Shawn Collins' Blog

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

Archives for December 2008

Pinnacle Awards Finalists at Affiliate Summit West 2009

by

The third annual Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards will be presented on Monday, January 12 at Affiliate Summit West 2009, taking place at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.

The Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards Gala is affiliate marketing’s most prestigious, competitive honor for the leaders in the space. Award winners are recognized because they are innovative leaders with vision and influence.

Brian Littleton receives the Affiliate Marketing Legend Pinnacle Award at Affiliate Summit West 2008

Here are the finalists for the Pinnacle Awards at Affiliate Summit West 2009:

Affiliate of the Year

  • Scott Aikin
  • Mike Allen
  • Kim Rowley

Affiliate Manager of the Year

  • Angel Djambazov
  • Stephanie Harris
  • Kim Salvino

Exceptional Merchant

  • 4Checks.com
  • Amazon
  • CelebrateExpress.com

Affiliate Marketing Advocate

  • Michael Coley
  • Brook Schaaf
  • Melanie Seery

Best Blogger

  • Jamie Birch
  • Angel Djambazov
  • Scott Jangro

Affiliate Marketing Legend

  • Connie Berg
  • Scott Jangro
  • Kellie Stevens

The Pinnacle Awards are open to all attendees of Affiliate Summit West 2009.

See video from the Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards in 2008.

Which Market to Focus on with Affiliate Programs

by

Q: How do I, as a Malaysian who studies in Australia as a temporary resident, make money in the U.S. market? Should I focus on the U.S. market or other markets?

Shawn CollinsA: There is money to be made as an affiliate marketer all over the place… the U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan, the U.K., all over Europe, etc.

It comes down to which sort of affiliate programs you prefer to promote and the audience you are able to attract.

Your niche will typically dictate your audience and their geographic location to a degree.

However, if your site is about something sort of generic like clothing, look at your logs to see where your visitors are coming from, and cater to that group accordingly.

If you’re finding that 90% of your audience is based in the U.S., then you should certainly cater to that market.

Rather than try and force a certain audience to come to your site, I would recommend testing the path of least resistance and appealing to your existing audience.

Also, be sure to check with any affiliate programs you promote to confirm that they ship to the countries of origin for your most frequent visitors.

ShareASale Announces Inaugural Performance Awards

by

ShareASale has announced the recipients of the inaugural ShareASale Performance Awards, which will be annual moving forward.

And the winners are…

  • Exceptional Affiliate of 2008: Scott Jangro
  • Exceptional Merchant of 2008: CSN Stores
  • Exceptional Affiliate Manager 2008: Nicole Beidler of BirthdayInABox.com
  • PowerRank Champion 2008: Checks Unlimited
  • Emerging Technology 2008: GreenPlanetSearch
  • Pay It Forward 2008 (Fund raising): Missy Ward
  • Pay It Forward 2008 (Industry Advocate): Melanie Seery

More details at http://blog.shareasale.com/shareasale-performance-awards/.

Finding Niche Affiliate Programs

by

Q: I have a new Web site that is a portal for outerwear apparel. Is there a central depository for online apparel merchants that offer affiliate programs, or do I have to just hunt and peck with each merchant and ask if they offer an affiliate program?

Shawn CollinsA: There isn’t really an affiliate directory that is comprehensive. And I say that even with having one of my own, the Affiliate Thing directory.

Hopefully, you know your market well enough to know the players. Just go to each of those sites and look at the footer for a link that says Affiliates, Affiliate Program or something like that.

If nothing turns up that way, try searching the site via the Google toolbar for the word “affiliate”.

Some companies have an affiliate program and they manage to do a really poor job of getting it in front of affiliates.

Those strategies should be effective for you. Also, create accounts with the affiliate networks, where you can search for affiliate programs by category.

Best Buy Alienates Affiliates

by

Best Buy alienated affiliates last week when they slashed the commission rate for the Wii and laptops from 1% to .25%.

Shawn Collins at a Best Buy during better timesAffiliate Michael Coley of Amazing-Bargains.com started up a thread on ABestWeb about the issue (A New Low – Best Buy Laptop & Wii Commissions Dropped to 0.25%!, and is not being received well by affiliates.

Personally, I haven’t used Best Buy affiliate links. I prefer Amazon and Buy.com, where I am a customer and I see both of those companies actively participating in the affiliate marketing community.

But this sort of move by Best Buy reinforces my support of Amazon and Buy.com.

It reminds me of a move that I considered to be decidedly anti-affiliate by Apple last year when they didn’t make the iPhone available for affiliate to promote when it came out.

I get why these companies want to hold back their hottest sellers. They don’t think they need any help selling the iPhone, Nintendo Wii and laptop computers.

But what they don’t get is that affiliates take a hit with lesser conversions for traffic they deliver to these companies on other products.

So, in essence, the more popular products help to pull the overall EPC back up. But when the big sellers are taken off the table, affiliates are left with low conversions on less popular products.

And guess what, Best Buy, that scenario might sound great to you, but it’s lousy for affiliates, and they’re not going to stick around.

Angel Djambazov has a good take on the Best Buy issue on Revenews.com: Best Buy Gives Affiliates a Slap in the Face.

Direct Links for Affiliate Programs

by

Q: What are your thoughts on direct linking… the pros and cons? Do you have any cautions about this type of affiliate linking?

Shawn CollinsA: One con right away is that direct linking, where an affiliate links straight to an advertisers domain, rather than through a redirect, is not available through most affiliate networks. So, if this is something you wish to do, it’s going to limit your options.

Also, one of the pros of direct linking is a perceived SEO benefit to have hundreds or thousands of sites linking to you. I don’t have a grasp on the latest SEO issues, so I can’t say if this is something the search engines reward or not – having tons of sites link to your site overnight.

I use a company called Fusion Quest for the Affiliate Summit affiliate program where the affiliate links are direct to the domain. I don’t know that there has been any benefit from the inbound links, which are setup either as IFRAMES or direct links.

The IFRAMES from Fusion Quest give the appearance that there is no affiliate link. When not using IFRAMES, the affiliate links look like this (velocitynyc is the affiliate ID):

affiliatesummit.com/?velocitynyc

Anyhow, the SEO angle wasn’t a concern of mine in using this solution. I just liked the simplicity of the links versus using redirected links.

Also, the domains on the redirected affiliate links are sometimes targeted by anti-spyware programs, but that’s a whole difference can of worms.

Personally, I don’t see there being a great need for direct linking, and I don’t think I’m alone there when I look at the marketplace. There are not many vendors offering the technology for affiliate programs.

Media Breakaway and Florida Attorney General Working on Industry Best Practices

by

Media Breakaway announced today that they’ve been working in collaboration with collaboration with the Florida Attorney General office for nearly 12 months to promote online marketing best practices throughout the industry.

Since 2007, Media Breakaway has been working closely with representatives from the Florida Attorney General’s office to develop a set of industry-wide best practices for online marketers with special attention paid to mobile offers. The outcome of that collaboration is a set of guidelines that will help marketers produce advertisements that focus on the consumer experience with regard to various ringtone and mobile marketing products and services. This benefits the consumer and the advertiser.

In addition to working together, Media Breakaway is also contributing $1 million to the Florida Attorney General’s fund designed to promote more consumer-friendly online advertising.

See the Media Breakaway press release for more details.

ShoeMoney Wants to Wear Your Shirt for Charity at Affiliate Summit

by

Jeremy (ShoeMoney) Schoemaker is running an auction where the winning bidder will get to have him wear shirts with their brand for the three days of Affiliate Summit West 2009, taking place January 11-13, 2009 in Las Vegas.

This is a charity auction the winning bid going to National Breast Cancer Foundation, the official charity of Affiliate Summit West 2009.

In addition to the exposure in person at the event, the winning bidder will have their brand exposure from this auction live on well after the conference in photos and videos.

See the ShoeMoney.com blog for details on the exposure.

Bid on the auction for this powerful and unique marketing opportunity.

Also, Jeremy will be on a panel at Affiliate Summit, “Advertising on Facebook”, on Monday, January 12 at 11:30 am.

buy.at Launches in Sweden, Denmark and Norway

by

The buy.at affiliate network has officially launched in Sweden, Denmark and Norway.

buy.at is part of Platform-A, AOL’s digital advertising business, and after the recent launches in Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, Platform-A now has a presence in eight European countries including France, Germany and the UK.

Platform-A aligns AOL’s existing advertising operations and includes AOL’s owned-and-operated sites and premium portal content, along with thousands of sites in the Advertising.com third-party network and the affiliate marketing network buy.at that rewards partner websites for every sale and/or visitor.

Congratulations to the buy.at team.

FeedFront Magazine Issue 4 Now Available

by

The fourth issue of FeedFront, the official magazine of Affiliate Summit, is at the printer and it will be hitting mailboxes in January 2009.

FeedFront Magazine, Issue 4Issue four will also be distributed at Affiliate Summit West 2009 on January 11-13, 2009 in Las Vegas.

The cover features the women of affiliate marketing, and the accompanying feature highlights many female movers and shakers in affiliate marketing who took time to share some wisdom.

There are also articles on podcasting, a profile of super affiliate Tim Storm, affiliate opportunities in a recession, how the Target.com affiliate program is using Twitter, and more.

Plus, this issue features the program for Affiliate Summit West 2009.

Issue 4 can now be downloaded in PDF format.

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/.

Also, become a fan of FeedFront on Facebook to see past issues, covers, etc.