Shawn Collins' Blog

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

Archives for December 2007

Sales and Fulfillment of Digital Goods

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Q: I’ve decided to manage my affiliate program with iDevAffiliate software and I’ll be integrating it with PayPal. The product I will be selling is an ebook, and I’d like to know how I can set up automatic delivery for it. I would prefer to keep things inhouse as much as possible and avoid paying outside services. How can I do this with iDevAffiliate and PayPal, or is there a software I can use to integrate the two?

Shawn CollinsA: I am not familiar with how to integrate the two, but I’m sure there are hacks to do it. iDevAffiliate should be able to help with that issue.

Personally, I wanted to do the same thing a couple years back, and I went with a company called PayLoadz.

PayLoadz will manage the whole process for you: hosting the digital product, tracking and reporting sales, integrating with PayPal, and an affiliate program.

It’s a quick and easy solution. You upload your file there, create some confirmation e-mails, and provide your PayPal account information. They handle the fulfillment and copy you on sales notifications.

While you could do this a number of ways, I think many other options will result in manual fixes and hassles.

XO Laptop – End of 2007 Deduction

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I just got my (daughter’s) new XO Laptop from Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child initiative from laptopgiving.org.

Basically, it’s this great, little laptop that was designed for children in developing nations. It was designed to handle extreme environmental conditions such as high heat and humidity, as well as technological issues such as local-language support.

You can participate in the Give One Get One program through 12/31/07. For a donation of $399, one XO laptop will be sent to empower a child in a developing nation and you will receive one.

According to the site…

Up to $200 of your donation may be tax-deductible (your $399 donation minus the fair market value of the XO laptop you will be receiving).

The XO laptop is tiny, maybe 2/3 the size of my MacBook. It’s meant for a child, but it has the core functionality to be a productive, extra laptop for any adult. It runs on the Linux OS.

It comes with a bunch of applications installed, and there are a wealth of programs you can download and use with it for free.

And back to the part about the good cause. If you get one before 12/31/07, you will receive your XO laptop in early 2008. Your donated laptop will reach a child in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, Mongolia or Rwanda in the same early 2008 time frame.

I got this one for my eight year old daughter and she totally loves it. Since I couldn’t pry it from her little hands, I decided to order an extra one yesterday.

More information at http://www.laptopgiving.org/.

Jason Calacanis and Affiliate Spam

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I was just reading a thread on Wicked Fire about a presentation given by Jason Calacanis, founder of Mahalo.com, at the Le Web conference.

missy-ward-jason calacanis-shawn-collins

The gist of the presentation was that spam ruined Usenet, and we are seeing the ruination of search from affiliate spam.

This quote from Jason pretty much sums it up…

“There is a generation of people who are becoming entrepreneurs today who believe that because the Internet technically allows you to do something that you are within your right to do it. You are allowed to pollute the Internet, because you can.”

I agree, and this is definitely a problem. Some folks on Wicked Fire disagree with his statements.

In the thread there, he is labeled “the kid who always got picked on and hassled,” “a whiny little girl,” and “the hitler of the internets.”

The interesting thing is that Jason emphasizes that we must be self regulating, and not have the government come in and fix the problem.

I hope to see it work out that way. Otherwise, we may well see a CAN-SPAM equivalent for affiliate and/or search marketing in the near future.

I’m anxious to hear Jason’s further take on affiliate marketing when he keynotes Affiliate Summit in February. It should be an interesting Q&A.

Free Advertising for Affiliate Summit Exhibitors

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We’ve got an opportunity for exhibitors of Affiliate Summit 2008 West, taking place February 24-26, 2008 in Las Vegas, to get some free, targeted advertising.

Any companies with a booth in the exhibit hall (120 booths) or a table (72 tables) in the Affiliate Meet Market are encouraged to make a video promoting their company.

Just submit the video at the Affiliate Summit Video site.

We’ll promote your video in the Affiliate Summit newsletter and blog.

Don’t miss out on this chance to get in front of your audience. your competition will probably be too lazy to take advantage of this opportunity – will you?

Super Affiliates and E-mail

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Q: Is it possible to become a super affiliate without sending a single e-mail campaign?

Shawn CollinsA: Absolutely. E-mail is just one of many methods for marketing affiliate links. There are many super affiliates who don’t use e-mail at all.

For instance, some affiliates run content sites that rely on organic traffic from search engines and other sources.

There are affiliates that concentrate on e-mail, but they’re typically focused on pushing leads vs. retail offers.

Super affiliates run sites based on data feeds, there are bloggers on niche topics, PPC arbitrage players, etc.

Any way you can market online can be leveraged by affiliates, and e-mail doesn’t have to play a role.

E-mail is not essential to make it big as an affiliate, though it makes sense to me to incorporate it in your strategy.

Why not include a double opt-in e-mail list, so you can mail out newsletters or updates to interested folks?

Do Affiliates Know It’s Christmas?

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I’d like to wish a Merry Christmas to all of the affiliate marketers out there.

Affiliate Summit and Christmas shopping

I was just looking at my old record, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, by Band Aid – that “Feed the World” song from back in the 80s.

Note, I have it on record – not some newfangled CD or MP3. Old timer.

Anyhow, I was just remembering a little story from back then. I bought the 12 single of the song with the money I was making as a dishwasher at my local Friendly’s restaurant.

I actually got that job by forging my paperwork. I grew up in Maryland and we had to get a work permit from our high school that outlined the maximum hours we could work and such.

Nobody in the mall would hire kids under 16, so I doctored the thing up to get the much sought after dishwasher job.

I was pulling in $3.35 an hour for that job, and I was happy and proud to do it, despite the itchy uniform.

That experience reminds me of the affiliate attitude and approach: work hard, work long, innovate, and earn what you get.

So this Christmas, I’d like to honor all of the affiliates out there that have figured out their recipe of success, and the many others striving to succeed

I’m proud to be an affiliate and wish you all a Merry Christmas today.

Now get off your computer and go back to your family.

Affiliate Network vs. Software

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I have a tangible product that would be great for affiliates. Should I run through an affiliate network or install affiliate software on my server and work directly with the affiliates?

There are various reasons to go with a third party affiliate software versus or an affiliate network.

If you run your affiliate program through a network, you’ve got an established base of affiliates that could join your affiliate program in one click.

Otherwise, if you are using an installed affiliate software, you’d have to sell affiliates on your affiliate program and the affiliate software you are using, as the affiliate would need to create an account specifically for your program.

So, it is a bit more of a hurdle to go with software, but it’s more cost effective, too.

You’ve got to figure out whether you can dedicate the resources to sell your affiliate program and the platform that is powering it.

In contrast, you can focus just on selling your affiliate program when you’re running through a network, since they’ve already got a critical mass of affiliates working with them.

Additionally, when going with an affiliate network, you get some level of support, depending on the network and your contract.

If you have your own technology or an installed software, you could find it challenging when tech issues arise.

LinkShare Introduces Flex Links Widgets

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LinkShare has announced the debut of Flex Links, which is being rolled out with LinkShare merchant, ShopNBC.

Flex Links is an embedded link technology that allows merchants and affiliates to add a new level of tracking in their affiliate marketing efforts.

“ShopNBC, with its national reach and interactive multimedia platform, was instrumental in validating Flex Links,” said Steve Denton, President of LinkShare. “By distributing their brand message and product merchandising with video, widgets and other content embedded with Flex Links, ShopNBC will be able to reach consumers in entirely new ways.”

“ShopNBC is excited to partner with LinkShare in pioneering the use of Flex Links to enable us to syndicate our product merchandising through new and unique interactive means with our Affiliate partners,” said Geoff Smith, Vice President of ShopNBC.com. “Flex Links will enable us to syndicate our breadth of live and archived video sales presentations in a simple and easy to implement means, providing our Affiliates with an outstanding new sales tool.”

LinkShare’s Flex Links enable tracking to be embedded in a merchant’s content and automatically converted to a tracking link by affiliates who post that content.

MarketingSherpa’s E-mail Marketing Benchmark Guide

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The annual MarketingSherpa E-mail Marketing Benchmark Guide is now available, and it’s a key read to keep up with e-mail marketing.

Marketing Sherpa’s 5th annual Email Marketing Benchmark Guide is their largest edition to date.

The guide includes results from an in-depth survey of 1,210 marketers with hands-on e-mail experience; 260 charts, 12 images and nine new eyetracking heatmaps; and four new special reports.

The all-new research in the E-mail Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008 provides the fact-based data you’ll need to:

  • Compare your e-mail campaigns with others.
  • Improve the effectiveness of your e-mail marketing.
  • Gain critical insight into how your e-mails might be perceived by your constituency.
  • Allocate and justify your budget for e-mail marketing.

I’d recommend picking up this report from the SherpaStore, especially if you’re trying to improve the odds of your e-mails being noticed and read, and your offers converted.

Why I Shop Online

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Today I just wanted to share a little Christmas shopping experience. For as long as I can remember, I’ve done most, if not all, of my Christmas present shopping online.

This past weekend, I found myself in a mall and figured I might as well pick up some things I was going to buy for family and friends.

I like to give books as gifts, so I dropped in to a Barnes & Noble at the mall. I was going to pick up a couple books on the best sellers list, and they didn’t have either one.

They offered to special order the books, but said it would take seven days for the books to arrive.

Of course, that would require me to return to the book store to pick up the books. So much for convenience.

So, I figured I’d shop for books where I usually go… Amazon.com.

I’ve got an Amazon Prime account, so I get free two-day shipping, so I figured I’d try there for the books.

I was still in the mall and I figured I’d try shopping on Amazon.com from my Blackberry. I didn’t know if there was a mobile version of Amazon, but there was and it was a fast, smooth process to make the purchase.

I ordered the two books I wanted, priced below retail, on a Saturday and they were at my door on Monday. Even faster than Amazon promised.

So, why does anybody even shop at those malls anymore. The crowds, sold out items, packed parking lots, higher prices. Ugh.

I’d imagine there are a lot more retailers that I had assumed who have mobile versions of their sites. I think if I go to the mall during the Christmas season in the future, I’ll just check out some merchandise in person and then buy online.

I can check prices and buy fast on my phone right there, and then there is nothing to carry around.

Any merchants and affiliates who are not currently catering to mobile browsers, be sure to get your acts together by next fall.