Shawn Collins' Blog

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

Archives for October 2010

How Social Media is Changing Affiliate Marketing

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How Social Media is Changing Affiliate Marketing panel from Affiliate Summit East 2008, which took place August 10-12, 2008 in Boston, MA.

Speakers:

  • Ted Murphy, Founder/CEO, IZEA (Moderator)
  • Rob Key, CEO, Converseon
  • Stephanie Agresta, Internet Geek Girl
  • Chris Brogan, VP Strategy & Technology, CrossTech Media

In an era of brand evangelists, word of mouthers, meme starters, and buzz agents, empowered by social communications and new technologies, what is the definition of an affiliate?

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.

GrowSmartBiz Conference in DC Next Week

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The 2nd GrowSmartBiz Conference is taking place in Washington D.C. on Friday, November 5, and I wish I could go. But I’m moving to Austin TX the following week, and things are too crazy with all of that.

The GrowSmartBiz Conference is being organized this year by the Washington Business Journal and co-sponsored by Network Solutions LLC and Capital One Financial Corp.

Read more about the event from Shashi Bellamkonda, Network Solutions “Social Media Swami” in the Washington Business Journal.

I met Shashi when he spoke at the Affiliate Summit Social Media event back in 2008, and he knows he stuff when it comes to small business.

Affiliate Summit Social Media 103

Last year, there were over 400 small business owners at this event. Looks like a great opportunity to network and learn.

Monetize Summit

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It’s OK to Monetize! That was the message we were sharing from the Affiliate Summit booth at BlogWorld Expo 2010 about the upcoming Monetize Summit.

Monetize Summit

Monetize Summit is sort of a conference within a conference, as it is taking place Sunday, January 9, 2011 at Wynn Las Vegas during Affiliate Summit West 2011.

This series of beginner educational sessions on the Sunday of the conference are focused on monetizing content.

Monetize Summit is open for anybody to register at a rate of $1,000 to attend. This pass does not include access to the rest of Affiliate Summit West 2011. Folks who register for Affiliate Summit West 2011 with a Platinum or Diamond pass can attend Monetize Summit for free (just select it when registering).

There will be five hours of sessions focused on turning your blog into a profit center, making money using pop culture content, tips and tricks to increase conversions, and using a datafeed to monetize your site.

More details at http://www.monetizesummit.com.

AdSense Publisher Whitepaper from SearchForecast

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SearchForecast recently published insights from their Premium AdSense Publishers Survey.

Google AdSenseThe data was collected via online surveys with 40 premium AdSense publishers in October 2010.

Respondents were selected by SearchForecast for having a Google PageRank of 4/10 and higher, and an Alexa rank of less than 100,000.

Additionally, 60% of the AdSense publishers had run AdSense ads on their site for 3+ years, while 30% had been running AdSense for 1-3 years.

Findings in the report include how 20% of AdSense publishers have never heard from an alternative ad network, and 70% of AdSense publishers are willing to switch to another network for better payouts.

Read the Insights from Premium AdSense Publishers Survey.

Search Forecast Brief AdSense Publishers Whitepaper

Atma Links Automatic Affiliate Links

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There is a new service called Atma Links, similar to SkimLinks and VigLink, that automatically convert existing links into affiliate links.

Atma Links

Similar to their competitors, the Atma Links technology automatically converts regular product hyperlinks into paid affiliate links, and this service is free to affiliates.

The company also has a paid service called Proto Links that automatically generates new affiliate links from unambiguous references in text.

The Atma Links Proto Links technology (see a live demo) accomplishes this by analyzing webpages in real time for text that matches their database of millions of products.

More details at http://www.atmalinks.com/.

Landing Page Testing to Attract Super Affiliates

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Landing Page Testing to Attract Super Affiliates presentation from Affiliate Summit East 2008, which took place August 10-12, 2008 in Boston, MA.

Speaker: Tim Ash, President, SiteTuners.com

Landing Page Testing can lead to double digit conversion rate gains. Learn how to test your pages to improve conversion, and attract super affiliates without changing your payout structure.

Slides from this session are available at http://www.slideshare.net/affsum/landing-page-testing-to-attract-super-affiliates

More details on Affiliate Summit at http://www.affiliatesummit.com/

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: Landing Page Testing to Attract Super Affiliates

Contribute to Issue 13 of FeedFront Magazine

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The twelfth issue of FeedFront Magazine is out, so we’re on to issue 13.

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The next issue of FeedFront will be coming out in January 2011. This issue will double as the conference program at Affiliate Summit West 2011.

If you are interested in writing an article, go to the FeedFront proposal 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.

No ghost-written articles.

Do not submit a complete article now – just a one sentence summary.

You will be contacted whether or not your proposal is accepted for the next issue.

Follow Affiliate Summit West 2011 Speakers on Twitter

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The speakers for Affiliate Summit West 2011 are posted, so you can see who will be speaking, which company they represent, and their Twitter name (if they provided it).

TwitterFollowing speakers on Twitter is a good opportunity to start networking with them in advance of the conference.

Check out the Affiliate Summit West 2011 agenda to see when and on what topic they are speaking on.

If you’d like to follow all of the speakers in one shot, you can follow the Affiliate Summit West 2011 speaker list on Twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/list/affiliatetip/affiliate-summit-west-2011-speakers.

Posts from the Affiliate Summit West 2011 speakers are also organized in an online newspaper format at http://paper.li/affiliatetip/affiliate-summit-west-2011-speakers. If you don’t want to have to remember to visit daily, you can opt-in to receive a reminder by email each day.

UnMarketing by Scott Stratten

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I just read UnMarketing by Scott Stratten, and it’s really an entertaining book. You may know Scott as @unmarketing on Twitter, and if so, you know he’s a funny guy. If you don’t know him, you’re in for a treat with this book.

UnMarketingThere are 56 chapters of bite-size, fun to read advice on having a conversation with your audience and engaging them.

UnMarketing is one of those books where you can jump around without getting confused – the chapters don’t really rely on a chronological read.

Lots of examples and case studies, and Scott brings the funny, which is a nice departure from the typical business book.

I’d recommend UnMarketing for any business looking for ideas and inspiration to connect more and better with their customers.

Video: UnMarketing by Scott Stratten

Performance Metrics on Hydra Purchase from Adknowledge

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Adknowledge has released performance metrics, based on their purchase of Hydra, that indicate affiliate marketers have taken advantage of both cost per action (CPA) and cost per click (CPC) offers.

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The data, covering their three months of joint operations, shows that 81 former Hydra clients are also now running CPC offers, and have generated incremental affiliate revenues in the millions.

They have published a brief on CPC and CPA affiliates.

More details at http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/adknowledge-releases-performance-metrics-on-hydra-purchase-105245763.html.