Archives for January 2011

The Cheap-Ass Guide to Online Content

January 21, 2011 by Shawn Collins

Todd Farmer, who recently won the Affiliate Marketing Legend award at Affiliate Summit West 2011, just published a new ebook called the The Cheap-Ass Guide to Online Content.

The focus of the ebook is to help you get cheap or free content on a self-hosted WordPress blog or site.

It’s a quick, entertaining read, though I think Todd got burned for the $5 he spent on fiverr.com for the logo and cover.

Anyhow, Todd teamed up with Lisa Picarille to create the free community, MyContentPro.com, where they offer strategies, tips, resources, case studies and specific examples to help improve your content. The ebook is free to members of MyContentPro.com.

While you’re in there, be sure to check out the interview with me.

Affiliate Marketing Awards

January 19, 2011 by Shawn Collins

Fresh on the heels of the Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards in Las Vegas earlier this month, there are a couple other sets of industry awards going on.

The North American Affiliate Marketing Awards are taking place April 12, 2011 in San Francisco at the W Hotel.

In the case of these awards, there is a price to attend as well as enter. These awards include categories such as Best Merchant Campaign, Best Third Party Tool, and Best PPC Affiliate.

There are also a couple that I am assuming are jokes… Hottest Affiliate Manager and Hottest Affiliate.

I am one of the judges for these awards, along with Joseph Morin, Peter Bordes, Jay Weintraub, Oliver Roup and Steve Hall.

ABestWeb is also running their annual “Best of” Awards in Affiliate Marketing.

You must be a member of ABestWeb to vote for these awards, which include categories such at Best Affiliate Tool, Most Improved Affiliate Program, and Best Service to Industry.

Good luck to all the nominees.

Introducing the Affiliate Summit Forum

January 18, 2011 by Shawn Collins

Affiliate Summit has launched a new forum to facilitate networking and education in between the Affiliate Summit conferences.

The forum features an Online Meet Market for affiliate marketers to network, as well as an Affiliate Summit section for the latest conference information, and an area highlighting tools and services used by affiliate marketers.

There are also options for networks, merchants, OPMs, and companies selling tools and services to the industry to get branded sub-forums.

Join the Affiliate Summit forum at http://affiliatesummit.com/networking/.

Please note – the new forum is taking place of the Affiliate Summit social network on Ning, which will be closed down on February 28, 2011.

Are You Passionate Enough about Your Brand to be Branded?

January 17, 2011 by Shawn Collins

I’ve been working on Affiliate Summit for eight years now, and it’s been a passion project from the start. I share that passion for everything about Affiliate Summit with my partner, Missy Ward.

Last year, we started talking about getting tattoos with our logo during Blogworld in Las Vegas and ad-tech in NYC, but we didn’t get around to it.

That changed the day before Affiliate Summit West 2011, when we took a quick trip to Club Tattoo at the Planet Hollywood Miracle Mile Shops in Las Vegas. Missy got the Affiliate Summit logo on her foot and I got inked on my calf.

Lots of folks doubted that we’d gotten real tattoos, because… who does that with their logo/brand?

Well, we are those people. Affiliate Summit has been a significant part of our lives for 8 years – 20% of my life! Such a long chapter deserves a little tat tribute to me.

And we’re not alone. Shortly after we got our tattoos, Jason Rubacky of ShareASale got one of his own for a brand he’s building: #GetSome

There are, at least, two other people who were at Affiliate Summit with tattoos of their brand.

Rae Hoffman has one of her Sugarrae logo, and Greg Hoffman has some Internet Marketing Gorilla ink.

Would you bleed for your brand?

Social Media Monitoring

January 16, 2011 by Shawn Collins

I was excited to see the inner workings of the Dell Social Media Listening Command Center, and it left me pining for that sort of setup for my businesses.

I’ve been using backtype, Google Alerts and SocialOomph for quite some time, as well as running TweetDeck on a second monitor.

But I wanted something more. And I found it in RowFeeder.

RowFeeder enables me to track hashtags, user names, and keywords, which has been really helpful in my social media monitoring efforts.

I use it to monitor what is being said about my companies and sites, as well as my competitors.

The raw data collected, as well as some prettied up charts, can be exported to Excel. You can also link a RowFeeder account to a Google account, so the data automatically populates into Google Docs in real time.

That’s how I do it, so I can share access to reports, as well as jump into them anywhere I can get to a browser.

One term can be tracked for free, and after that there are packages and extra options to do things like normalize user location data and integrate Klout.

It’s not quite the custom Dell setup, but it’s making it easier for me to monitor social media, and I always love anything that makes me more efficient.

MediaTrust Launches PerformanceExchange CPC Bidding Platform

January 15, 2011 by Shawn Collins

MediaTrust announced the launch of MediaTrust’s PerformanceExchange (MTPX) at Affiliate Summit West 2011 in Las Vegas last week.

MediaTrust plans to take PerformanceExchange, currently in private beta, public by March 2011.

The platform delivers targeted ads through email, so advertisers can generate sales and leads outside of search and display advertising.

The ads are wrapped in contextually relevant graphics and the winning bidders’ text ads are dynamically served in real-time when the email is opened.

I didn’t get a chance to see a demo during Affiliate Summit, so I look forward to seeing this in action soon.

More details at http://www.mediatrust.com/performanceexchange.html.

Ignorant Affiliates are Annoying

January 13, 2011 by Shawn Collins

Most affiliates don’t read affiliate agreements. I realize this from many years of managing affiliate programs and gathering data for AffStat reports, but it’s still frustrating.

Not only does this laziness lead to problems like unauthorized trademark bidding and misuse of coupon codes, which make it less attractive for companies to work with some affiliates, but it can lead to lost earnings for affiliates.

For instance, in the Affiliate Summit affiliate program, it is clearly stated that “Affiliate Summit will not pay out commission on sales resulting from affiliates using domains that include affiliatesummit, affiliate-summit, or any other derivative.”

But that doesn’t stop people from frequently buying those sorts of domains, almost always with a private registration, and then driving traffic to the affiliate program with them. I just saw that affiliatesummitlv.com was registered this week.

When the affiliates doing this, or any other forbidden practice, are caught, they don’t get paid.

Some go to forums, Twitter, etc. to shout about how an advertiser or network ripped them off.

Take note affiliates – it’s not OK to break the rules just because you didn’t bother to read them. And you’re not being ripped off when you don’t get paid for doing things that are prohibited.

Day 3 of Affiliate Summit West 2011

January 12, 2011 by Shawn Collins

The final day of Affiliate Summit West 2011 started off with the announcement of the 2011 Pinnacle Awards winners.

Affiliate of the Year: Deals.Woot
Affiliate Manager of the Year: Carolyn Kmet
Exceptional Merchant: Zappos
Affiliate Marketing Advocate: Lisa Picarille
Best Blogger: Eric Nagel
Affiliate Marketing Legend: Todd Farmer

Congratulations to all of the finalists and winners.

The Tuesday morning keynote was delivered by Brian Solis, author of Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web, to a big crowd in the Encore Theater.

After the keynote, Brian gave away a bunch of copies of his book, Engage. I wish I was ready to capture some video, because a group of people pounced on the books. Clearly, they liked what he had to say.

The keynote was followed by a second day of crowds in the exhibit hall, as well as sessions on affiliate and affiliate manager relationships, mobile marketing, paid search, and industry regulations.

Affiliate Summit West 2011 wrapped up with a closing keynote from Dave Taylor of AskDaveTaylor.com.

Dave gave an interesting and compelling talk about achieving a work/life balance.

Thanks so much to everybody that came out to the Wynn Las Vegas for the biggest Affiliate Summit to date with 4,627 attendees.

Check out my Affiliate Summit West 2011 photos.

Day 2 of Affiliate Summit West 2011

January 11, 2011 by Shawn Collins

The second day of Affiliate Summit West 2011 got off to a great start with a funny, informative keynote from Drew Eric Whitman, author of CA$HVERTISING.

The keynote took place in the Encore Theater, where Garth Brooks performs when he is in town, and Whitman had the packed crowd captivated.

Afterwards, there were a series of breakout sessions on SEO, social media, trendspotting, personal brands, and, of course, affiliate marketing.

The blogger lounge at Affiliate Summit West 2011 was buzzing throughout the day with podcasts, videos, and blog posts.

Crowds packed the exhibit hall throughout the day.

I was excited to meet legendary quarterback Warren Moon at the Digital River booth in the exhibit hall and get a signed football.

But it wasn’t all good football news at Affiliate Summit, as I had to wear a New England Patriots jersey, as a result of a bet with Michael Martin, who was on a panel today about Mobile Affiliate Site Strategies.

But I did win some cash in a BCS football ball, which was run by the Football Fanatics Affiliate Program. It’s Vegas – I need to make some bets!

After the exhibit hall and breakout sessions finished up, there were a series of roundtable discussions, which were led by experts on legal issues, content creation, Facebook, buying sites and more.

The last event of the day was the launch of a new product from Jeremy Schoemaker called Linkcontrol. It’s a really cool looking project, and I look forward to hearing more about it.

We’re heading into the final day of Affiliate Summit, which kicks off with a keynote from Brian Solis. See you later, I have to go chug some Diet Dr. Pepper to power my eyes all the way open.

Check out my Affiliate Summit West 2011 photos.

Day 1 of Affiliate Summit West 2011

January 10, 2011 by Shawn Collins

I started off Affiliate Summit West 2011 with my partner, Missy Ward, at a tattoo parlor to get inked up with the Affiliate Summit logo.

You could say we have some passion for this conference, as we kick off our 8th year with 4,627 affiliate marketers at the Wynn Las Vegas for Affiliate Summit West 2011.

That makes it the biggest Affiliate Summit to date

Then, I led a 10 AM session geared towards folks attending Affiliate Summit for the first time.

It was great to have a large, packed room of conference attendees looking for advice on how to make the most of Affiliate Summit.

My session was followed by the opening of the Meet Market and a series of breakout sessions that covered all sorts of topics, including blog monetization, web redesign, email marketing, and local lead gen.

I really liked the way our new method of Q&A via SMS, Web and Twitter worked out.

While the action was taking place in the Meet Market and sessions, the exhibit hall was being built out for days 2 and 3 of Affiliate Summit West 2011.

In the evening, I headed to the ShareASale “Under the Stars” Party at Tryst Nightclub to continue the networking and good times.

It was a nice celebration to mark the ten year anniversary of ShareASale, and there was a moving speech from Brian Littleton, founder and CEO of ShareASale.

Too little sleep and way too much Diet Dr. Pepper now to power me on to day 2.

Check out my Affiliate Summit West 2011 photos.

« Previous Page

Archives for January 2011

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: