Shawn Collins' Blog

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

Archives for February 2012

Daily Program Management: Recruitment, Optimization, Compliance

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Brook Schaaf, Founder and CEO of Schaaf-PartnerCentric, spoke on “Daily Program Management: Recruitment, Optimization, Compliance” at the Affiliate Summit Meetup in Austin, TX on February 28, 2012.

Brook Schaaf speaking at the Affiliate Summit Austin Meetup

Brook talked to the crowd about OPMs, the two halves of the affiliate marketing empire, tracking solutions, recruitment, optimization, and compliance.

The meetup took place at Beets Café, and while I am an unabashed carnivore, I was happy with the “Raw Reuben” (sunflower flatbread layered with 1000 island dressing, kraut, marinated portabella mushrooms, caramelized onions, and Swiss cashew cheeze. Served with beets salad and veggie chips) I had for dinner.

Affiliate Summit Austin Meetup for February 2012

Thanks a lot to Brook and everybody that came out for some raw foods and piping hot affiliate marketing information.

Brook’s bio:

Brook Schaaf has been in the performance marketing industry since 2000. He has been the Affiliate Program Manager for multi-million dollar programs at Zappos.com, Shoes.com, and Edmunds.com, growing one from $25,000 to over $1,000,000 in monthly sales in less than two years. Brook has spoken at Commission Junction University, Affiliate Summit, Affiliate Convention, Google Affiliate Network Summit, ad:tech’s Content Revenue Strategies, and DOMAINfest. In 2003 he was recognized with the Commission Junction Horizon Award for Communications. He was featured as the Affiliate Marketing Guru at the DMA 2011 Conference. Brook is the past president of the board of the Performance Marketing Association and a current member of Entrepreneur’s Organization. Brook Schaaf holds a B.A. in German Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.

Follow Brook on Twitter @brookschaaf, as well as Schaaf-PartnerCentric @schaafpc

Presentation: Daily Program Management: Recruitment, Optimization, Compliance

HootSuite Pro Helps Me Manage Twitter Better

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I’ve tried out lots of tools to manage Twitter since I joined over five years ago, but most have left me frustrated.

For the longest time, I used the Twitter website, and later graduated to TweetDeck. And then I finally tried HootSuite.

My main reason for trying it out was to manage all of my Twitter accounts in one place, but I quickly realized it was a dashboard to manage my other social media accounts, too.

HootSuite has a free version, as well as a paid HootSuite Pro option.

The free version works for users checking on their personal accounts, as it’s limited to adding five accounts and it is ad-supported.

But I’d suggest going Pro for any business users that are managing a variety of accounts across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, foursquare, and more.

HootSuite Pro also provides a free, enhanced analytics report, archiving, as well as integration with Google Analytics and Facebook Insights.

I’ve found HootSuite pro so valuable that I have a second monitor on my desk that is dedicated to it, so I can quickly and easily monitor followers, lists, and hashtags.

Last Call for Affiliate Summit Central 2012 Speaker Proposals

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The speaker proposal period for Affiliate Summit Central 2012, taking place May 15-16, 2012 in Austin, TX, is about to end.

The submission deadline is February 29, 2012.

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Accepted speakers will be notified no later than March 14, 2012. Due to the volume of submissions, we will not notify applicants if they have not been accepted.

Therefore, if you have not been contacted by March 14, 2012, your proposal was not accepted.

Submit your speaking proposal at http://www.affiliatesummit.com/12c-speakers/.

Affiliate Marketers Still Have Not Embraced Video

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Affiliates were asked “Are you currently integrating video in your affiliate marketing plan?” for the 2011 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report.

A large majority of respondents, at 70%, said no, and the remaining 30% are currently dabbling in video for their affiliate marketing efforts.

I started playing around with video as an affiliate several years ago, and that was partly because there were not many affiliates doing it.

My Affiliate Summit partner, Missy Ward, and I ran a successful affiliate site for years called WeViews. We recently closed it down, due to time constraints.

We reviewed all sorts of gadgets and random items starting in 2007.

The video with the most views during that time was apparently popular because I had crazy eyes (I was trying not to blink for the whole thing).

What’s holding you back from trying video, whether you’re an affiliate or merchant?

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

More details on AffStat at http://affstat.com/.

Learn More About Affiliate Marketing

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Affiliate marketers share their stories of starting their own businesses, leaving bad jobs, working from home, and finding financial freedom as they make money online.

Hear from real people who have found a way to do something they love for a living, so they’ve having fun, instead of working at a job.

Learn more about affiliate marketing and how it works.

If you’re looking for a place to point people that want a quick understanding of affiliate marketing, point them here.

Most Affiliates Use Social Networks to Promote Their Campaigns

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Affiliates were asked “Does your affiliate marketing plan currently incorporate marketing on social networking sites?” for the 2011 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report.

The majority of respondents, at 71%, said yes, and the remaining 29% indicated they are not bothering with the social networks for their affiliate marketing efforts.

When it comes to the various sites, Facebook and Twitter were most popular, by far. Note that this data was collected before the emergence of Pinterest, so that would have likely shifted numbers around a bit.

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

More details on AffStat at http://affstat.com/.

Maribel Sierra to Keynote Affiliate Summit Central 2012

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Maribel Sierra will be the keynote speaker at Affiliate Summit Central 2012 on Tuesday, May 15, 2012 at the Hilton Austin.

Social Media & Community Open Workspace 5

Maribel Sierra is the Director in the Global Social Media & Communities team at Dell, where she is tasked with leading Dell’s Social Media Listening and Engagement Strategy, which includes their Listening Command Center.

Follow Maribel on Twitter @MaribelSatDell.

More details soon on Affiliate Summit Central 2012 at http://www.affiliatesummit.com.

Affiliate Marketing, Porn and Spam

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I was just reading a post from Daniel M. Clark (Affiliate Marketing: Just Like Porn, Apparently) about how TubeMogul has split out their multi-site video submission service as OneLoad.com.

One LoadBut that’s not the story. Rather, Daniel was pointing out how OneLoad was lumping affiliate marketing with a list of other things they consider to be unsavory when signing up for the service…

NOTE: By clicking “Sign Up”, you agree to our Terms of Service and verify that you will not upload any multi-level marketing, affiliate marketing, network marketing, home-based business, cash gifting, phishing, pornographic or copyrighted third-party content. Any users uploading videos that a reasonable person would consider to be a scam will be banned.

Daniel went on to remark, “Anyone who doesn’t think affiliate marketing has an image problem has their head in the sand.”

Yes, the dark cloud over affiliate marketing is a narrative for some, but it’s not the dominant narrative. Nor should it be, as the cheats and dirtbags are not representative of the majority of the industry.

There are so many positive stories about affiliate marketing enabling people to leave bad jobs, get off unemployment, work from home with their children, and more – all as legitimate affiliate marketers.

That’s the problem with broad brushes. They miss the details. It’s similar to looking at a company that distributes the same exact content to a bunch of different places and calling them spam enablers.

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Anyhow, I’d say it’s the duty of any affiliate marketer on the good side of the industry to report any bad actors to their respective merchants and networks.

We have to clean house internally if we’re going to fix the jaundiced view some have of affiliate marketing.

Affiliate Marketing is Not Rocket Science

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I hear from a lot of people that they want to get started in affiliate marketing, but they feel overwhelmed.

rocket scienceBut really, affiliate marketing is pretty easy for anybody to break in and try.

It’s not rocket science – I’ll boil it down to just two simple steps for you to start an affiliate content site:

  1. Pick a top you’d like to write about
  2. Set a deadline and publish it (Facebook, Twitter, whatever) for when you’ll launch the site

Now it’s not quite that easy, as there is some setup with a domain and hosting, but then again, it is pretty much that easy.

If you’re finally ready to put up that first affiliate site, do the two steps above right now.

And then visit my site, Extra Money Answer, where I will take you step-by-step through getting that affiliate site up and running.

Buy Business Ebooks to Help Fight Breast Cancer

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Want to learn more about business and help fight breast cancer at the same time?

books4boobiesThere are a number of ebooks written by affiliate marketers that are raising money to support the Affiliate Marketers Give Back team in the Avon Walk for the Cure.

Purchase any of the ebooks listed at books4boobies.org between February 12-18 and the authors will donate their profits to Team Affiliate Marketers Give Back.

Internet Marketing from the Real Experts, a book on affiliate marketing, social media, search marketing and more, is one of the many titles available on Kindle for this fundraising effort – get it for just $2.99.

Please support us by buying even one book. If you don’t have a Kindle, you can purchase and read Kindle books on your PC, MAC, iPad, Android tablets, and other devices with free apps from Amazon.