Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins Affiliate marketing news and opinion from Shawn Collins, an affiliate marketer since 1997, co-founder of Affiliate Summit and author of Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants.

It’s time for the 8th annual AffStat survey of affiliate marketing statistics. The survey is now open through February 28, 2010.
This AffStat survey is focused on affiliates, so please do not complete the survey unless you are an affiliate.
Data from the AffStat survey will be published in future editions of FeedFront Magazine (get [...]

The second AffiliateBenchmarks report has been published with general insights on affiliate marketing, as well as data geared towards both affiliates and merchants.

Some findings from the report…

The majority of affiliates belong to between 1 and 10 programs, with the largest group being members of 2-5 programs.
Nearly half of the respondents stated that they promote 10 [...]

I wrote an article, State of the Affiliate Marketing Industry – 2009, for the current issue of Website Magazine.
The numbers behind the numbers in the performance marketing space.
Many small details combine to make for a successful affiliate program. And they can all be summed up in one tenet for affiliate managers: Ask your affiliates [...]

I’ve been hearing a lot about AffiliateReporting.com, but hadn’t had a chance to dig into it until this week… and I am very impressed.
If you’re not familiar with AffiliateReporting.com, it’s a search engine marketing (SEM) software platform designed for affiliates. The suite of SEM tools come from m o v e software, and the software [...]

Americans shopping online miss the personalized experience of visiting a brick and mortal store, according to a recent survey by Harris Interactive.
The survey found that nearly 4 in 5 online shoppers (77%), who have purchased items online in the past 6 months, would like to get help from a real person before making certain online [...]

If you’re an affiliate, you could be leaving money on the table… that is if you’re a performer in affiliate programs and working at the base rate.
When I asked more than four-hundred and fifty affiliates whether they have successfully requested an increase in commission from an affiliate manager for the 2009 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report, [...]

It’s been 7 years since the Performance Marketing Summit on adware, and the debate raged for quite some time afterwards.
But do newer affiliates know about the issue? And if so, do they care?
When I asked more than four-hundred and fifty affiliates their opinion on the subject for the 2009 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report, only [...]

I rarely take note of the return days (number of days you can earn commission on a referral after somebody clicks your link and takes the commissionable action) when I sign on to promote an affiliate program. I just test the program and determine if all of the variables come together for a worthwhile ROI.
But [...]

One of the negative impacts of the advertising tax has been that merchants have chosen to kick affiliates out of their affiliate programs to avoid charging sales tax to consumers.
The assumption here is that people shopping online are less likely to make a purchase if they have to pay tax.
But when I asked “When you [...]

It’s been a little more than a year since the advertising tax started in New York and Affiliate Summit has decided to gather information from New York affiliates.
We will be conducting an impact survey from July 29, 2009 through August 31, 2009.
All affiliates who resided in New York in 2008 are encouraged to participate. The [...]