As I start this entry we are waiting for the nurses as my wife waits on what we hope will be her final surgery, almost a year to the date of her original breast cancer surgery.
This summer has been a rough one with my father-in-law in the hospital on the opposite coast for 6 weeks fighting a staph infection that laid him up with severe back pains and a high fever which made him hallucinate. Trying to entertain kids on their annul summer visit while juggling a couple hours in the hospital each day was not a fun chore for my wife. On top of that her longtime neighbor and family friend died of lung cancer while we were visiting. My wife loves going home to visit friends and family, but this time despite the pending birth of our new nephew, I think she was happy to get back home. She hadn’t even gotten the chance to mention that she was about to undergo her 4th surgery in a year.
Four surgeries in a year is not a badge of honor and at the same time it is not even close to the amount of surgeries many people have gone through with breast cancer, but looking back on it I still wouldn’t wish it on anyone. A total of 22 hours in surgeries so far and the 4th only expected to be 90 minutes and I can only imagine the toll all the anaesthesia takes on the brain. Maybe its old age but I can already sense some memory issues with my wife. She’s been through a lot and I have all the respect for her approach to this last one.
This morning our kids were cranky about having to get up early and were giving my wife a hard time. It really didn’t make me feel good to have to pull each of them aside and remind them how lucky we are. For two young kids who have had nothing but cancer and hospital visits all around them for the last two years, they instantly knew this was not the time to be acting up and realized how fortunate to have what they have.
(Move ahead 15 hours)
Well my wife had a bit of a temperature today and they didn’t want to operate on her for fear she might be getting sick and there could be a resulting infection. They knew my wife and I would be disappointed when they broke the news. We had waited 4 months for this date, but now have to wait more. After such a hard morning getting there it was a bit disheartening. I could see my wife was bothered. I was bothered too. A little for me and a lot for her. Tonight I just felt I had to apologize as I think she could tell I was not happy with the delay as well. We just want to get all of this overwith. One last surgery we hope. Now the wait again. A wait for another surgery date.
We can’t be angry though. My wife and I tried to console each other and subtly reminded each other of how lucky we are to be where we are today. It hasn’t been easy and this wasn’t going to end easy either. We’d been patient this far and couldn’t take this personally. It is so easy to lose your cool when you can taste that chance of moving to the next step. What’s a few more months…heck we still have to wait a few more years to be considered cancer (and Tamoxifen) free. The cancer clinic itself has been great. Just a couple weeks ago during her pre-op appointment they gave her a framed article from the Wall St. Journal that she had helped with (she took photos with the physicians) as well as a huge bouquet of flowers. They really care for her well-being and would rather err on the side of conservatism. Getting to know people on a first name basis makes things so much easier on the patient. I remember seeing them having to look at the charts to remember my wife’s diagnosis and name. Unfortunately they know it real well now, but that sterile feeling of being “just another breast cancer statistic” is gone. Being able to ask your sugreon about their kids and how they are liking their new school just helps to ease the tension.
On a side note, our son’s classmate’s father who was given only a few weeks at the beginning of the summer is still holding on. He is weaker now, but he really wants to see his kids start the school year. It will help them and I think he will make it to that goal. It is really sad, but in a small way having their sons back in school with such a supporting community will make the eventual loss not as lonely. Just last year this happened with another schoolmate when they lost their mother after her six year battle and the school rallied to make meals all year long. I had a chance to see the father at the pool this summer and he said it had been a long year but it taught him about patience and forgiveness with his two young boys. They had lived with this cancer with their mother for 6 years and he said the highs and lows were rough. This year was very numbing without her. Knowing that my wife was in a similar situation, he just put his hand on my back and let me know I could talk whenever I needed.
Yep. Patience. Practice before and after. Take one step at a time. There is no rush when it comes to cancer because it is a long road.
If you are tired of the midtwon/uptown scene and commericalism of the Times Square hustle and bustle, there are many options in New York popping up each year. The Thompson Hotels and the Lower East side have become a bit of an infatuation for me as I feel like the Lower East Side is not for tourists, but more for the locals and I remember my days fondly working in NEw York. The Thompson LES is a chic artsy high tech luxury hotel. This hotel appeals to those who like modern industrial decor with lots of leather and frosted glass that you can imagine would be the way a New York bachelor would decorate his room. Silver, white and black are the main colors of this hotel. Luminaries such as Madonna have held parties here so you know it is up to snuff.
the King Bed
The signature mark of this hotel is the unique outdoor pool deck on the third floor. It really isn’t a large functional pool more than it is a small lap pool and conversation piece. It’s more for art show than anything. There is a photomural of Andy Warhol on the bottom of pool, although hard to see through murky waters. Adjacent is a also a small gym, a guest only bar on the second floor overlooking Allen St., and a restaurant as well as 24-hour concierge service.
View Uptown off balcony
The Lower East Side of New York offers a great area to walk that is non-commercial and extremely diverse sandwiched bwetween SoHo, Little Italy, and Chinatown. Just three blocks away across Delancey St. is Chinatown, but you are right in the heart of the rock’n’roll club and lounge scene as well as near Clinton St., New York’s Restaurant Row. Just a note. This is truly a local’s neighborhood. If you don’t cab it, you will have to valet park your car or risk your car on the street.
The hotel is a unique experience from the neighborhood, to the beautiful rooms, to the great service and safe and friendly atmosphere provided by the staff.
Bathroom
Located just south of Houston St. and north of Delancey. It is conveniently located near numerous restaurants and stores within walking distance. As I mentioned, this is not commercial Manhattan. You won’t find a Starbucks or an Abercrombie here but they are instead replaced by tattoo parlors and head shops. Check-in was quick and friendly. I felt a bit out of place coming from a conference as everyone else checking in seemed to have instruments with them. There’s something about seeing people checking into luxury hotels with holey jeans and CBGB rock’n’roll t-shirts. There was a rock band checking out as we checked in. Sandwiched in between the niche boutiques and eateries are some of New York’s best late night music clubs like the Living Room and the Mercury Lounge, featured in the 2008 movie, Nick and Nora’s Endless Playlist.
Two TVs and Seating area
Just a year old, this hotel is on the upper end of the Thompson Hotels cost range and its chic style has bands and celebrities staying here frequently. If you book through Quikbook.com, you can get one of their lower end rooms for $175, but prices for the bigger rooms go for $450 and the biggest suites will be in the $800 range. I have to thank my wife for the stay at this hotel for my birthday. It was a perfect date night out after a long year. Rooms with balconies are not available online. you have to call reservations to specifically ask for those rates.
The hotel has an outdoor covered bar for guests only and was perfect for a nice drink or breakfast in the humid New York air. There is also an indoor restaurant dining area which I did not use. You can get to the third floor pool deck via the elevators or up the stairs from the restaurant. I was excited to see this feature but found the water to be a little cloudy and the Andy Warhol photo mural was difficult to see at the bottom of the pool. The spa and workout room area all located on the third floor as well.
Door to balcony
Before I get to the room, just a couple notes, the wireless internet ($10/nt), similar to other Thompson Hotels is a little slow. I’m not sure why they even bother charging you for it. The bathrooms in this hotel do have hairdryers, but once again do not have irons or ironing boards. How gauche that you should want to iron your own clothes! LOL! Seriously, you can order the board from the concierge
My king deluxe corner suite was quite spacious. In fact I might say my bathroom was larger that a King Deluxe room at the sister hotel, 6 Columbus. I was told however that I would not like the King Superrior room and find it to be a little cramped for more than one night’s stay. The bathroom is enclosed in frosted glass walls. When walking into our room the bathroom was on the right and we slid open the frosted wall to reveal a single raised sink bathroom with a very Japanese feel and lavender bath products by C.O. Bigelow that impressed my wife. The walls were not stone but a very smooth gray cold concrete. Behind the frosted glass door on the right was the toilet. Behind the glass door on the left was a separate shower and tub. The shower has a waterfall spout suspended overhead as you enter the room and drains into the floor.
The sitting room has two flatscreen televisions back to back. One for watcing in bed and the other when sitting in the living area. I think they could have just prchased a nice swivel tabble instead. The predicatment is that if both TVs are on (yes I tried it) you would change the channel on both TVs. There was a nice leather couch sitting area with a wet bar.
Overlooking the Bar over Allen St.
In case you are wondering, the sitting room does allow you to look into the shower area. So if you are staying with someone in the room, they would be able to see a vague silhouette when bathing, but you really can’t see anything. The sitting area does open onto a balcony where you can see up and down Manhattan. A couple notes here are that the balconies are all on the west side side of the building and all rooms with even numbers (we had room 600) have those balconies and look over Allen St. on the noiser side of the building. I was told that you have to call and request a balcony room as they are not specified when making reservations. The balconies are contiguous so you must lock your doors when you leave the room as people can walk over to the balcony area outside of your room.Outside bar overlooking Allen St.
LES Pool Deck
The centerpiece of the room is the bed. A kingsize bed with a large photobox of a winter black and white photo as a headboard. The one quirk about this hotel is the light switches. They are black on black walls and are hard to find and it took us several minutes to turn off the headboard.
Additionally the light switches have these small levers on the side which brighten and darken the lights. It confused us for a while why the lights weren’t working properly. There are small built in closets as well as a desk work area, although I don’t think much work gets done at the desk. The firm bed featured Italian sheets soft feather down pillows, a large duvet cover, yet no topsheet. There were only side bed mats on the floor and since we were at the hotel in the middle of the summer on the black painted wood floors, that was oka,y but I would guess those floors get cold in the winter.
Waterfall Shower and bath tub
Overall a wonderfully beautiful hotel that is pretty pricey. We ate on Rivington St. at Schiller’s Liquor Bar for dinner and had breakfast once again at the Clinton St. Bakery, a favorite of Martha Stewart! There are lots of great places to eat in the area from vegan to sushi. My wife and I noted that we felt like we were in another country as we heard all kinds of languages except English as we walked the streets at night. If you are looking for a great hotel with a young nightlife, this hotel is one you must try. I’d go soon though as it is only a year old and I could see it getting old and worn down in some areas already. I’d highly recommend but I am not sure I’d come back to this hotel only because of the price and I have so many more to check out!
Hotel Decor: 87 Hip Luxury with a chic Ikea 60’s feel although not always the most functional of decor. Furniture is not of high quality.
Hotel Amenities: 83 There is a Rooftop members Lounge and the Blue Ribbon Bar and Sushi Grill is located in the lobby. Blue Ribbon Restaurant is considered a top 100 restaurant in NYC. Concierge is 24 Hours as it is necessary in NYC where you are always in need of something. The City never sleeps!
Neighborhood Scene: 90 The streets are teeming with traffic all night long around Central Park, Columbus Circle and the Time Warner Center. If the scene isn’t good in the hotel, head on over to the Hudson Hotel or walk a few blocks down to Times Square.
Miscellaneous: There is a Starbucks next door and another 24 Hour Starbucks two blocks away on 60th. Best Buy is on 60th as well for any electronic needs. Need some clothing, the Time Warner Center across the street has all you need.
Overall Wow Factor: 85 the hotel is small and after a night or two the coolness factor wears off. Hey, you aren’t here in NYC to hang out in your room.
The Black Bathroom
6 Columbus, a Thompson Hotel, is located in midtown Manhattan just off of Columbus Circle. It really is on 58th St. (between 8th and 9th, so don’t get confused. It is conveniently located across from the Time Warner Center and is just across the street from the 59th and Columbus Circle Subway station and Central Park. Other “within walking” destinations (5 blocks) include Carnegie Hall, Times Square, MOMA, Rockefeller Plaza, and the Lincoln Center. The hotel has 88 rooms and suites with only 3 rooms per floor facing the street and three rooms facing the back. My room #607, faced out the back looking into people’s apartments.
The Lobby
The Thompson Hotel chain specializes in boutique hotels with chic interior designs and 6 Columbus is no exception. I took advantage of a special rate of $179/nt for a King Deluxe room after an upgrade through Quikbook.com.
The hotel has a small sushi restaurant (Blue Ribbon) in the lobby which also has a small seating area. Check in was quick and very helpful. The walls are a covered with a black fabric that resembles cowhide. In fact all the public walls are that way. Along with a dark blue paint job, the public areas are fairly dark and during my 4-day stay I constantly had to search for the elevator buttons due to the dim lighting. Additionally, the wireless internet ($10/nt) was a little slow as it was not able to download YouTube videos.
My room was fairly small. They advertise pod rooms for a really cheap price, but I was told they were VERY small. The room has a unique look to it with the centerpiece being a wall photo of a woman that I could not identify. I tried to work at the desk and the issue was that all the plugs were covered so I had to unplug the lamp in order to plug in my laptop. Traditional items missing from the room were an iron, an ironing board and a hair dryer. All of these items were available from the front desk as needed though. I was told that the hotel chain prefers to keep non-aesthetically pleasing items as well as hazards such as hot irons out of the room. Once again using the iron in my small room was difficult even trying to find a Additionally, the room does not have a closet but rather a small modern armoire-like cabinet that would not fit a large suit bag or suitcase.
King Deluxe Room
The bathroom was made of black tile and a glowing circular lit mirror and equipped with soaps and hair products from Kiehls (favorites of mine). Like most boutique hotels the room also had an iHome which is useful for docking my iPod nano. The only problem here was the my iHome was broken and my iPod did not play on this one.
The bed was extremely comfortable and I had no problem sleeping at night. The room was aesthetically pleasing but overall a little uncomfortable and small for my own taste. My room did have a nice feel to it though although I wouldn’t recommend it for a long stay or for luxurious travel.
Trademark Thompson dark hallways
As I mentioned, the hotel is central to the Time Warner Shopping Center complex and the subway is only a 20 minute ride to Yankee Stadium. Just a walk down the street will take you to the very sceney crowd at the Hudson Hotel where you can get your groove on to DJ music with a very good looking crowd aged 20-50, although I would venture to guess most of the 50 year old guys were with 20 year old women. For baseball purists I’d avoid the ESPN Zone in Times Square and head over to 59th St. (Central Park South) and check out Mickey Mantle’s Sports Bar where you can see more games at one time. You can also head across to the famed FAO Schwartz toy store.
Small desk and closet
A special note: Going forward in my Travel Reviews you might notice a little fella. His name is Woody. Woody the penguin will be making guest appearances with me on my travel adventures, both pleasure and business. Much like the TV show Seinfeld where there was always a Superman figure, you will find Woody in a photo. Sometimes he will be easy to find. Sometimes he won’t. Can you find him? Woody is a product of Jen Goode, a Colorado based graphic artist. Jen’s work can be found at JGoodeDesigns.com
“Life is an Occasion, Rise to It.” – Dustin Hoffman in Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium
( The opinions expressed here are strictly are those of the author and are not in anyway endorsed or promoted by any relation, acquaintance or employer)
Chris Brogan, Keynote at ASE09
As an attendee at a recent Affiliate Advertising conference I found myself motivated by the speeches, yet dismayed by the situation the affiliate industry is in. Like most conferences, this conference did a pretty good of providing you with “go forth” motivational messages and tools for what to do next, but it is the attendees who need to bring it on home and practice it.
The messages about trust, personal PR, building your own brand, social medias future role, weathering the current economy, etc. were all there and for the most part delivered on target. Those are what I gathered of the themes of the panels and keynotes, but as I looked around I could see there is something missing at the day-to-day level and that in order for these messages to thrive, there needs to be more directness in not only what those messages were, but who is delivering them.
We had two keynotes delivered at our affiliate conference. Filter through them and you can see the impetus, but wonder where the practice will be. You can watch the keynote videos here:
Peter Shankman: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1965661
Chris Brogan & Julien Smith: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1960635
Peter Shankman, 2nd day keynote at ASE09
When you combine these two speeches with the keynote delivered by Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV from the Winter Conference, you can begin to see where the transformation needs to begin. Gary said it best when he said, “Affiliate marketing is hard work, and those in the industry are the hardest working people out there. They are the Rocky’s of the advertising world. They drink raw eggs and do push ups on rocks before getting on their computers in the morning”. Armed with Gary’s motivational speech resonating in my ears, and refueled by the two keynotes at this latest conference I feel there are a few things that need to be revisited as we get back to basics.
1. Merchants: Know your salesforce (affiliates). Be a face for them, and not just a brand. These are your hardest working employees.
2. Affiliates: Know your merchant industries. Don’t just sign up for a program without truly knowing the product and industry you are working in. Focus on the title of being a top salesperson, not a hired gun.
3. Affiliates: Be honest to your followers. Don’t give them something unless you truly think it might benefit them and not simply because it gives you a high commission. Trust is something you earn, not something you buy.
Having attended these conferences since 1998 (Many consider the online affiliate business to have truly started when Amazon launched their program in 1996) I’ve seen the birth, the growth, and now I think we need to begin to see the disintermediation or at least a reaching out across the divide by merchants and affiliates. Back in 1998, the panels featured online merchants such as Borders, Barnes & Noble, Sears, Target and Amazon on panels with other merchants hanging on their every word and affiliates clamoring to figuring out how to market with them. Harking back to the theme of trust, big named brands are ones that people know and trust. Depending upon who you are, trust comes in different ways. For those big brands you know that they have real products and that there are real people, buildings, and business practices behind them. When buying products from Bestbuy.com, you know there are real stores and places to go when you need help. Would you as an affiliate tell your audience to buy products from Cheapcameras.com over BestBuy.com?
Sadly, I only saw Ticketmaster, Amazon and eBay as the major brand retailers with a booth. If you wanted to talk to gap.com you needed to talk to Commission Junction (CJ). I’m sure CJ didn’t have anyone there who could help affiliates understand this coming season’s new fashion trends. That’s not CJ’s fault. Same if you wanted to talk to iTunes. They would rely on Linkshare to spread the word about new releases this Fall? That is a mistake on the side of the merchant for relying on the networks to get the message out.
Social Networks are expanding and decentralizing the world of affiliate marketing with more new affiliates selling online every day. As a merchant, you HAVE to meet these people at the door. According to Shawn Collins of Affiliatesummit.com, there were more affiliates at this eastern conference than ever before. With the economy in flux and many unemployed, there are people turning to the industry for extra income. I met one woman who has a family plumbing business which is suffering with the lack of new housing developments. She decided to create a website fueled by affiliate referral fees. Every day I checked in with her and by the last day she said it was too hard to filter and there were so many companies she had never heard of. I told her to go with what she knew, what she’d be comfortable talking about with other people, and to experiment without spending a lot of money. By the end she decided to go with the Amazon program selling books in a niche topic area that she knew of, Home Improvement and would focus it in her local area. She had met with the Amazon reps and felt comfortable with them, so this was not much of a stretch for her.
The core of affiliate marketing are the merchants and the affiliates. Since this online industry started, new role titles such as advertiser, network, agency, and publisher have been all added to the mix. These are all great, but what is missing is the interactivity between merchants and the affiliates. In fact, at these conferences, you often see networks speaking to the affiliates about the merchants andvice versa. As a result, many large brand merchants choose to let the networks speak to the affiliates. As my current network, Buyat.com, can tell you, the ticket business is a lot more complex than it sounds. They’ve probably learned more than they ever cared to know, but understand how Ticketmaster might be the better party to answer a lot of these questions.
Over the last decade, Networks (Linkshare, CJ, Google (nee Performics)) have added much value to the industry and fueled the growth to what the industry is today and will continue to shape its future in some way. They add additional products and services that allow them to manage aspects of the affiliate business beyond traditional tracking and reporting. Management services such as widgets, feeds, affiliate recruiting, and servicing are all value added services that have helped to make the online affiliate marketing industry become much more prevalent. These are all important parts of the affiliate puzzle, but in the end, the best merchant andaffiliate relationships are the direct ones. Affiliates seem to be using these services as a proxy for getting to know what it takes to become a successful affiliate. They are forgetting the human aspect. Would you ever work for someone you didn’t know very well or sell a product to friends that might not be around tomorrow?
Message for the Merchants
As a merchant, the best relationships I’ve had are ones where I’ve worked closely with the affiliate to create a unique online experience. I often heard affiliates say that their network knows nothing about the merchant that they are representing and that they have never talked to a representative from that merchant organization. One affiliate at the conference told me that they felt more like an outsourced consultant rather than a field marketing and sales representative. That isn’t good (and this particular affiliate is pretty important if you ask me). Affiliates should be treated like regional sales people and the affiliate manager from the company should be the leader of the external sales force. This means they are responsible for training and communication with this group. I will speak only about my current program so as not to defame others, but I know that I have to go through a thorough education process to help people understand why ticket commissions are the way they are. These days most affiliates are all looking at who offers the highest commissions and not about what it is exactly they are selling. Someone might say they could earn $50 for the sale of some insurance product for a lead versus only $2 for selling a ticket to a Beyonce concert, but they need to know the difference in the effort to sell one vs the other. They need to understand conversion rates, uniqueness/scarcity of product, and the likelihood the consumer will have a good experience with a known name brand product over one they’d never heard of. Yes, brands = trust and to Chris Brogan’s point, they are Trust Agents.
It doesn’t mean that being a big brand you can’t have an individual identity. Look at Frank of @comcastcares on Twitter as a good example. He has personalized the Comcast service. So when people who are upset with Comcast go online they know that Frank is just a person who is trying to help and he works to make that experience better. He puts a face to that persson on the other end of the message. Also try Dick’s Sporting Goods CMO, Jeff Hennion who provides discounts online (@dickssportcmo on Twitter). So those are cases of a traditional brands reaching out and getting personal. On the other hand Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos, really put his own name out there to promote Zappos into a trust brand over other lesser known shoe sales companies like Shoebuy.com and shoes.com. There is nothing new here. We’ve seen this for a long time in traditional advertising. Both trusted celebrity endorsements as well as the founders lend their personasto connect with the consumer. Arnold Palmer was the face of Pennzoil for years, Steve Jobs is the man behind Apple innovation, Jared is the face behind Subway ads, and all the faces of Blue Shirt Nation (the Best Buy staff) have developed a reputation for knowledge about products. Even if you can’t talk to these people directly, their persona makes the brand come to life. Last night I had an interaction with a woman on Twitter who wasn’t happy. When I responded to her via our twitter account in a direct message, she was not only shocked that Ticketmaster had a voice, but that we were funny (I made a reference to a Kelly Clarkson song knowing that she was a Kelly Clarkson fan by saying “Life would suck without you”). She told everyone she could on Twitter that our brand had won brownie points with her. It turns out that she is also an affiliate which has been part of my mantra for merchants: “Affiliates are your best customers”. We also know the customer is always king. If you want to work well with ShoppingBargains.com, you don’t use your network. You work closely with Michael Allen, but first you have to build a personal brand relationship with him that leads to trust.
Edelman, one of the largest PR firms in the country, recently came out with a mid-year study on Trust in Brands. The findings were pretty obvious, but merchants have a chance to change this:
What can the Affiliate do?
If you are new to the affiliate game or maybe think you don’t know the inner workings of your current merchant programs, make sure you understand the business. Shoot off an email to your merchant and ask them for some good sources of information about their industry and what would be a good example of an affiliate that does well. Becoming an affiliate is not all about the biggest commissions. This isn’t about instant success or overnight riches. As Gary Vaynerchuk says, “It is hard work”.
Get to know your merchant business. Don’t just pick up a pamphlet and take it for granted. Don’ t just go with the numbers promised to you. This isn’t a get rich quick scheme. This is a business remember? I often see new affiliates starstruck by the big numbers: High percentage commissions, promises of strong clicks, high conversion rates, and high lead fees. Later they find that while those numbers might be real for them, the actual transactions are few and far between. Affiliates get a quick lesson in ROI and humility. People spend lots of money buying keywords on search engines and run out of money in days. I often tell people 20% of nothing is nothing, but 3% of $100 times 50 transactions can get you a nice dinner. Yes I can tell you stories of the movie nut college who was in my program at Reel.com who earned $15k/month pushing potty training videos to moms all over the web (Potty Training for Him outsold Potty Training for Her in case you are interested). But he had a secret. His parents were a pediatrician and a pre-school teacher. He was a video nut kid, but really focused on educational videos. Sure he sold a few copies of Titanic, but who didn’t. I had other affiliates who knew the release dates of every movie on DVD for sale or rental and were all over our site before our content people could announce it on our home page listings. They would even tell us when there were mistakes on our site. I had another affiliate tell me how low my rates were compared to another retailer and I told them that as a car salesperson in the real world, you’d get more for selling a new car over a used car, and you’d get more for selling a Porsche than a Honda. Why should this be different in the online world. Every product has a different audience, a different purchase cycle, different margins and a different value to the consumer. Remember, you have to act like the key salesperson for your boss (the merchant). Let them know you understand their business or at least want to know more.
Yesterday I was sent an tweet by the blog, Internet Marketing Review 101, in which they explained affiliate marketing as someone accidentally coming across your ad. There is no accident in the online marketing world anymore. Recommendations and promotions are highly targeted and when you send someone to a merchant, it is done with a purpose. Would you tell your grandmother to go to the corner of 42nd Street in New York and buy a diamond necklace from a street vendor in a raincoat who promises you the same thing as Tiffany’s for $200 less but with no service or warranties? I don’t think so, unless you no longer want to inherit her estate. There is no accidental recommendation there. The article went on to speak about how the key to success was finding the right ad networks to use. I almost choked on my spring roll (warning: Do not eat lunch and read Twitter SPAM at the same time). I will not say this again. Affiliate marketing is not about the commissions you earn, but the number of transactions and long-lasting relationships you build. Its not just about eyeballs (impressions in the online world). A friend who runs a dating site said that his company only succeeds when they make a connection between two people and that connection lasts more than 2 dates. It isn’t about how many possible profiles that individual looks at before choosing one. Good matchmakers/marketers build relationships that last because they know their business.
Last, once you build trust with your merchants by showing them you are knowledgeable, then build that trust with your customer base. When I looked at the marketing sheets at the conference I saw merchants promoting their programs by leading with their rates. That hardly is the way affiliates will sell products. You need to go out and examine these merchants for yourself. You need to be able to look these people in the eye and tell them you gave them the very best you could. Novice affiliates will often build their followers through friends and family who spread the word. Can you feel comfortable when your mother in law tells you she followed a link from your Facebook page and that she got scammed, yet you have that $100 in your pocket for the lead you provided? Don’t you want people coming back to you for more? Gary Vaynerchuk isn’t going to recommend wine that he doesn’t like or thinks that you won’t like. That is why people follow him! He’s trustworthy or as Chris Brogan says, he’s a Trust Agent (caveat: living in San Francisco near the Napa Wine Country and as former Board Member of the Northern California American Institute of Wine and Food, I don’t follow Gary personally for wine recommendations, just his entertainment factor).
Summary
This is an important time in the online marketing world and the affiliate industry has a chance to bump up its value in the advertising food chain. Networks and Agencies are providing new tools and programs for the merchants and affiliates, but the fact is that they cannot do it alone and cannot act as a proxy one to one relationship between a merchant and an affiliate. The world is becoming one big salesforce and we all know that the best salesforce is the most educated one. In the new world of decentralized social media the best salesforce is also the most trusted one.
There are two lines of relationships that need to be reinforced: The one between the merchant and the affiliate and the other between the affiliate and the consumer. Okay, lets get text book here. This is in any business Marketing 101 class you might have taken and again in any Brand Management MBA course, but it has some application here to help the merchant and affiliate see eye to eye. They need to go over the Four Ps of marketing together: Product, Placement, Price and Promotion. If you are an affiliate and don’t understand the dynamics of these four keys of what you are selling for your efforts, then call your merchant today. And if you are a merchant and have not put out materials to educate your associates on these points, publish it now. These are just some basic points to cover in your relationship amongst others but they will more than likely improve your understanding of each other.
Now for the Affiliate and the consumer relationship the text book answer is the Four C’s of Marketing (Convenience, Cost, Consumer Needs andCommunication) which are the consumer oriented aspects of marketing. You need to communicate clearly with your audience to build that trust in today’s world and you have to provide some or all of the other threes C’s to your audience.
I know those last thoughts sound basic, but isn’t that what we want or need? We need to get back to the basics. There might have been over 3K people at the last Affiliate Summit but in my mind there should have been 10K. Everyone needs to go. Everyone, merchants and affiliates alike, needs to be at the next gathering and talk openly and freely about how they can help each other. We need to see merchants and affiliates hugging in the aisles and maybe even see a few Karaoke duets.
“No matter how much pressure you feel at work, if you could find ways to relax for at least five minutes every hour, you’d be more productive.”
– Dr. Joyce Brothers
When my mother asked where I was heading this week, I told her I was going to the Affiliate Summit. “What’s that?” , she said? When I told her it was an advertising/ marketing conference, she looked at me oddly. Not unusual for my mother.
“But I thought you sold tickets”, was her reply.
Telling parents what you do in this day and age is always difficult to explain if you are not a lawyer or a doctor and especially worse if you are involved in technology. My mother once asked me when I was an investment banker on Wall St. if I knew the teller at her local bank on the other side of the country. So you can see my mother’s confusion, or at least the difficulty that I have in trying to explain what I do. In fact, it has taught me patience as well as an understanding of the need to break it down more simply.
When I told her it was like being an Avon lady except you could promote whatever you wanted online, you didn’t need to buy the product on consignment, and it was done strictly online, she pulled out her laptop and made me show her (I first sat her down with the video above). So after a 30 minute explaination of what affiliate marketing is, she was hooked and then started grilling me. Despite my mother’s “flightiness” she is pretty tech savvy for a 70 year old grandmother. In fact I would have to say she tends to be an earlier adopter of of retail than I am (as long as it is her idea). Not your typical geriatric mother, but she is one of the most productive people I know. So much so that she has started telling her friends about affiliate marketing and unfortunately they are now telling me daily about all the things they’ve helped to sell online for Amazon, etc. I am amused though as these women are all widowed friends of my mother who have Facebook accounts and blogs about their health which they started via an elderly technology class taught at the University of San Francisco’s Fromm Institute. They used to share information with each other during their Scrabble nights and now talk about how much product they sold on the Web. I must caveat all of this again and say my mother is a bit unusual. She was the first to put alfalfa sprouts in our sandwiches as kids, she wears a wooden fish around her neck (just so you know she is a Pisces), and has had many successful business ventures (before they were called ventures) in the gifts, confections and tourism industries. My mother is always selling something whether it was personal alarms, water purification systems , or vitamins, I think I heard all of her selling tactics. Afterwards, my mom hit me because I have been doing this for over 10 years and had never put her onto this. Truth be told I did, but my mom never listens to me (but that is another story).
So why am I telling you this about my mother? Well recently I’ve been looking at the attendance levels at the Affiliate Summit (ASE09) and saw how it has risen. As a mentor to first time attendees I was also assigned to 2 mentees this year which indicates that there are many people getting into the industry or learning more about it. As someone used to say, “it is the economy, stupid”. My feeling is that if my 70 year old mom can do it, so can you.
And why do you need to do this? Right now everyone is trying to make up for lost income due to the recession and the biggest beneficiaries are MOMMIES. I hear about moms offering massage therapy, holding clothing sales in their homes or helping as a doula. Some moms are strictly going back to work and restarting their careers. My sister has restarted her speech pathology consulting again. Women from single income families are earning income in as many ways as they can. An interesting side note, many of these women right now would be still considered unemployed and not reflect against the rising unemployment rate. Mommy blogs and moms (check twitter) who have started businesses online are extremely successful. MyBargainBuddy.com and SunshineRewards are two companies started by moms who are very big in the affiliate marketing game, work from their homes and make a very comfortable living while mainintaining household. One mom, Tricia Meyer, of Sunshine Rewards, even has her young daughter video tape some of the video for her blog.
So now many people might thing that this industry might be mature and that they have missed the boat. Au contraire. The affiliate marketing world is ripe for you. Many large companies are looking for the lowest cost for acquiring sales during this down time as their marketing budgets are getting trimmed left and right. Affiliate marketing has long been the cheapest way of advertising online.
Secondly, social marketing in the affiliate world has not yet been fully tapped and my guess is that it won’t be for a while. This is because the power is in you,the individual. It is your ability, just like my moms, to influence people just like you do in the real world. While there may be people who think they can help you tap into people like my mom and help sell women’s shoes for example, they might have no idea how poor of a seller of shoes my mother might be. In fact my mother might be the best at recommending chocolates and movies, but if you’ve seen my mother’s attire, she is not the one who should be giving advice (sorry mom, just my opinion).
So if you are new to the game, and are looking for some way to make a little money, think about what it is that makes you an expert about something. Figure out how you can use that knowledge and help your friends and their friends fins what they need and earn you some income based upon referrals. For example, I spent quite a few years in the travel industry visiting the most luxurious hotels in the world both in the US and abroad. I have many people ask me where to stay and where to go and if I wanted, I could send them to my website and link them straight to those hotels , cruise lines, etc and make a profit, just like a travel agent. Travel and music (the industry I’m in) are two industries that people seek personal advice from people based upon individual opinions. Some other good ones are health and financial.
For more information, I suggest checking out some of my affiliate marketing links on the right. I would also do some reasearch and possibly attend Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas in January 2010.
Patient Doctor Consultation with Decision Services Representative on hand
In today’s Wall St. Journal there is an article on the Decision Services offered at my wife’s breast cancer clinic, the Carol Franc Buck Breast Cancer Center at UCSF: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203674704574328570637446770.html#articleTabs%3Darticle
Decision Services is a great resource when you are overwhelmed with all the information and emotions when first diagnosed. At the time I thought nothing of the services. Now that I look back on it, the resources and advice for helping to manage our experience were invaluable:
– My wife and I watched many DVDs, pamphlets and other articles together,
– Prepared countless questions for our visits
– Reviewed stats together
– Went over online research made available to us
– Reviewed our notes of our meetings and prepared follow up questions
In this information age, services like this are so important to have. Patients have so many questions and thoughts running through their head that they sometimes miss what is being said to them, forget to ask the questions that they wanted to ask and feel frustrated and left out. Many times my wife would hear one thing and I would hear another. We’d just review the notes taken by the notetaker and we’d have our discussion resolved. I could even use this in my everyday life.
The service provided interns who took great notes during our visits before, during and after our visits to make sure we understood everything that was said in our visits and to help us get more informed answers from my wife’s doctors. We often submitted laundry lists of questions before each visit and they were prepared with their answers before we came in for each appointment. We all know how we forget what they tell us during those visits because we are so worried, but they provided great notes from our appointments.
Yes, that is my wife featured in the article’s photos.
As we reach the aage of health reform in the US, services like these will become more invaluable as we help put some control back in the care of the patients. There are many early adopters of such services such as the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, The Wellness Community, the Mendocino Cancer Resource Center, Breast Cancer Connections, the Humboldt Community Breast Health Project, and (abroad) the Edinburgh Cancer Centre.
The entire team at the Breast Care Center, led by Laura Esserman, is blazing new trails in health care. Check out https://www.breastcancertrials.org/bct_nation/home.seam and http://www.athenacarenetwork.org/ for other innovations from this group!
