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The finalists have been determined for the first annual Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards.

The Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards Show is taking place from 10:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. on Monday, January 22, 2007 during the Pure Imagination Party hosted by oneNetworkDirect and Wynn Las Vegas.

The Pure Imagination Party is taking place at TRYST the nightclub at Wynn Las Vegas.

Get your invitation at booth #116 or # 313 in the Affiliate Summit exhibit hall.

Here are the finalists for each category:

Affiliate of the Year

Anne Fognano
Michael Coley
Scott Hazard

Affiliate Manager of the Year

Jamie Birch
Angel Djambazov
Sam Osborn

Exceptional Merchant

Amazon
eBay
OnlineShoes.com

Affiliate Marketing Advocate Award

Linda Buquet
Ben Edelman
Brian Littleton

Best Blogger

Scott Jangro
Beth Kirsch
Jim Kukral

Wayne Porter Affiliate Marketing Legend

Todd Crawford
Haiko de Poel, Jr.
Brian Littleton

Congratulations to all who were nominated. We were excited to get such an abundance of nominations for these awards.

I’ve been hearing and reading about Second Life from some of the big minds in the business I respect, like Jeff Doak, Sam Harrelson and Wayne Porter. But is it something affiliate marketers should be getting in to (if they’re not already)?

If you’re not familiar with Second Life, it is “a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents.”

Second Life opened to the public in 2003. Since then, the population has grown to more than 1.7 million people around the world.

Businesses are flocking to Second Life to establish a presence. IBM is there. NBC and Reuters, too.

The media are all reporting how Anshe Chung is Second Life’s first millionaire.

Wayne Porter opined at ReveNews today about critics of the million dollar avatar:

“What I found the most ironic during some of my discussions is that people scoff at her “virtual empire” are the same ones who understood the the concept of “virtual real estate” like a website with a domain name attached about 15 years ago.”

I think that’s a reach. Then again, it’s probably worth affiliate marketers digging in to find out more about this whole thing.

I’ve heard some interesting ideas about how Second Life could be leveraged by affiliates - I’ll be watching and experimenting myself.

By the way, my Second Life persona is Wildebeest Amsterdam.

I just came across a tragic post over at the Super Affiliate Marketing Blog from Jon of the Wicked Fire forum.

Jai Rajkumar, an affiliate manager at Azoogle passed away over Thanksgiving weekend, according to Jon’s touching eulogy.

There is also a discussion about Jai and his impact on many in the affiliate marketing space over at Wicked Fire.

My condolences to all of the affiliates, co-workers, friends and family of Jai Rajkumar.

The Affiliate Summit preview conference call series will feature Wil Reynolds from SEER Interactive and Kellie Stevens from AffiliateFairPlay.com on Thursday, December 7th, 2006 at 3pm Eastern Time.

This is the third in a series of four preview calls in advance of Affiliate Summit 2007 West, taking place January 21-23, 2007 at Bally’s Las Vegas.

The purpose of this series of free teleseminar calls is to allow you to get to know the guest speakers for the conference. Space is limited, so register now at
http://www.affiliatesummitpreview.com.

Wil Reynolds from SEER Interactive will touch on whether the conflicting advice you are getting on SEO is keeping you from success, and the SEO issues keeping you from the top of the search engines.

Kellie Stevens from AffiliateFairPlay.com will cover new quality assurance considerations with sub-affiliate transparency, cross-channel company layering in ad delivery and new behaviors by adware.

The calls are hosted by Marty M. Fahncke, Founder of Conference Call University. You can listen to the Affiliate Summit Preview call archives at http://www.cculearning.com/summitreplay2007.

For more information about Affiliate Summit, visit http://www.AffiliateSummit.com.

I see there is an Internet Marketing board game coming out on November 28 and there is a contest going on to guess the name.

It’s being touted as the first Internet Marketing board game, and it’s supposed to be a training tool.

Apparently, the board game will teach participants about affiliate programs, blogs, joint ventures, podcasts, residual income, etc.

I can see playing it maybe once in the office - I wouldn’t subject my family and friends to such fun.

So what’s the name? Risk is already taken. Monopoly, too. I’m thinking the best name is probably Newbie.