I gave a presentation on communicating with affiliates at the recent eComXpo, and I received a number of questions at the conclusion of the presentation.
For the benefit of anybody that wasn’t able to attend, here are the questions and answers from the Q&A after my presentation.
Do you have any tracking for your blogs to know what the readership or distriubution is. Any tools your using?
Yes, I get stats through a free service called Feedburner.
Is the sales guide accessible to anyone, only after they’ve signed up or only by invitation?
Here’s one that’s easily accessible: link is no longer active
Have you published any tips on how to drive additional traffic to blogs?
Here’s my most recent one: link is no longer active
Why so much controversy surrounding forums lately?
I don’t think it’s really anything new – it’s just that the forum with all of the action changes from time to time. Three or four years ago, when ReveNews.com was the forum du jour (now they’re focused more on blogs), the contentious threads were frequent. Many folks from those days still haunt the current forums.
What about the length of your newsletter? I’ve seen your newsletters — they seem really long. Any thoughts on that?
I generally feature 5 or 6 items in the newsletters. In many cases, I’ll include an excerpt of a tip or other resource, so if there is interest, they can click for more extensive information. Also, I make them in HTML with links in the table of contents to jump down to the specific parts of the newsletter, so affiliates can easily navigate to the parts they want.
Would you suggest a different communications strategy for “super” affiliates?
Absolutely – I’ve found that most “super” affiliates don’t care to hear from me as often. And the fact that they’ve attained that status generally indicates that they’re on top of things. I send a monthly newsletter to all, but offer more hand holding to newbies.
Any way to know what the blog syndication is?
Blogs are in a format known as RSS (real simple syndication) that enables you to syndicate your content to other sites. For instance, if you check out Kolimbo, you can see how KowaBunga! is syndicating my AffiliateTip.com blog headines and part of the posts.
Are any of your affiliates effectively using rss to move information to their users / members?
There are two sides to that question. Yes, an increasing number of affiliates are utilizing RSS to communicate deals and information to their audience. But also, I am actively recruiting bloggers as affiliates, since they often have a loyal, responsive following and frequently updated content.
Blogs seem to be working for you. Are you going to increase your use of them?
Yes, I’ve launched a blog for each of the affiliate programs that I manage, as well as a general affiliate marketing blog. I continually try to condition affiliates to visit the blogs for information and updates, and it’s catching on. It helps that My Yahoo!, MSN and other user friendly enviroments are enabling users to read RSS feeds. I also started using a tool called CaRP that syndicates these feeds. I really think blogs are the communication tool of the future, as email has become so overwhelmed with spam, spam filters, etc.