I recently had a nice chat with Ken Evoy, founder of SiteSell and creator of SBI!, and we discussed the differences between blogging vs. building a theme-based content site.

I’ve known Ken since the 90′s(!), when I read his book “Make Your Site SELL!” (MYSS!), and it was fun to catch up and talk about creating affiliate sites.

Some things we touched on…

• The changes in the affiliate marketing landscape from 1997 to today
• What you need to know when starting an affiliate business now
• Who blogging is for (and not for)
• Who theme-based content sites are for
• What happens when you take a break from blogging
• What happens when you put a content site on auto-pilot
• Socialization of the Net and how it augments your business
• Which platforms deliver a complete package of process-and-tools for building a successful e-business

Enjoy the chat and if you haven’t gotten your first affiliate site up, yet, get it going.

Anybody can do it – it just takes patience, diligence, and a unique idea.

The Affiliate Marketing 3.0 panel was part of the first ever SES Affiliate Marketing Forum in New York City on Thursday, March 25, 2010.

The panel covered the future of affiliate marketing, as well as current issues, such as the advertising tax and innovations in affiliate marketing.

The moderator was Kristopher Jones, President of the Pepperjam Network, and the panelists were:

• Todd Crawford, Co-founder, Impact Radius
• Oliver Roup, Founder & CEO, VigLink
• Shawn Collins, Co-Founder, Affiliate Summit
• Nick Pahade, President, True Action

The session was recorded on my Nexus One, so it’s not tied directly into the sound system. Thanks to Vinny O’Hare for the tip on the DroidRecord app.

There was an advertising tax roundtable run by Tax Analysts on Friday, February 5 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, and they’ve allowed us to share the audio on GeekCast.fm.

Here is the description of the discussion:

Please join us for a discussion about whether states should tax Internet or other kinds of remote sales, and if so, how. Should states pursue “Amazon” laws that New York and Rhode Island have adopted and other states are considering? Or should Congress enact legislation to enable states to pursue a multistate solution?

The following folks participated in the roundtable:

• Christopher Bergin, President and Publisher, Tax Analysts (Moderator)
• Stephen Kranz, Partner, Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan
• George Isaacson, Senior Partner, Brann & Isaacson
• Scott Peterson, Executive Director, Streamlined Sales Tax Governing Board
• Michael Mazerov, Senior Fellow, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

More details on Tax Analysts at http://www.taxanalysts.com/.

Back in the spring of 1999, Cindy Arko (then Aylward) hired me to join her and James Marciano to run Refer-it.com, the first affiliate program directory.

Prior to my joining them, they ran the first Affiliate Solutions conference at the Harvard Club in early 1999.

It was an exciting, explosive time in affiliate marketing back when affiliate directories mattered and the first affiliate conference was getting off the ground.

The first Affiliate Solutions conference I attended was on December 2, 1999 in New York City. It was also the first conference where I was a speaker.

Shortly after, I wrote a recap of Affiliate Solutions NYC 1999 for ClickZ.

Anyhow, I met up with Cindy for lunch today and we had a quick chat about how she got started with Refer-it and Affiliate Solutions.

The “Five Successful Strategies for Monetizing Blogs” presentation was given by Affiliate Summit Co-founders Missy Ward and Shawn Collins at the Inbound Marketing Summit on May 27, 2009 in Dallas, TX.

It’s not easy making money with affiliate programs. You’re a blogger, not a marketer, right? There’s no reason you can’t be both. Affiliate marketers Missy Ward and Shawn Collins will provide proven tactics to monetize your blog, and associated photos, videos, podcasts, and Tweets. This presentation will outline the multiple tactics available to provide action items that enable you to be both a successful artist and entrepreneur. Methods will be categorized into one of five focused strategies for blog monetization.

The presentation is available to view or download at http://www.slideshare.net/affsum/five-successful-strategies-for-monetizing-blogs.

One of the key tactics for an affiliate is redirecting and/or cloaking affiliate links.

Affiliates cloak their links for a variety of reasons, but I do it so my affiliate links will be short, so I can use then in text email newsletters, and some people don’t like clicking affiliate links.

While there are many ways to redirect and cloak affiliate links, I am covering two: .htaccess and a software program called Ninja Affiliate.

Personally, I use .htaccess, which is a fairly simple file anybody can create (see the steps in my Affiliate Link Redirecting and Cloaking video), because it’s quick and easy. Also, it’s free.

One thing about .htaccess though is that if you enter a line in the wrong format, it can bring down your site. So always test, and if this happens, take the file down from your server while you troubleshoot.

The Ninja Affiliate program program is easy to use and has lots of features, but it also costs nearly $100.

Affiliate Tim Jones has been touting Ninja Affiliate since it was released last year.

You can see an ironic .htaccess link in person here: http://www.affiliatetip.com/ninja-affiliate

I created that one to promote Ninja Affiliate. As you can see after clicking, the redirects take place quickly, and they are barely noticeable.

The presentation is available to view or download at http://www.slideshare.net/affsum/affiliate-link-redirecting-and-cloaking.

I was thinking about what goes into creating a new affiliate site, and I’ve outlined the seven important elements when I start up a new affiliate project.

This primer is intended for folks that are just breaking into affiliate marketing. I know some people are searching for a “get rich quick” lesson, and that’s not the way it works with affiliate marketing.

Affiliate sites should be viewed as long-term projects, and not quick hits.

As far as the prevalence of affiliate programs among retailers, Internet Retailer magazine recently released their list of the Hot 100 Retail Web Sites, and 75% of those retailers had one or more affiliate programs in place.

Anyhow, here are the seven things to consider when setting up an affiliate site. Note that the various services I mention are those that I use personally. I mention them, because I’ve been happy with the pricing and service and would personally recommend them.

Also, I would create a new site with WordPress as the content management system, because of the ease of use and flexibility of the platform. You can get WordPress for free. If you’re not familiar with WordPress, I’d suggest reading through WordPress For Dummies

2-3 topics you care about
When starting a new affiliate site, don’t try to leverage the latest trends. Instead, focus on topics that interest you. Try brainstorming 2-3 areas where you are passionate and create your site based on the one that you think you’d like to focus on the longest.

Domain name
You’ll need a domain for your new site. I use GoDaddy.com, where you can get a .com domain for around $10 per year. Don’t obsess about your domain name – I’d say you shouldn’t spend more than 20 minutes picking it out. Just get something relevant to your topic, and the shorter the better. Start with a registration of one year, because you can extend it at any time, but if you decide the domain stinks, there is no use being locked into multiple years.

Hosting
There are many options for hosting your site. For the purpose of simplicity, there are two main types of hosting accounts you can get: shared servers and dedicated servers. The former is a cheaper option where your site is on a server with lots of other sites, while a dedicated server only has your site(s) on it. When you’re starting a new affiliate site, a shared plan should suffice. Currently, I use LivingDot for some new, small projects and RackSpace for my main, important sites. LivingDot is low-cost and they will install WordPress on your account for you. RackSpace is a bit pricey, but you’re paying for excellent support and uptime.

Email service
One of the key methods for driving traffic back to affiliate sites is to work with an email service provider that enables your visitors to opt-in to get updates, newsletters, etc. from you by email. I use AWeber to manage my email lists and messages. AWeber enables me to provide an option for visitors to subscribe to my blog RSS via email, as well as newsletters, and series of follow-up emails on various topics.

Patience
This is the cheapest and most important part of a new affiliate site: patience. Resist the temptation to put up ads right away. Instead, focus on building content to give people a reason to visit your site. When the time comes to incorporate ads, focus on relevant ads, and not those that pay the best. I’d suggest posting ten or more times (or longer) to a blog before any ads are up there. When you do put up ads, go beyond the banner. The vast majority of my affiliate commissions come from text links.

So, if I am writing about a new camera or computer, I’ll link the name of the device to a place where it can be purchased. That’s far more effective than a banner for the product. But it’s essential that you constantly test different ways to run advertising on your site to optimize the advertising strategies and phase out things that don’t work. Use an ad server like OpenX to run A/B testing.

Also, you don’t want to hear this, but you shouldn’t expect much money for months. It takes time to build up a site and an audience. It can be a grind, but stick with it.

Find your voice
People will follow your affiliate site as they get to know you. Odds are that you’re not a journalist, so don’t pretend. Just be yourself and write in your voice. It can sometimes get tough to think of things to wrote on your blog, so make it a practice to have an editorial calendar where you will schedule topics to write in the future. I frequently send myself email with ideas for future blog posts.

Also, consider setting up a page where people can ask you questions about your topic and answer them on the blog. I use Freedback.com to manage this process. And you can bulk up the content of your site with targeted articles from EzineArticles.com. I not only publish articles from there, but write them, too (Shawn Collins on EzineArticles.com), so I can get more exposure for my site.

Where to find affiliate programs
There are a variety of ways that affiliates can find affiliate programs. The 2009 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report breaks out all of the ways that affiliates are finding out about affiliate programs to join.

I mostly search in Google for affiliate programs that make sense for my affiliate sites. For instance, if I have a site about Halloween costumes, I’d search for costume affiliate program to find merchants to promote.

Good luck with your affiliate site!

The presentation is available to view or download at http://www.slideshare.net/affsum/make-money-online-with-affiliate-programs.

Last night I was a guest speaker at NYU for a class run by Ben Kirshner, Founder and CEO of Elite SEM.

I was speaking about Opportunities in Affiliate Marketing, and the talk was complemented by Ben’s input, as well as questions from students throughout the 90 minutes I was there.

The presentation includes industry stats, examples of affiliate sites I’ve abandoned, 7 steps to creating a new affiliate site, and examples of affiliate sites.

Unfortunately, the audio didn’t pick up all of the student comments, but I was able to capture most of it.

You can follow along with the slides at http://www.slideshare.net/affsum/opportunities-in-affiliate-marketing – they can be viewed online or downloaded.

By the way, Ben also founded CoffeeForLess.com – check out the CoffeeForLess.com affiliate program on CJ.

There has been a lot of talk about the advertising tax, which is being considered by many states, but a lot of folks aren’t clear about the threat and implications.

So, I’ve put together a a short video on the advertising tax. Given me two minutes of your time t find out why you need to start playing a role in the fight against the advertising tax in your state.

Basically, if you’re an affiliate working with companies who don’t have a physical presence in your state, and an advertising tax bill passes in your state, you’re at risk of being kicked out of those affiliate programs.

This tax is also known as the affiliate tax or Amazon tax.

The gist of it is that these states are trying to require companies to collect sales tax even when they don’t have a physical presence in the state.

Currently, if a company doesn’t have a physical presence, they don’t have to charge sales tax. There is legal precedent for this from the Quill Corp. v. North Dakota decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.

So yes, the advertising tax is unconstitutional for anybody who cares about the U.S. Constitution.

The contention by the states is that affiliates are a physical presence for these companies. You know that’s not true, and I know that’s not true, but does your state senator know that we’re just running advertising?

Anyhow, this sort of bad legislation became law in New York last year, and the result was a large number of affiliate programs removing their New York affiliates to avoid charing sales tax.

It’s a lose/lose/lose situation.

The state still isn’t getting sales tax from all of these transactions when merchants boot their affiliates, affiliates are losing their “jobs”, and the state naturally has less income tax to collect.

If you’re an affiliate, merchant, or network, it’s imperative that you take action.

One place to find information about fighting current or future legislation in your state is the Fight Against the #AdvertisingTax group on Facebook.

Also, check out Affiliate Voice and the Performance Marketing Alliance for resources and news on the advertising tax.

Lastly, when the vote does come down in your state, be sure to note how your representative(s) vote. And then put them out of a job at the next election if they voted against your livelihood.

I recently gave a short interview to Rob Toth as part of the Future of Information Marketing series.

Rob asked the following questions…

1. What is your vision and prediction for where the Future of Information Marketing is headed?
2. What is your #1 success tip for anyone considering information marketing or already involved?
3. And what is the biggest challenge or pitfall that you feel holds individuals back from success in Information Marketing?

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