Shawn Collins' Blog

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

Archives for December 2012

The Cheapest Way to Advertise to Affiliate Summit West 2013 Attendees

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The deadline to get your marketing materials in all of the attendee bags for Affiliate Summit West 2013 is December 19, 2012.

For only $2,000, you can have one item inserted in each of the bags handed out to Affiliate Summit attendees when they check in to the conference.

Affiliate Summit West 2010 440

If you want to take advantage of this sponsorship, you must act now – all inserts must arrive by December 19, 2012 in order to be included in attendee bags.

No exceptions – this is a firm deadline.

Book this sponsorship now and get your inserts out to the fulfillment house.

Please send 5,200 items to:

Affiliate Summit
C/O Opportunity Village Attn: Chris Carpenter, ERC Manager
6050 S. Buffalo Drive
Las Vegas, NV 89113

Visit the Affiliate Summit West 2013 sponsorships page for other sponsorship opportunities.

Payoneer Offers US Payment Service

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Payoneer, a service that enables issuing commission via debit card, is now offering the option for partners to sign up using only the US Payment Service.

This means no integration worries or anything for the partner.

Partners just have to provide the option for direct deposit payments.

Payoneer recently signed up ClickBank and ShareASale with this option.

Go to “Become a Partner” on the Payoneer site for more information.

Use WP Engine for Managed WordPress Hosting

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I’ve been running sites since the 90’s and have worked with more hosting companies than I can remember. Often, they have been a source of aggravation, but then I tried WP Engine.

WP Engine

Many hosting companies look the same from the outside, so why do I like these guys?

Well, I’ve currently got a lot of sites spread across different hosts (dedicated servers with 1&1, Liquid Web, and Rackspace, and a shared hosting account at Bluehost), and I am always monitoring the uptime, downtime, and performance.

I’ve been most pleased with Liquid Web, but since I’m not monogamous with hosts, I wanted to try WP Engine, since I’ve been hearing raves about them.

So anyway, their tech support has been superb. I reached out to them during migration, as I tried doing it without reading the instructions and messed up. They were fast, nice and helpful.

And their support folks are WordPress experts. All my sites are in WordPress these days, and I don’t remember ever dealing with a support person at a different host who was helpful with WordPress issues.

Then there is their staging area. Have you ever installed a new plugin or theme and broken your WordPress site? If no, lucky you. I’ve done it plenty of times.

That’s why I love that with one click I can set up a clean copy of my site to test stuff with WP Engine.

Also, they are obsessive about speed, and that is a great thing.

At first, I was surprised that they had a list of plugins they didn’t allow on sites hosted with them.

WP Engine performs security and performance scans on customer sites, which includes scanning for plugins on their disallowed plugin list. The reason for this is that they’ve determined certain plugins adversely affect site performance and/or security.

When I got a notification that I had an offending plugin, I was given a 7 day warning to find and test suitable replacements and then remove the prohibited plugin.

Any customer failing to act will have the plugin removed from their site.

Oh, and one of the investors in WP Engine is Toni Schneider (CEO of Automattic, the company behind WordPress). Now that’s a vote of confidence.

In addition to being a great company to work with, there is also a WP Engine affiliate program with a nice payout on ShareASale.

Free Access to Videos from Affiliate Summit West 2011

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Videos of educational sessions from Affiliate Summit West 2011, which took place January 9-11, 2011 at Wynn Las Vegas, are now available to watch for free.

Facebook session at Affiliate Summit West 2010

The full-length videos of the Brian Solis and Dave Taylor keynotes, as well as 40 breakout sessions are now all available on YouTube.

Just go to the agenda from Affiliate Summit West 2011 and click on any of the session titles to watch the videos.

And while you’re enjoying these past Affiliate Summit moments, also have a look at the photos from Affiliate Summit West 2011 and issue 13 of FeedFront magazine, which was distributed at that conference.

The Power of Nonverbal Website Intelligence at Affiliate Summit West 2011

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This was a conference session titled The Power of Nonverbal Website Intelligence from Affiliate Summit West 2011, which took place January 9-11, 2011 at Wynn Las Vegas.

Speaker

  • Derek Halpern, Chief Persuasion Officer, DIYthemes.com

Session description: Your content is verbal communication, but did you know that your site communicates in nonverbal ways, too? Learn how to use these “under the radar” marketing tactics to increase subscribers and sales.

Experience level: Intermediate
Target audience: Affiliates/Publishers
Niche/vertical: Persuasion

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: The Power of Nonverbal Website Intelligence video

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.

Social Media – A Marketing Bonanza at Affiliate Summit West 2011

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This was a conference session titled Social Media – A Marketing Bonanza from Affiliate Summit West 2011, which took place January 9-11, 2011 at Wynn Las Vegas.

Speakers

  • Gary Kibel, Partner, Davis & Gilbert LLP (Moderator)
  • Sal Conca, Director of Affiliate Marketing, NETexponent
  • Wade Sisson, Director of Marketing, Schaaf-PartnerCentric

Session description: Social media is becoming a mature industry and the marketing opportunities are expanding daily. As the social media providers mature, so do their policies and restrictions. Successes through social media are there waiting for you, provided one knows and observes the rules of the road.

Experience level: Intermediate, Advanced
Target audience: Affiliates/Publishers, Merchants/Advertisers, Networks
Niche/vertical: Social Media

Slides: Social Media – A Marketing Bonanza slides

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 – A Marketing Bonanza video

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.