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I’ve gotten word that Greg “Donut Guy” Hoffman got the job. A couple weeks back, Greg posted on ABestWeb that he was trying to get an affiliate management job, and in an effort to stand out, he personally delivered a dozen Dunkin’ Donuts to the company.

He later shared that he got a first, then a second interview. And as of yesterday, he got the position of Affiliate Network Director at Think Partnership (AMEX:THK), where he’ll be working with KowaBunga and PrimaryAds.

“Usually when someone starts a new job, they are known as ‘The New Guy’ for a while, or at least until the next ‘New Guy’ starts. But, I have a feeling that Greg will always be known as ‘The Donut Guy’,” commented Rachel Honoway, VP of Marketing at Think Partnership.

Good luck, Greg. One bit of advice when you’re up for a promotion… bring in Krispy Kreme instead.

This week on Affiliate Thing we welcomed Jon, the Forum Fuhrer at WickedFire.com.

Topics discussed included Jon’s unhealthy love of e books, how he is helping to market the eBook community, and thoughts on good and bad networks.

Shawn and Lisa also touched on mobile phone affiliate stats, PopShops, MFA (Made for AdSense) sites going down the tubes, and AffiliateHug.com raising money for the March of Dimes.

Listen to this episode now. The Affiliate Thing show airs weekly on Wednesdays at noon EST. Tune in at http://www.WebmasterRadio.FM.

If you’d like to call in to the Affiliate Thing show, dial up 866-345-6631 between 12:00 pm and 12:30 pm EST on Wednesdays.

Subscribe to the Affiliate Thing RSS feed or send a blank e-mail to affiliatething@aweber.com to get each podcast delivered by e-mail.

Affiliate Summit is once again working in tandem with a charity for the upcoming show in Miami. This past January in Las Vegas, affiliate marketers combined to donate nearly $25,000 to Big Brothers Big Sisters of Southern Nevada.

We are working with the March of Dimes, a non-profit health organization that works to prevent premature birth and other serious threats to infant health, this time around. The fundraising efforts kick off with AffiliateHug.com.

AffiliateHug.com is a joint effort between Affiliate Summit and Scott Hazard.

For an online donation of $20.00, individuals will receive a certificate entitling them to one (1) ScooterSqueeze™ from Scott and a “Freshly Squeezed” commemorative t-shirt. Certificates can be redeemed at the Affiliate Meet Market on Sunday, July 8, 2007 during Affiliate Summit.

Premature birth affects more than half a million babies in the U.S. every year. It’s the #1 cause of newborn death, and babies who survive may suffer lifelong consequences, such as cerebral palsy, mental retardation, chronic lung disease, and vision and hearing loss.

So book your hugs at AffiliateHug.com and help the babies. All monies raised through AffiliateHug.com will go directly to the March of Dimes.

Stay tuned for more efforts to benefit the March of Dimes as we lead up to Affiliate Summit.

You can also help benefit the March of Dimes by casting a vote for my video entry in the ShareASale video contest.

The prize for the winner is $1,000, and if I win, I’ll donate all of the winnings to the March of Dimes.

Adam Viener, President of Imwave, moderated a panel on “How to Recruit Super Affiliates” at Affiliate Summit 2007 West.

He asked a question as to whether there is a preference for working with affiliate managers who work in-house at a merchant, account representatives at an affiliate network, or outsourced affiliate managers.

Dan Murray, Internet Marketing Strategist at Ravenwood Marketing, answers and provides his comments on the ideal attributes of an affiliate manager.

This week on Affiliate Thing we welcome Jon from the Wicked Fire forum to talk about what’s going on in affiliate marketing.

Both Lisa Picarille and myself will be streaming video during the show. Mine is below and you can see Lisa at http://www.stickam.com/profile/revenuelisap.

The Affiliate Thing show airs weekly on Wednesdays at noon EST. Tune in at http://www.WebmasterRadio.FM.

If you’d like to call in to the Affiliate Thing show, dial up 866-345-6631 between 12:00 pm and 12:30 pm EST on Wednesdays.

Subscribe to the Affiliate Thing RSS feed or send a blank e-mail to affiliatething@aweber.com to get each podcast delivered by e-mail.

This is chapter 1, “What is Affiliate Marketing?,” of the video edition of my book, Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants.

In brief, I usually describe affiliate marketing as the online equivalent of Avon.

Back when I was growing up, we had the Avon lady in the neighborhood. She would sell cosmetics door to door, and if she made a sale, she earned a commission.

It’s as simple as that - when applied online, people have Web sites where they can display advertisements, and if they refer a transaction from their ads, they earn a commission.

Affiliate marketing is a fairly simple concept, but people complicate it sometimes.

As far as a quick history of affiliate marketing, it’s a little over ten years old in it’s online form. A lot of people attribute the concept to Jeff Bezos an Amazon.com, but CDNow actually launched a primitive version of an affiliate program a year or so before Amazon.com.

So CDNow were innovators, but Amazon.com certainly popularized affiliate marketing, and they deserve recognition there.

In terms of defining an affiliate, it used to be simply a content site. But affiliates have evolved greatly over the years, and these days an affiliate can be essentially any method used to market online. For instance, affiliates are using data feeds, SEO, blogs, video, pay per click search engines, etc.

The affiliate program model is generally applied to one of three types: pay per sale (revenue share), pay per lead, or pay per click. Some affiliate programs combine these models to form a hybrid affiliate program.

People often wonder what sort of companies have affiliate programs. Well, the top retail Web sites, ranked by dollars spent (excluding auction sites, large corporate purchases and travel) for the 2006 holiday season (Nov. 1 – Dec. 26) were as follows, according to comScore Networks:

• Amazon.com
• Dell.com
• Yahoo.com
• Walmart.com
• Ticketmaster.com
• JCPenney.com
• Apple.com
• Bestbuy.com
• Victoriassecret.com
• Circuitcity.com

Affiliate programs are all over the list of top retail sites. But they are also just a common among Mom and Pop stores online.

That said, affiliate marketing is not easy. It’s not something where you can simply throw money at it and see great results. Rather a successful affiliate program requires a number of things, including creativity, focus, effort, and money.

Visit http://www.affiliatemanager.net/videos.shtml for all of the Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants videos.

The Federal Trade Commission has opened a preliminary antitrust investigation into Google’s planned $3.1 billion purchase of the online advertising company DoubleClick, according to a report in the New York Times.

The inquiry began at the end of last week, after it was decided that the Federal Trade Commission instead of the Justice Department would conduct the review, said the executive, who asked not to be identified because he had not been authorized to speak. The two agencies split the duties of antitrust enforcement.

An F.T.C. spokesman said yesterday that the agency did not comment on pending inquiries.

The deal, involving powerful forces in their respective niches of the online advertising business, prompted privacy advocates and competitors to raise concerns after it was announced last month. Those concerns and the deal’s size made a preliminary investigation all but certain, according to antitrust experts.

Microsoft, who was once rumored to be interested in DoubleClick, pushed for an antitrust investigation of the Google-DoubleClick deal. Recently, Microsoft agreed to pay $6 billion for aQuantive, and one of their units is Atlas, which competes with DoubleClick.

Will this clash of the titans filter down to affiliate marketing? Just a couple weeks ago, Microsoft announced the beta of their Microsoft Affiliate Network, and to the surprise of nobody but my dog, it’s not being powered by DoubleClick Performics.

Like sands through the hourglass, these are not the halcyon days of our Internet marketing lives.