I am honored once again to be finalist for the Pinnacle Award: Affiliate of the Year to be presented at Affiliate Summit West 2010 in Las Vegas next month. Will I once again be “always a bridesmaid, never a bride”? Those of you that know me personally can decipher that in various ways.

Anyway, last year I was up against two very deserving gentlemen where Mike Allen won the coveted title.  This year I am again up against two notable males – Nicholas Koscianski of NickyCakes.com and Eric Nagel.

Joe Sousa put his bets on the winners, so here’s my handicaps on the situation…

I didn’t even know NickyCakes’ last name until the finalists were announced, but I do read his blog and get a chuckle over his ability to tell it how it is. If the winner was chosen by “whose made the most money”, my bet is that Nicholas would take the cake (yes, pun intended) as he is a self-admitted reformed blackhat.

Now, if they choose the winner by the nicest, most thoughtful and kind-hearted person of the bunch, Eric Nagel would win hands down. Sure, I like to think of myself as having those qualities, but I can’t even compare to Eric.  I have seen Eric donate very generously to the Affiliate Marketers Give Back charities on several occasions.  Plus he’s just an all-around likable guy. The first time I really talked to him, he impressed me by mentioning something trivial that I had twittered about.

So, see you boys in Vegas! The only other woman to ever win the prestigious Affiliate of the Year award is Connie Berg, and those flamingo shoes are hard to fill.

Check out All of this year’s Pinnacle Award Finalists.  Plus see Past Pinnacle Award Finalist Nominees and Winners.

I received several free shirts while at Affiliate Summit in Vegas for my Free Shirt Friday posts. One of my favorites was this Bettie Page Embroidered Logo Black & Red Swingmaster Bowling Shirt I received during the Midnight Bowl-A-Rama at the Gold Coast Lanes from BowlingShirt.com!  We bowled after the ShareASale Under the Stars 80’s Party (my prom pic made the invitation), thus the reason for my high bangs, side ponytail, blue eyeshadow and Madonna gloves (thanks to Connie Berg for those - my daughter has been wearing them 24/7 since I arrived home). My web designer (aka my brother, Mike) received a Turquoise Hilton Encore Bowling Shirt.  Can you tell we had FUN?!

The BowlingShirt.com affiliate program is managed by GTO Management and housed at ShareASale.  Shown above is Joel & Karen Garcia (such a cool couple) from GTO with Josh from BowlingShirt.com.

Here’s the whole clan of bowlers clad in our new bowling shirts from BowlingShirt.com!  We ended up bowling again two nights later where I doubled my score (wasn’t hard when I didn’t even break 100 the first time)! Thanks for the bowling shirt, BowlingShirt.com!  Kind of makes me want to be on a bowling league just to order a personalized bowling shirt!

Last weekend, my house was featured on our city’s Holiday Parade of Homes, and I overheard, “How does a single mom of four afford this house?”  I swear half the town thinks I sell crap on eBay, and the other half thinks I make porn in my basement.

I sometimes try to explain affiliate marketing and how my main site is an online shopping mall, but I usually have no patience.  If they persist on more info so they can “do what I do”, I tell them I was lucky to start my coupon code site a decade ago when I only had like 30 competitors (actually they were more like friends, and still are).  Now I probably have 30,000 competitors (and parasites* are not my friends), but I still have my loyal visitors from years past.  

So the advice I usually give newbies wanting to go into affiliate marketing is to pick a specific niche and run with that instead of trying to create a whole mall.  But that was before Connie Berg, CEO and Head Bird of FlamingoWorld.com teamed up with the Schaaf Brothers to create For Me To Coupon (get the Saturday Night Live play on words?)

ForMeToCoupon.com offers an automated, customized affiliate coupon feed that consolidates thousands of deals from merchants across all the major (and minor) networks.  I tested it out, and it’s awesome.  I just plugged in my affiliate id’s, and I was set with all kinds of deals, including coupons, rebates, deals of the day, etc.  So if you are considering setting up a coupon or deal site, I highly recommend ForMeToCoupon.com for your content.  Plus they are currently offering a free trial account so you can test it out yourself.

*OT – Check out Haiko’s LinkSteal.com – Is Linkshare a parasite now?  He used my site as one of his examples of OneCause.com ripping off MY commissions.  Not cool.