If you want to get a crowd mad at CJU, here are some tips for you. I’m giving out my own awards:

• Be shamelessly self-promoting. Talk about your greatness and past positions. Promote your site. Make sure there is no real information that will help your audience. Award: Mark Papia, Vice President of Performance Marketing, Fox Interactive Media (MySpace.com).
• Make sure what you talk about is too esoteric for anyone to relate to that isn’t in your inner circle. Award: panel that was so hard to follow I can’t remember what one it is.
• Put down search affiliates and give information that is misleading. Make sure Vinny Lingham isn’t in the crowd when you do this. Award: this is one I only heard about and didn’t attend. There was a shouting match at the end. Too bad I missed it. Someone fill me in on the comments section below.
• Tell people they can’t fly their helicopters in the lobby or outside during networking events. Award: CJU staff.
• Set up a lab to help people learn how to be power users of your site who don’t know much about it. Award: CJU staff – note this was my experience only. Complete waste of time.

Now for the positive ways to get a crowd riled up:

• Give good information based on real-life experience. Be bold and honest in the outcome. Award: Steve August, Operational Vice President of Customer Marketing, Brookstone. What a classy guy
• Choose an amazingly beautiful location and give people lots of opportunities to network. Award: CJU staff
• Give clear and well-articulated tips on how to run an affiliate business from someone who knows. Award: Jeremy Palmer. I heard a CEO commented to his staff – we need to hire this guy to consult for us!
• Conduct relevant and important surveys about the industry and clearly articulate the findings. Award: Rebecca Madigan, Director, Product Management, Commission Junction – she was outstanding.
• Engage the audience and wow them with your PowerPoint show and grasp of the industry from a high up view. I have never been disappointed by anyone I’ve heard from Ogilvy and so I’m a big fan. Award: Greg Smith, COO of Neo@Ogilvy North America

To get more news about the affiliate industry check out (thanks for putting my posts on the list!) Affiliate Classroom’s news page.

Also, read Revenews bloggers to get their take on the event. http://www.revenews.com/. Sam Harrelson made some dire predictions (I tried to meet him but no luck). I did get to see Vinny Lingham, Adam Viener, Jeremy Palmer, Justin Bowen, and others.

Fun times.

I was at the awards ceremony but to be honest I couldn’t hear a thing. It was outside, people were talking, and I couldn’t see the stage. However, I want to congratulate the winners of the Commission Junction Horizon Awards for affiliate marketers and merchants who run affiliate programs. I know one of the winners and met another at CJU.

People
Advertiser: Theresa Tao, ShoeBuy.com – who I got to sit by at lunch the next day and chat with. She’s incredibly down-to-earth.
Publisher: Craig Cassata, MrRebates.com

Greatness
Advertiser: HP Home and Home Office Store
Publisher: Liquid Apogee – I met Justin Bowen a few years ago at Affiliate Summit. After several years of working hard, he quit his job at Nasa to be a full-time affiliate. He’s a class act and friend. Congrats!

Innovation Award:
Advertiser: MidPhase Services
Publisher: Move Marketing

Global Vision
MNP Enterprises

If you live in Utah and want to learn more about blogging for your business, you will want to attend a free class this Friday. That is September 14, 2007 at 8am for one hour. It’s going to be at the Simmons Entrepreneurial Center in Kaysville, Utah.

The class will go over the basics of blogging – what a blog is and how it can propel your web site. Web sites are often static and change slowly if at all. Search engines pass you by. You can pay an expensive SEO firm to help you (which is something that I recommend for some businesses). Or you can get a branded business blog. It’s much more cost-effective and can mean traffic to your web site and sales for your company.

Blogs are meant to be frequently updated. Many small businesses don’t have the resources to do that. We have a turnkey affordable solution for businesses including setting up blogs and finding and training bloggers for your business. Even if you can’t make the meeting, you can contact me to learn more.

I realize many of you already know what business blogs are. However, if you know anyone who would benefit from this class or information, please pass this on.

Directions to 450 Simmons Way:
Take exit 328 off I-15 and go east. At Main Street, turn right.
Go about 1 mile. Just past Davis High School on the left you will see a
big electronic sign for DATC. Turn left just before that sign. Follow
the road around and take the first right. As you come up the hill, you
will see the little brown building on the left. On the side of it, it
says e-Entrepreneurial Center. Park in the parking lot just east of
that building and south of the main building. Come in the front of the
brown building and take the hall straight ahead. The classroom will be
at the west end of the building.

Speaking of business blogging, you should read this article. It has a great story about how a business blog helped a small online retailer of dog products.

I had a question in my inbox today about The Generations Network (was MyFamily.com). The writer said there is a rumor that they laid off a significant part of their staff. I know people who worked there but no one who does now. Can anyone comment on this?

Myth #1 – Being an affiliate is the easy life
CJU gave a great presentation about research they did on affiliates and affiliate managers. The myth of affiliates is that don’t really work too hard and make easy money. While they might have a laid back style and work out of their home, the affiliates that produce have been doing affiliate marketing for a long time. The average time is in the business is 8.5 years.

Sometimes I think this myth is perpetuated because affiliates are often not very corporate looking or acting. They work from home. The merchants they work for are not used to working with entrepreneurs. They are used to working with others like them. The CEO may not even know what affiliate marketing is about.

Myth #2 – Affiliates don’t work that many hours
The average time they spend on their business is over 60 hours per week. They put their own money into advertising for their merchants and build up their business over many years before quitting their regular jobs and are full-time affiliates.

Myth #3 – What merchants do won’t affect affiliates
The speaker did a great job explaining things from both an affiliate and a merchant’s point of view. Affiliates plan campaigns 6 months ahead of time and if the terms of the program change or the merchant makes other changes, it can break an affiliate. Especially as they gear up for important seasons and holidays. Affiliates and merchants should communicate and work as a sales team.

Myth #4 – Affiliates care most about commissions and bonuses – the money
The number one factor affiliates named was how responsive a merchant is to them. How a merchant responds to their requests. Then next is the brand name and then conversions. At number four was if the merchant allows deep linking. Commissions were ranked 5th in importance.

Myth #5 – Affiliates rely almost exclusively on Google
CJU talked about the concerns each side had and how surprisingly Google changes didn’t come up often as a concern for affiliates. Most affiliates know that you can’t base your business exclusively on Google. So they diversify.

This was the best presentation that I have heard so far – besides Jeremy Palmer’s. I’d like a copy of the data. Anyone know if they have the powerpoint or the research posted online?

This is just in from Jeremy Hanks CEO of Doba (congratulations to Doba on making the Inc. 500 list along with 8 other Utah companies!). They are sponsoring an event along with Connect Magazine and the Utah Technology Council to bring Guy Kawasaki to Utah.

Just like when we brought Seth Godin to speak, this is an event you don’t want to miss. I heard Guy speak at Affiliate Summit a few years ago. He’s an amazing speaker who made me think, laugh, and even cry all in one hour. He has a great mind plus he has soul (something MySpace needs more of after hearing them at CJU today).

Register and put this on your calendar now. Think of what you could ask Guy Kawasaki about innovating, something he is constantly doing. It’s a broad topic, so basically ask him whatever you feel like asking about business or even life.

It’s going to be held November 1, 2007 from 3 — 5 p.m. at the Health Science Center — Salt Lake Community College Jordan Campus 3491 W. 9000 S., West Jordan Utah. Cost: $10.

These tips come from super affiliate Jeremy Palmer’s speech today. It was entertaining to watch advertisers ask a lot of questions during the Q&A try to get in a plug for their program or try to find out how to recruit him.

Top Tips from Jeremy Palmer:

• Block off a horizontal space on your site for your call to action. Don’t clutter your page with more than one offer. Also, the most viewed part of your site is the top left hand corner. Try putting the offer there.
• Use images that match your marketing message (example: marketing online dating for Asians, get pictures of Asian men and women) and put a call to action under the image as a caption. Research shows that people read captions.
• Don’t add both affiliate links and AdSense. People think that visitors to their site will at least make money off a click if the visitor doesn’t make an affiliate sale on their page. However, it usually means people won’t do either one. Along the same theme he said, keep it to one offer per page.

Jeremy’s wish list for CJ Advertisers is he wants to see top and base line conversion rates and reversal rates for their programs. Also he said he’d rather have bonuses spread out across each sale than a big bonus payout in a lump sum.

I’m at Commission Junction University (CJU) right across the street from the beach in Santa Barbara, California. RMAMA (Rocky Mountain Association of Affiliate Marketers) hosted a swanky dinner. Troy from Hobbytron recounted how he was prohibited from giving away helicopters to affiliates. Hobbytron is famous for handing out remote control helicopters. They fly them in the lobby of the hotel. Today it was networking on the lawn and Troy and Dan Ben arrived with two boxes of goodies. A CJU employee asked them to remove the boxes immediately. No toys were given out. Long time affiliates who have got toys for years will have to go look for other souvenirs for their kids.

And, just because I am an affiliate of Hobbytron, I’m going to post a picture to remind me of the drive down. A helicopter mounted with a video camera was filming a brigade of Scions going down the Santa Monica freeway.

Kyosho Caliber M24 Electric RC Helicopter RTF

The whole time I’m singing Sheryl Crow’s All I Wanna Do…and the line “until the sun comes up on the Santa Monica Boulevard” Download Rock music on iTunes.

Business 2.0 is one of my favorite magazines. I read it and get inspired by what people are doing. I read just about every story of every issue. Business 2.0 is closing with October’s issue. I wrote a post last year that was pretty popular and I simply recapped what I learned. I intended to summarize my favorite stories each month, but time got away.

The content was always fresh and interesting. I’m going to miss reading it.

I am a Utah Woman blogger. I’m on the phone with another Utah woman blogger (Kelly Anderson at StartUp Princess which has startup advice for women entrepreneurs). What other Utah woman bloggers are there?

Dooce is the most famous Utah woman who blogs (even if she’d rather live in LA). There is Laura Moncur who is great. She Twitters and threatened to stop recently. She can’t stop because her twitters are a staple of my life now. I’ll just twitter this (Dooce does Twitter, not often, but she does). There are the buzzbooster women.

I really brand myself as an internet marketing or affiliate marketing blogger, but it’s always easier to rank on local terms. I just noticed that no one ranks on the term “Utah Woman Blogger” so I thought I would, starting hopefully tonight or tomorrow. Let’s see how long it takes.

If you’d like a one hour presentation on how blogging can help power your web site, get in touch with me. Use the contact form above. Also, I’d like to hear Dooce speak in Utah about her life as a blogger.

Update: My experiment worked, it took me less than one hour to rank #1 for Utah Woman Blogger in Google. You have to love blogs.