Jamie will be speaking about Affiliate Marketing at Searchfest which will take place on March 10th, 2008 at the Portland Zoo. Purchase your Searchfest 08 tickets now.
1) Please give us your background and tell us what you do for a living?
I studied International Relations at UC Davis, so after bouncing around a few continents I joined a few friends in the Russian Far East. We processed caviar, brought it back to the US and sold it to the wholesale market. I eventually moved into the translation/localization/web globalization world and then into SEO and PPC, first at NewGate Internet and now with LinkShare. I’m responsible for expanding LinkShare‘s performance based Search Advantage solution. Search Advantage combines expert management and optimization of a client’s paid search campaigns with an integrated approach to the client’s affiliate marketing initiatives.
2) What is the business case for affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing provides companies with a pay for performance sales channel that can significantly increase their online revenues, while helping them manage their ROI. This channel typically accounts for 5-15% of online sales. Some of the most innovative players in online marketing operate as affiliates, so aside from being a solid revenue driver it is an interesting and vibrant space.
3) What do you tell affiliates that feel that the reliance on cookie tracking & the ease of erasing cookies is costing them commissions?
LinkShare is proud to have the industry’s most robust tracking technology with our server to server LSTrans tracking solution, and new real-time Web Services tracking.
Todd Mintz knows PPC…knows Social Media…knows SEO…knows Blogging…knows Domaining…and knows them all real well. He runs growth marketing for )and is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association, and he can be found here on Twitter and Facebook.
I’d like to hear the answer to a question such as “how do you feel about search engines classifying affiliate marketers as spam sites and their efforts to filter those sites out of their indexes?