I blogged a few days ago about how I had been asked to speak on a panel at the above event and thought i’d follow up with a few thoughts about the event.
First of all I thought it was incredibly well organised and congratulations to Lizzie and the rest of the team for all the hard work. Whilst there is still often the perception that affiliate marketing is a bit of a cottage industry, events such as this go a long way to improving the image and demonstrating the professionalism that is needed to take things forward.
The keynote speaker was Lord Digby Jones who was a very strong speaker. John Maher from O2 asked a very good question about what Lord Digby’s advice would be for SME owners and I thought his answer was spot on. If people don’t pay you on time then stop working with them. Food for thought for affiliates and networks…
Mainly I wanted to talk about the panel session that I was on, chaired by Warrick Lambert from Platform A. Alongside me on the panel was Pete Wakim from Quidco, Chris Morling from Dotzinc and Alicia Navarro from Skimlinks. My main frustration about the session was that we didn’t have enough time to discuss all of the issues we had planned.
We covered questions around what niches affiliates can/should promote, whether affiliates should be paid on a lifetime revenue share basis and the question of last click attribution. There was some very good debate both on the panel and amongst the audience.
It seems there is desire amongst affiliates to understand more about these areas and I for one would welcome increased debate. If anyone wants to add any questions in the comments below I’d be more than happy to try and talk about these issues further in future blog posts.
