Blue Man Group to launch affiliate program w/ Partner Fusion

 Las Vegas, Nev. (PRWEB) December 4, 2007 — Blue Man Group, one of the top shows on the Las Vegas Strip performed nightly at The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino, announced today that it is launching a new affiliate marketing program at the beginning of 2008. The company has selected Partner Fusion, Inc, a performance-marketing agency in Utah, to develop and manage the program.

Blue Man Group plans to launch the affiliate program with its Las Vegas show and add additional shows and venues throughout the year. The company will use an affiliate tracking ASP platform to monitor and track affiliate sales in-house.

“This will be the third Las Vegas show that I’ve marketed through the affiliate marketing channel, and it’s the first time that affiliates will have the opportunity to work directly with the show’s production company versus a third-party, said Karen White, VP of Business Development & Marketing, Partner Fusion, Inc.

Blue Man Group, Las Vegas will also be participating in the “Bloggers Night Out” event during Webmaster World/Pubcon held in Las Vegas Dec. 4-7th. Both Affiliates and Bloggers interested in previewing the show are invited to participate in the event. For details visit www.PubCon.com. For information on the Blue Man Group Affiliate Program, please email bluemanpartners @ partnerfusion.com.

Latin America Travel Conference

I am going to be speaking at the upcoming “Travel Distribution in Latin America and the Carribean Summit” in Sao Paulo, Brazil. This is not your typical online marketing conference but rather an industry (travel) specific conference catering to companies who are just starting to dip their toes in the water of online marketing. I will be speaking during the search engine marketing track and am excited to meet with some of these companies and see what their views of online marketing consist of. Latin America as a “search market” is a couple years behind the US search market and the travel industry has long relied on consolidators and travel agents rather than directly pushing their own inventory. These factors make the travel niche in Latin America for search marketers irresistable.

CJ Announces Publisher Advisory Board

As reported by Vinny Lingham the CJ Publisher Advisory Board was finalized this week.  The full members of the board are:

Adam Viener, Imwave, Inc.
Connie Berg, FlamingoWorld.com / iShopDaily.com
Craig Cassata, MrRebates.com
Dan Murray, Ravenwood Marketing
David M. Lewis, 77Blue
Eva Klein, FatWallet
Jennifer Nissenberg, Upromise
Jeremy Palmer, QuitYourDayJob.com
Michael Coley, Amazing-Bargains.com
Paul Nichols, Ebates.com
Scott Jangro, MechMedia, Inc.
Scott Kluth, CouponCabin.com
Steve Schaffer, Vertive, Inc
Vinny Lingham, Clicks2Customers.com

These members will be the voice of the Publishers within the Commission Junction network.  Kerri Pollard, VP Client Performance, said:

“At Commission Junction, we are always looking for ways to develop sustainable relationships and improve our services to our clients in order to drive quality results. Keeping with that tradition, we aspired to enhance the communication channel between Commission Junction and our publishers. As a result, I am proud to introduce our Publisher Advisory Board (PAB).

Commission Junction will proactively obtain feedback from the PAB regarding successes or opportunities they observe throughout the lifecycle of a business or technical initiative. The PAB will collaborate with the Commission Junction executive board to implement enhancements in order to warrant success for all parties.”

Changes with Adwords

Google is rolling out changes to AdWords by week’s end. There will now be a column that will rank each keyword/ad and how it is performing on a three part scale, “Poor”, “OK”, and “Great”. This will help clarify why some ads have astronomical bids and some are just normal. In the coming weeks there will also be an algorithm change that will give advertisers the benefit of the doubt where little keyword data is available. Rather than jacking the bids through the roof, Google will allow a lower bid price until more data and performance is established.

Check out more coverage at Search Engine Land, and the official post from Google.

Affiliate Merchant Relationships

There is an interesting discussion going on over at ABestWeb on the Oreck forum. Paul Schroader, a founding member here at Super Affiliate Marketing is getting raked over the coals for requesting contact information from affiliates. The question boils down to this: do you let affiliates into a program after just reviewing their sites? Or should you do as Paul does and require updated contact information before allowing a publisher into your program? Paul asked me for my opinion on the issue and I chimed in:

…This is an interesting discussion and will be more and more relevant as this industry matures. This really is a double edged sword. Do you approve affiliates even despite not having current (or verified) contact information? (I know that some of us have it listed on the websites in our profiles, but there are many that don’t update that contact info or don’t have contact info listed at all). If you don’t approve these affiliates, how many super affiliates will you miss out on?

When I got into the business six years ago, I took the approach to stay anonymous. No contact info on my websites, register for all forums under a nickname rather than my own name etc., I found myself making a decent full-time living doing a cross between affiliate marketing and search marketing (both SEO/SEM). The turning point for me personally was reaching out to programs and affiliate managers to understand their program, their goals and putting my name out there.

So what you didn’t get approved. I’m a 5 bar-earner in CJ a CJ Performer etc, etc, and I get rejected on programs all the time or have applications stuck in pending status. Be proactive, e-mail the program. If there is no contact info listed for them in CJ send them an e-mail through the CJ interface. Find out why you haven’t been approved. Offer to call them to find out more about their program. Although counter intuitive to some, there are affiliate managers who are weeding out affiliates by seeing who will put forth the extra effort.

There really is a paradigm shift toward less affiliates and higher performers–especially for major brands. I know that almost all of you can come up with a couple (several) examples where that isn’t the case, but as you rub shoulders with affiliate managers at Affiliate Summit, CJU, etc you’ll find many are starting to take this approach. So for those of you who are content to make affiliate managers “jump through hoops” for you, beware, your days of dominance may be numbered.

As the industry matures we will see more and more requirements from programs so that this will be seen as a more legitimate business. I have one program in my portfolio that I would never have landed if I wasn’t willing to jump a flight and meet the affiliate manager in person. Now this program is one of my top 3 programs that I promote…

I really believe that this discussion will continue to be relevant for a long time.  Merchants are finding out that their are a lot of affiliates that seem innocent enough on the surface only to find out that they are doing very sneaky things behind a merchant’s back.  You know what I’m talking about, geo-targeting ads in locations where the affiliate manager won’t notice, day-parting ads so they show during hours the affiliate manager won’t notice.  Just to name a few.  So rather than sacrifice your brand, have to worry about a extra policing of the program, why not only accept affiliates that are willing to provide this information?

What say you?

Congratulations to incuBeta

Congrats to Vinny Lingham and crew at incuBeta for securing $3.4 million in venture capital from Mark Shuttleworth’s HBD. The press release states that the investment will help the company expand its presence in the U.S. and U.K. and fund the opening of offices in Silicon Valley. It is great to see investment of this scale in the industry. Money has been flowing into the affiliate networks for a while, but its nice to see the recognition of an affiliate in terms of investment dollars. Good luck to all involved.

Post Affiliate Summit-Jan 2007

This last weekend was the Affiliate Summit down in Las Vegas, for anyone who has not been there it’s a great event. Many of the top vendors, merchants, and affiliates are walking the halls.  If you make one good contact or get one great idea, the entire trip has paid for it self. Of all the networking and material you learn, the most important thing from any conference is what you do right when you get back. You come back with a million ideas and half a dozen directions to go in, but if you never put anything into action then it was all a waste of time. Action is needed, even if you have no idea of how your going to get from point A to Z, all you need to do is get from A to B, C will follow.

Welcome Paul Schroader

Super Affiliate Marketing are excited to announce the addition of Paul Schroader to our team of expert internet marketing bloggers. Paul comes to us with a long history in internet marketing that began back in the late 90’s with Flipdog.com. Paul recalls being advised to become an affiliate while managing programs by Todd Crawford in 1999 and has maintained that philosophy ever since.  He feels that in order to truly understand the issues that affiliates are dealing with, one must walk in their shoes. He has become a super affiliate (primarily using paid search) for a variety of well known programs. He presently manages affiliate programs for such well known companies as Oreck and Tabasco. Paul is also a founding member and the President of the Rocky Mountain Affiliate Marketing Association which includes affiliate managers from companies such as Overstock.com, MyFamily.com, BackCountry.com and 1800Contacts.com.

Welcome to Super Affiliate Marketing

Thanks for stopping by. We are launching a new site that will host some of the top names in affiliate marketing.  We’ll interview affiliate managers, super affiliates, and top marketing experts to help you in your affiliate marketing efforts.  Check back often.