Affiliate marketing news and opinion from Shawn Collins, co-founder of Affiliate Summit.
Speaking proposals for Affiliate Summit West 2015, taking place January 18-20, 2015 in Las Vegas, are now being accepted.
The submission deadline is September 5, 2014. Any submissions after this date will not be considered.
Accepted speakers will be notified no later than September 26, 2014. If you have not been contacted by September 26, 2014, your proposal was not accepted.
Submit your speaking proposal for Affiliate Summit West 2015.
The 27th issue of FeedFront is headed to the printer and copies will be going out to approximately 42,000 subscribers in late July and early August.
Issue 27 of FeedFront will also be distributed at Affiliate Summit East 2014.
This issue of FeedFront Magazine includes Succeed in Spite of Your Disability by Missy Ward, 4 Essentials for My Sanity and Productivity by Shawn Collins, Making Affiliate Marketing Attractive to Bloggers by Rachel Honoway, and the Affiliate Summit East 2014 Agenda.
Also blogger product reviews, creative essentials, LinkedIn strategies, multitasking, running a successful sweepstakes, how Pinterest can help SEO strategy, characteristics of a great affiliate, capitalizing on hot markets, mobile optimization, direct mail, and more.
Issue 27 of FeedFront Magazine can now be viewed online, downloaded, and printed from issuu.com.
Get the FeedFront RSS if you’d like to get all of the articles as they are published to the feed.
If you haven’t subscribed, you can get the magazine for free at feedfront.com/free-subscription.
Also, become a fan of FeedFront on Facebook to see past issues, covers, etc.
This was a conference session titled Affiliate Compliance – Best Practices, Issues, and Options from Affiliate Summit East 2012, which took place August 12-14, 2012 in New York City at the Hilton New York.
Session speakers:
Session description:
Understand the challenges of managing affiliate compliance, and techniques used by blackhats to hide. Develop policy, process and systems for managing affiliate compliance across your programs.
Experience level: Intermediate
Target audience: Affiliates/Publishers, Merchants/Advertisers, Other
Niche/vertical: Compliance
Session video:
Affiliate Compliance – Best Practices, Issues, and Options video
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.
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.
This was a conference session titled Ask the SEO’s from Affiliate Summit East 2012, which took place August 12-14, 2012 in New York City at the Hilton New York.
Session speakers:
Session description:
Ask any questions about SEO. Each panelist not only runs their own affiliate sites, but also consults with companies large and small.
Experience level: Intermediate, Advanced
Target audience: Affiliates/Publishers, Merchants/Advertisers
Niche/vertical: Search engine optimization
Session video:
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.
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.
Mobile now accounts for the majority of email opens with a 51% share, according to data from litmus. Have you checked your email newsletter on your phone?
I just checked mine and it’s difficult to read on a phone.
When I went to look for a solution, my first stop was my email solution provider, AWeber, and I was delighted to see that they have lots of drag-and-drop email templates for broadcasts and follow up messages that are mobile responsive.
The mobile responsive templates from AWeber automatically resize themselves to fit the screen your subscribers open them on.
Your readers won’t have to scroll across their phone screens to read your message if your email is wider than their screen, which is so annoying.
Using these templates makes your email easier to read on a small phone screen, and therefore more likely to be read.
AWeber has over 600 mobile responsive templates, so there is no reason you should be serving up a bad experience. Soon, I won’t be forcing my old template on people.
Q: I have just started affiliate marketing and started paying for search engine ads, however, i haven’t got a single conversion so far. I am so nervious now about spending on paid advertising. Please could you advise why i am not getting any conversions. I have just started affiliate marketing in this week. Been running ads for 5 days now and no conversions. Let me know if you have any questions so you can help me.
A: One issue there is that I have not seen your campaigns on Google AdWords, and I don’t know the URL(s) for your landing page(s), so I am doing this a bit blindly.
But I will give you some recommendations on how you can optimize and track your paid search campaigns.
As soon as your ad is created in AdWords, you can see how it is doing on the AdWords homepage in a graph they display on your performance, and they have some tables that outline how the various categories of keywords are performing.
If you drill down further from the homepage, you can select your campaign and then an ad group.
A side note here — AdWords is very competitive and the prices are high for many keywords. I am not sure what kind of keywords you are targeting.
Anyhow, look for a column marked “status” and then the keywords that are indicated as “eligible” are the ones that are running.
Anything marked as “below first page bid” is not.
The issue there is that you aren’t bidding enough money or the “quality score” for your ad is too low. The “quality score” is a measure from Google on your ads and the keywords you target, and the landing page where you are sending people.
Google makes some conclusions from this information and assigns a “quality score”. The better all of the pieces match up, the higher your quality score.
The best way to turn around any of these “below first page bid” ratings is to increase your bid. That might help you also.
As far as fine tuning yours ads, it can be a challenging and frustrating experience, because some ads that performed great last week might be inactive this week. This could be due to Google conducting an audit on your ads and they have determined that they do not measure up this week, or a competitor might be bidding more than you.
It’s essential to check your ads regularly to see what is working and what is not, and sometimes you just have to raise your bids.
Also, you should kill off any poor performing ads, as they are a distraction. Also, change your copy entirely every once in a while to see if the change can generate more clicks and conversions.
Hopefully, you’re already doing some A/B split testing. If you’re not, you should. If you don’t already have a Google Analytics account, get one (they are free) and connect it to your Google AdWords account.
They have a feature called Google Analytics Content Experiments, which allows you to test variations of your pages on your site to determine whether any changes may alter the behavior of your site visitors. You can see which elements might increase conversions for you.
You can get great insight from Google when you hook up Analytics and AdWords, so do it. Constantly monitor, modify, and test your campaigns.
And if you’re getting tight on money for the ads and you’re not seeing a return, I would suggest halting your campaigns, and try generating original content to bring in organic traffic.
Video: I Don’t Have Any Conversions With My Paid Search Ads video
Ask Shawn Collins your affiliate marketing question and it will be added on the affiliate blog.
Affiliate Summit East 2014 is on schedule to sell out in late July or early August, based on sales patterns of past Affiliate Summits.
If you haven’t registered, don’t risk getting buried in your summer vacation and missing out.
Affiliate Summit East 2014, the premier affiliate marketing conference, is taking place August 10-12, 2014 at the New York Marriott Marquis in New York, NY.
This three day conference includes an exhibit hall with affiliate merchants, vendors, and networks, as well as multiple tracks of educational sessions covering the latest trends and information from affiliate marketing experts.
The keynotes for Affiliate Summit East 2014 will be Rich “Big Daddy” Salgado (Monday, August 11, 2014) and Julie Gurner (Tuesday, August 12, 2014).
Affiliate Summit will feature an exhibit hall and Meet Market with hundreds of booths and tables. Sorry, all booths and Meet Market tables are SOLD OUT.
There are a limited number of other sponsorships still available.
There will be a Saturday workshop before Affiliate Summit East 2014 titled Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers.
This half day event is ideal whether you’re a seasoned blogger or a newbie.
The educational sessions will teach you how to integrate affiliate marketing techniques into the revenue strategy for your blog.
The cost is just a $20 donation to the Performance Marketing Association through July 25, 2014. After July 25, 2014, the price will be a $35 donation to the Performance Marketing Association.
Register for Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers – space is limited.
This was a conference session titled Affiliate Program Interactivity and Attribution from Affiliate Summit East 2012, which took place August 12-14, 2012 in New York City at the Hilton New York.
Session speaker:
Session description:
This session will explain the challenges and potential solutions of affiliate programs and other multi-touch internet marketing channels.
Experience level: Advanced
Target audience: Merchants/Advertisers
Niche/vertical: Attribution
Session video:
Affiliate Program Interactivity and Attribution video
Session slides:
Affiliate Program Interactivity and Attribution 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.
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.
This was a conference session titled Affiliate Improv! from Affiliate Summit East 2012, which took place August 12-14, 2012 in New York City at the Hilton New York.
Session speakers:
Session description:
Four industry veterans brainstorm marketing ideas for items/services with audience participation. Ideas to actionable solutions in one fun, lively hour. Come get your creative juices flowing!
Experience level: Beginner
Target audience: Affiliates/Publishers
Niche/vertical: Education
Session video:
Session 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.
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.