On November 9th, Marty M. Fahncke held a teleseminar whose guests discussed how to take an affiliate program global and how to achieve maximum ROI from viral video.  The replay of this call is now available.  This teleseminar was the second in a series of preview calls with the speakers of the upcoming Affiliate Summit 2007 West conference in Las Vegas.  The speakers joining Fahnke for this call were Sean Cotty from Art.com and TaxBrain.com's Todd Taylor.  The call recording is available on Collin's Affiliate Tip Blog.

In his latest issue of his Associate Programs Newsletter, Allan Gardyne has some excellent tips for recruiting affiliates. "Every now and again on our affiliate forum we see a plaintive plea (or spam) from a desperate affiliate merchant who wants to know how to recruit affiliates", says Gardyne. "So I've written a couple of articles describing a variety of techniques affiliate merchants use."

The author of the AdWords Black Book has released a free report covering how affiliate marketers are being taken advantage of. The author claims, "...if you want to survive and thrive in Internet marketing - it does not matter if you're an affiliate marketer or merchant - you MUST read this report now."

The report is available at no charge from BlackBookDVDs.com (e-mail registration required).

The Affiliate Summit is a conference for those involved in the affiliate marketing industry, either as an affiliate program manager or as an affiliate. The conference will be held in Las Vegas on January 21-23, 2007 and will feature keynote speaker Michael Sanchez, co-founder of ClubMom. Other speakers this year will include Jim Kukral, Anik Sengal, Jeremy Shoemaker and many others. Visit the Affiliate Summit website to learn more about the conference.

Adam Viener over at ReveNews talks about the benefits of product demonstration videos. Viener points out that affiliate marketers can make use of the idea to sell more affiliate products. Affiliates can use online videos to create product demonstrations that help prospective customers to make the decision to buy. Viener also recommends that affiliate managers should begin creating videos for their affiliates, "Advertisers who have products that can [be] easily demonstrated and "sold" by video should start making videos available to their affiliate partners!"

Read Viener's full commentary over at ReveNews.

On Thursday, December 7th, Marty M. Fahncke will host a teleseminar with Kellie Stevens from AffiliateFairPlay.com and Wil Reynolds from SEER Interactive. Both Stevens and Reynolds will be speakers at the upcoming Affiliate Summit 2007 West conference in Las Vegas.  On this preview call, Stevens will be providing insights on "quality assurance considerations with sub-affiliate transparency, cross-channel company layering in ad delivery and new behaviors by adware".  Fahncke's second guest, Will Reynolds, will be answering participants' "most important questions about SEO."  Registration for the call is available at the Affiliate Summit Preview site. 

On January 18th, LinkShare will be holding its annual Partnership Summit in San Francisco, California. Michael Schrage of MIT's Media Labs will be the keynote speaker at this year's event. For more information about the event, and to register, visit the Partnership Summit website.

ClickBank has released a slew of updates to its system this week including an improved account management system, promotion tracking, and a transaction analysis tool (beta). The redesigned account management system includes updated navigation, more comprehensive reporting, and new application features to improve publisher productivity. The Tracking Code enhancement allows affiliates to add an 8-character identifier to the hoplink and order process to accurately track and manage campaigns. The Transaction Analytics feature (in beta) provides additional data on sales that is sortable and downloadable as a CSV file. Read the entire release summary on ClickBank here.

Shawn Collins chimes in on his blog with some advice on how to best open the lines of communication with your affiliates. Collins writes, "Most affiliate managers think it's sufficient to rely solely on e-mail to communicate and they send the same canned messages to all affiliates." Collins addresses this statement and what more affiliate managers can do to get their affiliates motivated. Read Collins' full commentary here.

Andrew Fox has launched his new product, Dominating Clickbank. The video tutorials discuss buying resale rights, recruiting affiliates, finding the best products to sell, becoming an "affiliate hunter," JVs with other Clickbank product owners, promotion of your site and how to get free web hosting. He is also offering several bonuses to the first 500 people who purchase the product. More information about the product is available at www.DominatingClickbank.com

On Thursday, October 26 at 3 pm ET, Shawn Collins will be hosting a conference call to provide listeners with the opportunity to get to know the speakers at the next Affiliate Summit in 2007. This call is the first in a series of calls, and will be "FULL of tips and strategies that will help you grow your business, no matter how you are related to the Affiliate Marketing industry", according to Collins. Collins will be joined by co-host Marty M. Fahncke, who will be presenting tips on how to get the most out of attending the conference. There is no cost for the call, and registration is available at the Affiliate Summit Preview website.

Linda Buquet of 5 Star Affiliate Programs reports that CJ has begun offering advertisers the ability to offer product catalog datafeeds to their affiliates. The new Web Services Division also allows publishers to search the services "based on keywork, UPC, manufacturer, model number, advertiser, SKU and more." Buquet mentions that the new division also has demo videos, one of which demonstrates turn CJ datafeeds into contextual ads. View Buquet's full commentary here.

The search engine giant announced Friday it is launching its "Merchant Referral Program" for its online payments service. Under the program, affiliates will receive 1/2 a percent of all sales the referred merchant processes for the first year. Google will also pay the affiliate an extra $25 if the merchant processes at least 3 transactions and $500 in sales.

Linda Buquet reports that Commission Junction has completely backed down from its Link Management Initiative. This initiative would have mandated JavaScript-style affiliate links. Thanks to Scott Jangro for his petition to change CJ's mind and to all the bloggers who helped spread the word.

Linda Buquet reports that in a ValueClick earnings call yesterday (the parent of CJ), the company stated that they will not be mandating JavaScript links, dubbed its "Link Management Initiative", on wholesale basis. The company still believes LMI is the wave of the future, and that over time the market will voluntarily choose to adopt with the new format.