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Archives for October 2006

Affiliate Classroom Magazine – October 2006

October 30, 2006 by Shawn Collins

The October 2006 issue of Affiliate Classroom Magazine is out and this month’s issue takes a look at niche marketing from three different marketing perspectives: promoting CPA programs, keyword research, and niche mining.

The cover story discusses how CPA and niche marketing can be a great match, but only if you find the right CPA match for your niche topic and audience.

Also, an Affiliate Classroom student explains the principles behind effective niche research, including audience, product, and keyword-based approaches.

And in a continuing series on affiliates and Web 2.0, you’ll learn how to use “social spaces” to find hot niches.

Check out the new issue of Affiliate Classroom Magazine.

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Filed Under: Affiliate Resources

Monitor Merchants with Google Alerts

October 29, 2006 by Shawn Collins

One of the foremost tenets of affiliate marketing is know your partners. Monitoring merchants is something every affiliate should do, but how many really do it?

WOW

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) enables you to subscribe for updates on any company name or keyword with Google Alerts.

Google Alerts are e-mail updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.

In addition to providing you with news updates for any keyword term you select, you can also get e-mails if your keyword is mentioned in a blog, the regular Google results, or Google Groups.

This is a great, free tool to keep an eye on any key announcements for companies you promote, as well as positive and negative opinions on the companies in blogs and Google Groups.

Visit http://www.google.com/alerts for more details.

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Filed Under: Affiliate Tips

Ask Shawn Collins: Selling Unique Products via Affiliate Marketing

October 28, 2006 by Shawn Collins

Q: Can affiliate marketing be used to sell one-of-a-kind products, and if so, how?

Shawn CollinsA: There is only one thing that affiliate marketing cannot be used to sell, and that is the product or service that isn’t otherwise selling on the Internet.

That is a problem I see repeated over and over again. Somebody has a grand idea to sell something online, but they don’t bother researching and testing to determine if there is an audience for their product or service.

Nor do they perfect the selling process before launching an affiliate program.

Affiliate marketing can provide incremental sales for a product. If you”ve already established a site that is selling a product, then you should explore affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is not a magic bullet, it’s a marketing channel to increase your existing online sales.

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Affiliate Summit Preview Conference Calls

October 25, 2006 by Shawn Collins

The Affiliate Summit preview conference call series kicks off on Thursday, October 26th at 3pm Eastern Time.

During the first call, host Marty Fahncke will chat with me about what’s new with Affiliate Summit.

Also on this call, Marty will be presenting ten tips to get maximum value from Affiliate Summit.

He’ll be covering how to learn more, earn more, and become a master networker by leveraging this (or any event) for maximum profit.

Topics to be discussed include…

  • What to do before, during and after the conference to maximize your return on investment
  • How to network confidently to increase your business
  • How to get the most value from the speakers and educational sessions

This series of free teleseminar calls will give you a chance to hear a preview of the speakers for Affiliate Summit 2007 West.

The calls will be full of tips and strategies to help grow your business, no matter how you are related to affiliate marketing.

Space is limited, so register now at http://www.affiliatesummitpreview.com/.

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Filed Under: Affiliate News

Set Up a Cash Back Affiliate Site

October 24, 2006 by Shawn Collins

Q: I am launching a site for school programs and want to add a page with affiliate links. While checking out, the buyer must select the school they wish to benefit by that sale (a portion of the sale goes to the school). How can we have that tracking for each school?

Shawn CollinsA: You will need to add a sub-ID parameter to each affiliate link that populates an ID for a given school when it is selected.

These sub-IDs are needed by many affiliates, such as affiliates that provide rewards or incentives to members and need to distinguish which person referred a given action.

The same applies to identifying which school should benefit from a purchase at your site.

You can break out the tracking for schools appending your affiliate URL with any word, number or combination with most affiliate solution providers. The number of characters varies from system to system.

Note – some companies require that you notify them in advance and/or sign a special agreement before using sub-IDs.

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Ask Shawn Collins: Analyzing Affiliate Programs

October 21, 2006 by Shawn Collins

Q: Can you please tell me how I can do analysis to determine if my affiliate program is good, and can you please give some references of the affiliate Web sites or books?

Shawn CollinsA: The caliber of your affiliate program is subjective – it depends on the category you are in. After all, there are very different metrics at play for Amazon.com than for an e-book seller. Margins, conversion rates, brand name, etc. all play a role.

In order to do competitive analysis, I would suggest setting up a real affiliate site with a domain, unique content, etc.

Then apply to the affiliate programs in your category and promote them as an affiliate. This will enable you to review the competitor’s creative, receive their communications, and get some insight into their conversion rates.

In the case of competing affiliate programs where the EPC is public, you can combine that data with your other findings to formulate snapshots of those affiliate programs.

As far as Web sites and books, have a look at affiliate marketing blogs and affiliate marketing forums for the latest information. Books are generally not up to date on the latest issues.

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Ask Shawn Collins: How to Start an Affiliate Program

October 18, 2006 by Shawn Collins

Q: We sell products that have a high conversion rate but low market exposure, and so we want to set up an affiliate program. Where do we start?

Shawn CollinsA: As the old adage goes, slow and steady wins the race. A lot of folks are anxious to see magic happen with an affiliate program from day one.

I would advise you to take your time to set up your affiliate program (expect to spend four weeks) to be sure all of the pieces are in place.

I wrote a book about affiliate program management, Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants, back in December 2000 (it came out in April 2001).

The book is dated in some aspects, but the overall principles to get started are largely unchanged. Pick up a copy as a primer on things.

One part of the book is an action plan to get you started.

As far as a topline list for getting started, here are some things you’ll need to do:

  • Development of a strategy and budget for your affiliate program
  • Affiliate solution provider evaluation and selection
  • Competitive analysis
  • Technical implementation
  • Creation of a comprehensive affiliate agreement
  • Designing a personalized communication strategy for each segment of affiliate, based on their level of activity

If you are feeling lost, you might want to check out the prospect of an Outsourced Affiliate Program Manager.

Good luck.

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Affiliate Summit East 2006: Affiliate Marketing Legal Issues

October 17, 2006 by Shawn Collins

Affiliate Marketing Legal Issues, a panel session moderated by Rachel Honoway at Affiliate Summit 2006 East, is now available on video.

Rachel serves as Vice President of Marketing for Think Partnership.

The session was an overview of legal issues that impact the affiliate marketing industry with the following panelists:

  • Linda Goodman, Partner, The Goodman Law Firm
  • Tom Manspeaker, Director and Affiliate Manager, DirectLeads
  • Steven Richter, President and General Counsel, Media Breakaway, LLC
  • Mark J. Rosenberg, Of Counsel, Sills, Cummis, Epstein & Gross P.C.
  • Ernie St. Gelais, Co-founder and Co-president, LinkConnector Corporation

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Filed Under: Affiliate Resources

Spying with Google

October 16, 2006 by Shawn Collins

GoogSpy, one of my favorite tools, has been rebranded with lots of enhancements. The free, Web-based tool for competitor research is now SpyFu.

Velocityscape launched GoogSpy.com in April 2005 to enable people to sleuth out the keywords their competitors were buying on Google AdWords.

That functionality is very useful for me, as an affiliate manager, to monitor trademarks and discover the keywords affiliates are bidding on.

It is also great for affiliates to see what their competitors are bidding on. Huge time saver for gathering competitive intelligence.

The name has changed to SpyFu partly because it’s become more than a Google AdWords competitive intelligence tool. They have plans for the near future to expand it to cover other search engines.

GoogSpy was free for all, but there are features of SpyFu that will only be available to subscribers. The good news is that the free data on SpyFu is more robust than what used to be available on GoogSpy.

Here are the features of SpyFu:

  • Search by Domain (No Cost)
  • Browse by Category and Industries (No Cost)
  • Search by Domain (i.e. Microsoft.com) and view
    • Estimated Daily Advertising Budget (No Cost)
    • Total Clicks Per Day (No Cost)
    • Average Cost per Click (No Cost)
    • Average Click Day (No Cost)
    • Average Ad Position (No Cost)
    • Average Ad Competitors (No Cost)
    • Average Ad Percentile (No Cost)
    • Alexa Rank (No Cost)
    • Incoming Links (No Cost)
    • Average Load Time (No Cost)
    • Top 10 Organic Results (No Cost)
      • All Organic Results up to 50th position w/stats in downloadable format (Subscription Only)
    • Top 10 Ads (No Cost)
      • All Advertisements up to 50th position w/stats in downloadable format (Subscription Only)
    • Top 20 Organic Competitors (No Cost)
      • All Organic Competitors w/stats in downloadable format (Subscription Only)
    • Top 20 Ad Competitors (No Cost)
      • All Ad Competitors w/stats in downloadable format (Subscription Only)
    • Up to 15 Sub Domains for the parent domain (No Cost)
      • Listing of all Sub Domains (Subscription Only)
    • Up to 15 Other Domains Owned (No Cost)
    • Up to 5 of the Categories the Domain is listed in (No Cost)
      • Listing of all Categories the Domain is listed in (Subscription Only)
  • Search by Term (i.e. Cars) and view
    • Cost per Click (No Cost)
    • Click per Day (No Cost)
    • Cost per Day (No Cost)
    • Number of Advertisers (No Cost)
    • Number of Organic Search Results (No Cost)
    • Top 5 AdWords results (advertiser) by Domain with Ad (No Cost)
      • Top 50 AdWords results (advertiser by Domain) with Ad (No Cost)
    • Top 10 Organic Search Results with description (No Cost)
      • Top 50 Organic Search results by Domain (No Cost)
    • Up to15 Terms Competitors also bought (No Cost)
      • Complete list of AdWords Competitors also bought w/stats in downloadable format (Subscription Only)
    • Up to 15 Terms related to the searched Term (No Cost)
      • Complete list of Related Terms w/stats in downloadable format (Subscription Only)
    • Up to 15 Terms contextually related to the searched Term (No Cost)
      • Complete list Terms contextually related to the searched Term w/stats in downloadable format (Subscription Only)
    • Up to 5 Categories the Term is listed in
      • Listing of all Categories the term appears in (Subscription Only)

SpyFu is powered by Web Scraper Plus+ to gather data from sources around the web and to monitor specific data points. This information comes from search engines, Alexa data, DMOZ categories, and variety of other sources. They are using their data manipulation and cleansing skills to parse and structure the data. Then they are using Bayesian logic to sort, compare, and compile statistics and data.

According to Michael J. Roberts, President of Velocityscape (and Proprietor of SpyFu), “SpyFu.com has nearly 20 times more data than GoogSpy, and the coolest statistics imaginable. This time we believe did it right.”

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Filed Under: Affiliate Tips

Ask Shawn Collins: Getting Lots of Subscribers Fast

October 15, 2006 by Shawn Collins

Q: I am on a fast and furious mission to get 6,000 more subscribers in the next 10 days. Would you have any suggestions or ideas on some ways to get maximum exposure for an affiliate promo like that?

Shawn CollinsA: That is not a very large goal, assuming you have a competitive payout, a subscription that people want, and a form that is not too long.

If all of those pieces are in place, I would suggest going to your top performing affiliate over the past three months and offer a raise in commission to refer those 6,000 subscribers within the timeline.

Ask them how they plan to accomplish the goal, so you’re not left with promises and 128 subscribers in ten days. Give a deadline to respond and move on down the line of performers until you get a taker.

One component that can potentially compromise the quality of your subscribers, but will help in hitting the numbers, is to allow for affiliates to incentivize the offer.

If you are going to allow incentives, I’d suggest reviewing each one to determine if it will be likely to contribute to lesser quality subscribers.

In the event you don’t have super affiliates that can bring the number of subscribers you need, contact some CPA networks and see what they can do for you.

There’s a chance nobody will bite on the offer, so just ask them what you need to do to make it more attractive for them.

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