Shawn Collins' Blog

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

Archives for June 2007

Affiliate Commission Structure

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Q: How do I find the right percentage of payout to give affiliates?

Shawn CollinsA: There isn’t really any Golden Rule here, rather it comes down to what’s happening in your particular vertical.

I’d suggest looking at your competitors to see what they are doing and how much they are paying, and use them as a guideline.

You don’t want to pay out less than competing affiliate programs, and just the same, it doesn’t make sense to far exceed their commission rate.

Ideally, you will dig into your margins to pay some degree more than the competition to set your affiliate program apart from the pack.

Of course, this is just one piece of the puzzle. Your site has to convert well, too, in order to keep the affiliates happy.

How Many Affiliate Ads?

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Q: I am getting ready to launch a 1000+ page national B2B directory. I have lots of ad and affiliate advertising space available, lots. I want to fill all of that ad space, roughly 2,000 potential affiliate ad spots. I have 20+ industries that I could be an affiliate in. Should I do one affiliate program for each industry or multiple?

Shawn CollinsA: I don’t know how your site is laid out, and whether it will easily accommodate multiple ads, but I would suggest starting small with one ad per industry category.

Test that location by rotating multiple ads from different affiliate programs.

Keep an eye on what’s working and what’s not. If possible, do some A/B split testing by serving up a version of each page with multiple ads to some visitors, and give others versions that have a single ad.

Then analyze the clicks and revenue from the different types of pages to determine which your audience prefers.

Don’t design the site on gut instinct – let your visitors dictate the way it should be.

Affiliate Summit Free Videos

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Quick announcement re: Affiliate Summit. We’ll be filming the sessions at the upcoming Affiliate Summit (July 8-10 in Miami) and making them available for free.

affiliate-summit-logoThere will just be a simple registration to access the videos from the sessions.

Yes, lots of other conferences sell the videos, and we could, too. We’re leaving money on the table. Heard it from plenty of people, so no need to tell me. 🙂

We want to share the information, and have no concerns that it will dissuade people from attending. There is no replacing the value of face-to-face meetings with affiliate marketers in a group this size.

Passes are going fast – register now at affiliatesummit.com.

See Affiliate Summit videos on YouTube.

Spam, Beer, and Black Hat Affiliate Marketing

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Affiliate Thing welcomed Mark Wielgus of 45n5.com this week.

Topics discussed included Mark leaving his job to work online full time, spamming SERPs, alcohol at conferences, and aspirations to build a white hat site.

Example of an affiliate spam site
Example of a “spammy site“

We also touched on the LinkShare acquisition of Traffic Strategies.com, zanox.TV, Apple moving from LinkShare to CJ, and the “Donut Guy” that got a job at Think Partnership.

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.

13 Pillars of Internet Marketing

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I recently had a chat with David Bain, Managing Director of Purple Internet Marketing Limited, based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

He introduced me to his “13 Pillars of Internet Marketing.” Definitely worth checking out.

Also, have a look at a recent interview video David did with Fraser Edwards of affiliateblog.co.uk.

They discussed the 13 Pillars of Internet Marketing, including areas such as blogging, SEO, article submission and press releases.

Become an Affiliate Yourself

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This is chapter 3, Become an Affiliate Yourself, of Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants.

The reasoning for an affiliate manager also being an affiliate is that they will have a 360 degree understanding of the industry.

I’m a little biased, because I was an affiliate before becoming an affiliate manager, but I think affiliates make the best affiliate managers.

However, and I would hope I don’t even have to say this, but an affiliate manager should never be an affiliate for their own affiliate program.

Benefits of being an affiliate yourself include having a greater understanding of what your affiliates want and need from you. That will help you to serve your affiliates more efficiently.

Also, if you create an affiliate site in the same vertical as your company, then you can apply to your competitor’s affiliate programs. This enables you to monitor their communications and types of creative.

Promoting the affiliate programs of your competition also enables you to gather competitive intelligence. By actually promoting them, you can get a feel for their conversion rates, EPC, etc.

You’ll also be able to learn the dynamics of your competitor’s affiliate programs by becoming their affiliate. From the first step of applying to their affiliate program, you can get an indication of their management style: do they automatically accept you as an affiliate or manually approve applications?

If it’s the former, you might deduce that their affiliate program is on auto-pilot.

Finally, a merchant should never run affiliate offers on their own site prior to the completion of a transaction. Such cannibalization of your affiliate traffic will only serve to implode your affiliate program.

So anyway, go become an affiliate already!

Watch all of the videos at http://www.affiliatemanager.net/videos.shtml.

Affiliate Widgets for Bloggers from Wize

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Wize, a collection of user and expert reviews, has launched a revenue generating widget for bloggers that gives their readers access to information on products referenced in their blog.

The Wize widget is a targeted feed of product photos and rankings, and it is geared towards bloggers who write about new products, products they love, or product quality.

Through this widget, Wize is syndicating its proprietary Wize Rank product approval scores. To calculate each product’s Wize Rank, Wize collects user and expert reviews and ratings on the Web and algorithmically computes a Wize Rank of 1-100.

The widget is apparently only available for TypePad blogs, based on the page for more details: http://wize.com/typepad. I assume they’ll have one for WordPress in the near future.

That page also references the “Wize Affiliate Network”…

You can earn revenue through our affiliate program. To set this up, please contact us.

C’mon Wize – if you’ve got an affiliate program, share the details. That’s an annoying, disconnected process for affiliates to learn more about your opportunity.

LinkShare Acquires Traffic Strategies.com

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LinkShare announced today that it has acquired Traffic Strategies.com, a privately held Tampa, Florida-based online lead generation firm.

“LinkShare’s pay-per-action marketing expertise across affiliate, search, and services will be complemented by Traffic Strategies.com’s expertise in online lead generation,” said Steve Denton, President of LinkShare. “In addition to the high quality traffic generated by our network, LinkShare will now be able to offer our clients a multi-channel distribution platform for online lead generation.”

Founded in 2001, Traffic Strategies.com develops and implements custom lead generation programs that leverage industry expertise, proprietary technology and consumer-facing channels to help clients achieve their online customer acquisition goals.

“By joining with LinkShare, a firm with global operations, Traffic Strategies.com will gain access to new markets,” said Mark McClure, President of Traffic Strategies.com, “as well as broader technology and service resources.”

Traffic Strategies.com Chairman Bill McClure is retiring from the business, and Mark McClure will stay on as President.

One thing that might be sticky is the LinkShare exclusivity policy as it pertains to clients of Traffic Strategies.com. The Traffic Strategies.com site mentions that eHealthInsurance and HomeGain are two of their featured clients.

Both also have affiliate programs on CJ.

Blank Generation of Internet Marketers

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I’ve noticed an increasing number of people on affiliate marketing blogs and forums that proudly detail their efforts in cheating to make money online.

They label their doings as evil tricks, grey hat, etc. All sorts of cute little names for lying, cheating, and stealing.

As far as I am concerned, any affiliate manager that works with affiliates that are known to be shysters ought to be on the unemployment line.

This all reminds me of an excerpt from the keynote at Affiliate Summit in July 2006. The keynote was delivered by Jim Bouton, New York Yankee 20-game winner, best selling author, TV Sportscaster, actor, inventor, and businessman.

Jim recalled a story about legendary golfer, Arnold Palmer. Palmer was once asked why it was that whenever he played golf with Jack Nicklaus, Jack would beat him.

Arnold Palmer explained that he “was always trying to beat Jack. And Jack was always trying to play good golf.”

Good business will win in the end.

My 5 Favorite SEO Strategies Exposed

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My 5 Favorite SEO Strategies Exposed presentation from Affiliate Summit East 2008, which took place August 10-12, 2008 in Boston, MA.

Speaker: Wil Reynolds, Associate, SEER Interactive

Session description: In this session we’ll share the tools that we use daily to get great results for clients. Expect to learn a lot in a quick exchange of tools to help you evaluate opportunities and optimize your sites.

Slides from this session are available at http://www.slideshare.net/affsum/my-5-favorite-seo-strategies-exposed

Note: the companies and positions listed above were current as of the time of the conference. Some of this information may have changed since then.