Shawn Collins' Blog

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

Archives for May 2007

Donut Guy Gets the Affiliate Manager Job

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I’ve gotten word that Greg “Donut Guy” Hoffman got the job. A couple weeks back, Greg posted on ABestWeb that he was trying to get an affiliate management job, and in an effort to stand out, he personally delivered a dozen Dunkin’ Donuts to the company.

He later shared that he got a first, then a second interview. And as of yesterday, he got the position of Affiliate Network Director at Think Partnership (AMEX:THK), where he’ll be working with KowaBunga and PrimaryAds.

“Usually when someone starts a new job, they are known as ‘The New Guy’ for a while, or at least until the next ‘New Guy’ starts. But, I have a feeling that Greg will always be known as ‘The Donut Guy’,” commented Rachel Honoway, VP of Marketing at Think Partnership.

Good luck, Greg. One bit of advice when you’re up for a promotion… bring in Krispy Kreme instead.

Wicked Fire Jon Loves eBooks

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This week on Affiliate Thing we welcomed Jon, the Forum Fuhrer at WickedFire.com.

Topics discussed included Jon’s unhealthy love of e books, how he is helping to market the eBook community, and thoughts on good and bad networks.

Shawn and Lisa also touched on mobile phone affiliate stats, PopShops, MFA (Made for AdSense) sites going down the tubes, and AffiliateHug.com raising money for the March of Dimes.

More Affiliate Thing shows at GeekCast.fm.

Subscribe to the Affiliate Thing RSS feed or send a blank e-mail to affiliatething@aweber.com to get each podcast delivered by e-mail.

Affiliate Managers that Affiliates Like

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Adam Viener, President of Imwave, moderated a panel on “How to Recruit Super Affiliates” at Affiliate Summit 2007 West.

He asked a question as to whether there is a preference for working with affiliate managers who work in-house at a merchant, account representatives at an affiliate network, or outsourced affiliate managers.

Dan Murray, Internet Marketing Strategist at Ravenwood Marketing, answers and provides his comments on the ideal attributes of an affiliate manager.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

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This is chapter 1, “What is Affiliate Marketing?,” of the video edition of my book, Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants.

In brief, I usually describe affiliate marketing as the online equivalent of Avon.

Back when I was growing up, we had the Avon lady in the neighborhood. She would sell cosmetics door to door, and if she made a sale, she earned a commission.

It’s as simple as that – when applied online, people have Web sites where they can display advertisements, and if they refer a transaction from their ads, they earn a commission.

Affiliate marketing is a fairly simple concept, but people complicate it sometimes.

As far as a quick history of affiliate marketing, it’s a little over ten years old in it’s online form. A lot of people attribute the concept to Jeff Bezos an Amazon.com, but CDNow actually launched a primitive version of an affiliate program a year or so before Amazon.com.

So CDNow were innovators, but Amazon.com certainly popularized affiliate marketing, and they deserve recognition there.

In terms of defining an affiliate, it used to be simply a content site. But affiliates have evolved greatly over the years, and these days an affiliate can be essentially any method used to market online. For instance, affiliates are using data feeds, SEO, blogs, video, pay per click search engines, etc.

The affiliate program model is generally applied to one of three types: pay per sale (revenue share), pay per lead, or pay per click. Some affiliate programs combine these models to form a hybrid affiliate program.

People often wonder what sort of companies have affiliate programs. Well, the top retail Web sites, ranked by dollars spent (excluding auction sites, large corporate purchases and travel) for the 2006 holiday season (Nov. 1 – Dec. 26) were as follows, according to comScore Networks:

  • Amazon.com
  • Dell.com
  • Yahoo.com
  • Walmart.com
  • Ticketmaster.com
  • JCPenney.com
  • Apple.com
  • Bestbuy.com
  • Victoriassecret.com
  • Circuitcity.com

Affiliate programs are all over the list of top retail sites. But they are also just a common among Mom and Pop stores online.

That said, affiliate marketing is not easy. It’s not something where you can simply throw money at it and see great results. Rather a successful affiliate program requires a number of things, including creativity, focus, effort, and money.

Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants Introduction

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I’m starting off the video edition of Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants with an introduction to the book.

Shawn CollinsThis will be followed in the near future by a thirteen part video series on each of the chapters of the book.

The book is a little outdated at this point. I wrote it at the end of 2000, and it was published in April 2001. So basically, I wanted to recap Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants and provide some updates. And as an introduction to the video version of the book, I wanted to set some expectations.

I’m going to go through each chapter. The book is setup in three sections: What Affiliate Marketing Can Do for Your Business, Setting Up Your Affiliate Program, and Managing Your Affiliate Program.

Each video will be about 3-4 minutes. They won’t be so in depth, but rather a recap if you’re already familiar with the industry, or else a primer for folks that are new to affiliate marketing.

It’s not going to be a one-stop solution for affiliate managers. I’d still encourage everybody to attend conferences, read blogs, and participate in forums to get a well rounded affiliate manager education.

Anyhow, the forward of Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants was written by a guy named James Marciano. I met him almost by accident.

I was riding the train into New York City for work and reading the business section of the Newark Star-Ledger. There was a profile on James, because he’d started up the first affiliate directory, Refer-it.com. This was back in late 1998 or early 1999.

At the time, I was running the affiliate program for Medsite.com. I felt sort of isolated, because there weren’t groups or forums of affiliate marketers. I was so excited to see somebody else in the business, and I reached out and asked if he’d like to grab some lunch together.

We chatted, and James ended up being something of a mentor to me in affiliate marketing. I’d say James and Declan Dunn were two of the biggest influences in my affiliate marketing career.

James was a really sharp guy, and he started up the affiliate directory concept with Refer-it.com, and sold it to Internet.com. And so he wrote the forward to the book.

The dedication I wrote for the book is very timely today. I recorded this video on my eleventh wedding anniversary and the dedication read…

For my wife, Vicky, a masterpiece of nature and the best ROI my heart will ever know.

I managed to sneak in a mixture of geekiness and romance.

Finding Affiliate Programs

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Q: How do I find companies that have affiliate programs?

Shawn CollinsA: One thing you could do is just go into Google and search for “affiliate directory.” You’ll then see a list of the leading affiliate directories, which you can use to find companies by name and category that offer affiliate programs.

Also, you could go to the bigger affiliate networks, such as Commission Junction, Kolimbo, LinkShare, Performics, ShareASale, zanox, etc.

Personally, I go to the companies I want to promote with the hope that they have an affiliate program.

Te quickest way to find out if they have an affiliate program is to take a look at the footer of their Web site. Generally, they will have a link that says “Affiliate Program” or “Affiliates” that leads to details about their affiliate program.

Additionally, check the search engines for the category you are seeking. So if you are looking for affiliate programs that sell shoes, search for shoe affiliate in the search engines.

Those techniques ought to help you find the information you need.

Affiliate Coupon Sites

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Q: How do you keep the coupons current on an affiliate coupon directory?

Shawn CollinsA: It’s a pretty simple procedure, though a little bit laborious. Just keep on top of all of the affiliate newsletters and RSS feeds for the affiliate programs you promote.

Make the updates to your site as you receive them from the advertisers.

I would urge you to refrain from “borrowing” coupon codes from the affiliate sites of your competitors. That’s definitely not cool.

There are some other methods that are worse than that, but I am not going to share them with you if you don’t know them already.

Just do it legitimately and frequently and the transactions will come.

Mobile Phone Affiliate Marketing Potential

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I’ve been using AdMob for a few weeks now to serve ads on the mobile phone version of my blog, and I had sort of forgotten about it until today.

I was just checking my stats, and was surprised to see that people are hitting my site in increasing numbers on their phones.

The volume is still relatively minor, but yesterday I had 549 impressions and 30 clicks (5.46% CTR) for the mobile version of my blog.

AbMob pays per click for the mobile ads they run on your site.

That’s 5x the traffic I was getting a week ago. Looks like it’s time to try out some mobile ads on Google AdWords.

Not buying the hype on mobile phone marketing? Have a listen to the figures Karen Verelley (then the Vice President of Marketing for LinkShare.com) shared in her Affiliate Summit presentation in January 2007.

zanox Acquired for $288 Million Dollars

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zanoxGerman newspaper publisher Axel Springer and Swiss-based PubliGroupe have announced an agreement to buy the German-based affiliate network zanox for €214.9 million euros ($288 US).

Springer will be putting up 60 percent of the purchase price, and PubliGroupe will account for the other 40 percent.

Visit zanox at booth #25 at Affiliate Summit, taking place July 8-10 in Miami.

Dollars to Donuts This Guy Gets the Affiliate Marketing Job

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I came across a post on ABestWeb titled, “Affiliate Manager Brings Doughnuts,” by a guy named Greg Hoffman today, and it caught my attention on a couple of levels.

donutGreg is interested in a particular job, one he referred to on his blog as “the perfect position in affiliate marketing.” In an effort to stand out after his initial application, he delivered a dozen Dunkin Donuts to the company with his resume taped to the top.

One thing that struck me was his tenacity. He says he first applied through Monster.com. No response. Then he tried contacting the owner of the company via LinkedIn. Still no response. After the donut stunt he got a first interview.

Also, I liked that he was willing to sell himself by marketing outrageously. It stands to reason that he’d be a good source of ideas for marketing the company, too.

Both of these attributes should be attractive to an employer when hiring an affiliate manager.

If I were the one hiring, I’d call him back for a second interview, and expect to be wowed by his ideas for the affiliate program.

Good luck, Greg.