nextMEDIA: How to Make Money and Do It Right

If you want to read more on the sessions that happened at nextMEDIA, check out BrandingDavid.com, where there is a full index of the posts surrounding the event.

Marina Mann is an independent digital Marketing consultant specializing in e-Commerce and building online businesses. Marina has 11 years experience producing and monetizing interactive, high-tech customer experiences for entertainment, retail and telco brands. In 2007, Marina led Virgin Mobile Canada's Web marketing, strategy & operations and launched Virgin's content (VAS) portal.

The Internet is the world's largest marketplace, and a growing part of that is e-commerce. Affiliate marketing is a part of the e-commerce ecosystem.

The word of mouth economy is strong, and can push affiliate products quite easily. You can now reach thousands of people using Facebook, Twitter, e-mail and more.

Display advertising by itself is bad for conversion but good for branding while proper affiliate marketing integrations are stronger for conversions and result in a money making type of traffic.

"Affiliate marketing is like buying a T.V. ad, and only paying for it if it works" - Marina Mann

The presentation of course focused in on one affiliate model, and made it seem like publishers don't really get a good deal as they work hard to drive traffic for next to no money compared to the products that they are working to make sure are sold.

Publishers should focus on finding networks that can monetize their traffic sources. eBay can monetize any traffic from around the world, which is one advantage over companies that can only monetize any one countries traffic.

WestJet grew to 850 affiliates in their first year, and generated over $20 million in sales and used Commission Junction for their programs. But they almost closed the program because they didn't understand affiliate marketing, "if they aren't travel agents, what are they?"

Only the top twenty percent make substantial income as an affiliate sales expert, but in an economic downturn, as we are experiencing today, Affiliate Marketing will thrive as it will offer a lower-cost way of finding customers.