Affiliate networks, for those not leveraging them, can be a powerful catalyst for traffic generation and actions on your website. This applies equally well for both advertisers and publishers.

There are really no analogies for tactics that cost nothing up-front offline but can generate powerful leads, registrations, sales or other actions.

Some key nuggets you need to know and then look for a Top 10 list of Affiliate Networks  you may want to research in a follow-up post. This advice is drawn from my past experience in custom affiliate networks in gaming and experts currently teaching a program I am taking, Jim Kukral and Chris Penn.

Key facts:

1. Networks allow users to get affiliate offers from merchants
2. Work by embedding code on your site that is tracked
3. Conversion on merchant goals generates commissions
4. Networks vary by features, offer type and vertical focus
5. Look for the best, most relevant offers
6. Consider sign-up on multiple networks to track best offers
7. Track network reporting, review and make adjustments
8. Text ads may outperform banners
9. Each network requires an application program so you must be comfortable providing corporate and personal info
10. Works best for higher margin, scalable merchants with good cash flow and flexibility in presentation (e.g. affiliates may promote more aggressively than you are use to)

Our own experience with affiliates is that it is critial to have systems in place to manage their timely payment and enquiries.  The growth can be viral and you need to be ready if you have a good product - you can really drive your traffic.

Stay tuned as we share more on a demo we are undertaking with the Google Affiliate network for premium content for riiPlay.tv.  We’ll share what we learn with our readers.

This is an interface we are testing for Riiplay.tv to show related episodes, speakers or events.  Please add a comment to let us know what you think.

While reading Chris Anderson’s updated Long Tail, I was intrigued by the use of Google Trends to measure the “suckness” of Dell by entering Dell Sucks vs. Dell Rocks.  Word of mouth is king and while Telus Sucks doesn’t seem to register you may want to check your own brand.

I was, however, very pleased to find that there was a huge amount of similar experience that Telus sucks including Darren Barefoot’s post and many others including www.telusimmobility.blogspot.com.   Great name.

My own experience has included the impossible to use and time-wasting automated directory - I always feel like I’m talking to that teacher in the old Peanuts cartoons - for those of you old enought to remember!  Most recently, after raking me with bills for months, they immediately found a way to save me over 70% of my monthly bill when I moved to switch.  Finally, they charged me  a 30 day porting fee even though I have no service then sent me a bill within a week with a collections date threat that was before I received the bill.  Nice.  25 years as a customer.  That’s CRM for you.

So, as a service to our readers we invite you to share your experience at one of these sites.  Let’s see if Telus is smart enough to watch the blogosphere, we’re unamused by our demo.  Now back to our regular programming!

Vivity Lab’s CEO Michael Cole came down to our studio to give us a demonstration of a few of the games Fit Brains is offering on-line. Fit Brains secured $1Million in funding earlier this year and we are pleased to feature Michael’s pitch at fundfindr.com. Check it out for some cues to make your pitch fundable.

What I found amazing is how popular on-line brain exercise games are amongst middle aged women! But there are all kinds of games to exercise all five parts of everyone’s brain. I played games that stimulated language, concentration and spacial/visual concepts. You really should check out Fit Brains, not only because its free but their next up-and-coming game is: The Executive Game!!!

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Got a hot demo for your innovation? Tell us more at news@fundfindr.tv and you may be next to be featured on fundfindr.tv.

One of the very cool technologies we’ve seen recently is CellMap, a mobile application that gets you where you want to go and then shares interactive information that you are looking for. Follow fundfindr.tv’s Shannon Kaplun and CellMap CEO, Aaron Hilton as they take care of important business in Whistler, BC! CellMap was the winner of the Best mobile application at the recent PopVox awards and a runner-up in our Pitchies Warm-up event.

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Don’t forget to enter the Pitchies to win up to $20k in cool prizes. Plus, if you want a cool demo for your product, give Shannon a shout at shannon@fundfindr.tv. Only Shannon, Danita and videographer extraordinaire, Ben Z. Cooper, can bring your product to life in our fun, entertaining, informative and effective way. If we like the technology, you could be next to be featured on fundfindr.tv demos!