I pull up such interesting things in my feedreader. This one I haven’t quite figured out, so I thought I’d just throw it out there. Is this speaker for the upcoming Internet Retailer conference going to pull a ‘Jason Calacanis‘ or is this just link bait? Because the title and tone of this blog post are totally different than what’s written in the conference agenda.

Affiliate Marketing: Far More Dangerous Than You Think
“Alan Rimm-Kaufman will be moderating a panel on affiliate marketing at IRC 2008.

For many years, Alan has been (and remains today) highly critical of the affiliate channel, so this promises to be a lively session…

…Affiliate fan or foe, come watch the fireworks!

Discovered the post above at Cost Per News. Thanks Sam!

Not sure if the Rimm-Kaufman blog post was link bait or what. If it was, I guess I bit cuz I’m blogging about & linking to it. ;-) Below is the actual session title and description, which reads much differently than what was said above.

Affiliate marketing: Why you can’t set it and forget it
“Affiliate marketing programs are often the quiet one of the major online marketing methods. Whereas marketers can view e-mail click-through and conversion rates within minutes of a send and can easily go to Google or Yahoo to see where they rank in search results, it’s not so easy to see what an affiliate marketing program is doing. But just as the other marketing methods need constant management, so do affiliate programs. This workshop will examine such important areas as how to streamline the connection process so affiliates can easily link to a retail site and get the latest product and promotional data; how to reward affiliates so that top producers get a higher incentive and how those tiered rewards have changed in the past year; and how to make sure you are competitive with other marketers using your affiliates. In addition, retailers can undertake behind-the-scenes initiatives that help affiliates do a better job, such as providing affiliates with a daily stream of user reviews, which allows pages to be fresh every day to maximize search engine indexing; color swatching, which makes an affiliate site more engaging for a viewer; and links to similar products, which affords an affiliate the opportunity to earn more commissions. Our two retailer speakers this session manage affiliate programs. They will discuss their different approaches and why they manage their programs the way they do and what changes they have observed and reacted to in the past year. Our third speaker is a leading consultant who advises retailers on affiliate management. He will talk about the changes he has seen in affiliate marketing in the past year and assess their appropriateness for different kinds of retailers.”