Shawn Collins' Blog

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

Archives for January 2009

Defining a Super Affiliate

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ShoeMoney made a post last week where he included opinions from many folks in the industry on their definitions of a super affiliate.

Interesting insight from the likes of NickyCakes (“Super Affiliate is a stupid buzzword”), Zac Johnson (“I personally consider “super affiliate” status to be anyone making six figures a month consistently”), Neil Patel (“A super affiliate is someone who can make 5 plus figures a month in profit through affiliate marketing”), and a bunch of others.

A super affiliate takes on a different definition for any given vertical in my opinion, and it can also vary for types of affiliates.

The rule of thumb I’ve applied in the past has been to consider the top 2% of active affiliates in an affiliate program as the “super affiliates”.

Check out his post at http://www.shoemoney.com/2009/01/02/what-is-a-super-affiliate-again/.

Hiring an In-House Affiliate Manager

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Q: I am looking for an in-house affiliate manager – where can I find one?

Shawn CollinsA: I would say that one of the best qualifications of an affiliate manager is that they were previously an affiliate, because they have a 360 degree understanding of the industry, rather than just somebody how knows about the management side.

I encounter too many affiliate managers who don’t understand the basics of affiliate marketing.

My suggestion is to ask prospective candidates in the interview if they are currently or ever have been an affiliate.

Ideally, you’ll find somebody with experience as an affiliate manager in your niche, who is also located in your geographic area, but that’s probably not likely unless you’re based in NYC or San Francisco.

Anyhow, there are a lot more affiliates than affiliate managers out there, so if you place value on affiliate experience, you’ve got a much deeper pool of candidates.

In reality, it’s not that hard to learn any given affiliate network interface. A quality affiliate manager knows about the industry and can relate to people. Those skills trump an MBA in my opinion.

Affiliate Resolutions for 2009

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I rang in 2009 in laid back style with my wife and kids. A little champagne, Wii playing and throwing shredded documents in the air as makeshift confetti were the action for the night.

After all, it’s almost time for Affiliate Summit West 2009, so no time to get crazy and sleep in like the old days.

Collins Girls Celebrate 2009

Since I’m kicking off day one of 2009 behind my desk, I figured I’d finally work out some resolutions for the coming year.

One thing I’d like to do is post more content over at EzineArticles. If you’re not familiar with the site, it’s a great place to syndicate your original content and get links back to your site.

I’ve had an EzineArticles account for a while, but was surprised to see yesterday that I hadn’t posted anything since January 2008. I made my way back there yesterday when I saw a post in Twitter about their new feature, a sort of leader board of article authors who are on Twitter at twitter.ezinearticles.com.

It’s cool to see their social media enhancements, and I’ll definitely get on the ball in taking advantage of it – you should, too.

Another thing I want to do even more is to track and respond to any mentions of my blog, Affiliate Summit, me, etc. I’ve been doing this via various tracking tools to monitor news, blogs, Twitter, and other places, but haven’t always followed up.

I was watching a video from Gary Vaynerchuk yesterday, “Ego Searching or Caring?” and I realized those searches have been heavy on ego in the past.

2009 is the time to close the loop and always follow up with the caring.

Finally, I want to get into live video. I’ve been posting plenty of videos to YouTube over the past couple years, but haven’t really played with live video.

I’ve created a channel on Ustream.TV, “Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins,” and I will be getting some material up there. Stay tuned.

Speaking of Ustream.tv, we are going to broadcast the Gary Vaynerchuk keynote at Affiliate Summit West 2009. So be sure to subscribe to the Affiliate Summit channel on Ustream.tv if you can’t make it to Las Vegas.