Shawn Collins' Blog

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

Archives for December 2011

Early Bird Whiteboarding with Eric Nagel at Affiliate Summit West 2012

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Due to popular demand, Eric Nagel, programmer-turned-affiliate marketer, specializing in PPC and SEO, is going to return at Affiliate Summit West 2012 with his Early Bird Whiteboarding sessions.

Affiliate Summit East 2011 Early Bird Whiteboarding with Eric Nagel

The sessions will run an hour at 8am on both the Monday and Tuesday in the Emperors II room, so they end at the start of the Affiliate Summit breakfast. Yes, coffee will be served.

Bring your sites to this open session and get advice on usability, SEO, conversions and revenue streams.

Eric has been in the affiliate industry since 2005, and a full-time affiliate since 2008. He is a finalist for the Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards this year for the Affiliate of the Year award.

These sessions are open to all Affiliate Summit pass holders.

I Got Issue 17 of FeedFront in the Mail

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Issue 17 of FeedFront Magazine came in the mail to me today.

Matti reading FeedFront issue 17But I wasn’t the first to read it. My dog Mattingly snatched it and had a read.

This issue of FeedFront Magazine includes Forecast: Sunny with a Chance of Windfall by Missy Ward, Seven Precursors of Affiliate Marketing Failure by Geno Prussakov, Three Ways to Repurpose Your Existing Content by Deborah Carney, and the Affiliate Summit West 2012 Agenda.

Also sub ID tracking, Affiliate Summit Newcomer Program, maximizing affiliate revenue on a blog, increasing productivity, private labeling, switching affiliate networks, driving traffic, podcasting, affiliate marketers to follow on Twitter, and more.

If you don’t get FeedFront by mail, issue seventeen of FeedFront will also be distributed at Affiliate Summit Meetups and Affiliate Summit West 2012.

Here are the articles for this issue:

  • 3. All About the Affiliate Summit Newcomer Program by Daniel M. Clark
  • 4. Making the Most of Sub ID Tracking by Laura Miller
  • 6. Affiliate Marketing: The Forgotten Piece by Jennifer Myers Ward
  • 8. Work With Affiliate Managers for Higher Payouts by Doug Davis
  • 9. How to Maximize Your Blog’s Affiliate Revenue by Ryan Healy
  • 10. Seven Precursors of Affiliate Marketing Failure by Geno Prussakov
  • 12. Three Ways to Repurpose Your Existing Content by Deborah Carney
  • 13. Increase Your Productivity with These Ten Tips by Matt McWilliams
  • 14. Optimize Your Exposure with Review Sites by Bonnie Rogers
  • 16. History of Affiliate Summit by Shawn Collins
  • 18. Primer on Private Labeling by Eric Almquist
  • 20. Diary of Switching Affiliate Networks by Courtney Turner
  • 21. Is Your Business Backed Up and Mobile? by Shawn Collins
  • 23. Affiliate Tips to Fight Affiliate Fraud by Brett Bumeter
  • 24. Seven Strategies for Intelligent Commission Setting by Matt Swan
  • 25. 11 Ways I Drive Traffic to Sites by Shawn Collins
  • 26. Four Affiliate Marketing Strategies for Podcasting by Dave Jackson
  • 28. First Impressions as an Affiliate Marketer by Merianna Neely
  • 29. Thank You Affiliate Summit West 2012 Top Sponsors
  • 30. Affiliate Summit West 2012 Agenda
  • 45. Keynote Bios
  • 47. Speaker Bios
  • 62. People to Follow on Twitter
  • 64. Caesars Palace Las Vegas Map

The issue mailed this week, so it should be hitting mailboxes all over the U.S. any day now (if it hasn’t already).

If you can’t wait to see your copy (or you’re not currently a subscriber), you can download issue 17 of FeedFront.

Free subscription to U.S. addresses at http://feedfront.com/free-subscription.

Make Your Dreams Your Reality

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I used to write a zine (printed, not online) back in the mid-90s called Velocity NYC, and I recently re-discovered a bunch of the stuff I wrote back then on archive.org.

This is one of the editor notes that I liked from back then…

What do we talk about when we talk about our dreams? I checked out my dictionary for a little guidance, and it defined a dream as “a series of mental images, thoughts, and emotions occurring in certain stages of sleep,” or as “a hope or aspiration.”

The first one is the sort that nobody wanted in those Nightmare on Elm Street movies. That kind can range from really great to just plain horrible. In one night you might have a dream about your dog wearing a Richard Nixon mask as he strikes out President Clinton in the kickball championship. That same night you could dream about all your appliances coming to life and attacking you.

These dreams are the type that we can’t really manipulate. I learned that back in 6th grade when they gave us a very clinical sex education class. I remember them taking the girls out of the room to tell the boys about the nocturnal emission (or wet dream) and how that was sort of the same thing as sex.

For years after that, I hoped for a wet dream before I went to bed each night and it never happened. To this day, I’ve never gone all the way in one of my dreams.

These are also the dreams that new age quacks claim to be able to analyze. I refuse to believe that when I dream about monkeys playing football or other non sequitur stuff that it has anything to do with anything. Just random thoughts that our mind makes up to keep from being bored.

The second kind of dream is the one that sends a kid from the ghetto to the batter’s box at Yankee Stadium, the kind that wins a scholarship, the type of dream that actually means something.

After I got out of college, there wasn’t a whole lot going on for me. One summer afternoon, the band Dada (“Dizz Knee Land”) was playing a free show in one of those little parks in downtown Washington. I went there with my friend Sheri to check it out.

On the way there and back, we chatted a lot. We didn’t come out and realize we were talking about our dreams, but we were doing it sort of subconsciously. We talked about what we wanted and hoped for in love, careers and all the other ancillary stuff. Back then, it sort of seemed like dreams were all we had.

That kind of dreaming has the ability to develop into something tangible. By talking about it, it sort of helped us make it happen. I think sometimes we don’t realize we want something until we tell somebody that we want it.

A few years later, we’ve both found the love that seemed so elusive in 1993 and our careers are working out the way that we’d hoped they would. Like so many things in life, it all goes back to Dr. Frankenfurter in the Rocky Horror Picture Show when he sang, “Don’t Dream It, Be It!”

If you’re not where you want to be, wake up from that dream and do something about it!

Upgrade Your Affiliate Summit West 2012 Pass

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We’ve received a number of inquiries about whether passes to Affiliate Summit West 2012 can be upgraded. And the answer is yes.

The cost of upgrades is the difference in the price of your pass when you registered and the price of the higher level pass at the time of the upgrade.

Affiliate Summit Upgrades

There are four pass types: Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond. If you’re interested in seeing sessions at Affiliate Summit, Gold will get you into the Sunday sessions and Platinum provides access to all three days of sessions.

Diamond passes get access to all three days of sessions, plus DVDs of all recorded session videos.

Visit http://www.affiliatesummit.com/register/ for more details on the various pass types. Contact us about upgrading your Affiliate Summit pass.

Costs to Get Started as an Affiliate Marketer

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Q: I want to thank you for your youtube video tips it was very useful and now i am thinking about signing for Google adsence to blog about smart phones my question to you is do I have to pay for WordPress beside paying for a domain name how does the process work?

Shawn CollinsA: There are a couple different costs to consider when starting up a new affiliate site.

There is the domain registration, which runs about $8 a year.

You also need hosting for your site, and you can get a hosting plan for around $5 or $10 a month on a shared server, which means your site will be on a server with many other sites.

An alternative is getting a dedicated server, which costs far more, and it’s not something you really need to consider when you’re starting.

Anyhow, a lot of hosts have a one-click install of WordPress, so it’s nice and easy to get it going on your site. You can literally click a link with the host and WordPress will get setup on your site.

I use BlueHost for a number of my affiliate sites, and they have the WordPress one-click install feature. In addition to WordPress, they have the one-click install for a variety of other scripts and software programs.

My free online book, Extra Money Answer, includes details on registering a domain name and website hosting.

Affiliate Summit West 2012 Passes on eBay

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Affiliate Summit West 2012 is sold out and the auctions for registrations are starting to pop up on eBay.

Affiliate Summit West 2012 on eBay

If you are interested in passes listed on eBay, please be sure to contact Affiliate Summit to confirm that the pass can be transferred.

All registrations have an associated reference number. Request this number from the seller, as well as the name on the registrations, 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, contact us by phone or email.

Bear in mind that Affiliate Summit starts Sunday, January 8, 2012 in Las Vegas, so bid on auctions ending before that date.

Parties at Affiliate Summit West 2012

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There are a lot of evening networking opportunities taking place during Affiliate Summit West 2012, and we’re compiling a list on the Affiliate Summit blog.

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Check out the latest list of Affiliate Summit West 2012 parties.

If you’re running a party, dinner, etc. during Affiliate Summit, submit your details to us and we’ll add your event to the list.

Payment Frequency Impacts Which Programs Affiliates Promote

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Affiliates were asked “Do commission payment policies (how often a program pays) affect your decision to promote an affiliate offer?” for the 2011 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report.

Fifty-nine percent of affiliates responded “yes” for this survey question.

This is somewhat of a non-issue for affiliate programs running in affiliate networks, since they have aggregated, monthly payments for the average affiliate.

But it comes into play with the big players, especially PPC affiliates, who are putting out significant expenditures and want/need weekly commission payments to invest back into their businesses.

Over fourteen-hundred affiliates were surveyed on their methods, preferences, and strategies for the 2011 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report.

Using Twitter as an Affiliate

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Q: What’s the best way to let my twitter following know that a link in one of my tweets points to an affiliate product? Is there an acronym I should use like (aff.)?

Shawn CollinsA: First of all, I’d say it’s really not valuable to anybody if you’re just going to post affiliate links to Twitter.

It’s far more useful, and it removes this issue, if your Tweet goes to a post of yours, where you pre-sell a product or service through persuasive, original content.

In Twitter, if you’re putting up a single Tweet direct to a merchant and simply broadcasting that people should buy, you are adding no value at all.

But when your Tweet links to your site, you can go on at length about why you recommend a product or service.

Affiliate Summit West 2012 is Officially Sold Out

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Affiliate Summit West 2012, starting on Sunday, January 8 at Caesars Palace Las Vegas, is now sold out.

This conference makes it 19 times in a row that attendee registrations for Affiliate Summit have closed before the event, due to capacity.

As we process cancellations, the registration page will open up and additional registrations will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.

Affiliate Summit West 2011 Exhibit Hall

Check https://www.regonline.com/asw12 for availability. If you’re able to enter your registration — you’re good to go.

In the event registrations are open onsite, based on last minute cancellations, the rate will be $449 for a Silver Pass, $749 for a Gold Pass, $1,749 for a Platinum Pass, and $2,749 for a Diamond Pass.

More information on Affiliate Summit at http://www.AffiliateSummit.com