Eric Edelstein - Affiliate marketing

Eric Edelstein, chairman of Traffic Synergy, is talking affiliate marketing. More specifically, "Assessing affiliate marketing and the instant global sales force it creates". As an indication of the power of affiliate marketing, Eric starts by quoting 650 leads for a recent company in a single day, generated by Traffic Synergy's group of affiliates. Affiliate marketing is all about performance-based results. The vendor only pays the affiliate after the sale's gone through, so there's no risk to the company advertising, just a share of the profit to the affiliate program (Traffic Synergy) which then passes this on to their affiliates. Eric highlights the number of affiliate conferences around the world: Affiliate Summit, PubCon, SES and AdTech. Internationally, affiliate marketing is big business, with thousands of affiliates earning significant incomes. Amazon.com apparently generates 25-30% of their sales via affiliate marketing. Affiliates are on the bleeding edge. They take the risk, they test new media, they're in charge of niche networks and were the first to take advantage of Facebook social ads. Eric suggests that, for many companies, it makes sense to let the guys who already in the communities do the work for you - you get to focus on building your business while affiliates worry about finding the most advanced technologies to get your brand/product out there in new and effective ways. Eric moves on to talk about a range of affiliate bites - FROM Adwords benefits to companies wanting to keep their competitors out by allowing affiliates to bid on their keywords TO geotargeting international sites to reach South African visitors on sites like Facebook, Yahoo, IMDB and so on. Quite a lavish life these super affiliates live. Eric spreads out pics of 8 seater plane parties, 36 hour poker sessions and shindigs (otherwise known as conferences) that the big boys attend. Why do affiliates prefer networks to individual brands/programmes: ONE login to multiple programs ONE place to get stats ONE commission payment ONE account manager ONE system to learn Bottom line? South African affiliate marketing is exploding. One of the Traffic Synergy success stories: a guy who left his 9-5 job to move into full-time affiliate marketing. A year and a half later, he's just bought a house in Camps Bay.