The conference itself was a collaboration of several of the performance marketing industry’s best known players including Heather Paulson and her Paulson Management Group, Webmaster Radio’s Brandy Shapiro Babin and Daron Babin, as well as AffEuro.

In fact it was hard to tell who were the real organizers because the entire event went without a hitch.  I was lucky enough to be chosen to speak on two panels on Friday the 19th.  The sessions were well attended and I was honored to share the stage with Shai Pritz, CEO of Uniqueleads, as well as Graham Gochneaur, CMO of Clickbooth, both of which gave incredible insights on the panel named “How to Get What You Want From Your Affiliate Manager”.

I also sat on a panel that explored “Negotiation for the Best CPA or RevShare Models” with a brilliant woman who I had never had the pleasure of meeting before, Gillian Muessig, President of SEOmoz.org.  I found her explanation of how Outsourced Program Management works one of the best I have heard.  The session again was well attended and the questions were very well aimed at the subject matter.  My part of the panel was focused manly on negotiating within a CPA network and how to leverage yourself into higher commission payouts when you are new to the industry.

Overall the attendance was dominated by affiliates, which is quite different from other affiliate marketing conferences.  I believe the last count was over 850 affiliates out of 1200+ attendees.  I found it particularly well thought out to have a color coded badging system so that everyone could easily identify who they wanted to talk with.  I kept my eye on the red badges, as these were top affiliates who I had come to the conference to uncover and hopefully convince to join Offeratti.

I have to say I was successful in that endeavor, meeting literally over 100 affiliates over the course of three days.  many of whom have become Offeratti affiliates.  I am confident that come December, we are going to want to sponsor a booth and most likely an event at the next AffCon as it is being dubbed by insiders.  It was refreshing to have an event where the main starts got in for free and were extremely accessible and eager to learn more about the industry and how to succeed.  This was truly a show for affiliates where they could be in control.  Which isn’t always the way I have seen it at other industry events.

My hat is off to the organizers for pulling together a terrific show in a simply great location (Denver).  Thank you for putting the Affiliate back in Affiliate Conventions.

In Offervault, there are no less than 40 campaigns running right now that Feature a Google work from home type campaign.  The campaigns are generally along the same lines as far as content goes, they tell the end user to pick a niche, then start a blog or other website, place AdSense ads on it and start article marketing your butt off.

While the formula is simple enough to understand, get an army of marketers all selling people who want to be marketers.  Along the way Google gets richer and garners more traffic from searches because of this subculture of online marketing entrepreneurs.  Google seems to be a willing participant in this organic movement in that the sites that promote these types of campaigns all have Google in the name of the URL.  I can only assume that these sites continue to operate sans the usual Cease & Desist letters most infringement cases are plagued with.  I would hope Microsoft takes this cue as well.

So why isn’t Microsoft making Bing more attractive to would be marketers.  Granted they only have a sliver of the search market, Bing has been reported by Reuters as grabbing “12.1 percent of U.S. Internet searches for the work week June 8-12″, according to data released by industry tracker comScore earlier on Wednesday.   The prospect of having throngs of marketers promoting Bing as the next cash cow could add that and more to their numbers, without spending $80MM.

Google’s many Biz Opp campaigns for performance marketing channels is completely organic in its growth.  Marketers early on realized that niche websites can get clicks on AdSense text ads and in turn one can make a decent additional income from this sort of arrangement.  If MS with all of it’s monster marketing budget could transform Bing into an entrepreneurs dream, they could increase market share in Search.  Furthermore, if they could encourage Bing toolbar downloads, just as Google did with it’s toolbar for IE and Firefox, it’s share would grow even larger.

For Microsoft to shed it’s agency based marketing plans in lieu of online entrepreneurs organically growing their numbers, is probably a pipe dream.  But if they were to make Bing friendly to the online performance marketing channels such as CPA Networks’ publisher bases with a well thought out approach to getting these marketers to promote Bing based make money online campaigns (i.e. work from home type campaigns), they could save a lot of sheckles in the process.

What self respecting “I wanna be rich tomorrow, but only want to spend an hour or so a day getting there” biz opp prospect could resist the temptation of the headline “The World’s Richest Company Wants To Pay You To Start a Business.”  Turns out it, this would actually be a true statement.

When else can you get to talk to Yanik Silver about marketing using only sock puppets?

I have been a featured speaker at Yanik Silver’s Underground Seminars more times than anyone else.  Why, I have no idea.  But I do know I get more actionable ideas at is conference than at any other event I attend.  If he decides to do another (as if he has time with his Lifestyle, do yourself a favor and check it out.  You will not be disappointed with the business ideas and new partners you walk away with.  Yanik is a true business Maverick, in every sense of the way Sarah Palin intended.

I finally took the plunge after playing on the outside for the last 6 years I have spent in  mainstream online marketing and have decided to open my own CPA marketing network and advertising agency. I have been engaging IM guru’s over the past several months
to get me their best performing campaigns whipped into shape for distribution among affiliates and networks.  These are names like Shawn Casey, Justin Blake, Yanik Silver and many others that have confirmed their involvement as Merchants for Business Opportunity niche offers.

It seems this economy has taken it’s toll on many a launch list’s performance, as well as the lack of funds most consumers are experiencing, which makes for a perfect timing
to go downmarket with solid content.  In essence we are widening the net for these giants on Internet Marketing.

In addition, there are many solid offers that perform in other media’s and sales channels, but have not been ale to gain success in online marketing channels.  These offers are perfect for the type of split testing machine we have been building to optimize our own in-house Biz Opp offers.  So the network offerings will be a split between Offeratti’s own in house MONK (see below) built exclusives and exclusive third party advertiser offerings.

Offeratti was developed from the ground up to be a different performance network. Unlike some of the competition, here’s what you can expect when you are approved as an offeratti publisher:

• No Tiered Payouts on Downsells - Always Get Full Commission
• Live Dynamic Custom Split Testing - You Get the Highest Converting
  Control at ALL Times.
• Custom Landing Pages Tailored to Specific Marketing Channels (i.e. PPC, eMail, Banners, International, etc.)
• On Time Payouts
• Top Biz Opp Offers from The Most Successful Internet Marketers

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. What really makes us different is our dedication to building, testing and tweaking, which is done by our MONKS.

These MONKS of the Offeratti are our

Monetizing

Optimizing

New offer

Keepers

They are the reason our offers convert and why Publishers can trust that the Monks of the Offeratti are working every day to improve the quality of conversions.

Our Monks even have a jingle, take a listen here.

All the marketing hype aside, they represent our commitment to making Offeratti a truly Publisher centric network, that you can count on for top performing campaigns and a willingness to go the extra mile to ensure profitability for both Publisher and Merchant.  This is the only way I have seen success in my 25 years of marketing.

I hope that you will contact me at jim @ offeratti DOT com during the Affiliate Summit West show in Las Vegas to sit down and discuss how we can make money together.

For the initial launch of the network, I wanted to do something special for those publishers (and advertisers with lists) who help us get moving quickly.

BONUS OFFER: I am offering a limited time 12.5% 2nd tier (until 2/15/09) for all 2nd tier relationships.  Send me an email to find out how to qualify.

Just sign up at HERE.

Cheers,

Jim Lillig
President
The Offeratti Network

I got to thinking about social marketing real for estate agents and how they could easily benefit from having a FLIP player.  How real estate agents can use video is really up to your own personality, but as you shall see, you are not the star of the video, your client and the homes are.

Here’s how I see the Flip being used for real estate video marketing.  When you take clients through a home, give them your Flip player and let them shoot some video for themselves.  Encourage them to record the areas they like and can picture themselves and their family in them.  Once the walk through is finished the agent asks for the Flip back, the agent can upload the video very easily to the potential buyer via email or through YouTube or any other social network video sharing site.  They can even put it on their website and send buyers links in email, text messages or Twitters to their site to view it.

The key factor here is that now the potential buyer has personalized what they like and don’t like.  This makes a connection for the agent that is missing once the buyer goes home to think and discuss their choices.  Better than a pre-produced walk through video, this is “keeping it real” in real estate agent marketing.

There are several other benefits to this online marketing tip for real estate agents as well.  As buying a house is often a decision that may take into account several immediate family and extended family members’ opinions (as well as friends - read: more potential clients), the ability to send to a friend easily (email pass along), as well as being able to send links to the videos can help make the decision for a home that you are showing them.

The Flip makes this all very simple and user friendly.  Once you plug in the attached USB flip out (thus the name) the machine does the rest.  You can’t really edit the video all that much with the included software, except shorten the beginning and the end.  It does however record in .avi mode, so if you have a Mac or are handy with the video editing, it is your dream machine.

If you are so inclined, you may want to add in a simple pre-roll and post-roll branding for yourself.  This can be as simple as a title screen with your name, picture, phone and email information displayed.  If you are really inclined, you can add in a stock intro of yourself speaking directly to the buyers or a custom one highlighting the homes you have looked at in a day or a weekend.  Remember, using this method will help potential buyers sort out a day of multiple home tours or open houses much better, and you can be the cause of it.

Being unique and going that extra mile, can make the difference between making the sale or not making the sale.  When a solution this simple is in your reach, you should at least attempt it.  The worst that could happen is your clients think your are one hooked up agent.

MARKETING TIP FOR REAL ESTATE AGENTS:  Using YouTube or any other video file sharing service over the Internet will expose your video to 1000’s of people who type in keywords looking for specific video.  Please do not place anything on YouTube that you would not want the world seeing.

Having said that, if you use YouTube, Viddler or any other service out there (heck, use them all, TubeMogul will upload to 120 of them) you can very tightly target your keywords and description as well as provide a link to the listing on your website or to your page to contact you.

Make sure you use the town name (and surrounding town names but use the term “area” with the keyword to differentiate that the main town without the “area” is the town the property is actually in), the area’s name, the neighborhood name, the zip codes of surrounding towns, state, school district, home attributes (i.e. 2BR and 2 bedroom, fireplace, basement, etc.) and any other deep search keywords in the listing.  The keywords are what the potential buyer will type in, so think like a potential buyer and what they might search on, then use that.  The video now can be searched by anyone looking for those keywords in Google or any other search engine.  Tagging the video is very important.

The key takeaways are:

- you get a piece of reality TV that you had to do very little for that can now be a marketing piece for you,

- it took very little effort,

- help buyers make better choices and engage them in a new and refreshing way.

Since The Flip video recorder is about as stupid simple as you can get, why not give vacationers the option to have one to use for their trip for free, as long as they upload at least 10 minutes of video. If they don’t upload any video, then they get charged $25 for using it (or the full price of the unit if they fail to return it).  They could also give a Flip away every month to the traveler turned video-maven who gets the most views on their video.

Since both of these sites know well in advance of when a family or a couple is going on vacation, they could simply ask them if they want to participate.  If they do, then the traveler puts a deposit on a credit card (card is not actually charged) and the Flip (branded of course) is either sent to them or they could have a number of them stocked at the destination hotel.

For the length of their stay the traveller has the Flip to record their video.  I would suggest that they get the destination hotels to work with them to set up a station in the business center or right in the lobby, where the traveler is encouraged to upload their day’s video to the site.  In fact when they do upload content, they are also prompted to send a link to their friends and family via email or their cell phones.

Doing this would allow for greater content sharing as well as building up a library of user generated content that can be used with the travelers review of the property.  In addition, by almost forcing the traveler to give friends emails when uploading you are creating a wider circle of people who now will interact with the brand and be encouraged to learn more about what the Brand has to offer.

The Flip is a wonderful tool for brand’s to use to enable user genrated content.  What can you do to encourage your users to upload content?

AdReady from MSNBC.com, supplies ready made the creatives, you simply drop in the text, phone, picture, background color and website address you want to go on the Flash enabled ad and voila you are done.  Reminds me of SpotRunner, one of my favorite tools of all time, but that is another post.

MSNBC then displays your ad only to visitors of the site that are from the geographic area you want.  So if you are serving the San Diego area, only those people coming to MSNBC’s properties from the San Diego area will be served your ads on the Channels you specify.  Totally targeted, except the list of cities by state is relatively few and you cannot target by zip code.

But at what cost?  $16.50 per CPM.  With a MINIMUM $50 daily spend, means that for your $50 you are getting 3,030 impressions shown.  This would be fine if you could say, I only want to be on the pages that have keywords related to real estate on them if I were a real estate agent buying the ads.  But alas, you only get the 8 channels, which includes:

- News
- Business
- Entertainment
- Health
- Politics
- Tech
- Today Show
- Travel

Expensive.  YES

Targeted.  SOMEWHAT

Telling your friends you have ads on MSNBC for your home market: PRICELESS

ROI:  Probably Not Worth It.

CLICK THE PIC ABOVE
Make sure you visit the site.   It could actually use to highlight the video better as well as do a better job at getting more newsletter/white paper signups (i.e. prospects).  Overall the site is a very good example of a well done lead generation sitewhen it comes to moving products.  You have to give it up for anyone who can design a CentrifugeConfigurator.

epMotion’s Holger Eggert, Product Manager for Eppendorf says “The feedback from
the scientific community has been fantastic. As well as featuring ineditorials, including nature.com and nationalgeographic.com, there have been countless positive comments about the video in newsgroup posts.”  Maybe this will inspire other B2B social
campaigns.  We’ll keep you posted.

Thanks to BizMediaScience blog for this find.

Is the hype surrounding mobile advertising real?  With millions more cell phones than PC’s and laptops in play, marketers need to look at this channel as a vital part of their overall marketing plan.  But how can they overcome the roadbloacks such as display continuity across multiple carrier platforms and long wait times to implement short codes?

Recently I watched Ad Age’s 3 Minute Video Report What Agency Creatives Don’t Know About Mobile Advertising which featured Richard Ting, VP Mobile and Emerging Platforms Group for R/GA.  In it he lamented that there were three major obstacles to marketers dreams coming true of landing their  message on the cell phones of their targeted audiences.

These included:

-          Mobile creative teams are not usually involved in the campaign process from the beginning.

-          The diversity of platforms now widely in use on cell phones and the optimizing of the creative for uniform delivery of their content.

-          Short code campaigns can take up to 12 weeks to receive approval from carriers.

All of these are valid concerns, but there are service providers who can ease these pains for marketers. 

Until mobile is seen as a vital channel to the advertiser or their agency’s strategy development teams not much will be done to change the organizational structure of agencies and their strategy process’ to include mobile teams from the beginning.  They will remain focused on the tried and safe methods of putting up websites, optimizing SEO, sending out emails/newsletters, paying for Search and Display ads as well as  dipping their toes into the Social media space.  The key game changer will be the consumer themselves.  Their acceptance of handheld advertising will be the tipping point at which advertisers will begin to add mobile to it’s core marketing plans. 

The chart below shows the breakdown of offer types and how well they are responded to.  The clear winner is text messaging.  I attribute this to the cell phone’s capability, that is, the difference between a smart phone experience and a standard handset experience.  As iPhone and Smart Phone (i.e. Blackberry) type devices with built in GPS begin to replace older standard handsets, more consumers will be hungry for applications that will empower them to do more from their cell phone than ever before.

Recent research from Compass Intelligence, a global consulting and market analytics company, predicts that U.S. businesses will spend about $11.6 billion on mobile applications by 2012. 

Worldwide Mobile Ad Spending

This is important, but how do marketers today overcome Ting’s main roadblocks to a successful implementation?  Here are several resources that can speed any mobile campaign as well as ensure cross platform functionality.

Mobile Content

In order to optimize mobile content for all handset platforms you will need a company that has major experience and resources at their disposal in order to make it succeed.  SpeedShape provides clients such as Ford, Michelin, Jack Daniels, Chevrolet, Saab and a host of others with services ranging from creative direction and execution to platform specific encoding ensuring smooth and consistent message delivery by campaign.  SpeedShape can ensure that all creatives whether video, Flash, rich creative or any other multimedia presentation you have will look their best no matter size of screen or resolution.

Mobile Platform Development

This is a company that I was introduced to a few months age, InfoWave Knowledgeware.  This is a surprisingly nimble Indian based company whose main focus has been on creating multimedia and mobile technologies, 3D graphics and new media lifecycle management products and services.

 I was particularly impressed with their ability to sort out the cell phone platform issues with mobile phones here in the US and around the globe.  They support over 85% of all Internet Connected handsets in use today in the US.  This includes Windows Mobile, Symbian, J2ME, iPhone, Blackberry and now Google’s Android Mobile Platform (set to debut in October 2008).  They even show you a unique demo of how their mobile phone websites are functional, check it out. 

If you really want a turnkey mobile media campaign, they have it.  Mobile Media Campaigns for clients have been created using their 7 Step Approach to building and launching your Mobile Text Messaging Campaign, A Mobile enabled website, or a mobile application.  I really have not seen a technology company be able to seamlessly move into the marketing space as these folks have.  I have to admit, if I had a tech team like this (who understands marketing) many of the projects I have worked on would have gotten to launch faster.

One last thing, not only do they concept, develop and launch mobile marketing campaigns, they also monitor with incredibly detailed mobile campaign statistics and analysis.  This alone is something very few providers can roll into their mobile solutions for marketers.

Alternative to Mobile Short Code Campaigns

If you have ever waited for a short code approval from carriers then you know that a firm launch date is never discussed.  In addition, their no-recourse billing with frequent errors leaves much to be desired.  But since they are seen as the only game in town, most marketers bite the bullet and press on.

There is an alternative, Joel Comm’s TextCastLive Mobile Message Campaign Solution.  They are not much on their website in terms of info, but you can read my original blog post on TextCastLive here. 

In brief, TextCastLive allows you to display a number for the user to text a two word message to.  Those two words can trigger a number of events on the back end and automatically send out a series of timed mobile messages, subscribe them to alerts or updates messages, or even prompt an outbound call to the user if they double opt into it.  Those are only the tip of the mobile interactivity that users can be exposed to.  Joel Comm, is a remarkable online marketing promoter and someone who understands the value of customer relationship marketing when it comes to mobile.

I have always found that mobile messaging is about interest.  Using it to blast out infrequent messaging to your entire list is just not going to work in today’s protect-my-privacy-at-least-on-my-cellphone world.  TextCastLive allows you to “silo” unendingly to customize messages by any parameter, zip code, lifestyle, age, etc.  It also costs far less than Short Code and will be installed in far shorter.