January 4, 2008 podcast (about 22 mins / 10mb’s)

Download the MP3 File

Shownotes

-Obama’s Iowa Victory Speech
-Edison Fries an Elephant 100 Years Ago Today - Wired
-Google’s OCR Patent a Game Changer?? InformationWeek and Techcrunch. More on TechMeme
-eBooks Not Worth Their Weight in Paper - Carsten Cumbrowski on ReveNews
-Don’t Spam: King Ralsky Indicted - The Register
-Great, Here Comes the Facebook Malware - Secret Crush App
-OLPC and Intel Break Up - PCWorld
-Shawn’s OLPC Post
-Asus eee
-Photos of my Asus eee

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*Image via Point Oh! (a great online marketing read, btw)*

Vlad has taken (what I think is the correct) step in removing PayPerPost from his blog due to its inability to convert unless you have a large subscriberbase and Alexa ranking (even though we all know how worthless Alexa rankings are becoming).

Should you follow Vlad’s lead?  I think so…

From the affiliate point of view my merchant simply cant convert. I do not pretend to have send them and army of bloggers, according to the statistics in my account I have referred them only 8 bloggers since April. However all of them are still listed as pending.

My Affiliate Journey - Affiliate Marketing Blog by Vlad

Fraser Edwards writes more of his thoughts on the situation of an affiliate manager directly competing with his affiliate partners. Interesting and thought provoking example of what not to do as a manager and what to look for as an affiliate…

It does raise some questions though about preventing affiliate managers from competing with their affiliates. They have access to a wealth of information that makes it easy to compete with their affiliates and unfortunately I suppose this could be easily done through a false name. On one hand it’s good for affiliate managers to have experience on the affiliate side but should it also be part of their employment terms that neither they or their families will operate as affiliates on any programs they manage?

Marcel Ellis - Affiliate Manager Corruption? - Fraser’s Affiliate Marketing Blog

The increasingly popular social networking site Facebook recently opened its doors to 3rd party developers and gave access to it’s 20 plus million users for no charge.

While some are dubbing Facebook the new “Social Operating System” since so many programs and platforms can be managed inside the Facebook interface by users, there are some questions about the long term potential for steady growth and revenue.

Namely, advertisers have to step up to the plate and embrace Facebook’s open vision, as this post below from Online Spin points out.

However, could affiliates lead the charge to help insure Facebook’s success while helping to monetize the platform in an organic and “non-gaming” manner? Affiliates led the way on the monetization of search, so is social media the next gold rush opportunity?

As social media players shift strategies, the questions advertisers have to ask themselves include: What are we as advertisers doing to match the pace of change in social media? How can advertising support the open social media ecosystem? What value can our advertising creative and our brands’ social currency add to the social media ecosystem?

Online Spin » Blog Archive » What The Social Media OS Strategy Means To Advertisers

For affiliates using services such as ReviewMe or PayPerPost, remember that it’s in your best interest to always practice full disclosure of who is paying you!

Here’s a video of the FTC’s Eileen Harrington discussing the FTC’s views on word of mouth marketing and consumer protection at last January’s Affiliate Summit…

Word of Mouth Marketing

Affiliate Summit Videos: Word of Mouth Marketing

Yet another reason to not build or rely on “arbitrage” or “Made for AdSense” sites…

Numerous AdSense publishers have been receiving emails from Google the past couple of days stating that their use of their AdSense account is an unsuitable business model and that accounts would be disabled as of June 1st …

Techmeme: Google AdSense disabling arbitrage publisher accounts as of June 1st (Jenstar/JenSense)

The lure of quick and easy cash might be appealing in a seemingly anonymous digital world. However, if you are a new or old affiliate, it’s important to remember that there are others in the industry (especially affiliate manager) who have seen it all.

Affiliate managers, for the most part, do pay attention to stats and can pick out a scam much quicker than many people give them credit for.

So, as you’re reading blogs and forums trying to find a new and profitable way to do your marketing, keep in mind that you are not doing business in a vacuum…

In case any aspiring dregs think this is some new, clever idea, it’s not. The affiliates at the bottom of the barrel have been engaging in this sort of thing for a long time.

The Numskull Underbelly of Affiliate Marketing at Affiliate Tip Blog by Shawn Collins

“CSO Magazine has an article about “The Scourge of Image Spam,” with an explanation of its effect (a year ago, fewer than five out of 100 e-mails were image spam; today, up to 40 percent are in that category, and image spam is the reason spam traffic overall doubled in 2006). You might already know about that, ho-hum. But what’s even cooler is a interactive graphic page which demonstrates the various methods used by image spammers and how it works.”

Slashdot | How Image Spam Works