Last Spring, it seemed as if the world of affiliate marketing would be saturated with bloggers. BUMPzee was riding high and everyone was trading links, trackbacks, comments and bumps.

It was the short lived golden age of affiliate blogging.

Don’t get me wrong, there are still some great places to read about affiliate marketing such as Shawn Collin’s AffiliateTip Blog, Scott Jangro’s blog, Linda Buquet’s 5 Star Blog, Mark’s 45n5 blog, Zac Johnson’s blog, ReveNews as well as many others that I’m surely leaving out. There are some great new blogs such as Trisha Lyn’s blog, but things don’t feel the same.

However, last year it wasn’t uncommon to get 10-15 “bumps” on a thought provoking post from BUMPzee that made you feel as if something unique was happening in the affiliate blogging space.

And it wasn’t uncommon to see many new and interesting blogs popping up addressing real affiliate marketing issues. Maybe it was BUMPzee’s influence? Maybe it was the market boom last year?

It just doesn’t feel the same.

What happened?

I came across this blog while looking over new submissions to the BUMPzee Next Gen Marketing community which I facilitate.

Basically, it’s the business and chamber of commerce blog for Monmouth, NJ… but it’s completely in tune with how blogging, social networks, design, etc can help out small and independent businesses. 

Really makes my day to see these theories and applications being put to the test outside of the tech geek or marketing crowd.

Great job to Howard who puts this together… 

The blog will have a mixed set of topics but will be focused on business in Monmouth County New Jersey. Topics such as marketing, business ideas, news, technology, local issues, and many others will be discussed here. I really look forward to these discussions and getting to know all of you better.

ourmonmouthblog: Business and community blog of Monmouth County New Jersey

Making the post so you don’t have to…

I love the idea of content aggregation.  So, after I get through wading through the feeds in my reader (I’ve recently switched from Google Reader to FeedDemon, btw… love it), I head over to BUMPzee’s Affiliate Marketing Community to see what’s new in the comments world.

So, if you have a blog that is related to affiliate marketing and you’re not on BUMPzee’s Affiliate Marketing community, please join up so that I can read comments that get posted to your blog.  I’m selfish like that.

Anyway, I never thought I’d really use BUMPzee in such a way, so it’s fascinating to me that it has become such a daily ritual in my screen-time habit.  It really is the best way to keep a thumb on what’s being discussed in the affiliate blogosphere.

Entry List - Affiliate Marketing Community @ BUMPzee!

The interesting thing about affiliate marketing is that once you think you know everyone in the business, a new door opens to a new community of people whom you’ve never met. That keeps things exciting in this business.

I’ve been toying with the UK affiliate network Affiliate4U (a .com site, not a .co.uk site) today and I have to say that it’s definitely an impressive place of community, discussion, social voting and a little bit of “Twitter” like short messaging.

The ease of use and navigation is astounding compared to some of our forums here in the States. The rapidly growing BUMPzee is the closest thing that we have to something of this nature, even though its scope is wider than just affiliate marketing.

So, if you’re on Affiliates4U, look me up (”samharrelson”) and show me around as we Americans have a hard time navigating places without large maps and fanny packs full of prescriptions.

Andrew Chen asks a very good question about “freemiums” and incorporating a game playing mentality into business models (especially those reliant on user generated conent).

So here’s a question - why don’t web products incorporate this functionality. Everyone is familiar with freemium models - that is, make it free for most people, but in exchange for the advanced features, make people pay for the package.

Here’s a twist: Unlock the features everytime the user engages with your site more. If they comment, upload pictures/videos, or do whatever you want to do with the site, reward them with more functionality.

This way, you’re trading engagement/pageviews for functionality, and particularly in the UGC world where you’re trying to get people more active, this is a big win/win.

I think Andrew is on to something.

One of the major questions facing popular but free applications such as Twitter or Wordpress or Meebo or Tumblr or even YouTube is how to monetize the traffic and not go out of business.  Where and what is the business model? Can you really rely on page-view driven advertising for a sustainable and long term success (especially with a trendy niche site like Twitter)?

Games like World of Warcraft or Zelda are addictive, organic  and viral because they make users come back for more to see what the next level is like.  Sure, you can buy a level 60 orc off eBay (like Jim Kukral or Scott Jangro), but where’s the fun in that?  Working your way through hours of quests and wolf slayings teaches you skills and adds to the addictive qualities of the game. 

Anticipation is everything, even in business.

Any programs using this?

Futuristic Play by Andrew Chen: Level up for features instead of freemium?

technorati tags:worldofwarcraft, freemiums, advertising, marketing, zelda, meebo, twitter, tumblr

You’ll notice a new widget over on the sidebar underneath the BUMPzee widget for “TwitterLit.”  I love what TwitterLit is doing so much, that I have no problem supporting it through a widget here.  It’s an example of future marketing and the best of what affiliate marketing is and can be in the present and future.

TwitterLit, as I’ve explained earlier, is without a doubt my favorite new affiliate marketing site.   If you’re on Twitter and you haven’t added TwitterLit as a friend, you’re missing out on the future.   If you’re not on Twitter (my account is here), fear not… you can subscribe to an RSS feed to get updates on the first lines of famous pieces of literature, fiction and non-fiction as TwitterLit deems fit to produce them.

I’m hooked already!  Content meets communication meets compelling attention… now that is smart marketing.

BUMPzee is rapidly becoming the Techmeme/Technorati/Digg of the online marketing sphere.

Today, Scott Jangro and his team released another major upgrade to the BUMPzee service.

This time, users are allowed to see “HotSpots” which show where the most action within a particular community is taking place as well as the ability to “show” and “hide” the various menu’s on a community’s main page in a very snazzy fashion.

To go along with that, users have the option of getting stats on their blogs where the BUMPzee widget is placed. This is not only helpful, it puts BUMPzee above and beyond what platforms such as MyBlogLog have built.

All of this, along with the implementation of “Zee’s” (Twitter like short messages) is putting BUMPzee in an incredible position as both a filter and a mediator of online content.

Look for good things to continue there…

About a week ago, our resident lounge gear connoisseur, Jonathan (Trust) wrote this “Zee” (short form communication akin to Twitter) on BUMPzee:

Has bumpin’ gone down? I’ve noticed a lot more 1 bump, 0 comment blog posts making it to the front page. I admit when this first started I used to bump whatever I found good, now I just read more.

I still have the BUMPzee “BUMP THIS” widget on individual pages, but took it off the main pages while I try out this template since I’m not getting that many BUMPs anymore. Even before that, I noticed a significant drop in the quantity (and I would argue quality, but that’s subjective) BUMPs that were being generated on BUMPzee.

Perhaps I’m just not making content that is interesting enough for BUMPs.

I love what Scott Jangro has created with BUMPzee and I’ve been one of the earliest and most vocal advocates of the service, but it seems that most of the BUMPs are going to either Shoemoney posts or hyper-confrontational posts.

Perhaps this is the way of all social networks. Or, perhaps our niche industry is into a certain kind of post and doesn’t find other content worthy of a “BUMP,” but I’d like to think otherwise.

I hate it.

I really do.

I consider myself a nice guy and try to stay positive about things, even if I’m not a big or small fan (SEO for instance).

There is something very disturbing about the current state of the blogosphere… it’s going negative, quickly.  I think this is a moment we’ll look back on and point to as one of the indicators thatthe golden age of “nice blogging” is over.

Young people who ground their coding teeth on MySpace, and now Facebook, are looking beyond the blog to express their opinions, share their views and find content. Blogging has become a stepping-stool platform, or a transitory platform, for us old folk to move from old media to new media.  Young people didn’t need this transitory step and are rapidly advancing into the brave new world of new media ahead of us as we grapple with how to monetize and make sure that we’re getting the right “google juice” out of our blogs.

Even in our space of online marketing and media, you can see evidence of this shift towards the negative to get eyeballs. Check out BUMPzee on any given day, and up near the top of the highest voted or highest commented-on posts will be a couple of blogs with negative titles and negative content.

Perhaps it’s one more example of why blogs are on the backend of the innovation curve and why platforms such as Twitter or Tumblr are the new place of discussion rather than dollars-for-eyeballs bonanzas.

In the words of a modern day prophet,

People are crazy and times are strange,

I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range,

I used to care, but things have changed.

The blogosphere, especially in the affiliate world, is rapidly going negative, and that’s not good.

Last week, I posted about a new service called “TwitThis” which allows for users to share interesting links from blog posts on their Twitter pages.

Of course, there are obvious ways to seriously abuse this, and I’m sure it will happen eventually due to the human condition.

However, for those seeking to keep Twitter a somewhat healthy and useful tool, this little tool is a perfect way to distribute content and allow others to share in the joy (or despair) of your experience with that content.

The FeedBurner team has created a little script which allows you to add a “TwitThis” link on the bottom of your page or feed item if you are using FeedBurner to manage your syndication content. Since I do use (and love) FeedBurner (even have a sticker on my favorite laptop), you’ll see an example of the “Feed Flare” in action below this post or feed item.

FeedBurner has done a great job of allowing for the distribution of content with their FeedFlare options. Every producer of content, should be attempting to have their content distributed as much as possible.

But, there is a balance to be found.

Pushing your willingness to have your content shared can backfire in your efforts to have that goal accomplished. There are blogs where I do enjoy the content, but cannot stand to visit on a regular basis because of the heavy pushing of social networking links. In this regard, I am more than thankful that RSS feeds are easily discoverable in FireFox so that I can get the syndicated content without having to deal with the mess.

I do keep a BUMPzee button at the bottom of the posts here, because of the usefulness that it serves for me and for a large majority of my users. I think moderation is a good thing in this respect.

However, as we’ve pointed out many times here, RSS adoption is still relatively low. So, how many visitors and readers are you turning away from your blog because of issues such as your insistence that your content be shared on del.icio.us, Netscape, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc?

The better tactic is to let your users organically choose to bookmark and share your content. The best way to do that is to encourage the use of RSS and syndication, in my opinion. Rather than seeking to gain more traffic by beating your loyal readers over their head with social networking links, allow them to share what they deem is fitting on their own volition.

If you’re content is good, it will be distributed. Let your readers choose their distribution methods instead of forcing it down their eye sockets. They’ll reward you with loyal readership and more traffic in the long term (tail).

There will be major changes occurring here over the next few hours, days and into weeks.

Details will come trickling out at first and then the levy will break. If you’d like to follow along and see where things are headed, check out the following places:

My Home Page

My Twitter Page

My YouTube Page

My Tumblelog

BUMPzee Next Gen Marketing Community

ABW Web2.0 Marketing Community

Each one of these places will play a major role in the changes that are already starting here (and at other places) and will eventually morph into the next iteration of CPN.

Aggregate all of these sources, you say? Nope, that’s your job.  I’d like for you to pay attention, but I’d rather earn it from you.

Don’t worry, it will be easy, quick and might even to cause you to think (differently?) about marketing, humanity and how/why we do what we do in this insulated bubble we’ve created for ourselves.

In a nutshell, CostPerNews will remain a site and will retain its basic character. However, the way “content” is produced, compiled and composed here will be altered dramatically. Just as individuals outside the “blogosphere” are creating, sharing and marketing their own ideas, we need to move to the next step.

I would call it blogging2.0, but blogging is dead…