There are many parallels in digital marketing where the knowledge we acquire and learn can be transferred and applied to other online marketing tools and tactics. Over the past eights years, I have managed affiliate programs for start-up companies operating in different market sectors and have been fortunate enough to have gained experience with a "hands-on" approach rather than outsourcing the management of the affiliate programs. More recently, I have been focusing my online skillset in learning the art of SEO campaigns - and my current employers have provided me with a platform to deliver and implement a strategy for the organisation. What I quickly began to find is there are a number of common similarities in affiliate marketing and devising a link-building campaign. purpose being to provide similarities between running an affiliate marketing program and a link building campaign.

1. What's your USP?

Before you commence an affiliate/link building strategy it's…

A review with Geno Prussakov

Affiliate marketing is still a core online marketing technique for many businesses like retail, travel and financial services. The principles of working with and incentivising partners can also be applied to many other areas. To understand how to make affiliate marketing work better from a marketers point-of-view, I've always turned to Geno Prussakov (@ePrussakov), initially through his first book, A practical guide to affiliate marketing and more recently through his latest book from Wiley, [amazon-product text="Affiliate Program Management: An Hour a Day" type="text"]0470651733[/amazon-product] and his excellent AM Navigator blog. He's also founder and chair of Affiliate Management Days conference and a speaker at many other conferences. If its one of your new years resolutions to attend an affiliate conference, check out Geno's guide to affiliate marketing events and conferences in…
This month I"€™m pleased to interview Richard Kershaw who is an active affiliate who uses paid and organic search to drive sales through his clients"€™ affiliates programmes. I was keen to tap into Richard"€™s expertise from following his commonsense comments on the UK Netmarketing discussion forum and his own Quality Nonsense Blog. I also wanted to get an affiliates perspective on trends in affiliate marketing. Q1. How do you see the balance between the importance of SEO and PPC focused affiliates changing in the future? (With merchants getting more refined in paid search and putting more attention into SEO plus the search engines apparently trying to exclude affiliates, will this make life too difficult for small-to-mid size affiliates?) [Richard Kershaw]: As far as PPC is concerned, there"€™s a pincer movement between Google and merchants. The AdWords platform is getting more complex, while traffic prices are on the up thanks to…