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Affiliate marketing news and opinion from Shawn Collins, co-founder of Affiliate Summit.

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Archives for March 2005

New Affiliate Program Network Set to Launch

March 23, 2005 by Shawn Collins

I’ve heard a very low buzz that there is a new affiliate network on the way. Not a lot of detail to report so far, except that the project is well-funded by a public company and the top management will be composed of expatriates from the affiliate networks.

It seems the folks behind this endeavor plan to take on the leading affiliate networks.

And it’s not a CPA network – it’s an affiliate network that is quietly courting many big brands. My contact didn’t name names, but they claim to have deals in place with a handful of very well known affiliate programs.

Also, they say there are some BIG affiliates on board to help with the architecture of the technology. This is for battling adware, cookie erasers, ad blockers, etc., as well as having the most affiliate friendly user interface.

It seems they are flirting with a tagline in the spirit of “The Network Created by Affiliates for Affiliates.”

How do I know these things? Can’t say, but I am not part of Affiliate Network X – just reporting on it.

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Filed Under: Affiliate News

Ask Shawn Collins: Alternative Affiliate Links

March 20, 2005 by Shawn Collins

Q: When I’m advertising in Google Adwords, I want to change my ‘Destination URL’ to direct to an alternate landing page, how do I do that? And how do I do that without losing my affiliate ID in the original path? ‘The original path’ meaning: the link given to me by the Merchant with my affiliate ID embedded in?

Shawn CollinsA: The available landing pages vary for any given affiliate program, depending on the technology they are using and what they are willing to set up.

Some affiliate programs will provide you with linking options where you can set up a link for any page on their site. but other affiliate programs only provide certain landing pages.

If you would like a link that is not available in their affiliate program links, your best bet would be to try and reach the affiliate manager. Ask them if they would be willing to set up such a link for you.

In the event that the affiliate manager says that they simply cannot do it for you, due to technological constraints, try pointing them to the Affiliate Tools Suite from the Finon Corporation.

If the merchant in question was to use this service, they would be able to provide you with:

– External Datafeed Manager
– Product Display Maker: Creates customized HTML-based displays of any and all products from your datafeed
– Direct Link Maker
– Search Link Maker
– Search Form Maker

I use this Affiliate Tool Suite with a couple of affiliate programs that I manage in order to provide additional linking options. The cost to the merchant is $99/month.

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Filed Under: Ask Shawn Collins

Jekyll and Hyde Affiliates

March 20, 2005 by Shawn Collins

I was just compiling the data I collected for the AffStat 2005 Report, and I came across a curious comment by one of the affiliate managers that completed the survey:

WOW

“I would love to have the answer to why ABW affiliates denounce ‘parasites’, yet continue to partner with companies that are clearly listed in the apps?? I can’t imagine it is pure laziness on their part!”

This statement reminded me of one of the survey results from the AffStat 2004 Report, where I questioned affiliates on a range of topics.

Could it be the real data for these affiliates is indicating that the badware plague is overstated? Even better, the efforts by the affiliate networks to clean house may well have been more effective than critics care to admit.

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Filed Under: Affiliate Stats

Amazon Has Over Half a Million Affiliates

March 19, 2005 by Shawn Collins

Congratulations to Mark Southgate for getting the correct answer to the question, according to the Amazon.com Associate Program FAQ, how many Associates are in their program?

Mark wins a free pass to Affiliate Summit 2005 for his correct answer. Affiliate Summit 2005 is taking place June 13-14 in Las Vegas. Flights and hotel rooms are cheap, but the content is rich!

The correct answer, according to the Amazon Associates FAQ is “over half a million” affiliates in the Amazon affiliate program.

Stay tuned for the next affiliate marketing trivia question, where I will be giving away another free pass to Affiliate Summit 2005 to the first person that answers correctly.

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Filed Under: Affiliate News

Ask Shawn Collins: Am I Crazy?

March 18, 2005 by Shawn Collins

Q: I am working on a dating directory site that will be geared to affiliate links. Any suggestions? Am I crazy?

Shawn CollinsA: I’d suggest that you start by checking out the Matchmaking category on AffiliateTip.com (note: this affiliate directory no longer exists).

In that list, you can see details from over a dozen dating affiliate programs on the various affiliate networks.

In addition to general interest dating sites like Match.com and True.com, there are also some interesting niche sites out there, like STD-Singles.com and the Single Christian Network.

I would urge you to provide some real value to these listings, such as personal reviews of each service, or reviews submitted from your visitors.

The world doesn’t need another list of dating sites – you have to build in some sort of unique value proposition to give people a reason to visit and re-visit your site.

As far as your second question, based on a psychology class I took in my freshman year of college, I do think you might be crazy.

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Filed Under: Ask Shawn Collins

Sour Grapes in Affiliate Marketing

March 17, 2005 by Shawn Collins

I was just reading the Digital Moses Confidential newsletter, and I came across the Tip of the Week from Jason Wolfe, head honcho at Direct Response Technologies.

He had this to say:

“Seems like CGI Holdings, aka Think Partnership has been aggressively acquiring firms in our space. It reminds me of the days when others did the same and then collapsed in the late 90’s and early 2000. When considering being acquired, you might want to consider the ability of the leadership to take you to the promised land. Consider carefully before jumping – you might be better off keeping your feet on solid ground, your solid ground.”

I hope his tongue was firmly planted in his cheek there, since CGI Holdings, aka Think Partnership acquired one of his chief competitors, as well as one of his clients.

Otherwise, that “advice” might come across as sour grapes. Come on, Jason – it’s St. Patty’s Day – relax and smile.

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Filed Under: Affiliate News

Ask Shawn Collins: Reaching Quality Affiliates

March 17, 2005 by Shawn Collins

Q: I am a owner of a company and currently a merchant of an affiliate network. I have been with the network for about two months now. I have about 100 affiliates, but I am not getting any results mainly due to the quality of the affiliates. I have read your book but I could use some help. How can I reach quality affiliates and overall, how can I develop my program into a success?

Shawn CollinsA: The key to a successful affiliate program is to always be recruiting targeted affiliates, activating those affiliates, and then making yourself available to assist the affiliates.

Most affiliate managers tend to trip up on the first part – they rely on their network to recruit for them, and do not bother to do any proactive recruiting themselves.

One basic way to identify affiliate prospects is to use a program like Link Capture, where you can run queries to find which sites are ranking well for certain keywords or linking to certain sites.

The reports generated by Link Capture include details such as email, phone and mailing address to contact the prospects.

After you’ve recruited affiliates, don’t expect them to all magically become active with your program. The vast majority will not put up links without being prompted to do so.

Try reaching out with direct mail or a phone call to activate your affiliates. If that sounds prohibitive, then you have more affiliates than you can properly manage.

After they have become active, be sure to have tools and resources to assist them in promoting your company. Think about the offline world – when you hire a new employee, you provide them with tools and guidance to effectively sell the company. So why haven’t you done that sort of thing for your online sales force.

I’m not talking about making a few banners available, but rather putting together tools and guides that help affiliates to best understand your target demographics and how to effectively sell to them.

Treat your affiliates as valued partners and provide them with the tools they need and access to you, and your affiliate program will grow.

Don’t forget to have a competitive commission, tested creatives, and a tested conversion process on your site that works well.

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Filed Under: Ask Shawn Collins

Cusimano.com Scripts: new script for InstrumentPro

March 16, 2005 by Shawn Collins

We are pleased to announce the release of a new store generator script called DySE::InstrumentPro that is designed to display products based on the InstrumentPro.com datafeed.

InstrumentPro.com (http://www.InstrumentPro.com) offers approximately 7,000 musical instruments and accessories. InstrumentPro.com pays affiliate commissions of 7%. If these types of products are a good match for your website or if you’re planning to create a new website for these types of products, we encourage you to use our DySE::InstrumentPro script. The InstrumentPro.com affiliate program is managed by Shawn Collins who is well known and respected in the affiliate industry.

A live example website that uses DySE::InstrumentPro is http://www.EverythingInstruments.com

Use of our DySE::InstrumentPro script is free to our sub-affiliates of InstrumentPro.com (if you’re not signed up, you can do so via our sub-affiliate link). The script comes with several pre-defined template sets to save you time. And it uses our new “Dynamic Store Engine” DySE(tm) technology that provides the following benefits:

– automatically downloads datafeed from merchant.
– no HTML files to create; uses properietary database.
– store builder can be run via web browser or SSH.
– template changes appear online immediately; no rebuilding.
– builder is 5-10 times faster than our previous scripts.
– uses less disk than our previous scripts.
– no created HTML files to upload.
– uses mod_rewrite (requires linux/unix server).
– reduced learning curve; all DySE scripts work the same way.

To learn more about DySE::InstrumentPro, visit http://www.c3scripts.com/instrumentpro/

If you have any questions or problems with DySE::InstrumentPro, do not hesitate to contact us. Also, visit our discussion forum at http://www.c3scripts.com/forum

For a list of all our current scripts, visit http://www.c3scripts.com

Thank you for using our scripts.

Yours truly,
CUSIMANO.COM CORPORATION
per: David Cusimano

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Filed Under: Affiliate News

Affiliate Marketing Print Ads in Internet Retailer

March 16, 2005 by Shawn Collins

I was reading through the March 2005 issue of Internet Retailer and was glad to see a few full page ads from companies engaged in affiliate marketing.

Since I’m a subscriber to Internet Retailer, as well as an affiliate and merchant, I figure each of these ads is targeted at me to varying degrees.

Here are my impressions on the effectiveness of each ad. Click any of the advertisements to enlarge.

Performics
p. 13
The Performics ad plays to the situation facing many retailers with lots of skus. I’ve got a data feed, now what do I do with it. The ad is a take on the “This is Your Brain – This is Your Brain on Drugs” campaign.

It definitely got my attention, though the abundance of Performics orange was sort of reminiscent of The Gates that recently graced Central Park in NYC.

The ad touts that they are “Introducing Performics’ Feedlab technology,” but from the ad, I have no idea what makes this technology a reason for working with Performics.

Also, the contact information and url are in a tiny font at the bottom of the page, and there isn’t any sort of mechanism for tracking the ad, as far as I can tell.

NETexponent
p.17
NETexponent ran an ad that looks like a solicitation letter that’s been marked up by a potential client, complete with a Post-it urging a colleague to check out NETexponent.com.

I like how the letter includes a trackable email (GetResults@NETexponent.com) and url (http://www.netexponent.com/ir), as well as the direct line for CEO, Peter Figueredo.

In addition to the hand written comments on the letter, there are sections that are highlighted, including a part about “affiliates bidding on search terms.” This ad ran opposite from an article, “Affiliates, marketers wrestle over trademark use under new Google ad policy.”

Talk about contextual advertising!

LinkShare
p. 53
The LinkShare ad had an elegant look and a very straightforward call to action: The 2005 Second Annual LinkShare Golden Link Awards: Call for Nominations.

The ad urges readers to “Make a nomination today at www.linkshare.com/goldenlink,” and a list of the various awards that will be given out at the event.

I cannot really tell from the photo in the ad, but it appears that these awards are golden bowling pins?

I’m left wondering if Joan Rivers and Star Jones will be working the red carpet at this gala event. Anyway, I’m off to make some nominations.

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Filed Under: Affiliate News

Which Affiliate Program Network is Winning the Fight?

March 15, 2005 by Shawn Collins

I came across this funny tool called Google Fight, where you can compare the number of results for two competing keywords. So I figured I would stage some fights among the affiliate program solution providers to see who would come out on top.

Angry dog

Let’s get ready to rumble affiliate style!

After a bloody showdown where Commission Junction, Direct Track, LinkShare, My Affiliate Program, Performics, and Shareasale faced each other in the ring, one fighter was left standing.

And the heavy weight champion of the Affiliate Program Google Fights is LinkShare in a TKO over Shareasale.

Each contender fought all of the other affiliate program solution providers one time each. Below are the standings:


Fighter

Record
LinkShare 5-0
Shareasale 4-1
Commission Junction 3-2
My Affiliate Program 2-3
DirectTrack 1-4
Performics 0-5

The results here are just for fun – don’t get bent out of shape if your company of choice got beat up in the fights.

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Filed Under: Affiliate News

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