Affiliate marketing and other stuff from Shawn Collins, co-founder of Affiliate Summit.
Coull and buy.at have launched a video product for affiliate marketers, and they’re looking for affiliates to beta test the new tool.
The Coull Activator allows buy.at affiliates to generate income from any existing, approved video, including videos from YouTube.
Visit buy.at booth #124 during Affiliate Summit West 2010 for a live demo.
If you won’t be at Affiliate Summit, you can register online at http://coull.com/affiliate/register for the beta program.
VigLink, a new company that enables people to automatically convert existing links into affiliate links, launched earlier this week.
It appears to be a similar solution to Skimlinks, where a snippet of code is added to a page to enable the conversion of direct links to affiliate links.
There is a tool on the VigLink site that enables site publishers to estimate the amount of money they’re supposedly leaving on the table.
More details at http://www.viglink.com/.
ReveNews has started up a new interview series with folks in affiliate marketing, and the just published the interview with me.
I spoke with Angel Djambazov of ReveNews about the health of the affiliate marketing industry, how things have evolved over the years, a preview of Affiliate Summit West 2010, and more.
Read the interview at http://www.revenews.com/angeldjambazov/2010-affiliate-industry-preview-series-interview-with-shawn-collins-of-affiliate-summit/.
The January 2010 issue of Winning the Web magazine from Epic Advertising is out now.
The cover story features Andy Dolich, COO of the San Francisco 49ers, on how they are using the Internet to market the team.
Read the latest issue online or download it at http://www.winningthewebmag.com/january/.
Issue 9 of FeedFront Magazine came in the mail to me a few days ago. This issue of FeedFront Magazine includes articles on the importance of branding in affiliate marketing, how to recycle your blog content, and FTC endorsement guidelines.
Plus, the agenda for Affiliate Summit West 2010, a Twitter beginner’s guide, and choosing an affiliate network.
If you don’t get FeedFront by mail, issue nine of FeedFront will also be distributed at Affiliate Summit West 2010.
Here are the articles for this issue:
The issue mailed a week ago, so it should be hitting mailboxes all over the U.S. now (if it hasn’t already).
Q: Why would anyone go to an affiliate site when they can just go to the actual company site directly?
A: I’d say the answer there is relatively simple… it’s all about the affiliate site adding value to the equation.
There are plenty of affiliate sites that don’t add any value, and it’s a shame any of them ever get indexed in the search engines.
But affiliates should endeavor to provide quality content or some other reason for people to go to their site, and then the affiliate should be pre-selling the product or service they are promoting.
Affiliate sites should be solving a problem, whether it be directly or indirectly.
Otherwise, there is no real reason for some affiliate sites to exist, and the customers would be better served going straight to the company sites.
Google launched the Nexus One phone earlier this week, and we’ve got one to give away to one lucky person.
The one we’re giving away is the unlocked phone that sells for $529 from Google.
Anyhow, all you have to do is Tweet the following message by midnight EST on Tuesday, January 12 or comment on the Affiliate Summit blog about why you need the Nexus One:
Affiliate Summit West 2010 checkin opens Sat from 4pm to 8pm – go then to beat the lines http://bit.ly/ASW10agenda #asw10
Do not Tweet the message more than once – anybody doing so will be disqualified. We’ll randomly select a winner on Wednesday, January 13 and send the phone in it’s original packaging to the winner.
More details on the Nexus One at http://www.google.com/phone.
Affiliate Summit is sold out and the auctions for registrations are starting to pop up on eBay.
If you are interested in passes listed on eBay, please be sure to contact registration@affiliatesummit.com to confirm that the pass can be transferred.
All registrations have associated registration ID number. Request this number form the seller and provide it in your e-mail to the Affiliate Summit registration team, so they can determine whether the pass in question is transferable.
Just search for Affiliate Summit on eBay to find auctions selling the conference registrations.
Also, please note that the transaction is between you and the seller for any registration purchases on the secondary market. None of these passes are being sold by myself or anybody else that works for Affiliate Summit. Please ask any questions about the pass to the seller through eBay.
If you have questions specific to Affiliate Summit, send them to registration@affiliatesummit.com.
Bear in mind that Affiliate Summit starts Sunday, January 17, 2010 in Las Vegas, so bid on auctions ending before that date.
Q: My Web site is multilingual and for people from all over the world. I’d like to use several affiliate networks worldwide. Is it a good idea and what affiliate networks do you suggest for the Europe market, Asia and Australia and for South America ?
A: I would suggest going with a single affiliate network, rather than one for each continent.
In my experience running affiliate programs, I typically had affiliates from across the world in them. So, it’s not like Australian affiliates only work with Australian affiliate networks.
Affiliates gravitate towards the offers and affiliate programs that make the most sense for them.
Over the ten years that I managed affiliate programs, I’d say about 30% of my performing affiliates came from outside the United States, even though my affiliate programs were based in the United States.
Lots of affiliates are mercenaries, and they’ll follow the money all over and create sites that appeal to audiences in a variety of countries and languages.
So, I think you should focus on getting started with one affiliate network, or two if really necessary, where affiliates can get paid in a variety of currencies.
Otherwise, it can be a real hassle to manage multiple platforms. I’ve done it before and regretted it.
I’ve been pretty much promoting the same verticals and companies for many years, because I am familiar with them and happy with the returns. But once in a while I get a wakeup call about lost opportunities with affiliate programs I am not promoting.
Today I was reading posts on ABestWeb and I came across a thread by Andy Rodriguez of Andy Rodriguez Consulting that caught my eye: “Yesterday we paid out over $10,000 in affiliate commissions …”.
In this case, the ChecksUnlimited.com affiliate program had over $55,000 in gross sales and nearly $11,000 in commissions paid out in a single day.
I had wrongly assumed that custom checks were a diminishing business, largely because I’ve never gotten any, and also because my personal and business accounts both use online banking to pay bills.
But now I’ve got to take a closer look at this area.
More details at http://forum.abestweb.com/showthread.php?t=128006.