Shawn Collins' Blog

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

Archives for September 2008

Budgeting an Affiliate PPC Campaign

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Q: Do you think $100 to $400 is enough to run a successful PPC campaign?

Shawn CollinsA: There are many variables missing with your question, which make it tough to gauge where you are with PPC.

I don’t know if that budget for you is daily, weekly, monthly, or some other period of time.

Also, it depends on how you define success. In my view, a positive return on investment for a PPC campaign is a success, but certainly I’d refer a 300% return over a 110% return.

So that ties into your ultimate goal. Do you want this to be a full-time job for you, or a hobby that nets you a few hundred dollars a month?

I would suggest that you start testing with a modest investment to get a feel for what works and play around with the systems a bit.

And then, just keep scaling up so long as it is profitable.

You could easily spend $400 a day with PPC, and if it’s returning a profit for you, that’s great.

You could do the same with $1,000 or $5,000 a day. It all comes down to whether you’re seeing positive returns, and perhaps how risk averse you are as you try to scale it.

Affiliate Summit West 2009 Price Increasing

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Early bird pricing for Affiliate Summit West 2009, taking place January 11-13, 2009 in Las Vegas, ends next Sunday.

The Keynote Speaker will be Gary Vaynerchuk, star of Wine Library TV and Director of Operations at Wine Library in Springfield, NJ.

The Early Bird registration rates of $949 (Platinum Pass), $349 (Gold Pass), and $149 (Silver Pass) are going up after October 5. Starting October 6, the rates to register for Affiliate Summit will be $1,249 (Platinum Pass), $549 (Gold Pass), and $349 (Silver Pass).

For a description of the available pass types see http://www.affiliatesummit.com/09w_conference.php.

Pricing for exhibitor booths will also change after October 5. 10′ x 10′
booths will increase from $4,195 to $5,195 and 10′ x 20′ booths will increase from $6,295 to $7,795 starting on October 6. Pricing for other booths, as well as the Affiliate Meet Market and the Merchant Mart are also increasing after October 5.

Other Affiliate Summit sponsorships are also available. See http://www.affiliatesummit.com/09w_exhibitors.php for details.

Rooms at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino are available at an Affiliate Summit group rate of $159 a night until December 9 (or the block has reached capacity). After that, the hotel will charge the prevailing rate.

Issue 3 of FeedFront Magazine is Out

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The third issue of FeedFront, the official magazine of Affiliate Summit, has been published and it will be hitting mailboxes over the coming weeks.

FeedFront Magazine, Issue 3Issue three will also be distributed at Affiliate Summit Social Media 2008 on October 5 in NYC.

The cover features Cory Booker, who delivered the keynote address at Affiliate Summit East 2008, and the issue includes a transcript of his speech.

There are also articles on widgets, the effectiveness of long-form sales letters, a profile of Melissa Salas of Buy.com, time management, and more.

Plus, this issue features the program for Affiliate Summit Social Media 2008.

Issue 1 and Issue 2 of FeedFront Magazine can be downloaded as a pdf file or you can read the articles online at feedfront.com.

Get the FeedFront RSS if you’d like to get all of the articles as they are published to the feed.

If you haven’t subscribed, you can get the magazine for free at http://feedfront.com/free-subscription/.

Gary Vaynerchuk – Keynote at Affiliate Summit West 2009

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Gary Vaynerchuk, star of Wine Library TV and Director of Operations at Wine Library in Springfield, NJ, is going to be the keynote speaker at Affiliate Summit West 2009.

The conference is taking place January 11-13, 2009 in Las Vegas.

See a sample of Gary Vaynerchuk speaking at the recent Web 2.0 Expo in New York.

Register for Affiliate Summit West 2009.

Retiring the Flip Camera

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I’ve been using the Flip Ultra camera for about a year to shoot home video and video blogs, and while it’s quick and easy to use, I think it’s time to retire it.

Shawn CollinsRecently, I got the Canon VIXIA HV30 MiniDV High Definition Camcorder, so I can record video in HD.

It’s a great camera for longer videos, like family events, conferences, etc when I want some top notch quality.

I am also using the Casio Exilim EX-Z1200 12MP Digital Camera for snapshots and shooting bits of video.

When I was at the BlogWorld Expo conference last week, I wanted to take pictures and video. Since I didn’t feel like carrying the Casio and the Flip, I just stuck the Casio in my pocket.

And I got to wondering what problem the Flip solves for me. My Casio digital camera is about the same size, and takes better video than the Flip. Plus, it takes nice pictures.

Not to mention that the Flip has inferior sound to the other two cameras when recording video.

Granted, the Flip is cheaper than the other two, and easier to use, but if you’re concerned with quality for your video, you might want to retire your Flip, too.

Impact of Microsoft IE8 and Google Chrome on LinkShare Tracking

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I was reading the latest LinkShare newsletter, and was interested to see what the had to say about the effectiveness of their affiliate tracking on two new Web browsers, Microsoft Internet Explorer Version 8 and Google Chrome.

Both browsers have privacy protections, which are good for the consumer, but can be bad for affiliates.

Browser privacy settings can result in blocking affiliate cookies, which can be devastating if such functionality becomes commonplace.

Not that this is a new issue, as anti-spyware and anti-virus programs often delete affiliate cookies, and some users manually delete them.

Anyhow, in the case of LinkShare, their tracking does not rely on cookies. LinkShare offers two methods, LS Trans and Web Services.

With the LS Trans method, transaction information is sent via a secure and reliable patented batch process. With Web services, tracking transaction information is sent over a secure server-to-server transmission. In both methods there is direct communication between the Advertiser and LinkShare, and the web browser does not present an additional potential point of failure.

That’s reassuring, and hopefully other affiliate networks are testing with these browsers, too.

MySpace Advertising in Beta

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MySpace Advertising, a sort of Google AdWords for the MySpace community, has launched in Beta.

The minimum price is $0.25 per click and the minimum budget required for each campaign is $25.

MySpace Advertising

I created an account to test it out by running some ads for Affiliate Summit. While they tout it as a way to “Promote Your Business”, there aren’t really options for promoting a B2B play.

None of the categories were relevant for me, and the only tangentially related sub-category I could find was to target people interested in books by Malcolm Gladwell.

Then again, MySpace isn’t the first or even 78th place I’d typically go to promote Affiliate Summit. I just wanted to skip through and see the interface.

I’ll jump back later to create some real affiliate campaigns.

Check out “Myspace Ads Beta: First Impressions” for a detailed overview of MySpace Advertising from Nickycakes.

You can sign up for MySpace Advertising at http://advertise.myspace.com/.

OpenX Seminar in New York

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OpenX, the popular ad server used by many affiliates, is holding a seminar in New York on Thursday, October 2 from 10am to 5pm.

The event is open to anyone with an interest in OpenX.

The agenda will be based on the feedback OpenX users give to them. Register at http://www.openx.org/openx-seminar-in-new-york and you can suggest things you’d like to be covered during the registration process.

Scott Switzer, the OpenX Community Leader, and Alex Dean, the Senior Project Manager, will lead the talks.

The folks at OpenX expect a broad range of attendees from small affiliates looking to build on their Google AdSense revenue up to super affiliates and ad networks using OpenX.

Topics will include an introduction for beginners, trafficking techniques and performance tuning tips, as well as an overview of the OpenX product roadmap.

More details at http://blog.openx.org/09/openx-seminar-in-new-york-2nd-october/.

Commission Junction Announces CJYou Award Winners

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Commission Junction has announced the winners of their CJYou Awards, which were presented at the annual Commission Junction University (CJU).

The CJYou Awards, formerly known as the Horizon Awards, were presented to the following:

  • Rookie of the Year, Advertiser: Abe’s of Maine
  • Rookie of the Year, Publisher: ShopDiscover
  • Advertiser of the Year: Yahoo! Affiliate Program
  • Publisher of the Year: RetailMeNot.com
  • People’s Choice, Advertiser (tie): BuyCostumes, GoDaddy
  • People’s Choice, Publisher: CouponCabin
  • Innovator of the Year: Intuit
  • Agency of the Year: iMarketing

For more information on the 2008 CJYou award winners, go to www.cj.com/affiliatemarketingawards.

My AIM is True: affsum

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Back in the 1990’s, I signed on with AOL for Internet access. I forget exactly when, but I think it was probably 1997.

Shawn on AIMA couple years later, Comcast introduced broadband to my area, and I jumped on it.

But I kept AOL, because my wife liked it, and I figured it would be a backup for when Comcast Internet went down, which was fairly often back then.

Over time, I added a couple accounts to it for AIM: affiliateninja and later affiliatetip

Finally, my wife became a Gmail convert and closed the AOL account for good recently. And with it went my AIM names.

I figured they would stick around, since they were free to people now. I was wrong.

So anyway, if we were AIM buddies, I lost my buddy list and don’t have your user name.

My new name is affsum.