Shawn Collins' Blog

Affiliate marketing and other stuff from Shawn Collins, co-founder of Affiliate Summit.

Archives for November 2004

Buy Domain Typos

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You spend a lot of time driving traffic to your site, but due to human error, some of that traffic is not making it to your site.

domain-name

One of the reasons for this is that people are making typos when they key your domain into their browser.

According to Google, 10% of all of their search engine queries contain misspellings. I know I often make a mistake when my fingers blaze across the keyboard a bit too fast.

There is an easy and relatively inexpensive solution to this problem. You can buy versions of your domain that visitors are likely to spell as a typo. There is a domain typo tool that will assist you in creating a list of domains to consider purchasing.

Enter your domain name into the box to generate a list of suggestion of likely human misspellings and typos for your domain.

Because the results are based on the proximity of the characters on a QWERTY keyboard and a database of common spelling/typo mistakes (and a few other factors), the results from this tool a relatively accurate and likely to occur in a real-world situation.

Basic Training for Affiliate Managers

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By Shawn Collins
iMediaConnection

There is an immoral minority in affiliate marketing who wreck havoc and cause headaches to affiliate managers. They stuff cookies, spam blogs, redirect affiliate links, and commit a whole assortment of dirty deeds.

We could go the Travis Bickle route and hope that someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets. But a more reasoned, and effective approach is to take some proactive measures, monitor affiliate activity closely and enforce your terms and conditions.

Terms of Endearment

There are certain truisms in affiliate marketing, like affiliate agreements for most programs are outdated boilerplates. And affiliates don’t read affiliate agreements.

It has long been common that new affiliate programs, especially those without in-house legal counsel, borrow extensively from affiliate agreements used by other companies. In the late ‘90s and early part of this century, it was laughable how many affiliate programs did a find and replace on the Amazon affiliate agreement, and then called it their own. There were hundreds of agreements out there with the same typos as Amazon.

There are a few problems with this approach. The assumption that one size fits all is flawed. If your target market is middle aged men in the Pacific Northwest, the particulars for your program will be a lot different than those of a bookseller.

Also, there’s always a new bogeyman in the industry that needs to be addressed, and you cannot count on other companies to do your homework. Finally, it’s not cool to steal from others.

Complete article at http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/4604.asp

Ask Shawn Collins

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I am frequently asked questions about various aspects of affiliate marketing by affiliates and affiliate managers, and I do my best to respond with thoughtful answers.

Since many people have the same sorts of questions about how to succeed in affiliate marketing, I am going to start answering questions and posting them publicly to benefit all.

Visit AskShawnCollins.com to ask any question about affiliate marketing and I will answer it in the AffiliateTip.com blog.

Affiliate Manager Boot Camp Recap

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Over the weekend of November 6-7, Beth Kirsch (Audible) and myself conducted the first Affiliate Manager Boot Camp in the Pocono Mountains of PA.

It was an interesting blend of per lead and per sale affiliate programs, as well as some independents and network programs.

Here is an action shot of the attendees discussing affiliate marketing up in the mountains.

Affiliate Manager Bootcamp

The agenda covered ten areas of affiliate management, and the sessions were hosted alternately by Beth and me.

It was something of an unorthodox environment (my mountain house) and according to the feedback, it wasn’t for everybody, but the intimate environment seemed to work for most attendees.

The most highly rated aspects of the program were those where problems and solutions were customized for the individual attendees and their programs, so that’s an area that will receive more attention in the future.

I think one of the most valuable resources that comes out of this sort of event will be the private forum that will be accessible only by those of us who were there.

So we’ll continue on as a small focus group of affiliate managers that can bounce ideas off one another and ask tough questions before a small, confidential audience.

Overall, I was very happy with the way it worked out, and there are sure to be more affiliate marketing excursions to the mountains. Stay tuned.

New Affiliate Forum: Revenue Source

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A couple of weeks back, I wrote about the favorite affiliate marketing forums of affiliates.

Since then, I’ve come across an interesting new forum for the community, Revenue Source.com.

Aside from the typical features on an affiliate marketing forum, Revenue Source also enables affiliates and affiliate managers to earn points, based on their posting habits, and these points can be redeemed for various items.

Members of this forum can also earn funds based on Adsense ads that are delivered in threads they initiate.

These forums are also featuring dedicated areas for individual affiliate programs, similar to A Best Web and Affiliate Boards.

It will be interesting to see how the battle of the affiliate forums pans out.

AffiliateForce 2000: Miami Conference Coverage

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Following the theme of the recent reprint of my affiliate marketing year end recap from 2000, here is some similarly vintage coverage of the once thriving Affiliate Force conference. This summary is from the first of these events back in the spring of 2000 in Miami.

work is a vacationI was talking to a friend of mine recently about Internet advertising and marketing. She works at one of the big advertising agencies, and she was telling me about this new account that was very unhappy with the traffic being generated by a recent banner buy.

This company was paying a $40 CPM and getting a quarter of a percent click-through rate. Let me save you a few seconds of calculating that in your head – they were paying $16 per click to their site.

The advertising people have a name for this… it’s called branding. I doubt P.T. Barnum could have devised a better name for ineffective service. Affiliate programs have been around for years, but the revolutionary concept of performance marketing is still a secret for too many companies.

Revolution in Miami

An April 1999 Forrester Research survey of marketing executives, “Driving Site Traffic,” ranked affiliate programs number one in effectiveness, ahead of email, PR, television, and all other marketing methods. Merchants know they should have an affiliate program, and webmasters want to make money from the concept, but how?

Herby Olschewski, president of ICCWorldWide, created the AffiliateForce/2000 conference, where the affiliate marketing concept met Woodstock over three days of networking, sunning, learning, partying and making new friends in the industry.

AffiliateForce/2000 was founded to meet the demand for educational seminars and training in affiliate marketing. The conference, held March 15-17 in Miami Beach, featured a diverse itinerary and a virtual all-star team of affiliate marketing experts: Brian Clark, Dane Arden, Declan Dunn, Fox Tucker, Glenn Sobel, Joel Gehman, Jonathan Ezor, Ola Edvardsson, Patrick Anderson, Chad LaFreniere, Rick Bier, Riyaj Shaik, Ryan Adams, William Sutjiadi, and yours truly.

Due to advance interest in AffiliateForce/2000, logistics efforts were bolstered for the event to accommodate 3,500 delegates and more than 70 showcase merchant booths in 117,000 square feet of space at the Miami Beach Convention Center.

Three Days of Peace and Affiliate Programs

AffiliateForce/2000 was a marathon of affiliate marketing that began early on the morning of Wednesday, March 15, and culminated late on the evening of Friday, March 17, with AffiliateParty/2000.

Highlights of day one of the conference included a workshop on the basics and essentials of affiliate marketing, a presentation by Declan Dunn, CEO of Active Marketplace, and a special roundtable that was convened to discuss the broad patent related to affiliate programs recently granted to Amazon.

Day two of AffiliateForce/2000 featured a presentation by Jonathan Ezor, director of legal affairs for Mimeo.com; a panel of the affiliate solution providers; and a panel of successful merchants, such as E-Commerce Exchange and ep.com, that have developed their affiliate solutions in-house.

Day three of AffiliateForce/2000 kicked off with a presentation by Patrick Anderson, COO of Active Marketplace. Other highlights from the final day included a panel discussing the use of storefronts in affiliate marketing, a presentation by Corey Rudl, president of the Internet Marketing Center, and a panel of affiliate analysts, editors and proprietors of affiliate program directories.

Affiliate Knowledge Is Power

In addition to the panels, programs and presentations at AffiliateForce/2000, there were also educational sessions hosted by Commission Junction and Virtualis.

Commission Junction University was first held earlier this year in Santa Barbara. CJU was brought to AffiliateForce/2000 so that affiliates on the East Coast and in Europe could take advantage of the course to learn more about affiliate marketing education and strategies.

Virtualis offered Virtualis University, where they lined up three of the industry’s most respected affiliate marketing gurus (Patrick Anderson, Declan Dunn, and Corey Rudl) to instruct affiliates on how to improve their results with affiliate programs.

Drink Our Commissions

Some of the most brilliant minds in affiliate marketing pooled their talents to throw AffiliateParty/2000 on the final evening of the conference.

The publishers of AffiliateWire (Brian Clark, Glenn Sobel, Ola Edvardsson, Rick Bier and Ryan Adams) participated in the AffiliateForce/2000 affiliate program and used their commission money to host a free party at Penrod’s in South Beach. (Bigstar.com, Commission Junction, and ePod.com were co-sponsors.)

The party featured BBQ, drinks and dancing on the beach, plus a chance to catch up and relax with new and old friends in the industry. A class act.

On the Road

What’s next in affiliate marketing? AffiliateForce/2000 has tentatively announced plans to go on the road. For the merchants and affiliates not able, for whatever reason, to go to AffiliateForce/2000, there are plans to offer smaller, one-day AffiliateForce events in Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco and Seattle.

[editor note: unfortunately, the dream of the road show never quite materialized]

Winning the New Affiliate Game

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Declan Dunn is going to be conducting a free conference call on November 9, 2004, where he be answering questions from the attendees.

The session is titled, Winning the NEW Affiliate Game 2005, a nod to his big selling book, Winning the Affiliate Game.

What is the most important question you would like to ask Declan about the future of affiliate programs? Ask it now at http://www.dunndirectgroup.com/now/.

You will receive an email afterwards that will require that you confirm your attendance on the call. If you do not confirm, you will not be able to access the call.

Space is limited – affiliates, affiliate managers, and Internet marketers in general are encouraged to sign up. All who attend the call will receive a copy of Winning the Affiliate Game — 2005 Update.

I would highly suggest participating – Declan is a fantastic speaker with a wealth of knowledge. I’ve been a fan/student of Declan since I picked up his little, blue book, The Complete Insiders Guide to Associate & Affiliate Programs, about six years ago.