This week on the Affiliate Thing podcast, Shawn Collins and Lisa Picarille preview Affiliate Summit West 2012, covering the list of parties, tips for first time attendees, and how to get a free massage in Las Vegas.

We also talked about the new issue of FeedFront magazine, finding tickets for the sold out conference, and Eric Nagel’s whiteboard sessions.

Show Links

• Starting a New Year’s Resolution? Gympact Makes You Keep It or Pay
• I Got Issue 17 of FeedFront in the Mail
• Parties at Affiliate Summit West 2012
• Affiliate Summit West 2012 Raises $5,000 to Fight Breast Cancer
• First Timers Guide for Affiliate Summit West 2012
• Free Massages at Affiliate Summit West 2012
• Affiliate Summit West 2012 Passes on eBay
• Upgrade Your Affiliate Summit West 2012 Pass
• Early Bird Whiteboarding with Eric Nagel at Affiliate Summit West 2012
• My Top 9 Online Organizational Tools for Business in 2012
• Sam Harrelson on a Segway

Subscribe to the Affiliate Thing RSS feed or listen on iTunes. You can also send a blank e-mail to affiliatething@aweber.com to get each podcast delivered by e-mail.

A mixed bunch of podcasters from GeekCast.fm had an open, candid discussion about the hot topics in affiliate marketing at Affiliate Summit East 2009.

Affiliate Summit is the premier affiliate marketing conference.

More information at http://www.affiliatesummit.com/

Video: GeekCast.fm Live at Affiliate Summit East 2009

Jim Kukral interviewed Phil Ayres, Senior Manager of Affiliate Marketing for Hotels.com in the lead up to Affiliate Summit East 2011.

Here are the questions they discussed…

• Let’s get right to it. Why should an affiliate join the Hotels.com affiliate program?
• So you guys run a big operation with this program, that’s evident. I know you can’t say specifically, but you have affiliates earning a lot of money with you right?
• What does the program pay out and all the details?
• What types of affiliates do best with your program?
• I know you can’t give out your top affiliate’s secrets, but can you tell me at least a few ways that top affiliates earn with your program?
• How can an affiliate sign up for your program?
• What’s a typical day in the life of an affiliate manager like you?

More details on the Hotels.com affiliate program at http://www.hotels.com/deals/travel-affiliate-program/.

Bryan Eisenberg is a New York Times best-selling Author of multiple books, a top-rated professional speaker and advisor to numerous venture backed companies. We’re excited to have him as a keynote on Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at Affiliate Summit East 2011

Recently, Jim Kukral sat down with Bryan to talk about his upcoming keynote.

Bryan shared some tidbits about his upcoming keynote, titled “21 Secrets of Top Converting Websites”, and as you will hear from Bryan, this presentation has taken him over 10-years to put together based upon his experiences.

He will focus on showing both experts and beginners how to optimize and test their websites and landing pages for more conversions.

Bryan’s bio:

Bryan Eisenberg is the co-author of the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, USA Today and New York Times bestselling books “Call to Action”, “Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?” and “Always Be Testing”. Bryan is a professional marketing speaker who has been the keynote speaker for corporate events and conferences such as Search Engine Strategies, Shop.org, Direct Marketing Association, MarketingSherpa, E-consultancy, Webcom, SEM Konferansen Norway and the Canadian Marketing Association. He is also the co-founder and Chairman Emeritus of the Web Analytics Association. Bryan serves as an advisory board member of Search Engine Strategies, the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit and several venture capital backed startup companies (ie. Bazaarvoice, iPerceptions, UserTesting.com, ClickEquations, etc.) and is on the board of trustees of the Direct Marketing Education Foundation. Bryan Eisenberg is the recognized authority and pioneer in online marketing, improving online conversion rates, Persuasion Architecture, and persona marketing. Bryan was recently recognized by eConsultancy members as one of the top 10 User Experience Gurus and and he was selected as one of the inaugural iMedia Top 25 Marketers, and a DMEF Rising Star Award winner in 2010. Bryan has been a featured expert by The Wall Street Journal and the The New York Times and been quoted in Business 2.0, CXO Europe, Advertising Age, CNN, Forrester Research, Jupiter Research, Miami Herald, Publish, Internet Advertising Report (IAR), Chicago Business Tribune, Inc Magazine, Entrepreneur, Target Marketing, DM News, Microsoft’s bCentral, MarketingSherpa, the Toronto Star, Smart Money & Internet Retailer for his thought leadership in the critical area of internet marketing and improving online conversion rates. In 1998, Bryan co-founded FutureNow Inc., the company has been helping businesses generate more engagements, leads, subscriptions, and sales with its unique framework he helped develop, Persuasion Architecture®. Bryan’s proudest professional accomplishments are the thousands of companies, students and clients, including HP, NBC Universal, GE, WebEx, Overstock and Dell, that have consistently enjoyed dramatic improvement in sales.

More details on Affiliate Summit East 2011 at http://www.affiliatesummit.com.

Best selling author Marc Ostrofsky, recently appeared on The View, and we’re excited to have him as the opening keynote on Sunday, August 21, 2011 at Affiliate Summit East 2011.

Recently, Jim Kukral sat down with Marc to talk about his upcoming keynote.

Marc’s bio:

You’ve seen him on ABC’s 20/20, The Today Show, Wall Street Journal, NY Times, USA Today and 1000 other media outlets. He is in the Guinness Book of World Records for selling the domain name Business.com for $7.5 Million. He founded the PrePaid Phone Card Industry, 5 Magazines and 12 Trade Shows – Sold for over $50 Million. He raised $60 Million for his last business with partner w/ Howard Schultz, founder of Starbucks. He owns Internet Firms: Blinds.com, CuffLinks.com, SummerCamps.com, eTickets.com and Get Rich Click.com. He owns domain names MutualFunds.com, Consulting.com, Photographer.com, Bachelor.com, BeautyProducts.com, TechToys.com and 300+ others. His book, Get Rich Click, has testimonials from Steve Wozniak, Co-founder of Apple, Steven Covey, Jack Canfield, Jeffrey Gitomer, Keith Ferrazzi, Robert Allen, Les Brown and other Bestselling authors and experts. Marc is an Entrepreneur, Venture Capitalist, Author, Speaker Coach and Father of 5 teenage daughters.

More details on Affiliate Summit East 2011 at http://www.affiliatesummit.com.

Wil Reynolds has been routinely rated as the best speaker for years by Affiliate Summit attendees, and we’re excited to have him keynote on Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at Affiliate Summit East 2011.

Recently, Jim Kukral sat down with Wil to talk about his upcoming keynote. Wil explains why he is such an engaging speaker, and shares some secret previews of what he’ll be speaking about on stage this August.

Wil’s bio:

Over the past 13 years, Wil Reynolds has dedicated himself to doing two things well: driving traffic to sites from search engines and analyzing the impact that traffic has on the bottom line of companies. Wil’s career began at a web marketing agency in 1999, where he spearheaded the SEO strategies for companies like Barnes & Noble, Disney, Harman Kardon, Debeers, Doubleclick, Hotjobs, and Mercedes Benz USA. For the last 6 years, Wil and the team of search professionals at SEER Interactive have been assisting clients in maximizing their visibility and sales using search engines in both SEO and SEM. You can catch Wil speaking with anyone who wants to learn about search, whether it is in a coffee shop or a major conference, it just runs through the veins! His goal at every speaking engagement is simple: Make sure everyone walks out with at least 1 new piece of information or perspective on an SEO topic.

More details on Affiliate Summit East 2011 at http://www.affiliatesummit.com.

This week on the Affiliate Thing podcast, Shawn Collins and Lisa Picarille discuss the year over year rise in online retail, why a dog loves ShareASale, and the parties at Affiliate Summit West 2011.

Also, Affiliate Summit West 2011 is sold out, the favorite conferences of black hats, and Bank of America wastes money trying to salvage their image.

Show Links

• U.S. Online Holiday Sales Up 15%
• A Very Special Dog Christmas from ShareASale
• Parties at Affiliate Summit West 2011
• Trivia Tweetup During Affiliate Summit West 2011
• First Timers Guide for Affiliate Summit West 2011
• Affiliate Summit West 2011 is Officially Sold Out
• The Secret Life Of The Black Hat SEO
• FTC Charges Massive Internet Enterprise with Scamming Consumers Out of Millions Billing Month-After-Month for Products and Services They Never Ordered
• Big Companies Wasting Money on Defensive Domains

Subscribe to the Affiliate Thing RSS feed or listen on iTunes. You can also send a blank e-mail to affiliatething@aweber.com to get each podcast delivered by e-mail.

Congratulations to Cory Booker on being re-elected to his second term as Mayor of Newark, NJ.

Back in August 2008, Cory Booker delivered the keynote address to attendees of Affiliate Summit East 2008 in Boston.

If you’re not familiar with Mayor Booker, he’s a fantastic speaker with a message that really resonated with the audience at Affiliate Summit. Some in the audience were literally moved to tears.

Prior to his first election as Mayor of Newark, NJ in 2006, Cory Booker was a varsity football player and class president at Stanford University, a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, he holds a law degree from Yale University, and a fixture on Twitter .

Transcript: Cory Booker at Affiliate Summit East 2008
Video: Cory Booker at Affiliate Summit East 2008

This session took place at Affiliate Summit West 2008 in February 2008.

Asymmetric Warfare: Battling Fraudulent Affiliates

A few bad apples can seriously undermine an otherwise successful affiliate program. Stop playing Whack a Mole. Advanced, hands-on techniques to combat these rogues en masse will be presented.

•Graham MacRobie, President and CEO, CitizenHawk, Inc. (Moderator)
•Larry Adams, Affiliate Product Manager, DoubleClick Performics
•Jason Hayden, Internet Brand & Domain Name Manager, Greenberg Traurig
•Joshua Sloan, Director of Online Marketing, 1&1 Internet, Inc.

Video: Affiliate Summit West 2008 –Asymmetric Warfare: Battling Fraudulent Affiliates

This session took place at Affiliate Summit West 2008 in February 2008.

Social Media Strategies in Affiliate Marketing

With almost 50% of Internet users now creating and sharing their own content, this new medium is changing how markets operate and how companies communicate with consumers.

•Sam Harrelson, VP of Business Development, OnCard Marketing (Moderator)
•Stephanie Agresta, Partner, The Conversation Group
•Justine Ezarik, iJustine
•Tris Hussey, Training Manager, b5media
•Deborah Schultz, Principal/Chief Strategist, DeborahSchultz.com

Video: Affiliate Summit West 2008 –Social Media Strategies in Affiliate Marketing