A transcript of an exchange about affiliate marketing that I hand (finger?) made from today's new episode of the Gillmor Gang after Shawn Collins of the Affiliate Summit sent in $250 as a part of Jason Calacanis' tongue-in-cheek test of Gillmor Gang advertising:

Calacanis: "You know what else is going to be a historical moment? The Affiliate Summit taking place Feb 24 through 26th."

Chuckles

Calacanis "Sorry, we've got to get through some advertising here. Who's going to the Aff Summit on Feb 24 and 25th in Vegas?"

Gillmor: "What are you talking about?"

Calacanis "I'm talking about the first sponsor of The Gang."

Doc Searls: "What is the Affiliate Summit?"

Marc Canter: "Yeah, what is it?"

Calacanis: "That's the question we have to answer. You guys know that billions of dollars are made by affiliate companies like Amazon's affiliate program?"

Gillmor: "Are you reading something?"

Calacanis: "No. I'm trying to do some shtick here. If you go to AffiliateSummit.com (x2), you will see it's an amazing event which is occuring on Feb 24 thru Feb 26 in Vegas. Who's been to Vegas on the line?"

Hugh McLeod: "What's it called? I feel a smut on?"

Calacanis: "Affiliate Summit (x2). It's a summit of people in the affiliate business."

... a couple of minutes later...

Doc calls Jason out as a speaker and asked what he's going to be speaking about. He says "web pollution and how affiliate companies can either police their web pollution or not. A lot of the affiliate stuff going on is a little suspect. People making landing pages and what-not."

Marc Canter: "But what is an affiliate company?" (Sam slaps head)

Calacanis: "So Amazon is the biggest company out there (Sam slaps head). Linkshare. Basically, what you do is you sign into these services as there are a whole bunch of different ones. Every time I get a click thru or somebody makes a purchase, you know, I get a dollar or a hundred dollars depending on what it is like a hotel room, etc. So there's a large portion of internet advertising and monetization that occurs which is affiliate based. People don't even know it. It's an entire underground. You guys, the smartest guys on the web, don't even know what affiliate marketing is!

Marc Canter: "So, multi level marketing comes to the web. What are they selling? Tupperware?"

Calacanis: "No no no no. It's commission based. It's cost per action instead of cost per click. It's more innovative than what Google is doing. As a matter of fact, Google is starting to work on Affiliate stuff where they pay per action. So, booking a hotel room you get $5 or buying a flight you get $6."

Someone: "Revenue sharing?"

Hugh McLeod: "I have a client that does $200 million that way"

Calacanis: "It is the biggest underground story of the last couple of years that no one is paying attention to and that's why I'm keynoting it, b/c I'm going to learn a lot at the Affiliate Summit (x2) at AffiliateSummit.com (x2) Feb 24, 25 and 26 in Las Vegas. And if you go, you can hang out with me and we'll do cocktails and have a steak."

Muttering

Calacanis: "So, Affiliate Summit got their $250 worth, so everyone go to affiliatesummit.com (x3) and register."

Marc Canter: "It's at the Rio, it's off the Strip, dude. I mean, come on."

Calacanis: "It's actually not a bad hotel."

Someone: "Great view from the roof. Go to the roof."

Calacanis: "Prices are affordable too b/c you don't want to blowing all of your money on the room when you can be spending it on other activities. And you can do that at Affiliate Summit Feb 24, 25, 26 at The Rio in Las Vegas, NV. Thank you for sponsoring the Gillmor Gang. They gave us their money, we give them our attention. Thank you again, Affiliate Summit."

I call that a pretty good bang for Shawn's $250. Oh, and I'll back up Calacanis and say that you should be going to Affiliate Summit.