Shawn Collins' Blog

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

Archives for June 2012

Marketplace for Buying and Selling Affiliate Sites

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Q: I have built my affiliate marketing company up over the last 4 years but now what to sell it. I’d love to find a similar company that was recently sold to see what I could get for it. Is there a place where people are buying and selling affiliate businesses?

Shawn CollinsA: I haven’t seen a community that is strictly about affiliate sites, but I would suggest checking out Flippa.

Flippa is a marketplace for buying and selling sites.

So, if you’re in a niche that is somewhat popular, you should be able to see what similar sites are selling for.

Bear in mind that there are a lot of variables, such as the age of your domain, current traffic, and your revenue from the site.

Somebody else might have a similar site, but it could be five years older and making ten times more than your site, so obviously it wouldn’t be worth the same as yours.

You could try eBay, too.

Social Media Marketing for Affiliates

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This was a conference session titled Social Media Marketing for Affiliates from Affiliate Summit East 2010, which took place August 15-17, 2010 in New York City.

Speakers:

  • Brent Csutoras, Social Media Consultant, Brent Csutoras, Inc (Moderator)
  • Kevin Henrikson, Technical Director, Henrikson Media
  • Amy Vernon, CEO, Amy Vernon, LLC

Session description: Session will touch on three main aspects to social media marketing: how it works, content, and managing the process to create and run your campaigns.

Experience level: Intermediate
Target audience: Affiliates/Publishers
Niche/vertical: Social Media

Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/affsum/5c-social-media-marketing-for-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: Social Media Marketing for Affiliates

If you liked this video, be sure to register for the next Affiliate Summit. The session videos aren’t made public until a year or more after each conference.

How Much to Pay Per Lead

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Q: What should we pay for leads in a new PPL program, it’s a construction related site that services the hotel and commercial remodeling industries.

Shawn CollinsA: The best move there is to see what your competitors are doing, or anybody else in a related niche.

That’s really the best indicator to see what’s going on in the market and the demands in your industry.

You don’t want to go in blindly and set a rate by comparing apples to oranges with another niche.

So study your competitors first to determine the average, and maybe pay more if you can work it into your margins.

But bear in mind that a higher commission rate should not just be for a shorter time. If you do that, you’ll lose the affiliates when you drop your commission.

Video: How Much to Pay Per Lead

Ask Shawn Collins your affiliate marketing question and it will be added on the affiliate blog.

Hilton New York Nearly Sold Out for Affiliate Summit East 2012

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Affiliate Summit East 2012 is still two months away (August 12-14, 2012) at the Hilton New York, but rooms at our group rate are in short supply.

Hilton New York Welcomes Affiliate Summit East 2011

The special group rate is $229/night, plus tax & service (single or double occupancy). A block of rooms have been reserved for August 9, 2012 – August 16, 2012.

The Affiliate Summit room rate will be available until July 5, 2012 or until the group block is sold-out, whichever comes first.

Please be sure to register for Affiliate Summit East 2012 before booking your hotel. We have a limited number of rooms, and when they fill up, anyone not registered for the conference is subject to losing the discounted rate.

Book at the Hilton New York at the Affiliate Summit rate.

The address for the Hilton New York is 1335 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019 and the main phone is 212-586-7000.

Avoiding the Google Slap

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This was a conference session titled Avoiding the Google Slap from Affiliate Summit East 2010, which took place August 15-17, 2010 in New York City.

Speakers:

  • Dush Ramachandran, Vice President — Sales & Business Development, ClickBank
  • Frederick Vallaeys, AdWords Evangelist, Google

Session description: Panel discussion with key executives from Google and ClickBank on landing page quality scores and ad quality guidelines.

Experience level: Intermediate
Target audience: Affiliates/Publishers, Merchants/Advertisers
Niche/vertical: Google

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: Avoiding the Google Slap

If you liked this video, be sure to register for the next Affiliate Summit. The session videos aren’t made public until a year or more after each conference.

Affiliate Window Launches in the U.S.

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Affiliate Window is launching in the U.S. for advertisers and affiliates.

Affiliate WindowThis coincides with buy.at rebranding to their parent company name, Affiliate Window.

Affiliate Window features an interactive directory with detailed advertiser and affiliate profiles to openly showcase their USPs and for advertisers to clearly detail all brand requirements and program terms and conditions.

This enables advertisers to recruit affiliates based on their relevance, niche, or performance.

Brands already working with Affiliate Window in the U.S. include Ticketmaster, British Airways, Skype, and TicketsNow.

Affiliate Summit East 2012 Has Raised $12,766 So Far to Fight Breast Cancer

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The Race to Affiliate Summit East 2012, a dailymile challenge where Affiliate Summit will donate $1 to benefit the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer in support of Affiliate Marketers Give Back team for each mile cycled, run, swam, or walked through the challenge, is running through 7/31/2012.

Affiliate Summit East 2012There are currently 59 folks involved in the challenge, and the top ten competitors have already accumulated 7,729 miles.

Overall, there have been 12,766 miles tallied by all of the participants, so it’s $12,766 raised.

I am at #9 right now (see my dailymile profile) with 569 miles with and Anne Fognano and Scott Jangro catching up to me quick.

Here are the top ten affiliate marketing exercisers, as of June 6, 2012.

dailymile syncs with Garmin devises, Nike+ device and iPhone app, as well as a number of iPhone and Android clients.

You can also manually enter your cycling, swimming, running, and walking efforts.

In order to participate in dailymile activities, you will need to friend me on dailymile and I will invite you to the challenge. The challenge is going through 7/31/2012.

Get more details at http://www.affiliatesummit.com/race-to-affiliate-summit-east-2012/.

Affiliate Summit East 2012 is taking place August 12-14, 2012 in New York City.

The participant with the most total miles at the end of the challenge will receive a VIP Pass to Affiliate Summit West 2013. 2nd to 5th place finishers will each receive a Networking Plus Pass to Affiliate Summit West 2013, and 6th to 10th place finishers will each receive a Networking Pass to Affiliate Summit West 2013.

Please note that all information you provide as part of the contest is public and may be used by Affiliate Summit in our marketing efforts for this event.

Ball Four by Jim Bouton is the Best Audio Book Ever

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The book Ball Four isn’t about affiliate marketing, but it is about marching to a different drummer and challenging yourself.

Jim BoutonSo, in that respect, it is something of a mirror for affiliate marketers.

If you’re not familiar with Ball Four by Jim Bouton, it’s a book about baseball on the surface. However, it’s way more than that – it’s about trying, failing, and trying again.

That theme of persistence is made us want to book Bouton to keynote Affiliate Summit East back in 2006.

In short, Ball Four is my favorite book on sports, life and motivation.

I’ve read it a number of times, and I was excited when it came out on Audible.

But it was way more than I could have expected. Author Jim Bouton does the read for Ball Four on Audible, and I’ve never had such a riveting experience with an audio book.

It’s like he’s sitting in your living room telling you stories. A totally different dimension from reading it.

At points, he’s laughing at his own words. Other times, you can tell he’s struggling to hold it all together. He sings, he does impressions (great one for Mickey Mantle), and just generally tells a really moving story.

I strung it out across about a month of dog walks, because I didn’t want it to end.

Seriously, even if you’re not a baseball fan, you’ll really dig this book. And if you’re a baseball fan, you should have already read it.

Now I’m off to go pound some Budweiser.

Facebook Advertising From Soup To Nuts

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This was a conference session titled Facebook Advertising From Soup To Nuts from Affiliate Summit East 2010, which took place August 15-17, 2010 in New York City.

Speakers:

  • Jeremy Schoemaker, Marketer, ShoeMoney Capital INC

Session description: Advertising on Facebook is a huge opportunity for affiliate marketers. But most affiliates stop — finding the platform very frustrating to use. Come and get the scoop on how it “really” works.

Experience level: Beginner, Intermediate
Target audience: Affiliates/Publishers, Merchants/Advertisers
Niche/vertical: Facebook

Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/affsum/facebook-advertising-from-soup-to-nuts

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: Facebook Advertising From Soup To Nuts

If you liked this video, be sure to register for the next Affiliate Summit. The session videos aren’t made public until a year or more after each conference.

Using Social Media For SEO

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This was a conference session titled Using Social Media For SEO from Affiliate Summit East 2010, which took place August 15-17, 2010 in New York City.

Speakers:

  • Josh Ziering, Owner, Full Speed SEO

Session description: If you thought Twitter was just for talking about great BBQ and Facebook was just for making old girlfriends jealous — thing again. Learn tactics to leverage social media to boost your rank on Google.

Experience level: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced
Target audience: Affiliates/Publishers, Networks
Niche/vertical: SEO

Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/affsum/using-social-media-for-seo

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: Using Social Media For SEO

If you liked this video, be sure to register for the next Affiliate Summit. The session videos aren’t made public until a year or more after each conference.