by Tricia on August 20, 2010
While I was checking out all of the SEO functions of some new Firefox extensions I installed, I happened upon Archive.org and the Wayback Machine. Out of curiosity, I went back and looked at the first week of the first site that I ever launched. It was 2004 and my site Helping Moms Connect was brand new. After my initial laugh at the site, I started looking more closely at what has changed and what has stayed the same over the last 6 years. Although I completely scrapped the site a little over a year ago and started fresh, it was interesting to see what stayed the same and what changed.
See Helping Moms Connect in 2004
See Helping Moms Connect now
Major differences:
Then: Frontpage (which most other people at my skill level at the time were using)
Now: Wordpress (which most other people at my skill level are now using)
Then: Pink! I thought if it was for women, it should be pink. Thankfully, I realized I was wrong.
Now: Green and yellow. A little more neutral.
Then: No advertisements. I hadn’t discovered affiliate marketing yet.
Now: A few banner ads on the main site and some tasteful text links.
Then: An email address and phone number to communicate with me.
Now: Twitter, RSS feeds, and newsletter.
Similaries:
When I look past those huge differences, I actually end up with a whole lot of similarities. A straightforward header with our name. Basic navigation to categories. Articles for moms that are updated at least a couple of times each week with female-friendly topics.
Despite a complete overhaul of the site, including moving it from hand coded HTML to a blog platform, I stayed true to my original purpose when I started the site. I always wanted Helping Moms to be a source of good content first and revenue second (and that is definitely still the case!).
How have your sites evolved over the years? Are you still true to your initial purpose? Has what you learned online changed your perspective and as a result your website?
by Tricia on August 18, 2010
I’ve only been home from Affiliate Summit for 8 hours and it’s already time to start thinking about next steps. I’ve brought in the luggage, spent time with my kids, ate a regular meal at the kitchen table, and read through all of my emails, Tweets, and Facebook posts since Saturday. At the same time, a thousand new ideas are running through my mind and I am trying to channel what is left of my energy into capitalizing on the education and networking I took away from the conference. With so many things to do, it can be daunting to figure out how to make up the work you missed while also making the most of the new opportunities that you have because of the conference. Here’s my take on an action plan. Not everything will apply to you, and you may need to change up the order, but hopefully it will help you get on the right track.
- Business Priorities. Make your way through anything that is an absolute priority for your business that you missed in the last few days. This may be running reports, responding to customer service emails, or something else. Essentially, it’s anything that absolutely cannot wait another 24 hours. Do that first so that you can feel comfortable continuing to focus on the Affiliate Summit follow-ups for another day.
- Sort the Physical “Stuff.” Pull out everything that you brought home and separate out business cards, notes, and swag to deal with later.
- Make Immediate Connections. One of the fastest things you can do is run through your whole stack of business cards (even the people who you do not intend to work with any time soon), and add everyone as a contact on LinkedIn or follow them on Twitter. This is just to get through everyone while you still remember who they are and where you met them. Don’t expect conversations or deals this week because everyone is busy.
- Create Prioritized Task List. Sit down for an hour and go through all of the business cards and notes that you took and make a list of everything that you would like to do as a result. Which merchants do you want to schedule follow-up meetings with? Which programs do you need to join? What SEO changes do you want to make to your sites? Make a list of everything that you would like to DO as a result of what you learned at Affiliate Summit and who you met and then prioritize them with a system like red, yellow, green or 1, 2, 3. Anything that will then help you start going down the list in order of importance as time allows.
- Start Looking at Affiliate Summit West. Incredibly, it’s only 5 months away. Think about whether you will attend, how you need to budget it now, and what you want to accomplish between now and then.
It goes without saying that things like catching up on sleep will have to be a part of the plan the next couple of days, but hopefully this will help you get started mapping out what you need to do for your business. What other tips do you have for people who are feeling overwhelmed after Affiliate Summit?
by Tricia on August 9, 2010
As I am preparing to leave for New York this weekend to attend Affiliate Summit, I am reading through all of the planning and packing and party posts. I’m going through my usual motions of getting a hair cut, picking out some new clothes, and figuring out where I left my Poken again. It all of a sudden occurred to me that I am not sure why I am going to Affiliate Summit this time. I don’t mean to suggest that I don’t know what the benefits are. It’s the one conference that I never miss. Rather, I need to figure out why I personally am attending this particular Affiliate Summit.
When I first started going back in 2006-2007, I was attending in large part to educate myself. I visited almost every single booth and attended sessions all day every day. I was also starting to network but was so overwhelmed with the basics that I didn’t do as much networking as I would have liked.
From 2008 to 2009, I stopped attending as many sessions and started focusing more on building and strengthening my network. The “parties” (mainly non-conference activities) became more important for me because I spent time caring more about the people involved in the business. I’ve found that even if someone isn’t a “business partner,” some type of business eventually comes out of most of the connections I have made at Affiliate Summit. Even if it doesn’t, my network of affiliate marketing friends is such a huge support to me in life in general that they are a priority to me now.
In the last year, I’ve spent more time on establishing my own place in affiliate marketing. Writing some articles for Feedfront, speaking at Affiliate Summit, and being a part of the mentor/newcomer program have allowed me to get my name out. In fact, I spent a good part of my time at the last few Summits just focusing on trying to be helpful to everyone else in the hopes that good karma would come back to me at some point.
Now it’s time for Affiliate Summit East 2010. I need to go into the conference with a purpose so that I can come out of it with a feeling of whether or not I achieved that purpose. My first instinct is that I need to do a little bit of everything that I have done in the past–attend some sessions to learn to be better at what I do, network with new people to expand my business, and strengthen my relationships with current friends and business partners. Maybe I have finally gotten to the point where I can take advantage of the full potential of Affiliate Summit?
What’s your purpose in attending Affiliate Summit? Is there anything that I am missing?
by Tricia on July 26, 2010
Affiliate Summit is almost here again and many affiliates and merchants are getting prepared. From clothes to business cards to travel plans, a lot goes into preparing for the conference. I’ve been attending Affiliate Summits regularly since 2007 and am finally starting to get the hang of it without too much stress. Here is a basic time frame of what you should be doing if you are serious about making the most out of the Summit:
Anytime: Start following the #ase10 hash tag on Twitter. In addition to seeing who else is attending, you will get good tips about transportation, sessions, parties, and more. Also join the Affiliate Summit Social Network to begin your networking.
One month out: Finalize your travel plans. You’ve missed the Early Bird rate to stay at the conference hotel, but you may still be able to get rooms at the Hilton at regular prices. You should also be nailing down your flights so that you are sure to get in and out at the dates and times that are most convenient for you.
Three weeks out: Order business cards, a Poken, or both. Decide how much information you want to share with everyone, including cell phone, email, and address. There are pros and cons to all of the above! I tend to only share my Twitter, email, and blogs with everyone and give out my phone number more sparingly.
Two weeks out: Read through the agenda on the website and determine which sessions you would like to attend. Read the various posts on blogs (you’ll likely see them on Twitter) that give more information about the sessions and the speakers. You’ll even find podcasts that may give you information that you won’t find anywhere else or give you a sneak peek into hearing more from the speakers. Determine your sessions first so that you know when you will have free time. (I’ll post my thoughts on sessions next week). Then start contacting your merchants and setting up individual meetings with any of them that you will not see at the Meet Market or in the Exhibit Hall. You should also start seeing a lot of information about parties at about this time. Many of them will overlap, so you will have some tough decisions to make! Order electronic items that you need like a backup battery for your laptop or cell phone.
One week out: Start gathering up your clothes, shoes, and jewelry. Shop for things like mints, gum, and eye drops as well. Read my previous post “Real Scoop on Preparing for Affiliate Summit” to see what I think about packing.
Final days: Make a list of all of the merchants and networks that you want to be sure to meet up with, including ones that you already have relationships with and ones that you want to meet. Set your business on auto-pilot or delegate as much as possible because you will want to spend every minute possible taking advantage of the conference and not doing your normal work.
I love Affiliate Summit and always get so much out of it. I hope that you will, too! Are you planning on attending? I’d love to meet you. Do you have other tips for those preparing to attend?
by Tricia on July 14, 2010
As the owner of a rewards site, I do not have a choice but to work with many different affiliate networks. That said, if I had the choice I probably wouldn’t work with a few of them. Affiliate managers and merchants often ask me which networks I like and which I do not like. Rather than complain about what I don’t like, I decided to put together my “dream network,” or what it would look like to take the best components of each and put them all together.
(As a bit of background, I’m not a “Super Affiliate” by any stretch of the imagination, but I do have some good niches and databases. I don’t market to a million people or do paid search at all. I’m pretty much your average content affiliate.)
Personal Communication: Hands down, ShareASale and buy.at do the best job of communicating on a one-on-one basis with affiliates. They make it easiest to talk to them via email, forum, Twitter, Facebook, and just about any other way that I could possibly want to talk to them. I know that I can get in touch with at least one person with either of these networks 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Troubleshooting and Problem Solving: In a way this goes along with communication, but ShareASale definitely stands out for this. I’ve sent messages via ABW forum or Twitter and gotten responses from the management team there within an hour. Actual responses to my questions and not just passing the buck. Some networks make you wait 1-2 business days for responses. That isn’t acceptable when our industry never stops. Even worse, some of the networks hide behind “help desk” email addresses and names and you can’t just communicate with someone until you get an issue resolved. It’s infuriating and it can result in lost revenue for all of us (Linkshare, I’m talking to you specifically on this one). Trouble ticket/help desk systems can work well when there is accountability behind them but they aren’t helpful when you have emergency situations or not actual point of contact.
Finding and Applying to Merchants: While no one network stands out for this, some are definitely better than others. Commission Junction makes it easy to search for and apply to a whole list of merchants at once. I also seem to get good results on my search terms, even if I do not know the exact merchant name that I am looking for.
Coupons and Discounts: This is huge for us at Sunshine Rewards and we need to automate as much as possible. It doesn’t do us any good when we get hot coupons but can only download them once a day. We end up loading the coupons manually from the emails before we can download as much as 24 hours later. Because of this, I favor the networks that allow coupons to be downloaded as they are added such as Linkshare and ShareASale. The one way that Google excels in that they allow you to decide which types of coupons and discounts you want to download.
Reporting: Obviously most affiliates are going to favor real-time reporting over batch reporting. I like when I can manipulate the data in different ways easily. ShareASale and buy.at are the best for transactions coming up quickly. Commission Junction is great for allowing easy downloads that can be manipulated in different ways. Linkshare has the easiest way to find individual product sales, which can be important for some of my niche sites.
Credit Disputing: Often we have to report when we do not get credit for a purchase. Some networks do not have a mechanism for this at all. Both Linkshare and Commission Junction make it easy to file disputes for credits, and Linkshare even lets you “escalate” a denial for further review. This helps keep track of outstanding issues and ensure that they are actually getting to the merchants.
Newsletters: I would much rather get links in a newsletter than have to click on the “Get Link” in an email to generate the links. I don’t know how much this depends on the affiliate manager, but it seems like the Google, ShareASale, and Linkshare links are most likely to come right in the newsletter. I also like the ability that some networks have to send the newsletters to multiple people in my company because I am not the one who pulls the coupon links from the newsletters.
Video: I haven’t been using too many videos through the networks lately, but ShareASale makes it easiest for me to add their links to my own videos and many of their merchants have video links now. buy.at has a new video tool but I honestly haven’t used it because I haven’t come across any good videos for merchants that I am running with them. Video on the networks doesn’t matter too much to me because I find people click on the links around the embedded video anyway.
Advanced Tools: I love the Linkshare LinkGenerator and CouponSnap. As a blogger, there is nothing simpler than navigating to a page and then clicking on the little box on my browser to generate my link. If every network had these, I would do a lot more product reviews. ShareASale offers a pretty easy way to generate a link to a specific page as well, although you do need to go into the interface and do it. I like that deep linking functionality to pages where I want to refer my visitors to a full category of products. All of the networks are hit or miss to me on how easy it is to pull links for individual products. It seems that a lot of that comes down to the merchants as well.
I could go on for hours about other features and each of the networks specifically, but you would get pretty bored. These hit the high points for me. What would your dream network look like?
