Shawn Collins' Blog

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

Archives for March 2007

Ask Shawn Collins: Best Paying Affiliate Program

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Q: I have been affiliate marketing for several years for my travel site. I have had success by dealing directly with key affiliate programs versus going through ad farms like CJ. I am wanting to add to my affiliates in the area of cruises. I’m aware of Orbitz, IAN, and some others. The most I’ve seen is just over $20 per cruise or a set percentage. Who pays the most in cruises?

Shawn CollinsA: I get variations of this question frequently – not only which affiliate program in a given vertical pays the most, but which has the best conversion rate, longest return days, best EPC, etc.

The short answer there, and likely not the one you were hoping to hear, is that you will need to check out what’s available on the affiliate networks, as well as indie affiliate programs to determine which affiliate programs pay the most in your sector.

All snarkiness aside, I’m here to answer questions on how to do things in affiliate marketing to help you grow and succeed. I’m happy to assist with tips, suggestions and ideas, based on my past experience as an affiliate and affiliate manager.

But I’m not going to do the busy work that you don’t feel like doing.

As far as which affiliate programs have the best EPC, conversions, and the like, there is one solid practice for gathering this information: TEST.

Test drive the affiliate programs in your vertical and allow for natural selection to determine which affiliate programs work best for you.

The Buzz on Your Site

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Who just said something about your site? Keep track of what people are writing about your site with Technorati.

Social media signs

Technorati is a dynamic directory of posts from many millions of blogs and other forms of user generated content, like photos and videos.

You can search on the Technorati site for keywords to see who is writing about the topic. But if you want to narrow it down specifically to your site(s), you can also search for a specific domain.

That’s sort of a hassle, though. You don’t have time to constantly visit the site to run queries, so set up RSS subscriptions for your domain(s).

It’s quick and easy – just a matter of subscribing to RSS feeds in this format: http://feeds.technorati.com/search/affiliatetip.com

Do that and you can easily stay up to date on who is writing about your site(s) and what they are saying.

Ask Shawn Collins: Network for Selling eBooks

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Q: I have an eBook I plan to sell online. Which service do you recommend to both deliver the eBook and manage affiliate commissions?

Shawn CollinsA: I’ve got two companies I would suggest checking out for selling your eBook.

ClickBank is probably the biggest seller of eBooks out there, and they will pay the affiliates for you. In my opinion, it’s the place where you will have the most presence and get the most sales.

The last time I sold anything there, and this may have changed, but I was responsible to handle the fulfillment after the sale. That’s going to be a hurdle if you’re not capable of doing that.

Another option is PayLoadz, and they provide an all in on solution. You upload whatever it is you’re selling, and when somebody makes a purchase, the file automatically gets delivered to them.

It’s a nice, carefree system and it runs through PayPal. The one thing with PayLoadz is that you have to handle the payments to your affiliates. Not so much of a burden, unless you’re selling a crazy volume of your eBooks, in which case you could always pay somebody to handle those sorts of administrative duties.

I’ve been very happy with PayLoadz in the two or three years I’ve been using them, and I currently sell my AffStat reports through them.

Affiliate Tip Moves to WordPress

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I started blogging on affiliate marketing back in February 2004. At that time, I wasn’t sure if it was something I wanted to really do, so I took the easy step of getting a presence on Blogger.

wordpressSoon after, I decided to upgrade to a more branded, tweakable environment, and purchased a license for Movable Type. And there I remained for a good 1,000 days or so.

Along the way, I heard repeatedly how WordPress was better, easier, more flexible, etc. But the prospect of migrating to another service was so unattractive that I kept putting it off. But the comment spam on my Movable Type blog put me over the edge.

Finally, I made the switch in the past few days and I’m elated. The interface, plugins, themes, etc. I cannot believe I waited this long. And the “Did You Pass Math?” plugin has eliminated comment spam for me.

Anybody blogging with anything else – seriously, you should check out WordPress.

And a BIG thanks to Sam Harrelson for his guidance and assistance in the process. If you’re looking to make the leap, check in with Sam and his Cost Per News Marketing Services/Food Co-op.

Also a thank you to Scott Jangro for helping with some RSS issues in the blog move to keep me alive on BUMPzee!

Last of all, Sam turned me on LivingDot, a hosting company that bill themselves as “Blog Hosting Experts.” I setup my blog with them and they’ve provided amazing tech support – refreshingly surprising on an account that costs just $15.95/month.

Ask Shawn Collins: Content for Affiliates

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Q: I am a new affiliate and I want to add content to my blog. Are there any places to get free content?

Shawn CollinsA: One option you’ve got is to go to a site called EzineArticles.com. They’ve got a variety of articles on all sorts of different subjects.

You can reprint those articles provided that you adhere to their terms of service.

Also, you can syndicate people’s RSS feeds. When somebody has a blog, they typically make an RSS feed available that enables anybody to republish their content in whole or in part.

I would suggest taking a look at two sites to see what’s available for different subjects: Technorati and the Google Blog Search.

After you come up with some blogs you’d like to syndicate, there is a tool called CaRP that is a converter of RSS to HTML. This enables you to get the SEO benefits of having the actual content on your site and in your code.