Shawn Collins' Blog

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

Archives for October 2007

Lead Gen Case Study: R.J. Reynolds

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Advertising.com has published a lead generation case study for the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company.

Being in an age-restricted industry, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (RJR) faces a number of unique challenges when it comes to lead generation.

This case study examines the objectives, strategy and results for the RJR lead generation campaign.

Interesting data and approach from Advertising.com to drive cost-effective, valuable and exclusive leads.

Visit http://www.advertising.com/advertisers/case_study_7.php to access the case study.

Cookie Stuffing by Coupon Affiliates

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Kellie Stevens of AffiliateFairPlay has published a study on the incidence of forced clicks (a.k.a. cookie stuffing) occurring on affiliate coupon sites.

With her research, Kellie sought to determine whether the recent increase in discussion of the cookie stuffing issue in the affiliate marketing community was correlate to an increase in the activity by affiliates.

The report, “Prevalence of Forced Clicks on Coupon Sites,” covers her methodology, results, and conclusions.

Kellie also blogged about the issue, as did Scott Jangro and Lisa Picarille.

Plus, there is a long, contentious thread about the issue on ABestWeb.

Affiliate Marketers Gear Up for Black Friday

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The latest issue of the CJ Quarterly, a newsletter for the advertisers or merchants in their network, featured advice on gearing up for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

cyber-monday

The holiday season is critical to the success of e-commerce sites and retail Web sites in particular, many of which generate 20 to 40 percent of their annual revenues and profits during the holiday season. Web sites that aren’t ready to meet the heavy increase in consumer demand may see traffic going elsewhere. Don’t let an unsatisfactory consumer experience lead to revenue loss. Kicking off the frenzy of holiday shopping are two of the biggest shopping days of the year:

  • Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and one of the busiest offline shopping day of the year, and;
  • Cyber Monday, following just three days after and one of the busiest online shopping day of the year.

In 2006, top online retailers boasted 2,145,558 visitors per minute on Cyber Monday, and sales were on average 218 percent higher than the previous Monday, with consumers spending a total of $608 million, up 26 percent versus the same day last year, according to comScore.

The CJ Quarterly also pointed out the following best practices (details in their newsletter):

  • Plan Ahead
  • Reflect on the Past
  • Custom Creative
  • Exclusive Offers
  • Unique Promotional Opportunities
  • Hot Items
  • Colors Count
  • Reach Out to Your Publisher Base
  • Publisher Branded Coupons
  • Communicate, Communicate, Communicate
  • Highlight the Value of ‘Online’

There’s your clarion call, affiliate marketers, start gearing up to capitalize on these big shopping days.

Don’t Lose Your Place on MySpace

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When it comes to social networks, everybody is head over heals about Facebook these days, but you don’t want to forget about MySpace.

This guy is scared of conferences

According to Hitwise, MySpace was still the most popular site, based on US Internet usage, for September 2007.

Facebook comes in at #10 (see the list below).

  1. www.myspace.com
  2. www.google.com
  3. mail.yahoo.com
  4. www.yahoo.com
  5. www.ebay.com
  6. mail.live.com
  7. search.yahoo.com
  8. www.msn.com
  9. www.hotmail.com
  10. www.facebook.com

Anyhow, back in the spring of 2006, I urged affiliate marketers to claim their names (sites, brands, etc.) on MySpace.

Well, I guess lots of folks claimed names, and then never really did anything with the accounts (myself included).

And just now I got the following message from MySpace:

You have not logged into MySpace since January 1, 2007. That makes us sad!

You’re also holding a very valuable piece of MySpace real estate, which is the username/URL you chose. That makes MySpace users sad! Why? Because you’ve got a URL someone may want, and you’re not really using it!

Since it doesn’t look like you’re an active user on this account, we will be resetting your username/URL so that someone else can use it.

To prevent this from happening, simply login to MySpace before Oct 31, 2007.

NOTE: We are only resetting the URLs of inactive accounts. We will *not* delete your account. We are simply trying to free up the username/URLs for people who actually want to use them. Thanks!

To login, simply visit http://www.myspace.com

So go back and get your presence going on MySpace before you lose a good name or seven. There are lots of eyeballs, so don’t waste the opportunity.

Affiliate Programs That Don’t Pay

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Q: When an affiliate company stops paying commissions and owes you hundreds of dollars, how can you make them pay what is owed? I have had several contacts with the CEO of the company, and he promises to pay from August 2007 to the present.

I have gone so far as to post my troubles to two of my Web sites, one that is a URL saying this company sucks, but still no payment. Any ideas?

Shawn CollinsA: I can empathize with you, because I’ve had some scumbag merchants that left me hanging.

The thing to determine here is whether the pursuit of the commission owed to you is worth your hassle.

You mentioned the amount was in the hundreds of dollars. If it were more than that, I would suggest going to your lawyer and start the process to collect your money through legal means.

Perhaps sending with a nasty letter on lawyer letterhead to the offending merchant.

But that could very well cost as much as the money owed to you.

As far as telling your side of the story on your site(s), I am not a lawyer, so I don’t want to give the impression that I am giving any legal advice here, but I would say you should be careful.

Be sure everything is factual that you state. Personally, I wouldn’t want to post anything saying I was ripped off by a company without running it by a lawyer.

And again, that’s going to cost some more money.

At some point you should site down and figure whether it’s all worth the agony you’re going through for a few hundred dollars.

You’re spending time and energy and getting lots of aggravation in the process of trying to get your commissions.

I would suggest refocusing on the future and doing some due diligence on affiliate programs before you promote them.

Ask around in forums; search for hints about their reputation in other places online.

Do your homework and hopefully you can avoid working with shady merchants in the future.

I’m sorry this happened to you, but if it were me (and it has been), I’d suggest packing up and going home.

Consider this experience an unfortunate lesson learned, and be more careful next time.

Good luck with your future merchants.

Top 20 Retail Sites and Affiliate Marketing

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Hitwise has published a list of the top shopping websites, based on US Internet usage for the week ending October 20, 2007, and affiliate marketing leaves a big imprint on the list.

Since this is where the consumers are going to shop, I’d say affiliates would be well advised to use this as a target list of affiliate programs to test on their sites.

I’ve promoted half of them in the last year myself. That reminds me – I need to review my current Dell for WeViews.tv and plug in some nice affiliate links.

  1. www.amazon.com
  2. www.half.ebay.com
  3. www.walmart.com
  4. www.target.com
  5. shopping.yahoo.com
  6. www.bizrate.com
  7. www.smarter.com
  8. www.bestbuy.com
  9. www.jcpenney.com
  10. www.dell.com

More details and the rest of the top twenty retail sites at http://www.hitwise.com/datacenter/retail/retail-index.php.

Affiliate Summit Goes to Boston

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Boston Seaport HotelIt’s official – Affiliate Summit is going to Boston next summer from August 10-12, 2008.

Affiliate Summit 2008 East is taking place at the Boston Seaport Hotel.

The independently owned Seaport distinguishes itself as a deluxe hotel, meeting, exhibition, and function facility located amongst historical seaside attractions.

With swift access to Logan Airport and Boston’s downtown, they feature a full service health club, gourmet cuisine, and wireless Internet.

Stay tuned for more details on registrations, room rates, etc.

Bill Gates Buys Facebook

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Microsoft will buy a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook and agreed to sell ads for Facebook overseas, according to Bloomberg.com.

“The company will pay $240 million for the stake, valuing Palo Alto, California-based Facebook at $15 billion, said Adam Sohn, a director in Microsoft’s online services group.

Microsoft, the biggest software maker, is seeking to tap the surge of visitors and advertisers on social-networking sites. Microsoft already has an agreement to sell Facebook banner ads in the U.S. through 2011. By winning the exclusive international deal with Facebook, the owner of the second-most-popular social site, Microsoft also benefits from growing demand abroad.“

Something tells me Google is not happy.

TechCrunch is live blogging the press conference.

Linkbait Back to the Future

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Last week at the SMX Social Media conference, there was an interesting panel, “Linkbait: Chumming for Traffic on Social Media Sites.”

monkey-working

The panelists, Rebecca Kelley of SEOmoz, Brent Csutoras of BrentCsutoras.com, and Cameron Olthuis of Factive Media, covered all angles of linkbait, as well as lots of tips that were covered in live blogging on Search Engine Land.

While I was watching the panel, I was reminded of how I used to try to create content for my early sites that would generate traffic, but I don’t think there was a name for it back then.

This was back in the 90’s, so there were a lot less resources and venues at my disposal. I would typically spread the good word on relevant Usenet groups and via press releases.

Anyhow, I was trying to remember some of my vintage linkbait efforts, and I came across one that is particularly dated. It was a press release from November 1998.

SHOCK JOCK VOTED BEST BABYSITTER
Strip jock Dr. Laura and liar Prez considered untrustworthy in Internet poll

NEW YORK, New York — In an online poll in the Velocity NYC e-zine, 1,375 respondents were asked “Who would you trust as a babysitter?” The choices were President Clinton, Dr. Laura and Howard Stern.

The majority of Americans polled chose Stern as the person they’d trust most with their children, as he captured the popular vote with 54%. Scandal plagued Dr. Laura followed close behind with 42% of the vote, and President Clinton tallied an appalling 4%.

“I voted for Howard Stern because, while his show is raunchy, he’s a good dad and devoted husband,” said Anthoula Vokolos of Astoria, Queens. “And above all, (he) is always honest to his listeners, his critics, and his supporters.”

While Dr. Laura has been embroiled in her nude photo scandal and the President has taken hits for his lack of character and integrity, the resounding choice for America was Howard Stern. Some people still care about family values and morality.

I don’t remember the numbers, but I do recall that this bit of linkbait was good for the most traffic I’d had to date on my site, plus a bunch of hate mail. The good old days.