Affiliate marketing news and opinion from Shawn Collins, co-founder of Affiliate Summit.
The early bird rates for booths and Meet Market tables at Affiliate Summit East 2013, taking place August 18-20, 2013 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, are ending on February 22, 2013.
That deadline is NOT flexible.
There are still lots of good spots left – don’t miss the best locations and low price.
Book a booth or table now to reach thousands of affiliate marketers in Philadelphia this summer.
ShareASale now offers two factor authentication for all accounts.
Two factor authentication is a safeguard to help prevent unauthorized people from accessing your account.
I have been using it for Dropbox, Facebook, and Gmail, and now ShareASale.
ShareASale is using “soft tokens” for their second factor, which means you will receive your code to login via your mobile device.
Their setup is compatible with “Google Authenticator” (that’s the app I use on my iPhone for this) and “Amazon Virtual MFA”.
The apps display a 6 digit code that changes every 30 seconds.
Once you have activated two factor authentication for your ShareASale account, you will need to append this 6 digit code to the end of your password each time you log in.
I literally got it set up in a minute.
I’d encourage everybody using ShareASale to activate this feature to better protect their accounts.
Wil Reynolds will be a keynote speaker at Affiliate Summit East 2013 on Tuesday, August 20, 2013 in Philadelphia.
Wil has consistently been one of the highest rated speakers since he first spoke at Affiliate Summit in 2005.
In summer 2011, Wil keynoted Affiliate Summit, and he is the first keynote to ever be asked back for a return engagement.
Over the past 13 years, Wil Reynolds has dedicated himself to doing two things well: driving traffic to sites from search engines and analyzing the impact that traffic has on the bottom line of companies.
Wil’s career began at a web marketing agency in 1999, where he spearheaded the SEO strategies for companies like Barnes & Noble, Disney, Harman Kardon, Debeers, Doubleclick, Hotjobs, and Mercedes Benz USA.
For the last 6 years, Wil and the team of search professionals at SEER Interactive have been assisting clients in maximizing their visibility and sales using search engines in both SEO and SEM.
You can catch Wil speaking with anyone who wants to learn about search, whether it is in a coffee shop or a major conference, it just runs through the veins! His goal at every speaking engagement is simple: Make sure everyone walks out with at least 1 new piece of information or perspective on an SEO topic.
A couple years back, I was in negotiations to write a book with a big publisher on affiliate marketing, and I was excited about it.
However, things fell apart when it came to the direction of the book.
I wanted to give a real and honest picture of the opportunities – how most people don’t make much at all, and that it requires lots of time, testing, and patience.
The big publisher wanted a “get rich quick” book. Since that premise is horseshit, I walked away.
But I had already written an outline for what I wanted to do, and I figured I would write it up anyway to combat the “get rich quick” propaganda.
I went through my own process of coming up with affiliate sites, creating content, driving traffic, and monetizing the content.
I blogged it step-by-step at ExtraMoneyAnswer.com, and now it’s available for just $1.99 on Amazon.
Get Extra Money Answer on Kindle.
If you have Amazon Prime, you can get it for free.
I’d love to hear what you think – please leave a review on Amazon if you read it.
Q: I was so pleased to find your youtube information. Hopefully you can help me. I recently applied for Google adsense and was not accepted. I would like help uniformly monetizing my platforms (youtube, blogger, etc). I am an actress from various Broadway shows. I’ve decided to start a new blog that focuses on giving advice to young actors as I constantly get questions about how I’ve done it. I had hoped that ads for broadway shows or hair and makeup would be familiar with my blog and a great fit for what I’m looking to do. My current blog is about my life but I plan to taylor it to a more helpful/advice column style. I was not accepted into the program. Based on my current blog do you have advice to give to me.
A: I don’t want to share the URL and embarrass the person asking the question, but the first problem is that it’s on Blogger.
I know there are Blogger sites that have Google AdSense, but many affiliate programs won’t consider you.
By using Blogger, you’re sending an unintentional signal to affiliate managers that you’re not taking your affiliate efforts too seriously.
You can get a domain name for less than $10 a year, so I would encourage you to go out and get a domain name and hosting for your blog.
Just the simple act of getting your own domain name and hosting will make a big difference when affiliate managers are reviewing your site.
I’ve been using HootSuite for a year or so, and it’s a vital tool for my social media monitoring.
It is so key that I have a dedicated monitor for HootSuite, so I can stay on top of Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and more.
But I was neglecting one of the most powerful aspects of tool until I chatted about it with Jaxon Lam, Affiliate & Search Specialist at HootSuite, during Affiliate Summit West 2013.
He encouraged me to set up some of the analytics reports, and I wish I’d been doing this long ago.
I’m mining some great data now, and it’s really helpful to have it all in one interface.
There are some pre-set reports on Facebook Insights, Google Analytics and more, as well as the ability to select a variety of data with custom reports.
I’d highly recommend the analytics from HootSuite for anybody who is managing social media accounts.
WhatRunsWhere, a service that enables advertisers and agencies to track competitors’ online and mobile ad campaigns, has partnered with Advertising Red Books, a source on advertiser and agency relationships, personnel and billing information.
The companies will share selected data for their respective users.
WhatRunsWhere users can now get a brand description from Red Books, as well as contact information, number of employees, revenue and the name and title of a marketing or sales executive.
And when Red Books users look up an advertiser, they will see examples of several of the brand’s current online display and text ads via WhatRunsWhere.
More details on WhatRunsWhere at WhatRunsWhere.com.
In January 2013, Mike Cojanu, CEO of WhatRunsWhere, spoke on a panel on affiliate success stories at Affiliate Summit West 2013.
Affiliate Summit, the premier affiliate marketing conference, has acquired online news outlet ReveNews.
ReveNews is a news blog that focuses on B2B topics in the online marketing industry with a special focus on affiliate marketing. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The acquisition will include absorption of the ReveNews site into the overall Affiliate Summit umbrella.
“While we’ll be keeping the site’s original intent, we’ll be introducing some exciting new features,” said Missy Ward, co-owner of Affiliate Summit.
“We wanted to provide another platform for affiliate marketers to have their voices heard on matters that affect our industry. Since ReveNews already had 15 years of affiliate marketing content under its belt, it seemed like a natural fit for us to acquire,” she added.
If you are interested in writing at ReveNews, get details on becoming a ReveNews contributor.
As part of a digital revamping initiative, the company will cease publication of the Affiliate Summit Forum on February 15, 2013.
I’ve long subscribed to the daily ideal of inbox zero, and I work towards it based on the ideas on productivity in the book Getting Things Done by David Allen.
So it has been fascinating to me to see a monthly analysis of my email activity through Gmail Meter.
I really don’t know how this volume stacks up with others, but I think I get a whole lot of email, and it sure it satisfying to keep it in check.
For the month of January 2013, I got 5,688 emails from 1,186 people, and I sent 1,182 emails to 227 people.
My inbound email tends to hit a peak around lunchtime, so no wonder I usually eat at my desk.
My email decreases, but doesn’t take off on weekends, and I tend to stay on top of it 7 days a week. I’d have a case of the Mondays every Monday otherwise.
When it comes to Getting Things Done, I consistently try to adhere to David Allen’s Two-Minute Rule: if there’s anything you need to do soon that can be done in two minutes or less, do it now.
About 20% of my email responses happen in less than 5 minutes from the time I’ve received an email.
I’d say one of the keys to my productivity is in being succinct with my messages. If only everybody else would economize on their words. 😉
Oh no, I’ve gotten three new emails since I started writing this. Gotta run, so I can reply and have good stats for this month.
The seventh annual Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards were presented on Tuesday, January 15, 2013 at Affiliate Summit West 2013, which took place at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
The Affiliate Summit Pinnacle Awards are affiliate marketing’s most prestigious, competitive honor for the leaders in the space.
Award winners are recognized because they are innovative leaders with vision and influence.
Congratulations to the winners…
Thank you to everybody who submitted nominations and congratulations to the finalists, too!