Shawn Collins' Blog

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

Archives for March 2007

Ask Shawn Collins: Monitoring E-mail Affiliates

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Q: How can I monitor my affiliates who are using e-mail to be sure they are being CAN-SPAM compliant?

Shawn CollinsA: I’ve got two tools I’d recommend that you check out. First is LashBack.com, where they have a suite of tools to enable advertisers to monitor affiliate CAN-SPAM Act compliance.

Also, there is UnsubCentral.com, which enables you to manage your e-mail suppression list(s). This tool enables you to protect your suppression data via MD5-encoding, as well as controlling which affiliates can even access this information and e-mail creative.

Check out those two products and take them for a test drive.

If you don’t have the budget for LashBack.com and/or UnsubCentral.com, you can monitor your affiliates the old fashioned way – opt-in to their list(s). This is not perfect since their “real” list might not be out there for you to subscribe.

An important thing to note – be selective about which affiliates are able to send out e-mail. Don’t just make the creative and suppression list(s) publicly available, or else you may well get a call from the FTC due to spamming affiliates.

Ask Shawn Collins: Affiliate Recruiting Software

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Q: Which is the best software to recruit affiliates… ARELIS or Link Capture?

Shawn CollinsA: There are a handful of software programs for affiliate recruitment. In addition to ARELIS and Link Capture, there is also the Internet Success Spider and Syntryx.

ARELIS is the most popular and lower in cost than Link Capture, but I prefer Link Capture. I also like Syntryx – it’s more expensive and more robust than the others.

It really depends on your pricepoint. If it’s between ARELIS and Link Capture, I’d go with Link Capture. If cost isn’t as much a concern, I’d suggest Syntryx.

Ask Shawn Collins: Mind If I Spam You?

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Shawn CollinsQ: My latest question is from an affiliate manager. It’s actually not really a question, but more of a solicitation. It’s a bit long, so I’ll excerpt some of it:

Hello Sir/Madam,

Greetings!

I’m Savitha from the affiliate team of Knowledge Online services!
I was browsing through your website and we found that we could partner up to work together.

We invite you join our affiliate program!

A: The submission goes on to explain all of the attributes of their affiliate program. The problem here is that they submitted this “question” as AskShawnCollins.com – the site is solely dedicated to accepting questions on affiliate marketing.

This affiliate program pitch totally untargeted. There is a profound disconnect between what they are selling (educational services) and what I’m doing (answering questions on affiliate marketing).

I think this is a prime example of a bad attempt at affiliate recruiting.

On a positive note, it’s something all affiliate managers can learn a lesson from, especially Savitha. Invest the time and energy to find quality prospects that make sense for your affiliate program.

Don’t just go out there with a shotgun method where you address people as Sir/Madam. Make an effort to reach out to an individual and understand what their site is about. Then, endeavor to make a real connection, instead of this sort of spam.

Personally, I’d never join an affiliate program that marketed to me in this fashion. Try picking up the phone or sending a note by mail to affiliates who you’d like to recruit into your affiliate program.

Just don’t bring your affiliate program down with this sort of lazy, counter-productive tactic.

Affiliate Managers that Suck

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The AffStat 2007 Report includes a section where affiliate managers voice some of their biggest challenges in managing an affiliate program.

Here is one affiliate managers complaint…

“I noticed that competing companies try to gain affiliates from our program by trying to bad talk. I think that a lot of the affiliate managers should try to keep their integrity and highlight their benefits and strong points, not highlight the weak points from competitors for the purpose of recruiting.”

I would hope people would be above this sort of behavior when in business. Sadly, some affiliate managers choose denigrating the competition over building a great affiliate program that sells itself.

My recommendation to affiliate managers would be to follow the old adage, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all,” when it comes to referencing the competition.

It’s funny – my little kids get that this is the way to behave, but some “business people” don’t have the same character we expect of children.

More affiliate manager opinions in my latest AffStat report at http://www.affstat.com/.

The Gospel of Affiliate Marketing

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Religion, sex and politics are the three topics that are supposed to be off-limits in business. However, I’ve seen increasing candor, for better or worse, on this trinity of topics among folks on the Interweb.

This past Christmas, I posted a review for the book, God is My CEO, and I was surprised by the number of people that touched base afterward to share their faith. Previously, I suppose they felt it was a taboo subject to commiserate on publicly.

Right around that time, I heard about a new group called Christian Affiliate Marketers. The group, formed by Wade Tonkin, is a networking community for, well, Christian Affiliate Marketers.

They hosted a successful and well-attended event on the first day of Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas this past January, and it got me thinking about the role of faith, or a lack of it, in affiliate marketing.

So, Lisa Picarille and I invited Wade to join us on the March 28 episode of the Affiliate Thing show.

We’re also having Shmuel “Shmuly” Tennenhaus, recently nominated Most Eligible Hassidic Bachelor at Shmais.com and a former affiliate manager for Ice.com, on the show that day.

Mark your calendars and listen – feel free to call in, too, to express your comments of support or condemnation.

Maybe some of the non-believers in affiliate marketing would like to make their case.

It’s always fun to get this great, big, dysfunctional affiliate marketing family together for a good spirited debate.

Affiliate Classroom Magazine – March 2007

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The March issue of Affiliate Classroom Magazine focuses on writing – specifically how to write copy optimized for affiliate sales.

Matti sleeps on Feedfront 15

The cover story of this issue, “SEO With Real People In Mind,” discusses the conundrum of creating pages that appeal both to human visitors and the search engines.

There is also a piece on “Keyword Rich Copy, the Key to Riches,” which is a lesson on building important keywords into Web site copy to capture the interest of readers.

Another article, “Affiliate Pre-Sales Checklist” goes into other aspects of copywriting. For example, you can learn how small changes in the copy for PPC ad campaigns can make a significant difference in conversions.

And in “Use the Copywriting Methods of the Pros,” subtle tricks by top copywriters are shared.

Ask Shawn Collins: Tracking PPC Arbitrage Conversions

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Q: I drive affiliate traffic through pay per click search engines straight to affiliate links without a landing page. How can I track which keywords are converting best?

Shawn CollinsA: It’s actually a fairly easy method. I’ll tell you what I do to track the effectiveness of my pay per click keywords in affiliate campaigns.

I use sub-IDs for each keyword. Most any affiliate network ought to offer the ability to do this – it’s a string of alpha-numeric characters that you add on to your affiliate link. I would suggest using each keyword as a sub-ID, so you can evaluate the reporting quick and easy.

For example, here is an affiliate link through Commission Junction to promote 1&1 Internet Web Hosting:

http://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-1544023-10365666

If I were running a pay per click keyword campaign to promote this affiliate program, here is an example of a link with a sub-ID I could use for the keyword “web hosting”:

http://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-1544023-10365666?SID=web_hosting

The structure of the sub-ID varies for each affiliate network (CJ calls it SmartRewards), so check with the respective affiliate network about how to create sub-IDs for their links.

Ask Shawn Collins: ASOS and Affiliate Marketing

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Q: What is your perspective on the recent interview over at New Media Age magazine with Nick Robertson, CEO of ASOS?

Shawn CollinsA: First, let’s start with the quote that’s gotten the UK affiliate blogs stirred up…

“Next year we’ll reintroduce affiliate marketing but as it should be, as opposed to affiliates as they were. [There’ll be] no silly commissions being paid to grubby little people in grubby studios growing income at our expense, getting in the way of genuine sales.”

Now unless there is some sort of language barrier there, and I don’t think there is, apparently Nick is a little confused or something.

I can’t really imagine what the motive is behind that statement, but if he really anticipates relaunching the affiliate program with that perspective, I think he’s in for a rude awakening.

I don’t think affiliates are going to be willing to promote ASOS, and in all likelihood there will be some sort of boycott against the brand and affiliate program by affiliate marketers.

I think this new way of affiliate marketing he has in mind is going to be nothing but a mirage.

The Affiliate Ringtone Scandal

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This week on the Affiliate Thing show, we welcomed President and General Counsel of Media Breakaway Steven Richter, and discussed the ringtone issues recently experienced by CPA Empire (a division of Media Breakaway), how they dealt with the offending affiliate, their future with ringtones, and more.

Lisa Picarille and I also discussed whether affiliates should be able to publish content from the RSS feeds of others, the pros and cons of search affiliates, and the use of Web 2.0 applications by U.S. Presidential candidate, John Edwards.

More Affiliate Thing shows at GeekCast.fm.

ClubMom Closes Affiliate Program

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I just received an e-mail from ClubMom affiliate manager Chris Cooper (below) notifying affiliates that the ClubMom affiliate program is closing on March 31.

I’ve got to say it brings a lump to my throat to see this announcement. After all, it was seven years ago this month that I launched the ClubMom affiliate program on Be Free.

I learned a lot along the way and became friends with lots of fantastic affiliates in the time I worked on the affiliate program there.

It seems like only yesterday that a rabble-rouser posted ClubMom Pulls the Plug on Affiliate Program on ReveNews. That was back in 2001 and it was a false alarm back then.

Sadly, this time it’s real…

We would like to take a moment to notify you of an important change to the ClubMom program. On March 31, 2007 the ClubMom Affiliate Program will be closing. The reason for the termination at this time is that ClubMom is halting member acquisition efforts while focusing on product enhancements to the ClubMom website.

With that said, please be sure to remove all ClubMom links and banners from your site by March 31. Commissions will be paid in full by late April for the commission balance shown in your account on March 31. After March 31, you will no longer earn commissions on new member registrations that you send to ClubMom. Please be sure that your account information and address are correct so commissions checks are delivered to you promptly.

We sincerely appreciate the time, effort and support that you have given to the ClubMom Affiliate Program through the years. On a personal note, I have greatly enjoyed getting to know many of you and for the opportunity to work closely with you over the past two years. I wish you the very best in your future plans.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please contact me at affiliates@clubmom.com.

Good luck to ClubMom on the new direction and to all of those ClubMom affiliates over the years – get those links down before they go dead.