show, and Internext take place, we are quietly having our annual meeting.

What is affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer by paying them some kind of bounty or revenue share based upon performance. Its the same as a large company hiring a bunch of sales people to get paid for selling their product and they will get a commission.

I have been in this business since the late 1990s when I first left my comfortable consulting position to join the wild and fast internet retail industry. I joined a company called Reel.com which 6 months later was bought by Hollywood Video. When I first started, one of the key investors, a venture fund, asked if I could start an affiliate program similar to what Amazon.com did. Brashly I said sure. If they could do it for books, we could do it for VHS tapes and these new things called DVDs. I rapidly built into the 4th largest program on the Web behind Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and CDNow. With over 250,000 affiliates it was like being the sales manager of over 250,000 sales people. Each had their own quirks. Some wanted more money, some wanted more hand holding, some had problems with other affiliates creeping into their territory, etc. In the physical world it is similar to managing an army of Mary Kay or Avon door to door salespeople or those who used to have Tupperware parties.

The main difference is that almost anyone can set up as an affiliate. most people do this as a side hobby to collect a little cash, but the people at this concference are mostly professionals who make a living at it. There are many kinds of organizations who are affiliates. Coupon sites, Loyalty companies, Shopping sites, fan sites, donation sites, etc.

The big deal these days is how to capitalize on social media and turn your blogs and personal social media pages into pages of casual affiliation. Affiliate arketing has always been about B2B2C (Business to business to consumer) or B2C (Business to consumer). I think with social media it is about to change to B2B2C2C or B2C2C in such that you the consumer are hlping to virally sell to other consumers. How’s that? Well just think for example how you buy things today. If you want to go see a movie or a a record or a book. Many of you might read a review in the news or a magazine, but there are many who buy that record or book at the advice of a friend. Our job is to find those affiliates who are tastemakers and pay them for their heartfelt recommendations.

Well that at least is my personal take on where things are going. The key is building the right technology and processes for making that happen in the online world. The conference that I am attending does rev up my juices each year and helps to reenergize my batteries to keep pushing forward in a much forgotten and sometimes ignred part of the online advertising world.

This conference is led by two individuals, Missy Ward and Shawn Collins who act as stewards for awareness of the industry. Missy is also an activist in the fight against breast cancer awareness and has a site to make sure people in our industry support the cause. It is called Affiliate Marketers Give Back. Each conference ends with a little fundraiser for a fight to “Save the boobies” as Missy likes to call it.