We celebrated Gina Meyers 5 year and Margaret Johnsons 4 year anniversary wth TheMediaCrew.  We look forward to man y more years with them.

Another show in the books. Ad-Tech New York was another great show. It’s always nice to see familiar faces. As we all know our industry is primary phone based so when we have a chance to see our clients and potential clients face to face we jump at the chance. We sent 5 team members to this years Ad-Tech, Ross Moore, Rustam Irani, Kim White, Bill Michelon and myself (Nick Foley). This was Bills first Ad-Tech with TheMediaCrew and he did an great job! I can’t tell you how important it is to have a group of people who know how to balance the business side of Ad-Tech and the social side. Enjoying a drama free show is always a plus. This year we only hit up one party, The Mailer Meetup. It was a good event with some great information if you’re a mailer. The mailers in our industry use to NEVER talk about email stratgies but now with all the regulations and big brother (our government) watching over us it’s a must us mailers communicate with eachother in a productive manner.

Day One of the show is always the busiest in my opinion. Everyone is eager and ready to create some business.   The business-buzz is in the air.  The second day is typically the opposite. People are recovering from the night before and only talk about how wasted they got the nite before, which does give us some funny stories to talk about. Never the less I give this show an A-. The number of people who attended was good, the numbers of exhibitors were good and the topics of the speakers were good. We look forward to Ad-tech San Fransico in April. We’ll see ya there.

And congratulations to our Kim White who won a Apple iBook in the Global Wide Media drawing .. Woo-Hoo !!!

Thanks,

Nick

We’re very excited to present our 12th interview with Nick Foley of RevenueStreet.com.

Nick Foley is the Founder & CEO of TheMediaCrew an Inc.500 Florida based company. Nick founded the company 11 years ago in his one bedroom apartment on Indian Rock Beach Florida. Since then, the company has grown significantly and employees some of the best people in our industry. Nick holds a BA in Business Administration from The University of Maryland.

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? How old are you?

I’m 36 years old. I grew up in the Washington DC metro area. After high school I moved to Florida to play college baseball after two years I moved back up to DC and finished school at the university of Maryland. after college I moved down to key largo in the Florida keys. after a fun experience in the keys I relocated to Indian rock beach (outside of Tampa). I started EmailMaestro.com and was a full time emailer. I self taught myself how to mail and I’m still earning new ways to mail. I also started an online casino which did very well until we had to close it down for obvious reasons. In the 5th year of EmailMaestro we changed the DBA to TheMediaCrew because our industry was evolving and our company was evolving as well so the name change was perfect timing.

2. How long have you been in affiliate marketing and how did you get involved?

I started RevenueStreet.com in 2004. We started it because we noticed the CPM and CPC models were slowly starting to die off. Additionally we retained almost 90% of our clients on the CPA/CPL model. This year we launched our propitiatory affiliate marketing tracking software EFFECTUS (www.effectus-software.com). We started to license it out and so far everything is working out great.

3. How long was it before you realized you could live off your affiliate income?

My first year. It was just me and I was a mailer (still am) I pushed out millions a days from 11 PM to 6 AM monday thru friday. my over head was almost nothing so I could live off my income the first year. That was the scariest and most exciting year for me.

4. What is the biggest mistake you made when you first started doing Affiliate Marketing?

Not fully understating the scrubbing process.

5. What was your biggest success to date?

We’ve made the Inc500 in 2009 & 2010. We made mThink.com Top 20 Affiliate Networks in the world # 19 and we made Florida Trend Magazine 2010 Best Companies to work for under 49 employees. Of all the awards I would say the Florida Trend Magazine award means the most.

6. Tell us a little bit about RevenueStreet and what you do over there?

RevenueStreet is our affiliate network. It runs on EFFECTUS our proprietary affiliate marketing tracking software. We have a great RevenueStreet team. Ross Moore is our network director. Rustam Irani (COO) and myself work with Ross to run the in’s and out;s of RevenueStreet. Ross does a fantastic job but we work well as a team. My main position is to make sure we grow in the right direction. To make sure we evolve with our industry. I’m always thinking on new ways in which revenuestreet can grow.

7. There are already so many CPA affiliate networks out there. What makes RevenueStreet different?

Our people! We have a great revenuestreet team.

8. I see you are using your own affiliate network software named Effectus. What made you build yourself, instead of choosing HasOffers, LinkTrust, DirectTrack and HitPath, etc?

CONTROL! I came up with the idea a few years ago to develop our own software. We had no control over the software we were using and the support we received was horrible. We saw so much room for improvement. We basically took all the standard features we liked plus added a ton of our own ideas and put them all into one software. The great thing about EFFECTUS is we will add features on the fly for our users. It an open source way of thinking. We want to have the best software out there and the best way to do that is by being open minded and added the features your users want and provide GREAT SUPPORT! Support is so important and it seems gets under valued.

9. Which offers are performing well on your network?

Education is our top vertical. We also do well with biz opp, travel, debt, and insurance & consumer products

10. Which traffic sources prove to be the most effective for your top earning affiliates – E-mail, PPC, PPV, Facebook, Media Buying or any others?

Email, Display, Search and Social Media is starting to pick up.

11. What are the criteria for a marketer to be accepted at RevenueStreet?

Once an application is submitted. Our client relationship manager, Susie Bordner contacts them and goes through a series of qualifying questions.

12. For those who are interested in working with you and your affiliate network – What’s the best way/time to reach you?

RevenueStreet.com

13. What are the best places for the newbie to learn affiliate marketing? What advice would you give for them?

Read the blogs out there, talk to people and ask a lot of questions. Affiliate marketing is a great business but it takes time to learn and most importantly to control.

14. In your experience, what are the three most critical elements of run a successful campaign.

Support & communication with all parties involved, proven traffic sources, and accurate tracking.

15. What’s the difference between a Super affiliate and an Average affiliate?

For us, its the volume they can produce on a consistent basis. They don’t have to drive the highest amount of traffic but drive it on a consistent basis. Our goal is to have all our affiliate become super affiliates.

16. What are the keys to building successful relationships between Affiliates and Affiliate Networks? What are some of the challenges of being an Affiliate Manager/Owner?

Communication. Establishing a solid line of communication and building that relationship will help forge long term business relationships. Being able to problem solve on a day to day basis is key. Our industry is young, fast and intelligent. When problem occur (and they do often) you need to be able to solve them quickly, fairly and make sure all parties are satisfied with the outcome.

17. If you could change one thing about the affiliate industry, what would it be?

The amount of fraud going on.

18. What do you think about where the industry is going? Where RevenueStreet may be going? What advice would you give to affiliates to keep up the pace.

I think our industry is still in its beginning stages. I see great thing for our industry but I also see a lot of companies dying off. Its survival of the fittest. The company who will survive are companies to practice good business, start a head of the curve and evolve with online marketing.

19. What are your goals in 2010?

Increase our annual revenue by 50%.

20. What’s your favorite movie and why?

Oh man, I’m a huge movie guy. I love them all .. but if I had to name one .. would be a comedy .. maybe animal house or superbad and tommy boy.

21. Give us a little glimpse into what a typical day in your life looks like.

Wake up take kids to school with my wife (sometimes) gym at 8:30, office around 10, home around 3 or 5 .. play with my kids and wife .. i enjoy just hanging with my family.

Many thanks to Nick for allowing this interview! If you have any experience with RevenueStreet Affiliate Network, please write a review for them on their review page.

Ps. If you are an affiliate marketer, AM or Network owner and are interested in answering a few questions about you, your network and affiliate marketing, please drop us a message.

I have been fortunate to contribute to one of the Tampa Bay area’s key business magazines.  Below is my second published article on email marketing and SPAM.  Hope you enjoy it.  If your company is not utilizing email marketing, you really need to consider starting yesterday.

click here to read the full article

~Rustam

This is a picture of Rustam, Nick, Susie, Colleen and Ross in NYC for Affiliate Summit East.  Our booth was in a great location and we had a ton of visitors.  We had a great show and look forward to Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas in January.  Everyone did a fantastic job and this was Susie and Colleen’s first time in the big apple.  I think it’s safe to say they had an awesome time.  We truly have a great team!

Click image for full size

Affiliate Summit New York 2010
New York, Empire State of Mind…. Concrete jungles where dreams are made of!  The city welcomed us on Sunday afternoon. For the two us this was of first trip to The Big Apple. What a sight! Time Square was mind-boggling. Wow, let’s leave it at that.

What we were really looking forward to was getting to put a face to a name of our clients. It’s always good to meet those we work with on a daily basis, and learn about their businesses.  Here’s a brief rundown of our ASE experiences.

Day 1
After a fun night at Old Castle and show tunes in the ballroom with friends, the day started bright and early at 10am. From 10 until the end of the day the exhibit hall was slammed.  Usually we’d expect a lull during lunch, but not this first day.  The show officially ended at 5pm, but that wasn’t the end for us! When our feet were tired and our voices were just about gone – the day wasn’t over.  The exhibit hall was still swarming with people.

During our busy first day we met a lot of new potential advertisers and even merchants looking to get exposure for their products online – Which is good news for our affiliates. There will be a lot more new offers coming your way.

Day 2

The various parties that were hosted on Monday night resulted in a slow start to Tuesday (Thanks Scott from Adknowledge for the VIP passes!).  People started filtering through the exhibit hall around noon, and we had the opportunity to meet a lot more publishers. By about 3:30pm, business was just about done for the day. Attendees started using their drink tickets… of which there were plenty! We used ours for bottled water! By 4pm it was time for us to get in our “limo” and head to the airport. A couple of us couldn’t handle the Chinese buffet lunch, bumpy ride, heat and pure exhaustion so the porcelain princess was their savior at the airport; others of us, managed just fine!

All in all, it was a great show. With great people! The trends that we noticed were mobile marketing, Click to Call, PPV, and telemarketing. We have great leads for new advertisers meaning new offers for our growing publisher base. Thanks Shaun and Missy for a great show once again.

Written By,

Collleen Darwent & Susie Bordner from RevenueStreet

Social media has provided affiliates with a whole new landscape to promote products and services.  It is a fundamental shift in the way people communicate.  Whether it is through video product reviews on YouTube, fan pages on Facebook, 140 character messages on Twitter, or tags on Flickr, the opportunities available on social media websites continues to grow.

Highlighted in a video produced by Socialnomics author Erik Qualman, are some fascinating social media stats including:
•    Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the US
•    YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world
•    If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 3rd largest
•    25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user generated content

With social media becoming such a major media player and influencer, it is important that affiliates learn how to tackle this burgeoning area.  Following are some important tips and rules that affiliates should keep in mind when developing their social media campaigns:

Keep up to date on the changing advertising policies on each social media site. Social media channels are monitoring their sites more closely.  If they suspect suspicious behavior then you run the risk of getting your account suspended.  Play by the rules!

There are several tools available to help you track who and what is being said about you and the message you are putting out. Free tracking tools include blogsearch.google.com, search.twitter.com, search on Facebook and search on Youtube.  Paid tracking tools are also available including Brandwatch, Whitevector and Synthesio which provide better accuracy. Listen to your followers, you can learn from what they are saying.

With growth comes competition. The rise in popularity of social media channels has led to a rise in price in CPCs/CPMs.  However, pricing can be managed effectively by utilizing high converting creative and ad copy.
Learn and address privacy issues. For example, people have mixed reactions towards ads that highlight/speak to private demographic information that they have included in their profiles, especially when this information does not relate to the product you are promoting.  There is a fine line between being effective and being obtrusive, make sure to look at things from an advertiser as well as consumer prospective.

Make sure to engage and interact with your followers. Social media is all about being able to have an open communication with your consumers. Listen to what your followers are saying and focus on building trust, goodwill and loyalty with them.  Accept the good with the bad, address any negative comments immediately with a genuine response. In the end, you will be more respected for it!

Finally, have fun, get creative and make the best use of these tools to engage your new audience!