During the recent PubCon South at Austin 2011 conference held in the capital city of Texas, PubCon video content producer Vanessa Zamora sat down for a video interview with conference speaker Shawn Collins, co-founder of Affiliate Summit. Collins spoke about affiliate marketing during PubCon South at Austin 2011, and with Zamora he shared how affiliate marketing has evolved since his early start in 1997 with the increase of options available to those in the field. To be successful at affiliate marketing, Collins said he has dedicated many years to learning, testing for success through trial and error, and ultimately found that what works for him is creating a lot of websites with plenty of original content, something he finds comes naturally. There is not a quick and easy way to success, according to Collins. Collins shared his explanation of affiliate marketing with Zamora by providing an example, and then highlighting the three characters in an affiliate transaction: the affiliate, who applies to the affiliate network, such as Commission Junction, and once the affiliate is accepted to the network they would apply to an affiliate program run by the merchants and the advertisers. Collins told Zamora that he expects mobile and video to be the next big thing in the affiliate space. Current trends in the affiliate industry include pay-per-call performance models, quick response (QR) codes, and mobile experimentation. Looking forward, Collins expects affiliates to embrace social media, pointing out that affiliates have adopted practices such as using bit.ly Pro, a domain name shortener that not only lets you specify the shortened domain to reflect a particular brand, but also redirects to the users affiliate link. Facebook works well for leads, but not products, according to Collins.