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Even grown men can act like small boys. Instead of making a business decision that would secure the position of Illinois as a state that welcomes the tech community, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn has decided to sign ill-conceived affiliate nexus bill HB3659 out of “fairness”. Specifically a member of Governor Quinn’s office who wished to remain unnamed stated that Pat Quinn had made the decision because it was “Amazon that was being unfair.” So like a petulant child Governor Quinn is lashing out at Amazon. Who he is truly hurting are dozens of small business owners in Illinois.

The misguided affiliate nexus portion of bill HB3659 was introduced by Senator John J. Cullerton (D), Illinois’s version of the so-called “Amazon Tax” which forces out- of-state retailers to collect Illinois state sales tax for Internet sales, based on the premise that affiliate marketers create a tax nexus. The bill was heavily fought against by ShareASale, Google, Performance Marketing Association, and TechAmerica.

What is truly tragic about Governor Quinn’s decision to ratify this bill is that not one penny will be collected from Amazon. As in other states that have passed such measures Amazon has already notified its affiliates that it plans to terminate relationships with them (we expect that to happen today). Other merchants like Overstock will likely follow suit. Amazon and the other merchants will still make money in Illinois by selling through other marketing channels.

So who gets hurt by Governor Quinn’s skewed concept of fairness? Dozens of publishers, website owners, small business owners in Illinois that rely on affiliate marketing as a form of revenue. Quinn’s “fairness” will cause job loss and an increase in unemployment. He is inflicting damage on his own constituents. Now there’s a model for fairness not to mention fiscal logic!

What this debacle in Illinois proves is that big box retailers have mustered a lot of lobbying clout and are willing to stomp on small business in order to gain an advantage over internet competitors. Governor Quinn is just gullible enough or greedy enough to lend validity to their lobby.

Retail giants like Wal-Mart are already wooing discarded Amazon affiliates. It’s only a matter of time before pro-tech states start wooing small business hurt by Governor Quinn away from Illinois.

This year it was very appropriate to be at DEMO Spring 2011 in Palm Springs on the day after the Oscars.  Like a Colin Firth many a nervous startup founder came on stage to make their presentations. Perhaps it was the lights and the large audience. Or maybe it was the $1 million dollar prize. Here’s a run-down of my picks for the best companies in the Consumer Technology category of DEMO Spring 2011:

Best One-Liner

Some jokes are still funny even though you’ve heard them before. Same can be said of the one-liner dropped by Shamus Husheer, CEO of DuoFertility, who delivered the humdinger:

“My name is Shamus, and my job is to get millions of women pregnant.”

While the line is still brilliant we previously covered Shamus, who was here as one of Qualcomm’s QPRize Finalists, and DuoFertility during last year’s CES otherwise they may have made the list.

Manilla

Bill pay systems are not sexy. And that’s part of the problem. The ones I’ve tried have poor UI’s and only solve one half of the problem. While they allow me to pay bills online they don’t help me stop all the clutter that comes with mailed bill notices.  This is where Manilla comes in. Owned in full by the Hearst Corporation, Manilla eliminates the physical bill that comes in the mail from any company they process payments for. This is key because it completes the loop for consumers.

According to George Kliavkoff, Hearst digital executive and interim CEO of Manilla, Hearst sends some 500 million pieces of transactional mail a year — bills and renewal notices. And that’s just from one company. Think what companies like American Express or Comcast generate,

Furthermore, Manilla displays for the consumer the entire bill in a manner they are used to seeing and allows the option to print or store a copy in a file system. What’s more, the UI is easily the slickest I have seen of any such provider.

Manilla does have some limitations. While they currently work with a wide array high profile companies, mainly through Hearst’s drawing power, their list of clientele is  not all inclusive. So the question is will they have enough provider partnerships to make using their services worthwhile.

But access is not the largest problem. Security and trust is. Hearst is obviously a long established and trusted company but whether consumers will feel comfortable enough to hand over their personal and account data will define their success.   With Manilla looking to essentially be the PayPal of the space one breach is enough to ruin everything.

Click here to view the embedded video.

PhotoRocket

Photos are the big connector between new generation technology users and the pre-internet generation users. Because of photos I see folks like my parents actually wanting to go on the internet in order to see and perhaps share some pics. But due to issues like resizing the sharing process is not smooth and to complicate things further it’s fragmented through the various social networks and platforms out there. This is a space where a lot of companies have tried to  step up but with PhotoRocket the thought and ease that has gone into the sharing UI is far superior then any I have seen.

Recognizing that building out a photo community in a space filled with the likes of Snapfish, Flickr, and the largest photo aggregator of all Facebook, would require a new level of function PhotoRocket focused on utility and it shows. As Scott Lipsky, Founder of PhotoRocket explains, “There are many little widgets and tools that you can use to put photos in one place or one other place. With PhotoRocket, you can put your photos anywhere. We think that’s a very important point and we think it’s disruptive.” The utility allows users to push out photos without attaching or worrying about file size limits/rendering,  to various social networks and email with a single button click. But what’s extra cool is the recipients can then, via the utility, take the photos they just received and automatically pull them in to the utility to further share them.

While the utility is slick the key question is under their current revenue model, can PhotoRocket make enough of a dent in the market upselling products that photos can be printed on to be a sustainable business model? Time will tell, but with Lipsky coming from the trenches as Co-Founder of  aQuantive there definitely seems to be more than one trick up his sleeve.

Click here to view the embedded video.

SocialEyes

Speaking of good pedigrees, if you are a startup in the video space it is hard to boast a better co-founder than Rob Glasser, former CEO and Founder of RealNetworks. SocialEyes essentially creates a video based chat room in which each participant appears in the interface in a format familiar to anyone who has used Skype. But unlike Skype, SocialEye taps into the user’s social network (via a widget on Facebook) and allows them to host a chat session for work or for a remote tabletop roleplaying game. It also supports far more conversations than Skype, allowing the user to talk to multiple people at once or directly address certain people in the “chat room” while muting the others.

While the UI of the multi-chat video experience is well conceived their actual website is a bit odd, especially how it loads. They also need to reconcile a bit of a brand awareness issue since there is a company called SocialEye based out of Massachusetts that does analytics.

Arguably though, their biggest hurdle will be to appear as more than just an additional feature set that Skype hasn’t built yet.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Look for the wrap-up of DEMO highlights tomorrow.

One of the joys of DEMO is seeing technology trends emerge and evolve. This year there were several companies who had obviously invested a lot of resources and development time in the science behind their product but still managed to come off  as too specialized for wholesale adoption  by businesses or consumers. As part of our series on DEMO Spring 2011 the  following are three companies who I think are working on very interesting technologies that is still not quite ready for prime time.

The first of these was the MindWave BrainCubed Education Bundle (really, could they have come up with a longer name?) by NeuroSky. With a background in EEG machines, NeuroSky has developed a headgear fashion accessory the Borg would be proud of. The purpose of the headgear is to interpret brainwaves and monitor brain function and although it was really developed to access the health and activity of the brain the technology also powers things like the Star Wars Force Trainer  and the Mattel Mindflex.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Although NeuroSky has  a direct to consumer product in the MindWave BrainCubed Education Bundle, as well as apps for very basic games that can be played solely through the user relaxing or focusing, their big play is packaged into a product by a larger game manufacturer. That is if Force Trainer and Mindflex are hits. Ultimately their core audience really seems to be more science based with researchers as well as those in the medical industry being the true target.

Then there was the Cyclic Variations in Altitude Conditioning (which would have beat NeuroSky’s titles but at least had an acronym of CVAC). CVAC wins the most interesting yet impractical (at least for consumers) device award. It is an escape pod shaped human-sized piece of equipment into which the user sits down.  Then, with the use of a vacuum, the chamber is pressurized in order  to simulate breathing at  higher altitudes. Their product is based on the fact that living or “training”  at  high altitudes can produce health benefits resulting from  increased conditioning of the  pulmonary system and the increased oxygen carrying capacity of the body.

But the unit’s base cost makes it impractical for the home, aside from the question of where would you put such a large noisy device. The CVAC units seem geared for health or fitness clubs like the one shown in the video below whose owner does a walk through of the system far better than President and Chief Executive Allen Ruzskowski during the presentation at DEMO:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And the last of the not quite ready for prime-time crew was ecoATM. Essentially it is a recycling device, similar to and invested in by Coinstar, that allows consumers to recycle their phones for cash. The device is self service and in theory prices your phone via visual scan and data check, takes a copy of your id, then quotes and pays you a price for the device. ecoATM then works with other green recyclers to either resell the device in secondary markets or melt-down the components for reuse.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is an interesting idea, but the malfunctioning DEMO version did not bode well for any potential  maintenance and customer service issues on such a machine. Additionally,  the potential for fraud and money laundering with the use of the devices is high, despite the companies claims that they can mitigate such threats. I am also unsure about the “green” ethics of a company that increases the churn in already short lived devices like cell phones. But still VentureBeat did give them a DEMOgod award at the end of the show, so what do I know?

Next in the series I will look at the what I feel are the top companies at DEMO Spring 2011 who are ready for prime time.

The right timing can equal success. Since launching in 2007 the BlogWorld founders Rick Calvert and Dave Cynkin have leveraged their timing to capture lightning in a bottle providing a platform for bloggers to expand their craft, find new business opportunities and exchange ideas with their community. Recently BlogWorld made a set of major announcements moving the show away from its traditional base in Las Vegas and holding two shows in the same year on in New York (May 24-26th at the Javits Center) and one in Los Angeles (November 3rd-5th at the L.A. Convention Center).

I recently sat down with Rick Calvert, CEO and Co-Founder of BlogWorld & New Media Expo, to talk about the impetus behind the changes in location and what Rick sees as the convergence of media.

What brings BlogWorld to New York?

Since our first event in 2007 we’ve had numerous people ask us about having an East Coast version of BlogWorld. Even though we get lots of people traveling to the show from around the country and abroad there are exponentially more who just can’t afford the travel or the time to come out West. For two years now we have been looking at doing an East Coast show that serves as many people as possible and finally everything fell into place with the Book Expo America Co-location. The fact that Book Expo America sees as much value in this co-location as we do is definitely a sign that traditional and new media are converging.

You’ve recently announced the West Coast BlogWorld will be in LA. The Cohen Brothers’ film Barton Fink is a great example of what happens when a writer from New York comes to LA. When it comes to the convergence of media will the City of Angels every really accept the blogging community?

The short answer is they will accept it or they will be out of business. The truth is lots of individuals in those entertainment industries are already embracing new media and even leading in many ways. Every major film studio, TV network and record company has some kind of social media initiative. I think it’s important for the bloggers and new media content creators to remember that the traditional media industry can teach us just as much as we can teach them.  They have been monetizing content for a very long time.

For those who haven’t seen Barton Fink at the end of the interview there is a clip, featuring John Turturro and Tony Shalhoub, that perfectly captures what Hollywood studios think of writers. When you watch it try swapping out the word “writer” for the word “blogger”.

What trends do you see that herald the convergence of traditional and new media?

All major magazines and newspapers in the country have blogs now. Many of them have Facebook pages and Twitter accounts as well. Last year the folks at the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) approached us and expressed interest in recruiting folks who were exclusively producing new media content to join the guild. The Grammys just held a couple of social media sessions at LA Live in the lead up to this year’s event. Previously, we’ve had Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park, Jermaine Dupri, and other musicians speak to huge crowds at BlogWorld. There is no doubt the convergence is happening. The question is how fast is it happening and how much crossover will there be between the two.

Traditionally, bloggers and journalists have been at odds. Do you feel that bloggers and authors’ goals are more aligned?

Some bloggers and some journalists are definitely at odds. Some bloggers are journalists. Some journalists are bloggers. Some journalists try to use the term “blogger” as a pejorative and that really just exposes them as ignorant. New media is perfectly aligned with all forms of traditional media. It’s hard not to harp on this point but honestly, most of the world still doesn’t understand it. This includes most of the decision makers in traditional media. New media is just a collection of new distribution tools and platforms. New media also changes the dynamic from a one way broadcast into a two way conversation and that is a very hard concept for many people to grasp. Once they do, they fall in love with it.

Book publishing as we know it is changing. How do you think publishing will be transformed over the next couple of years?

There is no doubt that digital content is going to outsell printed content very soon; it just came out a month or so ago that Amazon was selling more digital books than printed editions. That doesn’t mean print media or book publishing is extinct. It will just be more selective and quite possibly more premium. Blogs also offer a great medium for aspiring authors. Wiley has been coming to BlogWorld for a couple of years now and in fact signed several new authors to book deals as a result of meetings at BlogWorld. Book Expo America is going to be a great opportunity for aspiring authors to meet publishers and for publishers to find some really great writers.

Do you plan to offer some sort of combined pass between BlogWorld and Book Expo?

Definitely. All BlogWorld attendees with a two day conference pass or full access pass can attend Book Expo America. All Book Expo America attendees can visit the BlogWorld tradeshow floor and upgrade to a BlogWorld conference pass if they like.

I’d like to thank Rick Calvert for taking the time for this interview. And now a clip from Barton Fink. Enjoy.

(Full Disclosure: Carol Roth is a good friend and fellow foodie. However, this is not a paid endorsement and it is a genuinely good book.)

If I had to pick a motto for entrepreneurs it would be Han Solo’s quip, “Never quote me the odds.” Entrepreneurs by nature tend to ignore data that doesn’t fit into their vision. If they didn’t the odds of their success would seem daunting,   And while it is true that a brash, cocksure attitude can get you far, it can’t be the only thing sustaining your business. Reality always encroaches. When it does, you’d better hope you’ve plotted your course through that asteroid field well.

That’s where Carol Roth’s new book The Entrepreneur Equation comes in. Now, I generally stay away from business books since  they are often weak on  substance and heavy with  page after page of pep talk. Mercifully, Carol isn’t interested in being your cheerleader. She is interested in making you think and providing a clear set of guidelines against which you can measure the resources you have at hand. Carol is also not afraid to tell you that if after you’ve run the equation and the numbers don’t add up then maybe you don’t have the right formula to be an entrepreneur. In this day and age to highlight what is considered the “third rail” in business books is a bold statement.

One particular section which resonated with me was the concept that: Bad Competitors Are Bad for You, Too. My primary business is in and around the Affiliate Marketing industry, so Carol’s words ran very true, “Bad competitors poison the well.” If potential customers or clients have a negative experience due to a bad competitor it becomes that much harder to earn their business. Affiliate marketing has had more than its share of bad players (heck every year there is talk about “re-branding” the industry). Incidents like Digital Point Solutions and Kessler’s Flying Circus indictments for allegedly stealing over $20 million dollars in commissions only serve to make it difficult for legitimate affiliates to earn a living.

I think you will find your own gems to enjoy in The Entrepreneur Equation. Carol plays out many scenarios that ring true. She does with in a manner that is one part Amy Smith (of MIT’s D-Lab) and one part Kathy Griffin (comedian) which is a combination that is both easy to read and informative.

True to her passion to help entrepreneurs succeed Carol is donating one book to SCORE.org, a foundation that provides free and confidential small business advice to budding entrepreneurs, for every preorder of her book between now and February 18th. If you are interested you can  preorder your copy of The Entrepreneur Equation here:  http://theentrepreneurequation.com/special-offers/

Worth checking out before you jump back into that asteroid field I lovingly call entrepreneurship; it is bound to make your life a little less harrowing.

For several years GoDaddy has scored hits with it’s “see more” videos offering to show glimpses of spokes model Danica Patrick and other models in “hotter” situations than television allows. Although the videos were questionable in taste, they were a hit and increased sales mostly due to efforts of GoDaddy’s affiliates. The fact that the Super Bowl supposedly banned some of the videos for being too racy, only increased their success.

When Shashi Bellamkonda, Director of Social Media at Network Solutions, contacted me today about their parody of GoDaddy’s Danica videos I couldn’t wait to see what they cooked up. Now, full disclosure, Shashi is a friend so I was already biased to his video. When I heard about his “starlet” I was sold. I am a huge fan of Cloris Leachman. Not just for her iconic Frau Blücher character from Mel Brooks’ film Young Frankenstein; or for her whip wielding follow-up as Nurse Diesel in Mel Brooks’ High Anxiety; or her near silent cameo as Agnes in one favorite films Butch Cassidy and the Sun Dance Kid. What cemented her status for me was her Oscar winning role as Ruth Popper in Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show based on the great Larry McMurtry novel.

As you can see Shashi didn’t have to do much to get me in his corner. His team just had to be smart enough to let Cloris due her stuff. Now, it is apparent that whoever directed the video can’t hold a candle to Mel Brook’s ability to setup a comic scene…thankfully they mainly just seem to have let Cloris loose.

With lines like:

This new girl they got the race car driver or whatever, she’s ok but that thing she does with her hair…she got that from me.

and

$3 million dollars for a Super Bowl commercial? No wonder they have them dressed up in a super hero costumes. They aught to have flames shooting out their ass for that kinda money.

Network Solutions is gunning directly for GoDaddy and Danica. But my favorite line Cloris delivers is:

Yeah…that’s my ride. For when I play Texas Hold’em…and I’m not talking about cards either.

The appearance of BlogHer co-founder Lisa Stone tries to bring some professional poise to the escapades. But frankly it wasn’t needed.

Ok, enough of my fan boy raving, check out the Network Solutions’ Go Granny video for yourself:

Click here to view the embedded video.

At every Affiliate Summit I’ve attended there is always a new company who is doing something exciting, and disruptive in the space. This year one of the industry’s highest profile veterans, Jeremy Schoemaker aka ShoeMoney, had all the buzz. In a two-part session at Affiliate Summit, Jeremy unveiled his link shortener, A/B tester, and so much more: Link Control. I sat down with Jeremy, after Vegas, to discuss what makes Link Control so potentially disruptive. Enjoy.

Why did you decide to launch Link Control?

In the affiliate industry, everyone tries to optimize on the front end—banners, landing pages, and all this stuff—but nobody focuses on the back end. Affiliates find an offer they’re happy with and try to figure out how to get more traffic to that offer. That makes sense but there’s a lot of inefficiency with that process.

Another reason is affiliates simply don’t trust affiliate networks. Because thanks to the networks the one thing about being an affiliate marketer is that you don’t know shit. You don’t know crap about the strength of an offer. I figure there are basically 600 affiliate networks that have at least 100 affiliates (not counting the thousands using DirectTrack). So, as an estimate, let’s say there are 600 affiliate networks. Now let’s say half of them have the same Netflix offer, but all of them say they have the best payout with the best conversion. As an affiliate, you really don’t know who to believe, and you spend a lot of time figuring out what the best offer really is.

We set out to create a product that eliminates the guesswork of being an affiliate, that ensures you’re getting the highest payout from affiliate networks that you work with.

But let’s say you have the best offer, there are still a lot of inefficiencies. Let’s say an offer goes down, you’ll often never hear about it. If you’re doing a whole bunch of PPC and an offer goes down without you knowing, even for two hours, you’ve just burned through a couple thousand dollars. You know that’s lost money.

With Link Control, if any offer goes down, we’re going to divert that traffic immediately for you. We’ll keep checking until that offer comes up and you’re going to get notified. There will also be options allowing you to tell us where you want that traffic diverted to so none of your traffic is wasted.

What platform is Link Control built on?

The whole thing is powered by PHP and MySql. It’s based on a system that we built internally for our own stuff, which is why I think we’ve been the top affiliate for several different networks. For the last five or six years we’ve been basically optimizing between networks to make sure we have the best offer. I wanted to take the basic tools we’ve been doing really well with and that have given us a huge advantage over our competition; but make it available for all affiliates.

Why now?

Three years ago I sold the company called AuctionAds, and at that time, I signed a non-compete…I think the language was an “owner-operated” affiliate company or advertising network. So my hands have been tied for three years. I’ve wanted to do this for a while.

With Link Control, does the optimization still work if the network links that are encrypted?

Absolutely. Link Control logs into your account, and all it cares about is maximizing the earnings you’re getting per click. So each offer is weighed on an EPC basis. Now if you go a step further, we have an algorithm that learns from your traffic and where your traffic originates. So if Facebook’s Farmville converts better to the Azoogle’s dating offer than it does to Neverblue’s dating offer for the exact same company, it will direct your traffic to the better converting offer for that traffic type.

The system learns from how well different landing pages work, from types of traffic, from geolocation, and even which web browser performs better. If we see, for example, that Unix users in your traffic are converted better with one style of landing page than another, it will automatically divert that traffic towards the better converting page.

We are not quite fully automated yet, but we’re trying to have full automation in place by Q2 for everyone. Right now setup is very quick. You go in, set the offers you want to go through Link Control, and weight each offer with how much traffic you want to funnel to it. At the bottom you can set all these targeting rules.

For example, if it’s a mobile device, I can tell it to override all other rules because maybe I want to capture the person’s name and email. That way I can market later to those folks because as we know, most people don’t bother to buy yet from a mobile device. They wait until they’re at their computer to buy. We’ll just capture their email real quick because it’s easier to get an email from somebody on a mobile device than having them fill out a full form with their credit card information. Even with nuances like that, Link Control can do the targeting.

That sort of answers my next question. Will Link Control work via mobile device, via video content, etc?

At its very essence Link Control is a link shortener on crack for affiliate marketers. It takes one link and allows you to pass Aff IDs, Sub IDs and whatnot through it. We can send them to every affiliate network that you have accounts with, so if you want to use it on video content or whatever, people can click on them, and we can do the magic behind the scenes.

Tell us more about the multi-targeting function that you talked about in the Link Control intro video. How does that function work exactly? Does it create different links for each target?

Let’s say you’re doing ringtone offers, you’ve got all these ads, and you’re pretty happy with your Neverblue offer, so you’re running all your Facebook ads in one place. You’ve got a funnel set up where emails are going out, you’ve got pay-per-click coming and going, and you’re dealing with Yahoo, Google, and then you’ve got a landing page you have to optimize.

All of the sudden ClickBank comes to you. They have the exact same ringtone offer, but a different landing page they claim converts a lot better and, of course, it pays more…because every network says that. With Link Control, you can go to the dashboard, add the new link for the ClickBank landing page, and test it. Link Control will automatically pass the same variables,  and you only have to give it a very small percentage of the traffic (weight) from that link you’re already rocking on. You don’t have to change anything with your links. You’ll now just divert a percentage to other offers to test them. Then, instead of taking the network’s word for it, you can look at you EPCs and see which one is paying more.

From my standpoint, Link Control may be more valuable as an A/B testing tool in terms of saving time. That to me, frankly, is the sexiest part.

Thanks. It’s a definite A/B tester that optimizes your traffic source. Most people do mutli-variant split testing. Front-end testing is more about what is giving you the best conversions. I think that’s the missing piece in optimization. What if the red button converts better than the orange button? But guess what, people are still buying on that red button more than the orange button. How do we optimize for them? Maybe they all come from one source. So now you can do multi-variant split testing, but you can also see where the traffic is coming from, and then you can optimize on an even higher level.

You keep focusing on offers, so I want to confirm: Does Link Control focus at all on retail SKUs and product links? Or is it solely offer focused?

Link Control is 100 percent focused on CPA networks. Our system will work with traditional affiliate networks like Commission Junction, but where it really shines is with CPA networks. In part that’s where our experience is and we’ve been doing really well in that space. I’m not saying we won’t expand our focus in the future. LinkShare and ShareASale are two companies that we are meeting with currently to explore ways we can integrate with them.

Will working with Link Control increase an affiliate’s chances of being “Google Slapped?”

There’s nothing to indicate that Link Control will introduce any new problems.  Obviously Link Control provides people with a tool set that they could easily cloak through Google, showing Google one thing and then doing something else.

It obviously can be used for Facebook, too. Our systems is Facebook compliant. Now, obviously, it would be very easy for someone to break the rules. We have all these serves all over the country, we have all these domains, plus you can even add your own domain and there is nothing tied to a specific domain so that Google would be like, “Oh everything from this domain is bad.”  If you want to put yourself at risk that’s your deal. I’m not the police of the Internet.

But we’ve actually worked with Facebook and Google and they both really love the technology from the standpoint that it is really good and can clean up the industry than because it’s going to get rid of the crappy, scammy networks that are stealing from affiliates.

Why should affiliates trust you with their data if they already don’t trust the networks?

I don’t know if you know this or not, but I was the lead Unix security administrator for Wells Fargo. I have a really good understanding of encryption and the overall structure for data protection. I also have a lot of contacts in the security world, and I’m on a first name basis with some pretty high up federal auditors with the Federal Reserve Commission.

On Link Control everyone’s data will be held to ten times the actual standard of what a Federal Reserve auditor holds banks to. We’ve already contracted with Price-Waterhouse-Cooper, the leading data auditing firm in the world. They’re going to do a routine random audit, at least once a month, to make sure that all employees’ access will be logged and that user data is safe. On a personal level that is obviously a huge concern to me when I work with anybody who sees my data.

Let’s be honest: as affiliates how many times have you been doing well with an offer when you start to see the network itself doing the exact same thing you are doing? And you think to yourself, “What a coincidence!” I know that trust is a big concern, so we’ve done everything in our power to insure users’ data.

Also, if you look at our board of advisors, I think they reflect that philosophy. I specifically did not want anyone who is associated with a CPA network, right? So Missy Ward, co-founder of Affiliate Summit and my friend Andy Liu, who owns Buddy TV and I Can Has Cheezburger?, are two of our advisors. They are all very smart people who have their own expertise, but none of them are tied to a network.

When will Link Control move out of beta?

Our goal is by next summer. But I really don’t know that it’s in “beta” per se, at least not when it comes to functionality. It’s in beta now due to scalability. When we had AuctionAds, we had one site come in, like Pirate Bay, and we had to drastically increase our size immediately.

With Link Control, the stakes are higher because affiliate marketers who are spending thousands of dollars a day are working with us, and they’re entrusting us with their traffic. There’s no margin for error. That is the biggest reason we’re rolling it out slowly. Downtime is not an option. We’re not going to implement anything that we don’t trust 100 percent.

Let’s put it this way, I have all my PPC stuff running through it, so if Link Control is down, I’m losing a lot of money personally. I’m not going to let that happen to me, let alone the people who trust us with their traffic and business.

What is Link Control’s motorization model?

I’m privately funding Link Control, and over the years I’ve done pretty well for myself. I don’t expect Link Control to make money in the first year. What I want is to get users’ feedback on the product. We’re going to listen to our user base and evolve according to their needs. Eventually, we’ll take a small percentage of the transactions, I think one percent. From personal experience that’s more than fair.

Let’s be honest, people are not going to do something that will cause them to lose money. When they try Link Control’s A / B testing, they can see how much more effective doing that sort of split testing is with us. They can see how much better their conversion is with Link Control versus just sending it directly to multiple offers. They are going to find that it saves them time and that it’s incredibly better.

We were just playing around with a campaign the other day. We turned it on for three days using our Link Control algorithm for a PPC campaign, and it generated a 17 percent increase in conversions. I don’t want to say that’s typical, but that is my exact number. So I think a one percent fee is very, very fair if we can increase our users’ conversions by even five percent.

Where do you want to see Link Control a year from now?

I want to integrate every possible CPA network. This is so our magic sauce can take over. There are a zillion things that we do for the affiliates which will really make a huge difference to their bottom line, and our feature set will only improve.

By 2012 I would like to see us have an excellent product that revolutionizes the affiliate industry and helps everyone. One of my goals is to clean up the industry and, specifically, the CPA space. So by the end of 2012 we will have made a huge impact on the affiliate world, developed a great user base, and helped affiliates make a lot more money.

As part of the ReveNews 2011 Affiliate Industry Preview Series, I interviewed industry leaders to get a sense of their plans and goals for 2011. Today’s interview is with Amy Ely, Marketing Manager, buy.at US.

How do you feel about the health of the Affiliate Industry overall?

Overall, the affiliate industry is in a strong position right now.  Despite struggles in our local and global economies, more consumers are embracing online shopping and driving sales growth.  As evidenced by record breaking holiday sales, the online retail industry is also thriving, providing more revenue opportunity for affiliates.

In the United States, affiliate marketing is making greater strides towards standardization and regulation.  Networks, advertisers, affiliates, and other entities are beginning to work together to address key issues, which will support the future health of the industry.

A key part of the Affiliate Industry’s resilience is its focus on innovation. While other media channels are struggling, affiliate marketers continue to develop new methods of driving sales online, offline, through mobile, video, social media, and more.  These tactics not only capture the attention of consumers, but also companies that don’t traditionally advertise in the space who see affiliate marketing as an opportunity expand their business.

What adaptions will be necessary as commerce moves to mobile?

Mobile encompasses a variety of media and advertising techniques.  Ranging from text messaging to click-to-call, affiliate marketers need to consider a variety of factors.

Program managers and networks may need to adapt their tracking solutions to accommodate reporting and commission payouts for mobile messaging ads, click-to-call conversions, standard call tracking, and ads in mobile applications.

Advertisers will need to adapt their creative assets and landing pages to accommodate screen sizes and (on some devices) limited technical capabilities with flash, etc.  Savvy advertisers will use consumer data to construct relevant and targeted advertisements, with an eye on location-based opportunities.  Further, advertisers focused on driving sales should consider ways to simplify and secure the purchase process on mobile devices – as reducing the number of stages to order may impact whether or not the consumer completes the sale.

Affiliates – arguably facing the largest challenge – will need to adapt how they “sell” consumers through a variety of mobile formats without becoming intrusive or incurring charges on the consumer side.

Adaptation and innovation go hand-in-hand, and with the growth of smart mobile phone users, affiliate marketers are well positioned to test out new ideas and hone in on methods that generate a profit.

How will the FTC’s “Do Not Track” policy impact the industry?

Honestly, it’s difficult to predict the full impact on the industry until the policies are truly defined and executed.  That said, a “Do Not Track” policy could impact any affiliate marketers that use online behavioral data to deliver targeted content and advertising campaigns.

In these cases, affiliates using behavioral data may be unable to feature highly relevant and targeted advertising to online consumers that opt for Do Not Track.  Affiliate sites using behavioral data may lose out on the opportunity to fully understand the characteristics and interests of their audience, and make changes accordingly.

For affiliate networks like buy.at, the impact will be minimal since we track transactions rather than consumer behavior.

However, keep in mind that online consumers already have the ability to clear cookies and browsing history.  While the number of consumers blocking their data may increase due to Do Not Track, the lack of these statistics isn’t a completely new concept, and affiliate marketers will once again adapt and use alternative methods.  For example, impression and click statistics, search engine data, and social media activities will serve as an alternative resource of valuable information to facilitate audience growth and optimize ad performance.

A high profile story this year was the over $20 million dollars in cookie stuffing fraud allegedly committed by eBay affiliates. What can the industry learn from that event?

A high profile story such as this brings the cookie stuffing issue beyond the affiliate marketing community into mainstream news – and to the attention of regulatory organizations.

At the very least, it sends a message to members of the affiliate marketing community to become more educated on the issue and to setup a plan of action to address any legal violations.  This event should remind affiliates engaging in any unethical marketing practices that there are consequences to their actions.

In what ways did the move away from AOL change buy.at?

The move away from AOL brought greater strength and focus to the buy.at team.  We are now fully supported by a parent company that shares our values, our goals, and our corporate culture.

Within the AOL organization, we were one of a wide variety of solutions offered to online advertisers and often shared resources across multiple departments.  As part of Digital Window, we are backed by a global leader in the affiliate marketing industry that provides the support, expertise, and experience to accelerate our growth in the US and global markets.

Who is officially leading the buy.at US team?

Since the acquisition, no single person has been deemed the head of buy.at US.  Instead, a restructuring took place to allow US divisions to build stronger working relationships with their UK counterparts.  Each division works with an established UK line manager and the entire organization is led by the Digital Window board in London.  This situation is likely to evolve as buy.at US continues to expand.

What are the differences in the Affiliate Industry between the US market and the European market (other than the types of consumers you are trying to reach)?

In some ways, the European market is much more advanced than the US affiliate industry.  While industry support and regulatory organizations are beginning to gain traction in the US, full IAB standardization and strict policies are already enforced in the European markets.  As a result, marketers may see much more detailed terms and conditions and greater restrictions for affiliate programs outside of the US market.

Also, the European market arguably places a greater emphasis on transparency among the advertiser, affiliate and network relationships; hence buy.at’s open network approach in the global and US market.  The European industry pays considerable attention to detail in how affiliates promote each program and merchants are focused on only paying for incremental sales – leading to greater accountability across the board.

In some ways, the European market is more complex due to the variety of languages, currencies, cultures, and business practices to consider.  That said, the closer proximity of industry members in each country lends itself to more face-to-face interaction, relationship building, and knowledge sharing.

What are buy.at’s goals in 2011?

Similar to our goals in previous years, we continue to focus on growing our advertiser and affiliate base in the US and globally.   Supported by our relationships within the Digital Window family, we expect 2011 to be a very strong year.

Beyond growth, our focus includes identifying opportunities for integration, as well as leveraging each team’s technical capabilities.  In fact, we have exciting plans for our interface that we’re hoping to preview this year – stay tuned!