Shawn Collins' Blog

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

Archives for May 2009

Contribute to Issue 7 of FeedFront Magazine

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We’re starting to work on issue 7 of FeedFront Magazine, which will also be the conference guide at Affiliate Summit East 2009.

The next issue of FeedFront will be coming out in August 2009, and the deadline for articles for issue 7 of FeedFront is June 8, 2009.

If you are interested in writing an article, go to the FeedFront contact form to submit a one sentence summary on what you’d like to cover.

Articles are a maximum of 500 words – no exceptions. Anything longer will not be considered.

Do not send a complete article – just a one sentence summary.

Reasons to Attend CJU Video

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Commission Junction just put out a new video with testimonials from past Commission Junction University (CJU) attendees.

CJU is taking place September 15-17, 2009 at Fess Parker’s DoubleTree Resort in Santa Barbara, CA.

The keynote, Jackie Huba, looks interesting. I’ve got to pick up (or rather wirelessly suck it into my Kindle) her book, Citizen Marketers: When People Are the Message

I’m all registered to attend and look forward to seeing fellow affiliate marketers out there this September.

Watch the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGJZNiLcU1A. More details on CJU at http://www.cj.com/news/event_cju2009.html.

Chitika Launches MEGA-Unit

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Chitika has introduced a new ad unit called the MEGA-Unit, and so far they say the MEGA-Unit’s CTR is 4 times higher than their other ad units across the Chitika network.

MEGA-Unit from Chitika

Some affiliates have shared their success with the MEGA-Unit:

  • AskDaveTaylor.com increased his Chitika earnings from $85/month to $2000/month by adding the new MEGA-Unit to his site (Dave talks about this in greater detail on his site).
  • ArticleAlley.com tried the new MEGA-Unit and reports that “The result was a massive 721% increase in income – without any noticeable knock on effect to our other income providers.” – Adrian from ArticleAlley.com
  • Couponmom.com added the MEGA-Unit to just 1 of her pages, and immediately doubled her eCPM and revenue.

More details at Chitika.

Turning Customers into Affiliates

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Q: I am the affiliate manager for an online niche gift shop and I have a question that I would appreciate your advice on, and it may be of interest to other affiliate managers, as well. Until today, we have accepted only affiliates who run websites through our affiliate program, but we’d like to empower our customers as affiliates, even though they don’t have their own sites. Maybe they could put affiliate links in their email signature?

A: One place you could look over for the implementation of this concept would be CafePress.com, where customers are encouraged to start up their own CafePress.com shops.

However, this is separate from the CafePress.com affiliate program.

Perhaps you could go with a similar concept and give your customers a unique link and a custom header that indicated it was their store within your gift shop.

I wouldn’t recommend that you encourage customers or affiliates in general to insert affiliate links in email. That doesn’t come off as an endorsement, but just tacky, at least to me.

Also, I would suggest doing this only if you can provide each customer with a subdomain, because the typical customer will probably not know how to create links and such.

AWeber does this with their affiliate program. My custom subdomain with them is http://affiiatetip.aweber.com. It’s nice and compact for a text newsletter or other place a customer/affiliate might want to include it.

Make Money Online with Affiliate Programs

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I was thinking about what goes into creating a new affiliate site, and I’ve outlined the seven important elements when I start up a new affiliate project.

Shawn CollinsThis primer is intended for folks that are just breaking into affiliate marketing. I know some people are searching for a “get rich quick” lesson, and that’s not the way it works with affiliate marketing.

Affiliate sites should be viewed as long-term projects, and not quick hits.

As far as the prevalence of affiliate programs among retailers, Internet Retailer magazine recently released their list of the Hot 100 Retail Web Sites, and 75% of those retailers had one or more affiliate programs in place.

Anyhow, here are the seven things to consider when setting up an affiliate site. Note that the various services I mention are those that I use personally. I mention them, because I’ve been happy with the pricing and service and would personally recommend them.

Also, I would create a new site with WordPress as the content management system, because of the ease of use and flexibility of the platform. You can get WordPress for free. If you’re not familiar with WordPress, I’d suggest reading through WordPress For Dummies

2-3 topics you care about
When starting a new affiliate site, don’t try to leverage the latest trends. Instead, focus on topics that interest you. Try brainstorming 2-3 areas where you are passionate and create your site based on the one that you think you’d like to focus on the longest.

Domain name
You’ll need a domain for your new site. I use GoDaddy.com, where you can get a .com domain for around $10 per year. Don’t obsess about your domain name – I’d say you shouldn’t spend more than 20 minutes picking it out. Just get something relevant to your topic, and the shorter the better. Start with a registration of one year, because you can extend it at any time, but if you decide the domain stinks, there is no use being locked into multiple years.

Hosting
There are many options for hosting your site. For the purpose of simplicity, there are two main types of hosting accounts you can get: shared servers and dedicated servers. The former is a cheaper option where your site is on a server with lots of other sites, while a dedicated server only has your site(s) on it. When you’re starting a new affiliate site, a shared plan should suffice. Currently, I use LivingDot for some new, small projects and RackSpace for my main, important sites. LivingDot is low-cost and they will install WordPress on your account for you. RackSpace is a bit pricey, but you’re paying for excellent support and uptime.

Email service
One of the key methods for driving traffic back to affiliate sites is to work with an email service provider that enables your visitors to opt-in to get updates, newsletters, etc. from you by email. I use AWeber to manage my email lists and messages. AWeber enables me to provide an option for visitors to subscribe to my blog RSS via email, as well as newsletters, and series of follow-up emails on various topics.

Patience
This is the cheapest and most important part of a new affiliate site: patience. Resist the temptation to put up ads right away. Instead, focus on building content to give people a reason to visit your site. When the time comes to incorporate ads, focus on relevant ads, and not those that pay the best. I’d suggest posting ten or more times (or longer) to a blog before any ads are up there. When you do put up ads, go beyond the banner. The vast majority of my affiliate commissions come from text links.

So, if I am writing about a new camera or computer, I’ll link the name of the device to a place where it can be purchased. That’s far more effective than a banner for the product. But it’s essential that you constantly test different ways to run advertising on your site to optimize the advertising strategies and phase out things that don’t work. Use an ad server like OpenX to run A/B testing.

Also, you don’t want to hear this, but you shouldn’t expect much money for months. It takes time to build up a site and an audience. It can be a grind, but stick with it.

Find your voice
People will follow your affiliate site as they get to know you. Odds are that you’re not a journalist, so don’t pretend. Just be yourself and write in your voice. It can sometimes get tough to think of things to wrote on your blog, so make it a practice to have an editorial calendar where you will schedule topics to write in the future. I frequently send myself email with ideas for future blog posts.

Also, consider setting up a page where people can ask you questions about your topic and answer them on the blog. I use Freedback.com to manage this process. And you can bulk up the content of your site with targeted articles from EzineArticles.com. I not only publish articles from there, but write them, too, so I can get more exposure for my site.

Where to find affiliate programs
There are a variety of ways that affiliates can find affiliate programs. The 2009 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report breaks out all of the ways that affiliates are finding out about affiliate programs to join.

I mostly search in Google for affiliate programs that make sense for my affiliate sites. For instance, if I have a site about Halloween costumes, I’d search for costume affiliate program to find merchants to promote.

Good luck with your affiliate site!

Affiliate Fatblogging: I Can Fit in My Skinny Jeans

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I am proud to say I can fit into my skinny jeans. OK, well actually, I don’t own skinny jeans. I only wear regular jeans.

But one result I’m seeing from increased exercise is a reduction in the waist size. I’d been noticing that pants were more comfortable, and then I went swimming last Friday in a new bathing suit in the same size I’ve been wearing for years.

Halfway into the first lap, they were literally falling off of me, and I had to do a weird stroke that including hiking them up constantly.

Even if I had to skinny dip and get arrested, I was going to finish my workout.

Also, it’s nice to see a lot of other affiliate marketers posting on their blogs about getting fit. Some that I’ve noticed include Tim Jones, Jonathan Volk, Tyler Cruz, James Seligman (oops, did I say Rich in the video?), and Shawn Drewry.

Maybe we can finally get some sort of organized challenge going here with free passes to Affiliate Summit to people who set and met their goals. Interested?

Starting weight: 225
Last week: 219
This week: 219

Recommended Reading for Internet Marketers

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Q: I have been an affiliate manager since September 2008. Although I’ve been in advertising and marketing for a few years, this is new to me, and I want to be as informed and helpful to my publishers as possible. I read your book, “Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants,” which was an awesome start, and I’d like to read more books like this with tips for affiliate managers, merchants, and how to become better at my job. Overall Internet marketing books are helpful, too.

Shawn CollinsA: Unfortunately, there haven’t really been many books on affiliate marketing since I wrote my book in 2000. The one that stands out is “A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing: Quick Reference for Affiliate Managers & Merchants” by Geno Prussakov.

But otherwise, I’ll share my personal favorites that I use regularly for guidance and reference.

In no particular order, here are books I would recommend to you…

  • Marketing Outrageously by Jon Spoelstra
  • Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
  • Be Unreasonable by Paul Lemberg
  • Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear by Frank Luntz
  • Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples
  • The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout
  • Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work–And Why Your Company Needs Them by Peter Shankman
  • Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive by Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin, and Robert Cialdini

Watch my Recommended Reading for Internet Marketers video on YouTube for more commentary on these books.

Cory Booker, Mayor of Twitter

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I noticed yesterday that the Twitter account for Cory Booker, Mayor of Newark, NJ, was a lot more active than it had been, and that the Tweets seemed real.

I’ve been following Mayor Booker’s Tweets since he started up last November, and while it was interesting to me to see where he was speaking and such, the account had the tone of a public figure that had delegated Twitter to somebody.

So it was really refreshing to see personality injected into the account in recent days.

For instance, yesterday, Cory Tweeted how he was headed to see Star Trek and invited folks in Newark to join him.

This is exciting (to me, at least) to see the emergence of the real Cory on Twitter. Back at Affiliate Summit East 2008 in Boston last summer, Missy Ward and I spoke with Cory a bit about social media, after he keynoted the conference.

Follow Mayor Booker on Twitter @corybooker

Free, Quality Online Marketing Information

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I just wanted to share some tips on how to listen to podcasts. Personally, I use iTunes to automatically download the podcasts I like and list on my iPod Touch.

Shawn CollinsI know a lot of people think you need an iPhone or iPod to get podcasts through iTunes, but the software is free to download for anybody, so you can subscribe to podcasts and stream them from your computer.

Also, many sites with podcasts have the option to stream the audio right from the site. We have that on GeekCast.fm for all of the affiliate, search, mobile, branding, and other marketing and geek podcasts on there.

You can also download podcasts to play from a media player on your computer or any MP3 player.

Also, I often hear people say they don’t have time for podcasts. The thing is that you down have to carve out new time. Just optimize time you’re stuck in places like planes, trains, commuting by car, etc.

Other times I listen to podcasts are when working out, playing video games and doing stuff outside, like shoveling snow or cleaning up the yard.

It’s a great way to keep up on industry news and get ideas while your head is otherwise idle.