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Category Archives: Affiliate Marketing

The Long Term Cumulative Impact of Guerilla Marketing

In December a panel of internet entrepreneurs shared their stories and their keys to success with my BYU marketing and Provo Labs Academy students.

One young woman told how she had teamed up a few years ago with her brother to start an ecommerce site, selling a very unusual niche product. They did almost $1 million in revenue last year.

One student asked her how long it took for her sales to take off initially. Her answer surprised me: she worked for an entire week before she had her first sale.

New Genealogy Affiliate Program Launches

World Vital Records officially launched its affiliate program this week with the most generous commissions in the genealogy industry.

I believe we are the first genealogy company to offer recurring revenue for affiliates when a subscriber renews their subscription. I know that many genealogy affiliates have wanted this for a long time.

Here are the details from Brad Pace, who manages our new genealogy affiliate program.

Program details:

Jumping into Online Video

I wrote an article for Connect Magazine\’s September issue about skating to where the puck is going, not to where it has been, and I specifically addressed online video. I encourage companies to rush into online video, to take advantage of this new trend, and gain a competitive advantage by being an early adopter.

#1 Need for Startups

In May 2005 Fraser Bullock, one of Utah\’s brightest lights in the financial world (formerly with Bain Capital, now runs Sorenson Capital, helped with the 2002 Olympics turn-around), spoke at the Edison Conference in Salt Lake City.

Fortunately, I had my blackberry and I took extensive notes. Here are my notes from the middle part of his talk:

Management has to be adaptable. 1990 someone brought him into run home shopping network, pre-internet. Challenge was to get consumers to buy. They had a patent. Decided they had assets, what could they build that might be of worth. Built transaction processing engine for remote banking. Sold it to Visa International in 1994.

In fast moving tech environment, if I didn\’t step back every 3-6 months to fundamentally re-assess our assets and the environment, I might be missing a paradigm shift. You need the discipline to step back.

Influencing Key Influencers

While I was on vacation last week, I caught a USA Today article (I love USA Today) entitled \”Using Blogs for Buzz\” by Kim Hart. You can find her original article about getting bloggers to write about your product on the Washington Post web site.

When Nokia Corp. released its camera smartphone last fall, the marketing campaign cut back on news releases and flashy ads. Instead, the company sent sample products to 50 tech-savvy amateur bloggers with a passion for mobile phones.

Ancestry Ups Affiliate Commissions

I just got an email from Ancestry announcing new affiliate commission and better support for affiliates starting on August 1st. The new commissions include 5 tiers and get top affiliates up to 50% commissions. Plus, the call center now has a way to track phone calls and credit affiliates for generating the calls.

A Myriad of Decisions for Internet Startups

I continually get questions from students and startups such as: Which
email solution provider should I use? What is the best affiliate
program to launch? What about payment processing? What is the best
low-cost or free web analytics software?

These are tough questions for anyone to answer because most of us, even
internet veterans, have tried only a handful of solutions in each
category (email, affiliate, analytics, payment processing, etc.) and
often have deep experience with only one.

And today there are literally hundreds of available solutions, from

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