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Affiliate marketing news and opinion from Shawn Collins, co-founder of Affiliate Summit.

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Dr. Julie Gurner on Negatives of Perfectionism, Hot Dogs, and Dog Dogs

September 30, 2019 by Shawn Collins

Dr. Julie Gurner, Executive Performance Coach, podcast host, and angel investor joined me to chat on my podcast, This is Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins.

Dr Julie Gurner

I wanted to learn more about the real Julie, so I asked her a variety of questions I figured she had not been asked in previous interviews.

Topics included…

  • A seeing-eye dog statue
  • Negatives associated with perfectionism
  • Speaking French
  • Entrepreneurs and relationships
  • Hot dogs
  • Being awesome
  • Adopting an older street dog

Links from this episode

  • DrGurner.com
  • Julie on Twitter
  • Julie on Instagram
  • Julie on LinkedIn
  • The Relentless podcast

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Filed Under: Affiliate Resources Tagged With: dog, dogs, dr, french, gurner, hot, julie, perfectionism, statue, street

I Ran a Background Check on Myself

September 17, 2019 by Shawn Collins

I saw an ad online somewhere about background checks through BeenVerified, and I was curious what would be there in my own background check.

Private detective

Well, I had a good idea of what would be in there.

I was surprised when I got results, and also there were some items in there that were for another guy who shares my name.

One area that seemed funny to me was their list of possible aliases for me. Some were logical with including my middle name or initial, but then others were odd like Mickey Collins. That was one of my past dogs, but I never went by that name.

My list of previous phone numbers goes fairly far back – not as far back as my childhood home phone or my college number, but some records around 20 years old. I didn’t recognize some, but with lots of house phones and Google Voice over the years I’m not sure if they were errors or forgotten memories.

The email addresses include emails I had as far back as the mid to late 90s, including a couple on AOL.

My list of past addresses went far back, but there were some addresses in places I’ve never lived. I gave a thumbs down on those items where it says “Is this accurate?”. I am not sure if that eventually removes it from the record.

I am not sure why they provide a list of current and past neighbors, but that was interesting to me, because I didn’t know most of the names, so it probably wouldn’t benefit anybody knowing they currently or in the past lived near me.

The part that surprised me was the “Criminal & Traffic” section. I’ve had a handful of moving violations in my life and figured those would turn up, but they didn’t. Not sure what traffic infractions make the cut.

But I was surprised by an arrest that came as I result of a frat prank when I was in college. It was a misdemeanor and at the time I was told it would clear my record if I fulfilled the terms in my PBJ (probation before judgment). Well, I completed it and was off the hook, but apparently clearing the record doesn’t include the initial arrest. Doh!

My jobs and education have mostly good information, but a lot of the items are repeated in the list. I don’t know how they sourced this information, but it’s a bit of a mess.

They were spot on for my educational background – maybe that’s pulled from LinkedIn? Social media & websites were very partial for my sites, but they included lots of my social accounts.

When I got down to the assets there were properties and vehicles I’ve never owned, but they had my information, too.

Overall it was a neat process to see what others see in my background check.

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Filed Under: Affiliate Resources Tagged With: background check, BeenVerified

Chris Park on Rugby, Why He Likes the Mets, and KISS Mini Golf

September 13, 2019 by Shawn Collins

Christopher Park, Senior Affiliate Manager at JEBCommerce, joined me to chat on my podcast, This is Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins.

Chris Park

I wanted to learn more about the real Chris, so I asked him a variety of questions I figured he had not been asked in previous interviews.

Topics included…

  • How he ended up in marketing after studying English, economics, and religious studies
  • Riding on a mobile bar
  • Which pro sports teams he likes
  • Playing guitar with a Neil Diamond tribute band
  • Playing rugby in college
  • Serving on the city council

Links from this episode

  • Chris on LinkedIn
  • Chris on Facebook
  • The History of Action Park
  • The Most Insane Amusement Park Ever

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Filed Under: Affiliate Resources Tagged With: Action Park, Chris Park, city council, jebcommerce, kiss, mets, rugby

Your Journey to Becoming Unskippable by Jim Kukral

September 4, 2019 by Shawn Collins

Old school digital marketer Jim Kukral has written a new book, “Your Journey to Becoming Unskippable“, and you should take a look at it.

Your Journey to Becoming Unskippable by Jim Kukral

Jim discusses how to make an impact in today’s distracted world to make the most of your life and work.

If you’ve read any of Jim’s previous books, you already know the conversational tone that he writes in; but for anybody new to Kukral’s work, you’re in for a treat with his style.

He writes a different kind of business book. I’ve got a big collection of business books, and many are a chore to get through with the heavy use of buzzwords and overly complicated descriptions or processes.

You won’t get that with Your Journey to Becoming Unskippable, and that makes the advice so much easier to digest and implement.

Your Journey to Becoming Unskippable provides you with practical ideas, no-nonsense approaches, and honest advice to make your business or self unskippable.

In addition to this new book, Jim has also co-written a book with Lisa Picarille titled The Unskippable Handbook For Dealing with JERKS, IDIOTS & TERRIBLE People.

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Filed Under: Affiliate Resources Tagged With: Jim Kukral, Unskippable, Your Journey to Becoming Unskippable

SEMrush is Great to Stay on Top of Your Search Marketing

August 20, 2019 by Shawn Collins

I have been blogging since 2004 or so – I can’t even remember at this point, but I was on Movable Type before I moved over to WordPress.

I figured if I was writing quality, original content that it was enough. But my arrogance over putting out content blindly has officially ended.

I signed up for SEMrush and I had no idea what I was not doing all this time.

SEMrush is a set of analytics reports, tools, and projects, which are campaigns for your site where you get all the necessary metrics for competitors, keyword rankings, and on-page health.

I really like it for tracking competitors and doing keyword research, as well as comparisons of domains and SEO tools.

Check out the SEMrush free trial.

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Filed Under: Affiliate Resources Tagged With: SEMrush

Know When It is Time to Leave

August 5, 2019 by Shawn Collins

I was really excited on the morning of September 11, 2001. It was a gorgeous, sunny day in New York City as I headed into my job at ClubMom.com.

My dog Mickey when I lived across the river from the World Trade Center

My CMO with an impressive MBA from an Ivy-League school forced me to pause the affiliate program for the summer, even though it was cash positive with every lead and doing great. But that’s a discussion for another day.

Anyhow, September 11, 2001, was the day I was tasked with resurrecting the affiliate program. It was on Be Free (a popular affiliate network at the time) and I had an email scheduled in BFAST (their technology that had to be installed locally!) to hit all the affiliates that afternoon announcing the return of the affiliate program.

As I was finishing up my everything bagel and strawberry Yoo-hoo I got an email from one of the IT guys. It was sent to the whole company and it was a breaking news alert from CNN about a plane hitting the World Trade Center. The idea of that was impossible in my mind and I thought he must have been trying to make some bad joke.

But no, it was real. Somebody wheeled out a TV on a cart to a conference room and turned it on. It was reminiscent of 15 years earlier when a TV cart was brought into my class in high school for coverage of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion.

One big difference, though. The Space Shuttle was way far away from me when it exploded. The World Trade Center was a couple of miles away. I was in shock. We all were. I alternated between watching and chatting with friends and family on AIM. Then I saw a plane hit the South Tower on TV.

The bosses were telling us to stay calm and stay put. Then the South Tower collapsed before my eyes on TV. I needed to get out of there.

I chatted with some people and then gathered my things to try and make my way home. In addition to being totally freaked out, my now 17-year-old daughter Lexie was due to be born on September 27, 2001, and I wanted to live to see her birth.

That might sound overly dramatic now, but nobody knew what the hell was going on then, except that this was apparently terrorism. And our office was a couple of blocks from the Empire State Building. I figured that could be the next target and I didn’t want to be there to find out.

So, I headed over to my supervisor’s office to tell her I was heading out. She said, “No, you can’t leave.” It was at that moment that my fight or flight instinct kicked in. My first thought was to fight, and I was going to do that by saying, “Fuck you.” But I chose flight and just left.

As I headed down Fifth Avenue towards 34th Street, where I was going to hang a right towards Penn Station, I heard thundering noise across my whole body. People in the street were screaming and running.

I looked up and right there in front of me, the North Tower was collapsing. I froze. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. It was too much to handle. I watched the whole thing crumble and I was in shock. Shortly after, I snapped out of it and started running towards Penn Station to escape from New York by way of an NJ Transit train.

It was all a blur. Some people were walking There was screaming and crying in every direction, and I was running as fast as I could in jeans. Finally, I got to Penn Station and sprinted down to the tracks to jump on the next Jersey bound train. I got a seat and about 30 seconds later the doors closed, and the train began to move. The train erupted in cheers that lasted about ten seconds. Then it stopped.

We sat there for a while and they wouldn’t let us off. Finally, they announced that there may be explosives in the tunnel, and we should safely evacuate the train. I’d like to say I sat there and did the women and children first thing. But a few years earlier I saw those guys die in the Titanic movie. I broke out ahead of everybody and ran all the way to the Hudson River to get away from buildings and people and everything.

I tried frantically to make a phone call and say I was on the way home, but there was no getting a phone signal. I walked into a line of people about ten blocks long waiting to get on a Circle Line Cruise boat to cross over to New Jersey.

When I finally got on the boat there was an eerie calm. We started moving south towards lower Manhattan before cutting over and pulling into a dock in Weehawken, NJ. I didn’t know what to do and wandered off the boat until I saw an NJ Transit bus. I asked the driver where it was going, and he said they were taking everybody to Giants Stadium. I just wanted to get away, so I got on board.

After they brought us to Giants Stadium there wasn’t a plan for moving on from there. Bus after bus unloaded people and we all walked around confused and flustered and hot and thirsty. They were not allowing traffic in – only out. So, I got an idea – I took a piece of paper out of my bag and wrote the name of the town where I lived: MILLBURN.

I stood along the road hoping to hitchhike. And I was ecstatic that a car pulled over within ten minutes. It was a station wagon that already had like ten people in there and they let me jam in with them. The driver was some guy who worked for the Giants. We rode mostly in silence while hosts on the AM station WABC tried to make sense of things for themselves and us. There was all sorts of confusion and misinformation.

The highways were empty, so we made good time. I was the third or fourth to be dropped off and they let me out at my local train station where I’d parked that morning for the commute. There were literally no cars gone, yet. The lot was packed. I am pretty sure I was the first one to make it back. I wondered how many of my fellow commuters weren’t making it back that day or any day. I learned later that eight guys from my town were killed.

Over the course of the day, I was thinking a lot about how I was told I couldn’t leave. I had to leave, and I really didn’t like that feeling of being told I couldn’t. It weighed on me and I just couldn’t shake it. I spent the rest of that fall in a daze, except for the birth of my daughter, Lexie, on October 2, 2001.

My daughter Lexie born weeks after September 11

I was so wrecked by the whole thing that I was asking the obstetrician, during the birth of my daughter, about the risks of Anthrax exposure, as there was some monster mailing it to places in NYC after 9/11.

I started to get a grip on things in 2002 and figured out my first step in leaving the company. I started my own OPM company on the side to see if that could take off and replace my day job. The affiliate program management gigs started taking off, and then a random conversation with Missy Ward turned into us starting Affiliate Summit. We registered the .com on May 19, 2003.

That was the final thing I needed to leave my job for good. We held the first Affiliate Summit on November 3, 2003, in New York City. It was 783 days after 9/11. Shortly after I quit my job.

Know when it’s time for you to leave and don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t.

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Filed Under: Affiliate Resources Tagged With: 2001, Affiliate Summit, Anthrax, ClubMom, fight or flight, Lexie Collins, Missy Ward, New York City, NYC, September 11, Space Shuttle Challenger, World Trade Center

Bhavik Modi on Karaoke, Steak in Las Vegas, and Flight Upgrades

July 29, 2019 by Shawn Collins

Bhavik Modi joined me to chat on my podcast, This is Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins.

Bhavik Modi

I wanted to learn more about the real Bhavik, so I asked him a variety of questions I figured he had not been asked in previous interviews.

Topics included…

  • Not singing karaoke
  • Interning for the State of CT Teacher’s Retirement Board
  • Getting upgraded on US Airways
  • Sporadic Instagram posts
  • Gordon Ramsey Steak in Las Vegas

Links from this episode

  • Bhavik on Facebook
  • Bhavik on LinkedIn

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Filed Under: Affiliate Resources Tagged With: Bhavik Modi, Gordon Ramsey, Instagram, karaoke, Las Vegas, steak, US Airways

Chris Brogan on Ketamine, Farmer’s Markets, and Trans Day of Visibility

July 18, 2019 by Shawn Collins

Chris Brogan, President of Chris Brogan Media, joined me to chat on my podcast, This is Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins.

Chris Brogan

I wanted to learn more about the real Chris, so I asked him a variety of questions I figured he had not been asked in previous interviews.

Topics included…

  • Quiet by Susan Cain
  • His book “Superheroes in the Basement”
  • Trans Day of Visibility and his son Vincent
  • Giving a middling review to a farmer’s market
  • Pet Sematary, the book and movies
  • Using Ketamine to treat depression

Links from this episode

  • ChrisBrogan.com
  • Chris on Twitter
  • Chris on LinkedIn
  • Chris on Instagram

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Filed Under: Affiliate Resources Tagged With: Chris Brogan, depression, ketamine, Pet Sematary, Susan Cain, trans

Dennis Yu on Pizza Toppings, 1k Emails/Day, and the Golden State Warriors

May 30, 2019 by Shawn Collins

Dennis Yu, CEO of BlitzMetrics, joined me to chat on my podcast, This is Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins.

Dennis Yu and Shawn Collins

I wanted to learn more about the real Dennis, so I asked him a variety of questions I figured he had not been asked in previous interviews.

Topics included…

  • Harry Perry of Venice Beach
  • Pineapple on pizza
  • How often he is on the road
  • Why he gave one star to the W Hotel in Scottsdale
  • Managing 1,000 emails a day
  • Technology used by the Golden State Warriors

Links from this episode

  • Dennis on LinkedIn
  • Dennis’ blog post on managing email
  • My Biz Markie karaoke about BlitzMetrics

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Filed Under: Affiliate Resources Tagged With: dennis yu, email, email management, golden state warriors, Harry Perry, pizza, W. Hotel

Corey Newhouse on Working in Hip-Hop, Collecting Cars, and JetBlue

May 23, 2019 by Shawn Collins

Corey Newhouse, Founder and CMO of ICG America, joined me to chat on my podcast, This is Affiliate Marketing with Shawn Collins.

Shawn Collins and Corey Newhouse

I wanted to learn more about the real Corey, so I asked him a variety of questions I figured he had not been asked in previous interviews.

Topics included…

  • Being a hip-hop promoter in the 80s and 90s
  • Moving to Austin
  • Collecting big and small cars
  • Our lack of mutual friends on Facebook
  • Getting a BA in Economics
  • Why JetBlue is his favorite airline

Links from this episode

  • Corey on LinkedIn
  • Corey on Instagram
  • Corey on eBay
  • ICG America

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Filed Under: Affiliate Resources Tagged With: Austin, Corey Newhouse, diecast cars, hip-hop- JetBlue

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