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.

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Q: What is the best service for recruiting super affiliates and “quality affiliates” for a new product? I’d like to outsource affiliate recruitment to a reliable service.
A: There isn’t any one [...]

Q: If you joined an affiliate program and the product was digital with a price range around $20, how would you make four sales in your first month if you had a strong desire to succeed, no money (or very little), no Web site, no mailing list, and not much experience?
A: The first thing I [...]

Q: I need to find a directory of affiliate companies to partner with on both a CPS (cost per sale) and a CPL (cost per lead) business model. Where would I find this?
A: As far as finding relevant affiliates, there isn’t really a directory out there. There are a number of techniques you could use, [...]

Q: My ads get about 1,400 to 1,500 impressions per day, and I’ve had an account for about three weeks with Commission Junction, yet I’ve had only four clicks and zero conversions. Any tips?
A: It’s a little hard to give advice when I don’t know your site focus and what you’re promoting. For all I [...]

Q: From your experience, what is the best platform for an affiliate marketing website, in terms of faster, natural search engine rankings, landing pages, etc.?

Traditional silo structured website with a multi-level navigation bar
WordPress blog with an SEO plugin by itself
WordPress blog with an SEO plugin installed in a sub-folder of a traditional silo structured website

A: [...]

Q: I run an affiliate marketing company and I am looking to hire affiliate marketers to work for me. I was wondering if you could suggest some remuneration models and incentives?
A: An affiliate marketing company? I am not sure if this is a network or merchant? I am not entirely clear on the question, [...]

Q: I am the affiliate manager for an online niche gift shop and I have a question that I would appreciate your advice on, and it may be of interest to other affiliate managers, as well. Until today, we have accepted only affiliates who run websites through our affiliate program, but we’d like to empower [...]

Q: I have been an affiliate manager since September 2008. Although I’ve been in advertising and marketing for a few years, this is new to me, and I want to be as informed and helpful to my publishers as possible. I read your book, “Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants,” which was an awesome start, and [...]

Q: Mobile marketing is coming on strong. Where can I find the best information to capitalize on the next new marketing front with the publisher/affiliate business model?
A: I’ve got two resources for you on mobile marketing. One is a new podcast from Peter Glaeser of Sponsormob and James Coops of mjelly called Mobile Space. [...]

Q: Should you include the price of affiliate products you feature on your site?
A: In my entirely unscientific findings from my own affiliate sites, where I’ve tested the inclusion of pricing, as well as without pricing, I saw better clickthroughs when the pricing was there.
There was a lot more activity on the affiliate links for [...]