I got an email today from a stranger. It’s an email I get a few times a week from desperate people that are looking to make money fast.

It’s almost as if they’re on the same template with these three components:

• Something terrible has happened (sick family, lost job, bad investments, etc.).
• They found me on Google.
• How can they make money really fast in affiliate marketing?

I might as well set up a canned response in Gmail, because I invariably send them all the same answer, but with slightly different words.

I explain that affiliate marketing can be a great supplement to income, but it’s a slow grind to make that supplemental cash, and most people will quit before their first modest check.

Back in 1997 when I first got started as an affiliate, I had low expectations. After all, who was getting paid for putting up sites back then? Certainly not anybody I knew. They all had conventional jobs like me. We got on trains and commuted to the city.

But slowly, money started coming in. Not a lot, mind you, and it wasn’t proportionate to the time I was putting in. I might have averaged 50% of minimum wage my first couple months.

Then I was getting enough to pay for my hosting (a common goal for affiliates back in the 90s). I persevered, and other bills started getting covered. But I was way far away from making my affiliate action into a career.

At the same time, I was working a 9-5 on weekdays. I was also serving as the weekend sports editor for NJ.com (pulling down Newark Star Ledger sports stories by FTP and converting them from text to HTML – I got to write the headlines, too). This was 6am to 9am every Saturday and Sunday for $20/hour, and I was ecstatic to make such a grand rate.

I was also running a site for a ticket broker, and making online birth announcements by hand. I was scraping nickels and dimes where I could.

As time passed, I was able to drop some other projects and focus more on affiliate marketing. After a couple or three years, I was making more as an affiliate than I made at my first job.

That was hardly an overnight success – more like 1,000 overnights. All these years later (going on 13 as an affiliate), I supplement my income with affiliate action.

Long story short… if you want to make money as fast as I did, go out and work seven days a week, live lean, and be patient.

Oh yeah, and don’t buy those ebooks, videos, or whatever else that promise you the secret to fast money. Those are only fast money for the huckster selling them, and you’ll just be deeper in the hole.

This post originally appeared on the Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

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Download audio file (affiliatething-110909.mp3)

This week on the Affiliate Thing podcast, Shawn Collins and Lisa Picarille talked about seeing Miley Cyrus in concert, ad:tech New York, the Yankees winning the World Series, and heading to Pubcon.

Also, Content Revenue Strategies panel on affiliate marketing, Loren Feldman’s Audience, Twitter Lists, the Droid phone, and affiliate links on Twitter.

Show Links

• Affiliate Marketing: A Better Alternative?
• Photos from Game 6 of the World Series
• Shawn’s picture from Yankee Stadium on Thornton Tomasetti site
• You Should Have Been in the Audience
• Will Performance Marketing Save the Advertising Industry?
• Curating Twitter Lists
• Amazon Affiliates Integrate with Twitter
• Are You Thinking About Switching to the Droid?
• Coupon Affiliates, Are You Worthless?
• How to Deal with Coupon Affiliates

Subscribe to the Affiliate Thing RSS feed or listen on iTunes. You can also send a blank e-mail to affiliatething@aweber.com to get each podcast delivered by e-mail.

This post originally appeared on the Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

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I am going to be running in the inaugural Damon Runyon 5K Run/Walk for Cancer Research at Yankee Stadium this coming Sunday and I need your support.

The 5k will actually take place inside Yankee Stadium, and runners will get to explore the Stadium and finish with a lap around the warning track that circles the field while raising funds to support cancer research.

100% of the money I raise will be used by the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation to fund innovative research by today’s most brilliant young scientists, who are racing to find the causes and cures for all types of cancer.

Any amount helps! So far, I have raised $2,420 and my goal is $3,500.

For 63 years this cancer charity has selected and supported the rising stars of science – cancer researchers who have great potential to achieve breakthroughs in how we diagnose, treat and prevent cancer. So far, the Foundation has funded more than 3,200 scientists, including 11 Nobel Laureates.

Please do what you can to sponsor me for the run.

And if you’d like to run, I’ve set up a team and would love to run with you. You can join my team “Affiliate Summit”, and Affiliate Summit will cover your $50 registration fee for the 5k run.

This post originally appeared on the Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

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AWeber has launched a new Web form builder that enables users to create highly customizable signup forms directly in their accounts, instead of just taking the basic form HTML and editing it in another program.

Some highlights of the new form builder:

• Pre-created templates in a variety of colors, styles and sizes.
• Advanced design tools – customize submit buttons, form colors/sizes, labels and more.
• Dynamic thank you pages with a video option.
• Detection of the email program subscribers are most likely using (Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, Outlook, Mac Mail, etc.).
• Ability to insert a privacy policy with one click.

I’ve been using AWeber for quite a while for email newsletters and subscriptions by email to the RSS of my blogs – this company continually impresses me with the added features. I’d highly advise anybody in need of an email list solution to check out AWeber.

Video: Inside AWeber: Rethinking The Web Form Builder

This post originally appeared on the Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

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Commission Junction has posted the video from a panel I was on at CJU this past September called Navigating the Internet Advertising Tax.

Other panelists were Jonathan Johnson, President of Overstock; Brook Schaaf of Schaaf Consulting; and David Lewis, CEO of Cashbaq.

Kerri Pollard, General Manager of Commission Junction, moderated the panel.

Watch the video at http://www.cj.com/news/internet_tax_cju.html and you can download the slides to follow along.

For more on the conference, read my recap of CJU 2009.

This post originally appeared on the Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

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I was on a panel, Affiliate Marketing: A Better Alternative?, last Thursday at Content Revenue Strategies, a conference that was co-located with ad:tech New York.

The moderator was Steve Schaffer, Founder and CEO of Offers.com, and the panelists were as follows:

• Will Martin-Gill, Director, eBay Partner Network
• Peter Bordes, CEO, MediaTrust
• Shawn Collins, Affiliate, Blogger and Co-Founder, Affiliate Summit
• Brook Schaaf, Affiliate and CEO, Schaaf Consulting
• Gil Abir, VP, Corporate Partnerships, Payoneer, Inc.

The session was not recorded, but you can see the Affiliate Marketing: A Better Alternative? slides online. Here is the description from the panel:

In today’s economy, everyone is looking for new sources of revenue and new ways to grow. For mid-long tail publishers, affiliate marketing could be the perfect fit. In 2007, web proprietors paid out several billions of dollars to affiliates globally, yet that’s only the tip of the iceberg for this widely untapped medium. As the recession squeezes ad and marketing budgets, many businesses are committing more resources to performance-based programs like affiliate marketing, making this an opportune time for savvy publishers to join the game. At the same time, consumers are spending more time online researching products and pricing, growing savvy to ignoring the often questionable network ads shown to them on their favorite blogs. This leaves the door wide open for high-quality publishers to better engage and inspire trust in their customers through affiliate marketing. On this panel, experienced affiliates and advertisers will discuss the ins and outs of affiliate marketing, highlight the key areas of opportunity and offer tips and best practices to help new affiliates achieve maximum ROI.

It was a good, interactive discussion about the state of the industry, and there was lots of Q&A. I was sort of surprised by the lack of affiliates in the crowd – just a dozen or less, with the majority of folks there being focused solely on AdSense.

Although, when asked how many were working in affiliate marketing and AdSense, way more people raised their hands than when asked which were doing affiliate marketing. Either I was confused by the question, or they were.

Other than the time I was on the panel, I spent the two days of ad:tech New York at the Affiliate Summit booth.

It was great to chat with the hundreds of people that came by to learn more about Affiliate Summit or say hello. I’ll be back at the booth this week during WebmasterWorld’s PubCon in Las Vegas. And I’ll be on a panel called Will Performance Marketing Save the Advertising Industry? out there, too.

Anyhow, the highlight of ad:tech was most certainly last Wednesday night when a bunch of us headed to the Bronx to see the Yankees win their 27th World Series.

This post originally appeared on the Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

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I, audience.

Yesterday marked the first Audience conference, organized by Loren Feldman of 1938 Media, at the Hudson Theatre in New York City.

This was a unique event where the focus was on the audience, and there were groundrules out of respect for the speakers and fellow audience members – no Twitter, no open laptops, no photos, no live streaming, etc.

For the longest time, we refused to have WiFi in session rooms at Affiliate Summit. I think it’s rude to speakers and attendees that want to pay attention.

But we finally assimilated. Let’s hope Loren doesn’t.

The crowd got together for cocktails the evening before, so I did snap a picture or two there.

At most conferences, I preoccupy myself with taking pictures to post to Flickr and Facebook. This time, I was just listening, enjoying, and learning.

I’ve seen many of the speakers who were at Audience in other venues, such as Brian Clark, Rae Hoffman, and Jeremy Schoemaker, but they were different and better here. It was intimate, candid, engaging, and fascinating to hear their stories.

Many others I was seeing for the first time that were equally top shelf, such as David Binkowski, Dan Farber, Joe Jaffe, Andrew Keen, and Rachel Marsden.

I am hesitant to say I had a favorite, because I was bowled over by so many of them, but if pressed, it would be Jason Calacanis. He related a story I’ve heard many times about his start, but from other people. It was immensely more enjoyable to hear him tell it.

After each speaker, I’d have some sort of thing I’d think it would be great to chat about with them, and then they would be followed by another interesting character, and again I’d be absorbed in the latest speaker.

A really cool thing was that these speakers were the stars when they were on the theatre stage, but afterwards they mixed back into the audience. None of the pretentions of “big” speakers I’ve seen in the past who slipped out the back to avoid mixing with the commoners.

But I’ve got to say the star of the show was Loren Feldman with his multiple roles as Emcee, interviewer, host, etc. Maybe Loren kept it locked down from the outside, so the big secret wouldn’t get out – that he’s an incredibly warm, generous, kind guy.

Don’t miss the next chance to be in the Audience.

This post originally appeared on the Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

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Q: Any ecommerce store whose checkout includes a coupon prompt will have the issue of paying out affiliate commissions for sales that were already in their shopping carts.

To clarify for those who don’t know why this is a huge issue: if a merchant is buying traffic and then ends up taking both a discount off the retail price and paying affiliate commissions on the same sale those sales my cease to be profitable. They could even end up losing money on them.

A: I think one problem here is that you’re looking at your affiliates as some sort of adversaries, rather than partners.

It’s you’re own setup that is causing the conflict… not the affiliates.

The simple answer is that any affiliate that doesn’t provide a net gain for you in your transactions shouldn’t be in your affiliate program.

In this case, I don’t think you should assign blame to these coupon affiliates, as they’re performing as they are supposed to by delivering targeted leads.

I would sugggest either revising your payout structure immediately or reaching out to these particular affiliates and explaining the situation.

Then, you may be able to come up with a creative solution.

I don’t think any affiliates will be particularly excited about slashing their commissions, but it comes down to the EPCs they can generate, and if those numbers are working for them, they’ll continue working with you.

In the end, if it doesn’t work out for either you or the affiliates, just end the relationship and move on.

Video: How to Deal with Coupon Affiliates

This post originally appeared on the Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

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The Affiliate 2.0 Litmus Test panel from Affiliate Summit West 2007, which took place January 21-23, 2007 in Las Vegas, NV.

• Stephanie Agresta, CEO, Stephanie Agresta Consulting (Moderator)
• Glenn Meyers, Founder and CEO, myTriggers.com
• Wayne Porter, Co-founder, ReveNews.com
• Tim Storm, CEO, FatWallet, Inc.
• Andrew Weinreich, CEO, MeetMoi.com

Successful companies today embraced 2.0 long before the term was coined. This panel will explore the various definitions of Web 2.0 through the lenses of pioneers and performance marketing companies.

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.

Video: The Affiliate 2.0 Litmus Test

This post originally appeared on the Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

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Amazon has launched a new feature for affiliates called Share on Twitter.

Affiliates can access Share on Twitter from the Site Stripe and post to their Twitter account from Amazon detail pages in two clicks.

When clicking on the Share on Twitter button in the Site Stripe, a new window will open and an Amazon-generated message is pre-populated in the ‘What are you doing?’ text area of your Twitter account (you may be asked to log in to your Twitter account).

The message will include a shortened URL that includes the affiliate tracking ID.

Affiliates with feedback on the Share on Twitter feature are encouraged to use #AMZNSOT on Twitter when discussing it.

The Share on Twitter feature lauches just a week after LinkShare made their #tweetshop tool available for affiliates to Tweet affiliate links from the LinkShare interface.

This post originally appeared on the Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

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