Affiliate marketing and other stuff from Shawn Collins, co-founder of Affiliate Summit.
SEO Site Critiques from Affiliate Summit East 2007, which took place July 8-10, 2007 in Miami, FL.
Not sure if you are targeting the right keywords or using SEO best practices? Get the straight answers on how you can walk out of the door and improve your site.
Note: the companies and positions listed above were current as of the time of the conference. Some of this information may have changed since then.
Video: SEO Site Critiques
Jason Rubacky (@jasonrubacky) of ShareASale is hitting the road to meet with affiliate marketers in Texas.
The ShareASale tour of the Lone Star State takes place in July with stops in Austin, Dallas, Ft. Worth, Houston, and San Antonio.
The meetups are informal and open to anybody currently using ShareASale, as well as folks interested in checking it out.
Listen to Jason’s chronicle of his recent trip to Buffalo, NY for a ShareASale meetup on the both sides of the tracks podcast.
More details at http://blog.shareasale.com/2010/05/19/the-official-texas-roadshow-schedule.
Q: What data feed software would you recommend to a novice or intermediate affiliate? I have a number of domains that I have not monetized. I am thinking of purchasing the software so that I can take advantage of the data feeds from the publishers.
A: One thing I would suggest right away for a novice is to convert your sites into WordPress (if you’re not using it already).
WordPress is an easy, scalable content management system, and while I used to hand code the HTML on all of my affiliate sites, they are all in WordPress now.
And there are some WordPress plugins that enable you to word with data feeds.
One that I recently purchased is called CSV 2 POST. Personally, I wasn’t too happy with it, but that is due to my own laziness. I tried to use it without reading the documentation, and I was unsuccessful.
In my opinion, it wasn’t very intuitive. I was frustrated by it, and haven’t tried using it again.
CSV 2 POST has lots of video tutorials, and it may well be simple to use.
The creator of CSV 2 POST has also just created Easy CSV Importer, and based on the description, it looks easier than CSV 2 POST.
There is another data feed plugin called Datafeedr. I haven’t used it myself, so I cannot personally recommend it, but I’ve heard great things about it from other affiliates. I plan to try it out in the future.
Take a look at those two plugins, and you should be able to get moving quickly on some data feed sites.
Twitter announced on Monday that third-party ad networks will no longer be permitted to use the Twitter API to include paid tweets in the Twitter timeline.
Sponsored Tweets from IZEA quickly responded with changes to their system.
While Sponsored Tweets will no longer be able to directly publish to a Twitter user’s account, the same sort of insertion of ads will be permitted, as Twitter maintains they “don’t seek to control what users tweet.”
Another third-party advertising company, Ad.ly, maintains they will not be affected.
“Since inception, Ad.ly has, and still is operating under Twitter’s approved guidelines and terms of service for advertising on its platform. We look forward to continuing to create long term value for our advertisers and publishers, both of whom are key constituents in the stream ecosystem.”
Will Twitter be offering up an internal ad platform that functions in a way they’ve forbidden third parties to do? Stay tuned.
Google has announced the revenue shares for AdSense for content and AdSense for search.
AdSense for content publishers pays out 68% of the revenue collected by Google from advertisers for AdSense for content ads.
And then AdSense for search partners earn a 51% revenue share.
More details at http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/05/adsense-revenue-share.html.
Affiliates were asked “How do you most often find out about an affiliate program and then join?” for the latest Affiliate Summit AffStat Report.
I was a little surprised that nearly 20% of affiliates are still using affiliate directories to find an affiliate program. When I am searching out relevant affiliate programs, I use search engines to find them.
Also, I find lots of the affiliate programs I promote by meeting the respective affiliate managers at conferences.
Over eleven-hundred and fifty affiliates were surveyed on their methods, preferences, and strategies for the 2010 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report.
More details on AffStat at http://affstat.com/.
The accepted speakers for Affiliate Summit East 2010 were contacted yesterday, and we are posting the names of speakers as their speaker agreements are received.
We’ve got an exciting roster of speakers lined up for New York City this August 15-17.
Check out the agenda for Affiliate Summit East 2010 to see the topics covered, networking events, etc.
Also, there is a Twitter list of Affiliate Summit East 2010 speakers – follow it at http://twitter.com/affiliatesummit/ase10-speakers.
Be sure to check back often for updates.
Are you looking for somebody with experience in IT, Internet marketing, and/or affiliate marketing?
Todd Martini, who has established a great reputation as an affiliate marketer over the years, is looking for a full-time position with health benefits for the sake of his kids, who are both facing medical issues.
You may know Todd from an advertisement that LinkShare ran about him and his site Alex’s Coupons, which was created to raise money for his daughter Alex’s medical bills from treatment for Acute Myelogenous Leukemia.
Here is an update from Todd on Alex, as well as his son Nicholas…
Over the past couple of months my family has experienced a number of financial and personal setbacks, but nothing as serious as what’s happening to my 12 year old daughter Alex. Alex had a grand mal seizure back in April and her overall health has taken a turn for the worse. She’s experiencing more side effects from her treatment for Leukemia including low platelets and reduced cognitive abilities. Her platelets have dropped to the point that she’ll require regular transfusions in the near future and her latest cognitive evaluation stated that she has an IQ of 78 and the emotional age of a 4-5 year old. She’s going to need full-time physical therapy, occupational therapy and behavioral therapy to get through the next few years and my insurance only covers $3000/year for all of that, and that’s after the deductible and out of pocket expenses are met. That $3000 will cover maybe 3 months of therapy if we’re lucky. In addition my 7 year old son Nicholas is having his own mental health issues and requires weekly therapy for an anxiety disorder. Between the two of them they’re currently on four medications, which I pay for out-of-pocket. I had to cancel the Prescriptions part of our health insurance when our insurance company raised the price of our insurance by over 50%. I was able to get a bare bones insurance plan for half what I was paying for the old plan, but as you can imagine it’s not a great plan. All of this would be manageable if Alex’s Coupons was still profitable, but its commissions are down 75% from two years ago.
Back to how Todd Martini can help your company. Todd worked in Corporate IT for about 9 years and he has spent the last 15 years running a Web design business and later his online couponing business by himself.
He has a unique mix of technical, marketing and communications skills (I have a BA in English), and would be an asset to companies in the Internet marketing arena.
Check out Todd Martini’s resume and give him a call or pass it on.
Q: What is the best, free affiliate marketing program management software?
A: The simple answer is that there are none. Typically, best and free don’t go together when it comes to business products and services.
There are a lot of options out there at low price points for affiliate tracking software that you install on your own server.
However, I would advise anybody with the budget to go with an affiliate network. Get a demo from each one and examine their features to determine which is best for you.
But it concerns me that you are looking for a free vendor, which could indicate that your budget is so small that you are not ready to launch an affiliate program.
Bear in mind that the affiliate tracking is just one of the costs. You’ll also have the management of the affiliate program, as well as commissions to the affiliates. An affiliate program isn’t something where you can set it and forget it.
You have to cultivate relationships and work on the program day to day. Unless you are prepared for laying out money on the front end to do it right, you’re better off not doing it at all.
VeriSign, the registry for .COM and .NET, will be increase domain registration prices on July 1, 2010 – .COM will go up 7%, and .NET by 10%.
So naturally, as the increase is passed on to domain registrars, they will pass it right on to us.
I’d suggest taking care of them now to save some cash – I have about 150 myself.
While this isn’t a big deal if you’d just got a few domains, it will add up if you have dozens or hundreds of domains.
Set your reminder to register and renew your domains by June 30, 2010.