Part 1 : Early Days

Shawn, you have your own website at BabyLounge.com, and a job at ClubMom - I see a pattern here - but what led you to take up the position of affiliate manager and how did you get involved with affiliate programs in the first place?
Back in January, I visited ClubMom as a favor to a friend. I stopped by after work one night to give a presentation on affiliate marketing and to let them know why they should have an affiliate program. In the days after, they made an offer I couldn't refuse.

I got involved with affiliate programs back in the early days. Affiliate programs started getting attention in 1997 with the launch of the Amazon program, and at the same time I was getting my feet wet with HTML. Back then, I was still on AOL and I set up a primitive page about New York City (which eventually grew into http://www.velocitynyc.com). I joined Amazon's program to offer some coffee table books about New York City.

When affiliate programs first appeared, did you anticipate that this marketing approach would achieve the status it has so quickly?
Not at all, because they did not grow so quick immediately. I think the emergence of Refer-it and AssociatePrograms.com (and the directories that followed) were hugely responsible for the organization and growth of the industry.

Let's look at ClubMom - what proportion of your members are acquired through the affiliate program?
That's a tricky question, because the company started in July 1999 and the affiliate program launched in mid-March 2000. Also, for the five or so months (before the Web site grew legs), there was a large off-line initiative with kiosks in malls around the United States. But in the past weeks, now that the company is growing largely through online recruitment, the affiliate program has been responsible for approximately 50% of the acquired members.

Does the 80:20 rule apply - how successful are most of your affiliates at generating members for you?
To tell you the truth, the 80:20 rule is a myth. Most people that I have spoken to have experienced the 95:5 rule (myself included).

What characterizes your best affiliates - is it purely a question of traffic or is there more to it than that?
Creativity, traffic and focus. Our best affiliates do not put up a banner, they set up an environment to market our service, whether it is by the aid of one of our sweepstakes, free offers or the membership benefits. Of course, traffic is necessary, as well as a site that is geared towards moms in some capacity.