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Brian Littleton, President/CEO of ShareASale.com, will be interviewed today on the Affiliate Thing show at WebmasterRadio.FM.

Join Lisa Picarille (Editor-in Chief of Revenue Magazine) and myself weekly for commentary on the big stories in affiliate marketing, plus tips, resources, news, and interviews with affiliate marketing industry characters.

We’ll be chatting with Brian about how he got into the affiliate network game, the guiding principles behind ShareASale.com, the future of the affiliate network, and more.

The show airs Wednesdays at noon EST for a half hour. Visit WebmasterRadio.FM for more information.

On July 29th 2005 you answered a question with regard to compensating an affiliate manager. How different are those numbers now?

The post from July 2005 was based on the AffStat 2005 Report. In that report, I asked the affiliate managers, “What is your annual salary (including incentives and bonuses)?”. The results were as follows.

The latest AffStat report had a bit of a different methodology for affiliate manager earnings. This time around, I broke out the data for affiliate managers earning a salary and outsourced affiliate managers working on retainer.

The salaried affiliate manager figures came out as follows for the AffStat 2007 Report. The salaries include any incentives and/or bonuses received by the affiliate managers.

Outsourced affiliate managers earned the following in monthly compensation. These figures include a percent of transactions if applicable.

The AffStat 2007 Report is now available for immediate download in PDF format at http://www.affstat.com/.

It’s been more than 43 years since the Beatles took the U.S. by storm with their storied appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. Today marks a new wave as U.K. affiliate network buy.at soft launches into the U.S.

Malcolm Cowley, Strategic Accounts Director of buy.at, is heading up the drive into the U.S. under CEO Kevin Cornils, ex Managing Director of Europe for Match.com.

Intially the buy.at operation will run remotely, but a U.S. office is planned for the future.

buy.at has engaged the services of Andy Rodriguez Consulting, an outsourced affiliate program management agency based in Miami, FL.

“Many networks moving from the U.K. to U.S. and vice versa have failed to engage their customers quickly,” according to Mr. Cowley.

“buy.at’s relationship and association with Andy and his team, guys whom we have an enormous amount of respect for, should help to put us on the radar in the right way. Our ethics and working practice are a great fit,” continued Cowley.

buy.at has paid out millions of pounds in the UK to its affiliates and their sole focus is on affiliate marketing.

Clients of buy.at in the UK include T-mobile, Capital One, Hertz and Sky.

Cowley, one of the founders of the U.K. network, revealed that buy.at competes pound for pound with Commission Junction in the U.K. for market share of the big brands and would be aiming for a similar style of client list in the US.

buy.at will be working with CD WOW! US as the sole client initially with more affiliate programs to be added over the first couple of months.

More details at http://buy.at/region/us/index.php.

Got any tips for being a full time affiliate at home?

The first thing I would suggest is to pick up a copy of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen.

It’s a great book. It will give you lots of tips on streamlining the way you do things. I’ve found it to be incredibly helpful in increasing my productivity.

Second of all, since one of the great things about working from home is not being tethered to your desk, I’d say my Blackberry is invaluable. Get yourself a Blackberry or similar device, so you can go around and do your thing and still have access to e-mail, the Web, telephone and everything.

Lastly, one of my most important things is caffeine. I get that from two sources and I alternate them throughout the day.

One is my Keurig Elite 40 coffee maker. It enables me to have different gourmet coffees in single cups. It’s a great little machine.

And, of course, I need a nearby refrigerator to house a supply of my Diet Dr. Pepper.

Those are my secrets to being productive and efficient throughout the day. Good luck with being a full-time affiliate.

See more affiliate marketing questions answered on Affiliate Tip TV at YouTube.

MarketingSherpa is conducting their 2007 Affiliate and Merchant Survey and they’re looking for your input.

Participants will receive a (free) results overview and answers are 100% anonymous.

Note - you can skip any question if you’re not sure of the answer, and you must have cookies enabled to compete this survey. If you have any questions, please email service@marketingsherpa.com

Take the survey at http://s-8c9mo-5265.sgizmo.com.

Check out the SherpaStore for practical marketing case studies, benchmarks, how-to handbooks, buyer’s guides, and metrics for B2B or B2C.

ShoeMoney reported a few days ago that a CPA Empire affiliate was involved in some questionable behavior in the promotion of mobile phone ringtones.

In his post, CPA Empire and Mobile Sidewalk Team Up On Ringtone Fraud, ShoeMoney provides an example where an affiliate is using forbidden tactics with the following description of the activity:

Goto the site and put in any phone number. Notice how the the terms and services mysteriously auto checks itself. Also the form AUTO SUBMITS itself upon typing in the last digit of the phone number and you are taken to the pin code confirmation page.

This is not even mentioning that the site is titled “Totally FREE !

CPA Empire has reponded to the incident with a statement from Steven Richter, President and General Counsel of Media Breakaway (CPA Empire is a division of Media Breakaway).

“We were recently informed that an Affiliate’s website was improperly scripted to automatically acknowledge a user’s acceptance of terms and conditions. Such actions are strictly prohibited by our Terms and Conditions and our Best Practices Compliance Policy. Although this matter was brought to our attention close to midnight, within an hour of identifying the Affiliate’s web site, we terminated the links and suspended the Affiliate from our network, pending further investigation. Any users who subscribed to the offer promoted on the Affiliate’s web site will be contacted and given the opportunity to cancel their order and receive a full refund.”

The Affiliate Thing podcast, hosted be Lisa Picarille, Editor-in-Chief of Revenue magazine, and myself, has a new address: WebmasterRadio.FM.

The weekly affiliate marketing show, taking place on Wednesdays at noon EST, will be in the same format as before: chatter about the latest news, issues and trends in affiliate marketing, as well as interviews with the movers and shakers in the industry.

Our debut Affiliate Thing on WebmasterRadio.FM will be on February 28. Join us for thirty minutes of affiliate marketing and fun.

Set your reminders now to go to http://www.webmasterradio.fm every Wednesday at noon EST for Affiliate Thing.