Shawn Collins' Blog

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

Archives for September 2007

Affiliate Summit London 2007 Recap

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I’m back now from Affiliate Summit in London, and I’d like to extend a big thanks to all of the attendees, speakers, and sponsors that came out to the Olympia Conference Centre for our first event outside the U.S.

It was a packed day with lots of education and networking with a diverse group of approximately 600 registered attendees.

The night before the conference, we had a pre-party sponsored by Buy.at at a place called Firehouse.

This was an Edwardian town house in South Kensington, west London, and it was a blast. Great to meet up with many old and new affiliate marketing friends.

The conference kicked off with a networking breakfast and everybody filed in to register.

Then, David Hall of Affiliate Window kicked off the show with comments and introductions. This was followed by a presentation from myself and Missy Ward on affiliate marketing in the U.S.

David Hall at Affiliate Summit London

Linus Gregoriadis, Head of Research of E-consultancy, delivered the keynote address on the UK Affiliate Marketing Landscape. Tons of interesting, new statistics about the industry.

Since we were in London, I was very happy to pick Shepherd’s Pie as one of the networking lunch options, rather than the typical rubber chicken. The vegetarians in the crowd got to have a meat free lasagna (tough luck for them).

Affiliate Summit London Lunch

We wound up the day with a cocktail hour to network a bit. Attendees had a chance to step up to the microphone and give an elevator speech about their company.

There were a string of Americans who jumped up to have their say, but the local folks all declined. I guess nobody talks in elevators out there, or perhaps we should have called it a “lift” speech. 😉

See all the Affiliate Summit London pictures on the Affiliate Summit page on Flickr.

All in all, I had a great time meeting up with so many people and picking up some valuable new ideas. Cheers!

Battle of the Internet Gary Wine Guys

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There’s a battle going on in New Jersey among a couple wine sellers who have an Internet presence.

Video thumbnail for youtube video Affiliate Summit West 2009 Keynote Address by Gary Vaynerchuk [transcript] -

On one hand, there is Gary Vaynerchuk, the star of Wine Library TV and Director of Operations at Wine Library in Springfield, NJ.

Gary Vaynerchuk is something of an Internet celebrity with his popular wine vlog, which has garnered him notice on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, the Ellen Degeneres Show, and lots of other places.

He’s also active on Twitter, has a Facebook app, and he’s put out hundreds of entertaining and informative videos.

I first learned about Wine Library TV when I was driving home on Route 78 West in New Jersey from the Newark Airport. He was advertising his show on a billboard.

So yesterday, I’m driving the same route as I returned from Affiliate Summit London, and I briefly see a billboard with the URL, GarysWine.com.

I did a quick double take and noticed that it wasn’t Gary V in the picture.

When I got home, I looked up this other Gary, and what do you know? He’s doing video on wine, too. He got Garyswinevideo.com back in May (or Gary Swine Video, according to DomainTools.com). So far, he has put up five videos.

Nice production and information, but Gary Fisch is no Gary V. I don’t see the Vayniacs becoming Fisch-heads. We want wine-o-tainment.

On another note, neither of the Gary’s have an affiliate program for their retail sites. Come on, guys!

Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants Updated

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Are you planning on writing a follow-up edition to Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants, and are there recent releases regarding affiliate marketing that you would recommend?

Shawn CollinsA: I don’t have any plans to update the book itself. One of the reasons there is that it becomes out of date so quick. By the time the book is on shelves in bookstores, some of the content is irrelevant.

In order to try and remedy that issue, I just completed a free video series updating the book. The videos range about 1-5 minutes per chapter for all 13 chapters of Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants.

You can access the videos at AffiliateManagerBootCamp.com.

As far as any new releases, I buy everything that comes out, and I haven’t seen anything that I have found to be too useful.

Instead, I would suggest staying current with affiliate marketing blogs, as they are a lot more progressive in their coverage of the industry.

The information in blogs is more fresh, and after some time you can figure out which bloggers are more reputable, whereas I’ve noticed that many authors of books about the industry are not actually practitioners of affiliate marketing, but rather some people that did research.

I don’t think those are the ideal people to learn from in how to manage an affiliate program.

Take a look at CostPerNews.com, ReveNews.com, my own blog at AffiliateTip.com.

Lots of good blogs are out there – just search for affiliate blogs on Google, Windows Live, and Yahoo.

Affiliate Marketing ROI

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How can I manage the ROI of affiliate marketing?

Basically, there are three cost centers for a merchant running an affiliate program.

You’ve got the commissions to affiliates, affiliate manager or team, as well as the cost for the technology or affiliate network you are using.

Add all of those components up and subtract them from the revenue generated by the affiliate program, and you can determine your ROI.

Just tweak that around until it works for you.

One thing to bear in mind is that one of the biggest costs in affiliate marketing is to roll out a lousy affiliate program.

If you have an offer that is not compelling or a site that is not converting, it can doom the affiliate program.

Do a lot of fine tuning until your affiliate program is as good or better than all of your competitor’s affiliate programs.

Otherwise, you’ll find that you have a lousy ROI.

Google AdSense for Newbies

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Q: I am a newbie to Internet marketing. I want to get a quick, easy Web site set up and running with Google AdSense. What is the best software to use, and is it safe to use templates?

Shawn CollinsA: One of the quickest and easiest ways to get set up is to go with a blog. My personal favorite is WordPress, and it’s free to use, and you just install it on your hosting account.

The company I use for hosting blogs is LivingDot. The offer a few packages, and they start at $10 or so per month.

LivingDot will install WordPress into your account for you and they’ll also perform free upgrades of WordPress upon request.

They also support Movable Type, another platform for blogs.

I’ve experienced very good support from LivingDot, and WordPress is easy to use.

As far as templates, there are tons of free “themes” (templates) available for WordPress, and they’re very easy to install on a WordPress blog.

If you decide to have your own non-blog site with a template, I don’t see any harm in that.

It’s all about the content on your site. So long as you’re creating original content, you’ll trigger relevant ads from Google AdSense and all will be well.

The peril is in making a “Made for AdSense” site of MFA that doesn’t really serve a purpose beyond taking other people’s content and trying to get visitors to click your ads.

In that case, it doesn’t matter if you have a template or not – the site will be garbage.

Just create quality content and the clicks will come.

Affiliate Marketing Merchants Survey Report 2007

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The Affiliate Marketing Merchants Survey Report 2007, produced by E-consultancy in association with buy.at, was published today.

graphs and chartsThe report is based on an online survey of 239 UK merchants, which was conducted during August and September 2007.

The merchants surveyed for the report represent a range of sectors, the largest groups being financial services, retail, and travel.

Based on the findings in the Affiliate Marketing Merchants Survey Report 2007, the UK affiliate marketing industry is thriving and appears poised for continued and strong growth.

On average, UK merchants involved in affiliate marketing are driving 16% of their online sales via this channel. Some other tidbits from the report…

  • More than two thirds of responding organizations (67%) are now getting more sales from affiliate marketing than they were two years ago.
  • Almost four out of five respondents (78%) say their organizations are spending more on affiliate marketing than they were two years ago, compared to only 7% who say they are now spending less. The same proportion (78%) said they expected to be spending more on affiliate marketing in two years time.
  • Half of responding organizations expect to have more employees managing this channel in 2009 compared to only 4% who expect to have less employees involved.

Further, affiliate marketing is seen by merchants as the most cost effective channel for driving customer acquisition. The vast majority of UK merchants (95%) say that it is either ‘very cost-effective’ or ‘quite cost-effective’.

Paid search and email marketing are next in the list as the most cost effective channels, and they are rated as “very cost-effective” or “quite cost-effective” by 90% and 82% of merchants respectively.

Linus Gregoriadis, Head of Research at E-consultancy, will be covering a number of the findings from this report in his keynote address at Affiliate Summit London 2007 this coming Friday.

Affiliate Summit London Preview with Todd Crawford

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Fraser Edwards interviewed affiliate marketing legend Todd Crawford on his latest podcast, which provides a preview of Affiliate Summit London 2007, taking place September 28, 2007 at the Olympia Conference Centre.

In the chat with Fraser, Todd provides a background on Digital River and One Network Direct (he’s the VP Sales & Business Development of Digital River’s oneNetworkDirect), changing trends in purchasing software, advice for affiliates promoting software products, and Google’s CPA Network.

Todd is going to be moderating a panel of super affiliates at Affiliate Summit London with the following panelists:

Keith Budden, Associate, E-Business Assist UK Ltd
Sri Sharma, Managing Director, Net Media Planet
Richard Yendall, CEO, Rpoints Limited

The panel will cover the hot issues they face in affiliate marketing.

Listen to the podcast at http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/todd-crawford-interview-one-network-direct.html.

Passes for Affiliate Summit are sold out, but any passes that are cancelled will be made available at http://www.affiliatesummit.co.uk – so take a look if you’re trying to get one. Otherwise, they sometimes show up on eBay.

LinkShare Announces Weekly Payment Plan

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LinkShare has announced a new payment plan for affiliates where they will be paid commissions weekly. This payment schedule is effective immediately.

This ought to make affiliates with big cash investments in their affiliate promotions, like PPC players, very happy.

The new, weekly payment schedule from LinkShare will reduce the time for affiliates to receive commissions, and affiliates will receive payments on everything earned over $1.

CPA networks have been using this sort of payment schedule for a while as a perk to select affiliates. Great to see it made available to all affiliates.

More information at LinkShare.com.

Recommended Reading for Affiliate Marketers

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There is a really good list of resources in the Wall Street Journal today, courtesy of Jay Berkowitz, CEO of Ten Golden Rules.

Jay mentions a number of books and sites, some of which I’ve read and others that are now on my to do list.

He also included a couple podcasts, Daily Search Cast from Danny Sullivan, and Affiliate Thing, co-hosted by Lisa Picarille and myself (thanks Jay!).

I’d like to add on Jay’s own podcast as one to include in your iPod. Great tips and compelling interviews.

The article is on page R2 of the Wall Street Journal today, and it’s also available on the Wall Street Journal Online.

RIP Amazon Affiliate ref=nosim

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I just noticed that the ref=nosim tag for Amazon affiliate links is obsolete.

If ref-nosim doesn’t mean anything to you, I’ll give a little background. In the past, the links that Amazon provided to affiliates would bring the user to a page that featured the intended book title, as well as a few other titles they might be interested in.

The visitor had to click again to get to the actual product page if they wanted to purchase the book. However, affiliates could add ref=nosim into the URL (right before their Amazon affiliate id) and their clicks would go right to the main page for that book.

So anyhow, Amazon allows affiliates to select a URL they wish to have as their link these days, so ref=nosim is no longer needed.

However, I’ve got years and years of links with ref=nosim on various sites, and I was concerned about them dying in the near future.

I posted in the Amazon affiliates forum about the issue, and got this response from another Amazon affiliate…

I asked Amazon.com about this and they said that you should start using the new links; however, if you have any old links they will still give you credit for any items sold.

So anybody using ref=nosim should be good for a while, but I’d suggest updating your links to the new version just to be safe.