Shawn Collins' Blog

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

Archives for August 2013

Rakuten Marketing Acquires PopShops

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Rakuten Marketing has announced that they have entered into an agreement to acquire PopShops, an affiliate marketing coupon and product feed platform.

Rakuten PopshopsTerms of the deal were not disclosed.

PopShops was founded in 2006 and their platform and tools enable more than 25,000 affiliates to access up-to-date product information on millions of online retail products.

PopShops is now known as Rakuten PopShops.

All Rakuten PopShops employees will remain with the company at its headquarters in Seattle.

Rakuten LinkShare and Rakuten mediaFORGE are both also part of Rakuten Marketing.

Free Access to Videos from Affiliate Summit West 2012

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Videos of educational sessions from Affiliate Summit West 2012, which took place January 10-12, 2012 at Caesars Palace Las Vegas, are now available to watch for free.

Welcome to Affiliate Summit West 2012

The full-length videos of the Jon Spoelstra, Eric Thomas, and Jeremy “ShoeMoney” Schoemaker keynotes, as well as 36 breakout sessions are now all available on YouTube.

Just go to the agenda from Affiliate Summit West 2012 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 2012 and issue 17 of FeedFront magazine, which was distributed at that conference.

Affiliate Manager Boot Camp in Pictures

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I’ve created a pinboard on Pinterest of the images that appear in my new book, Affiliate Manager Boot Camp: Recruiting, Educating, and Retaining Affiliates.

Affiliate Manager Boot Camp pinboard

The pinboard includes examples of direct mail I sent to recruit affiliates in the past, as well as some data charts and screen shots from the book.

Affiliate Manager Boot Camp is currently available on the Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble nook. There will be a print version available soon.

Pinterest: Affiliate Manager Boot Camp: Recruiting, Educating, and Retaining Affiliates

Who’s Exhibiting at Affiliate Summit 2013 East?

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If you’d like to see who is going to have a table at the Meet Market or a booth in the exhibit hall at Affiliate Summit East 2013, we’ve got an interactive map and list of exhibitors.

Affiliate Summit exhibit hall entrance

The Meet Market is taking place in Terrace Ballroom I & II in the Pennsylvania Convention Center from 12:00pm – 6:00pm on Sunday, August 18.

The Exhibit Hall will be in Terrace Ballroom III & IV in the Pennsylvania Convention Center from 10:00am – 5:00pm on Monday, August 19 and 10:00am – 4:00pm on Tuesday, August 20.

Are you ready to be on your feet for 19 hours of networking?

See the complete Affiliate Summit East 2013 agenda to start working on your schedule.

Also, there are a limited number of Affiliate Summit East 2013 sponsorships still available (for now) – a few even come with passes for the sold out conference.

Upgrade Your Affiliate Summit East 2013 Pass

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We’ve received a number of inquiries about whether passes to Affiliate Summit East 2013 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: Networking, Networking Plus, VIP, and All Access. If you’re interested in seeing sessions at Affiliate Summit, Networking Plus will get you into one session per day and VIP provides access to all sessions.

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

Get more details on the various pass types. Contact us about upgrading your Affiliate Summit pass.

Affiliate Summit East 2013 Passes on eBay

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Affiliate Summit East 2013 is sold out and the auctions for registrations are starting to pop up on eBay.

eBay auction for Affiliate Summit East 2013

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, August 18, 2013 in Philadelphia, so bid on auctions ending before that date.

My Hottest Affiliate Marketing Meetup

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I’ve been organizing the Austin Digital Marketing Meetup Group for a couple years now, and the monthly get-together has taken place in a variety of restaurants.

But I decided to mix up the most recent one and have it on a pontoon boat.

Austin Digital Marketing Meetup Group

One downfall was that we could only fit about a dozen people on the boat, while the meetups usually have 30-40 people attend.

But I figured it would be a neat change to drop the formality of things and get together as a small group.

I was the Captain, and we went out for a few hours on Lake Travis in Austin, TX for swimming, laughs, and shop talk.

Along the way, we made a pitstop to get out of the hot sun for a little (103 degrees!).

Austin Digital Marketing Meetup Group at the Gnarley Gar

The stripped down atmosphere led to lots of interesting and entertaining conversations.

One of the chats we had was about how one of the guys was setting up an account on a dating site, and we talked about testing different copy, photos, etc. I’m curious to see how the marketing ideas do.

Austin Digital Marketing Meetup Group on Lake Travis

It was a neat venue and a quality bonding experience. I think this might have to be a new tradition.

6 Ways to Still Get Passes for Affiliate Summit East 2013

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Affiliate Summit East 2013 sold out last week, but there are still some sponsorships available that include passes to the conference.

Happy guy can get an Affiliate Summit passHere are the sponsorships that are currently available (click each one for details):

Affiliate Summit East 2013 is taking place August 18-20, 2013 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, PA.

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

Check http://www.regonline.com/ase13 for availability. If you’re able to enter your registration — you’re good to go.

You Get What You Pay for With Website Hosting

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There was a big web hosting outage this past Friday with Bluehost, HostMonster, HostGator and JustHost having problems for an extended period of time.

Sorry We're ClosedApparently, the outage was related to server maintenance at a Provo, UT data center.

This impacted me because I have quite a few affiliate and other sites on Bluehost.

These were not any of my “main” sites, but they resulted in a lot of headaches.

In one case, there was a site that existed solely to collect information on a form, and there was a deadline to submit information that day.

I learned a lesson from this, and that is that any site that is important enough to exist is important enough to invest in fast, reliable hosting.

I get it that things happen, but they seem to happen more often and longer at the lower cost hosting companies.

My near future plan is to get my sites over to WP Engine.

Yeah, they cost more, but I’ve got an account over there, and have had nothing but quality support, speed, and uptime.

Affiliate Summit East 2013 Donating $24,311 to Fight Breast Cancer

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The Race to Affiliate Summit East 2013, an exercise challenge where Affiliate Summit committed to donating $1 to benefit the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer in support of Affiliate Marketers Give Back team for each mile in the challenge, has completed.

Affiliate Summit vs. Breast CancerParticipants cycled, run, swam, and walked to add up miles for the charity competition.

There were 63 folks involved in the challenge, and the top ten competitors accumulated 17,771 miles.

Overall, there were 24,311 miles tallied by all of the participants, so the total donation was $24,311.

Thank you so much to everybody who participated and helped to make this charity donation from Affiliate Summit.

David Fairey, CFO at ClickBooth, had the most total miles at the end of the challenge with 5,056 miles and he is receiving a VIP Pass to Affiliate Summit West 2014.

The 2nd to 5th place finishers will each receive a Networking Plus Pass to Affiliate Summit West 2014, and 6th to 10th place finishers will each receive a Networking Pass to Affiliate Summit West 20143.

Affiliate Summit West 2014 is taking place January 12-14, 2014 in Las Vegas.