Shawn Collins' Blog

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

Archives for March 2015

FeedFront Magazine Issue 30 is Now Available

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The 30th issue of FeedFront is headed to the printer and copies will be going out to over 43,000 subscribers in April.

ff30_coverIssue 30 of FeedFront will also be distributed at Performance Marketing Summit 2015 in Boca Raton.

This issue of FeedFront Magazine includes Is Your Business Planted or Buried? by Shawn Collins, 3 Common PPC Management Mistakes by Miles Olson, How to Write Content People Will Read by Helen Fang, Twitter Cards, and What Affiliates Need To Know by Kyler Patterson.

Also, affiliate recruiting emails, growing your Pinterest following, telling your brand’s story through testimonials, buying and selling websites, LinkedIn, leveraging coupon and loyalty sites, curation, fraud, monetizing apps, and more.

Issue 30 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 in the U.S. (sorry to everybody else, but mailing outside of the U.S. is very expensive). Also, become a fan of FeedFront on Facebook to see past issues, covers, etc.

Vote for Affiliate Summit East 2015 Sessions

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Affiliate Summit needs your help to pick sessions for Affiliate Summit East 2015. Voting will be open through April 3, 2015.

Get Out The Vote

The speaker proposals have been pared down to the titles, speakers, descriptions, and classifications (experience level, target audience, and main subject).

Vote for submissions you’d like to see at Affiliate Summit East 2015 by clicking the “Vote” button next to the proposed session. You may vote for as many sessions as you’d like. Sometimes there are glitches with certain browsers, devices, etc. Sorry if you experience any difficulties.

voting-example

You can find sessions that interest you by sorting the Experience Level, Niche/Vertical, or Target Audience from the header, as well as using the search box.

Also, you can see a tally of the most popular sessions.

Create an account now and start voting if you are attending Affiliate Summit East 2015.

You must register to vote for sessions and then submit a user name and email. A password will be emailed to you.

If you don’t see it right away, check your spam folder for an email with the subject, “[Vote for Affiliate Summit East 2015 Sessions] Your username and password”.

Speakers for Affiliate Summit will be chosen based on the combined votes from the public, votes from the Affiliate Summit Advisory Board, votes from Affiliate Summit founders Missy Ward and Shawn Collins, and feedback received on past speakers.

Vote now through April 3, 2015 at AffiliateSummitVoting.com!

AWeber No Longer Requires Double Opt-in on List Imports

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I’ve been a customer of AWeber for as long as I can remember, and one thing that really frustrated me when I brought my lists there was that everybody had to opt-in to my list again to be able to mail them in AWeber.

happy-hands

But now AWeber has made it easy to import your subscribers into the platform without requiring them to opt-in again. It’s literally just a matter of a click.

I’ve heard a lot of grumbling from people over the years about the required opt-in, so I am wondering if this will bring on a surge of emailers at AWeber.

I love the company and would encourage anybody to migrate over.

Help Me Raise Money for Wounded Warrior Project

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So, I wasn’t able to persuade you to donate with my efforts to fight breast cancer, but how about a small donation to help injured service members aid and assist each other?

tough-mudder

I am training to take on the Tough Mudder in early May, and part of that is raising money for Wounded Warrior Project.

If you’re not familiar with the Tough Mudder, it is a hardcore 10-12 mile obstacle race – mud run events designed by British Special Forces. What do you say? Will you help me help our Wounded Warriors?

The mission of Wounded Warrior Project…

To honor and empower Wounded Warriors. To foster the most successful, well-adjusted generation of wounded service members in our nation’s history. To raise awareness and enlist the public’s aid for the needs of injured service members. To help injured service members aid and assist each other. To provide unique, direct programs and services to meet the needs of injured service members.

Please make a donation of any size. If you’re up to the challenge, you can join our team, too!

WP Engine is an Awesome Hosting Company

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I’ve been using WP Engine for years now for my own sites and for Affiliate Summit sites, because they simply do things right.

WP Engine is Awesome

So, I was delighted to get a box in the mail from them with a haul of really cool stuff, including t-shirts, coffee mugs, beer mugs, and stickers. My picture doesn’t do all of the stuff justice.

Anyhow, their specialty is fully-managed WordPress hosting, and it just so happens that every single site I work on these days is in WordPress.

In addition to being a customer, I’m also an affiliate of WP Engine (their affiliate program is on ShareASale). And I don’t love them, because I’m promoting them, but rather I promote them, because I love them.

Just yesterday I was adding a site to one of my WPE accounts, and I borked something. I couldn’t figure out how to fix it and submitted a help ticket.

Before I knew it, their support folks had fixed my mess. They just do things right, and that’s a great thing with a hosting company.

30 Tips, Tricks & Tools to Save You Time with Social Media and Blogging

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Ashley Coombe has written a new book. 30 Tips, Tricks & Tools to Save You Time with Social Media and Blogging, that’s packed with resources and personality.

30-tips-tricks-toolsShe mentions in the introduction that the book came about after giving a presentation, Advanced Social Media: 30 Tricks & Tools to Save You Time, at Affiliate Summit West 2015. That session was very well received, so much so that it was one of the highest rated sessions of the dozens that took place at the conference.

I really liked 30 Tips, Tricks & Tools to Save You Time with Social Media and Blogging, because it was filled with lots of useful resources I didn’t previously know about, and also it was a super quick read, so I was able to go through it quickly and get on to checking out the tips, tricks, and tools that Ashley had shared.

Also, the book is written in the fun style that is Ashley’s voice, and that makes an enjoyable read from what could have been a dry, boring presentation of social media and blogging strategies and tools.

Affiliate Program Updates from a Mobile App

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We surveyed more than eighteen-hundred affiliates on their methods, preferences, and strategies for the 2014 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report, and one of the questions we asked was “What is your preferred method for finding out information from an affiliate manager?”.

affstat-contact-from-ams

Up until now, the options we were giving for survey respondents to choose were the following:

  • Blog or company website
  • Email from an affiliate network
  • Facebook
  • Mass email from the affiliate manager
  • Twitter
  • Video

But MGECOM has changed that with a mobile app for affiliates from the OPM. It’s too late to incorporate this option in our 2015 survey, but we’ll have to get that included for 2016.

The MGECOM app makes all of their client coupons, promos, and full program details available to affiliates.

I think this is a really good move, because so many affiliates are making a hard shift to mobile, and not necessarily keeping a computer by their side.

Plus, they won’t have to compete with all of the other distractions coming in email, which is currently the runaway preference for affiliates to receive information from affiliate networks and affiliate managers.