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Moniker’s successful Live Domain Auction will be taking place at Affiliate Summit on Monday, July 9 at the Intercontinental Hotel in Miami.

The domain auction will provide an opportunity for affiliate marketers to secure premier web addresses. The master inventory of available domain names has been announced and they are now available for download.

Featured domains include…

AffiliateDirectory.com
AffiliateProgram.org
AffiliateSoftware.com
BirthControl.com
Commercial.net
DiscountedBooks.com
DiscountMall.com
Elections.com
eSports.com
FantasyFootball.org
GED.net
InsuranceRates.com
KIX.com
MusicTV.com
NewYorkRealty.com
OneWayFares.com
PDA.net
PokerAffiliates.com
Slots.com
SpecialSavings.com
Vodka.net
WineGallery.com

From the master list of more than 2,000, Moniker will select the best 150 domains that will be included in the Live Domain Auction. The remaining domains will be available for sale in the online Silent Auction system running Monday, July 9 through Tuesday, July 17, 2007.

Get more details on the domain auction at http://marketplacepro.moniker.com/auction/detail.html?auction_id=141.

A very limited number of Affiliate Summit passes are available at http://www.affiliatesummit.com.

I just heard that there is a “Beverly Jones” contacting folks in the UK under the guise of working for Affiliate Summit. According to Jess Luthi, this “Beverly” has contacted PrimeQ, DGM, and perhaps others.

Apparently, Ms. Beverly is offering free Affiliate Summit passes, and is asking for a list of conference attendees.

Anybody working with the conference has this information, and we’re not peddling free passes in such a manner.

If you happen to get a call from this character, it would be greatly appreciated if you would forward her phone number to realdeal@affiliatesummit.com, so I can call and say hello myself.

Google is being sued by Vulcan Golf, LLC in a complaint filed June 15, 2007 over the Google AdSense for Domains program.

According to Eric Goldman on his Technology & Marketing Law Blog, “Domainer litigation is heating up, and this lawsuit may be the most ambitious anti-domainer lawsuit to date. First, it is a putative class action lawsuit. Second, in addition to naming four leading domainer firms, the plaintiffs provocatively go after Google for providing ads to domainer sites. I believe this is the first lawsuit against Google for its domainer relationships.”

Google describes their AdSense for Domains program as follows…

AdSense® for domains allows domain name registrars and large domain name holders to unlock the value in their parked page inventory. AdSense for domains delivers targeted, conceptually related advertisements to parked domain pages by using Google’s semantic technology to analyze and understand the meaning of the domain names. Our program uses ads from the Google AdWords™ network, which is comprised of thousands of advertisers worldwide and is growing larger everyday. Google AdSense for domains targets web sites in over 25 languages, and has fully localized segmentation technology in over 10 languages.

As I am not a lawyer, I can’t speak to the merit of the lawsuit, but it does bring an interesting issue to the surface.

There has been a lot of fuss over MFA (Made for AdSense) sites, and how Google was going to clean those AdSense publishers out of the network.

But do they really add less value to the end user than domain placeholder pages? I’d say they are in the same league.

The July 2007 issue of Entrepreneur Magazine includes a short article on video, “Now See This: Online video can breathe new life into your business.”

The article, on page 30, mentions some things we’re doing with Affiliate Summit and video.

Also, there is a picture in there of me in action - playing around with video in my office. That’s Wil Reynolds, Associate of SEER Interactive, over my shoulder.

He’ll be speaking on SEO Site Critiques at Affiliate Summit 2007 East. And, of course, we’ll be capturing it on video and making it available for all to see.

Check out the article at http://www.affiliatetip.com/entrepreneur0707.pdf.

I was in New York City yesterday to give a lecture at NYU on affiliate marketing and had some time to kill beforehand. So I ventured up to the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue to see the people waiting in line for an iPhone.

It was a dedicated bunch, for sure, but ridiculous. Come on now - waiting a week to get a gadget.

I think it looks like a great product, though I am still a BlackBerry guy. Don’t get me wrong, I love some flavors of Apple Kool-Aid. I’ve got my MacBook and iPod right here in front of me.

And I may get an iPhone out of curiosity. But no way would I wait in the heat, humidity, rain and stink of the NYC summer. I’m all about buying my Mac products online.

The iPhone, nicknamed the “Jesus Phone” on some blogs, is being unleashed on the world at 6pm EST on June 29. More details on the iPhone at http://www.jesusphone.info/.

Henry Winkler once said, “Assumptions are the termites of relationships.”

That saying is not only true in our real-world relationships, it’s true in our online relationships….especially our online relationships with members of our opt-in lists.

Of course, first you have to HAVE an opt-in list before you can begin to build a solid, termite-free relationship.

The ways to build an opt-in list are many and varied but the most tried and true methods are:

1. Offering an opt-in incentive that has real value (example: an eBook, report or software)..
2. Being an active poster of online blogs and forum communities that relate to the products and/or services in your niche.
3. Writing thoughtful and informational articles and ebooks about your niche topic and submitting them to article banks and eBook repositories.

Even after you have done these things, it is still not time to start trying to sell products or services to your opt-in list….not yet.

BEFORE you sell, you must build a trusting relationship with each and every opt-in list member. And trust building takes time as well as patience.

You should send between ten and fifteen INFORMATIVE emails to each opt-in list member before you try to sell anything. Think of it as termite prevention.

You will build a solid relationship and the members of your list will trust you. That way when you do begin recommending products and services to them, they will be much more likely to buy them.

In order to maintain this solid relationship that you spent so much time building, you must be very, very careful to always recommend only high quality products and services that are beneficial to the members of your opt-in list.

To sum it all up, there are three main steps you need to do to build your solid, termite-free opt-in list:

1. Start building the list
2. Establish a relationship before you sell.
3. Maintain the relationship by only recommending high-quality products.

Commission Junction has announced that their affiliate marketing technology is used by more advertisers on Internet Retailer’s Top 500 Guide to Retail Web Sites than the next two affiliate marketing providers combined.

CJ also states that they lead in powering programs for 10 of the 14 market categories being used by advertisers to expand reach and increase online revenues.

Internet Retailer reports that 335 of the top 500 retailers have affiliate programs that they either manage through affiliate networks or in-house with their own tracking technology.

“Once again, Internet Retailer’s survey reaffirms Commission Junction’s leadership in providing the Web’s largest retailers with powerful affiliate marketing programs. With the CJ Marketplace our advertisers increase their online revenue and expand their reach into new markets,” said Tom Vadnais, CEO of ValueClick, Inc., and general manager of Commission Junction and Mediaplex.

“As the affiliate channel grows, Commission Junction will continue to lead in the development and delivery of the best affiliate marketing solutions to support our advertisers and the publishers who promote them.”

More details on the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide at http://www.internetretailer.com/top500/.

Lisa Picarille and myself welcomed Rob Kniaz, Product Manager at Google, for the latest episode of Affiliate Thing.

Topics discussed criteria for advertisers to participate in the Google Pay Per Action beta, ad formats, and whether Google considers AdWords and AdSense to be affiliate marketing.

We also touched on the LinkShare Golden Link Awards and Symposium, affiliates promoting the iPhone, using SMS as a marketing tool, and a preview of Affiliate Summit 2007 East.

Listen to this episode now. The Affiliate Thing show airs weekly on Wednesdays at noon EST. Tune in at http://www.WebmasterRadio.FM.

If you’d like to call in to the Affiliate Thing show, dial up 866-345-6631 between 12:00 pm and 12:30 pm EST on Wednesdays.

Subscribe to the Affiliate Thing RSS feed or send a blank e-mail to affiliatething@aweber.com to get each podcast delivered by e-mail.

Today on the Affiliate Thing show on WebmasterRadio.FM, broadcasting live at noon EST, the guest will be Rob Kniaz, Product Manager at Google.

Rob is coming on to chat about Google’s Pay-Per-Action (PPA) pricing model for AdWords.

If you’d like to call in to the Affiliate Thing show, dial up 866-345-6631 between 12:00 pm and 12:30 pm EST on Wednesdays.

Subscribe to the Affiliate Thing RSS feed or send a blank e-mail to affiliatething@aweber.com to get each podcast delivered by e-mail.

LinkShare has posted the video from the Golden Link Awards 2007. The video features bits from the emcee, Kevin Meaney, as well as announcements of the awards.

This is the same video they showed to kick off the LinkShare Symposium last week - nice work that they get it all edited over night.

The one problem with the edit was that my dramatic pause was removed when announcing AffiliateFairPlay.com as Performance Marketing’s Most Vocal Advocate.

Otherwise, it served as a sharp recap of the event. Also, this video is the first in hopefully many videos posted to the LinkShare channel on YouTube.

More on the Golden Link Awards at http://www.linkshare.com/symposium2007/glawards_overview.shtml.