Shawn Collins

The advertising tax issue was discussed this afternoon on Fox Business. Shibani Joshi talked about Amazon.com’s war against the various state plans to institute Internet advertising taxes...

Commission Junction is adding new “green” categories of affiliate programs. Categories let advertisers describe their program to publishers, who can then search for advertisers by category in order to locate those that best fit their program...

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 company, to the best of my knowledge, who offers affiliate recruitment services...

The sessions from Affiliate Summit West 2009, which took place January 11-13, 2009 at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, are all available to download or stream in the Affiliate Summit section on GeekCast.fm...

Forrester Research published a report, “Performance Marketing: How To Build An Effective Affiliate Program” earlier this month that provides an optimistic outlook for affiliate marketing...

There are three groups of people that have emerged since the announcement of the death of Michael Jackson yesterday: devastated fans, haters, and marketers. Well, if we drew up a Venn diagram, most marketers probably also belong to one of the first two camps, too...

I just recently got new running shoes and hit the track for the first time yesterday. I am trying to work up my stamina, so I am starting out alternating quarter miles with jogging and walking for a total of three miles. My goal is to run a 5k in my town in a few weeks...

The Associated Press reported earlier this week that the FTC plans to monitor blogs for disclosure. The practice has grown to the degree that the Federal Trade Commission is paying attention...

Download audio file (affiliatething-062209.mp3) This week on the Affiliate Thing podcast, Shawn Collins was solo and he talked about the return of the advertising tax in the California budget bill, a LinkShare Symposium preview, and MD affiliates getting together over crabs to learn more about the...

There is a lot of buzz on Twitter this morning about the return of the advertising tax in the California budget bill. Brook Schaaf Tweeted that Amazon will drop California affiliates if the advertising tax is enacted, and Lisa Picarille Tweeted that she’s headed to Sacramento to fight the bill...

I am heading across the Hudson River for the LinkShare Symposium tomorrow and just wanted to share some highlights (to me, at least). The networking starts this evening with an open dinner in The Living Room at the Standard Hotel, which is the official hotel of the LinkShare Symposium...

Download audio file (10GoldenRulesPodcast-Episode41.mp3) I met up with Jay Berkowitz of Ten Golden Rules for some dinner and conversation at Search Engine Strategies NYC a few months back...

I got a Tweet from @samharrelson this morning that he was being terminated from the Amazon affiliate program due to state advertising tax legislation...

Affiliate Summit and buy.at are hosting a Tax Talk & Crab Feast on Thursday, July 9 in Baltimore, MD at the buy.at office. We’ll be getting together starting at 4pm for a discussion on the advertising tax legislation, the impact on affiliate marketers, and how to fight it...

Download audio file (affiliatething-061509.mp3) This week on the Affiliate Thing podcast, Shawn Collins and Lisa Picarille talked about the Facebook username rush, the launch of the Affiliate Summit AffStat Report, and a lawn full of pink flamingos...

The 2009 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report is now available for free at http://affstat.com/. The report can be viewed online or downloaded. Over four-hundred and fifty affiliates were surveyed on their methods, preferences, and strategies for the 2009 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report...

LinkShare has announced the finalists for the 2009 LinkShare Golden Link Awards. The awards are taking place during the LinkShare Symposium on June 23 in New York City. As LinkShare has done in past years, they’ve got a fun comedian host. This time around it’s Joan Rivers...

BrandVerity has launched PoachMark, a service to help brands identify and stop trademark abuse in paid search ads. PoachMark identifies the websites, keywords and affiliate IDs used by affiliates as they run campaigns in paid search...

This week I decided to incorporate some more types of exercise into my routine. I went running for the first time since 1994 or so. This run revealed to me that I have horrible stamina and I’m very out of shape...

Early bird pricing for Affiliate Summit East 2009, taking place August 9-11, 2009 in New York City, ends June 12, 2009...

I am a big advocate of offering email as a subscription option for RSS feeds. Not only does it give people another choice to consume RSS feeds, but this option has been far more popular among reader of my blogs than subscribing with RSS readers...

The 2009 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report will be available for free on Monday, June 15. Over four-hundred and fifty affiliates were surveyed on their methods, preferences, and strategies for the 2009 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report...

It’s been a few years since I encouraged affiliate marketers to secure their names on MySpace. Since then, tons of social media sites have cropped up, and there are services like Knowem where you can secure your user name across many social sites at once...

The sixth issue of FeedFront, the official magazine of Affiliate Summit, is at the printer and it will be hitting mailboxes later this month. Issue six will also be distributed at the Linkshare Symposium East in NYC on June 23, 2009...

Download audio file (affiliatething-060809.mp3) This week on the Affiliate Thing podcast, Shawn Collins and Lisa Picarille talked about speakers lined up from Affiliate Summit, winners of the a4uAwards, and the ICANN Uniform Rapid Suspension System...

Advertising.com has a new initiative is to make their display network more accessible to small and mid-sized advertisers. The new product to serve this market is called BidPlace...

Download audio file (brandmouthing-12.mp3) This week on the Brandmouthing podcast, I talk about using a free domain typo generator from DomainTools.com to protect your brand...

The zanox affiliate network announced a new application store a few months back. The zanox App Store includes a quality benchmark system to help users identify the most successful applications, zanox AdRank that indicates how the applications are performing, and a satisfaction rating system...

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...

a4uAwards 2008 Winners from matthew wood on Vimeo. The a4uAwards took place June 2, 2009 in London, and the winners have been announced on the a4uAwards blog...

I tried out my new H20 Audio Amphibx Waterproof Armband to listen to music while swimming laps. It was great to have music while swimming, and the sound was great just below the surface, but increasingly lower as I swam lower in the pool...

Affiliate Summit has launched a new job board for affiliate marketers. We get lots of inquiries from companies looking to hire an affiliate manager, as well as folks looking to move on to a new affiliate marketing job...

Download audio file (brandmouthing-11.mp3) This week on the Brandmouthing podcast, I talk about companies that use freebie emails like @comcast.net when promoting their business...

Download audio file (affiliatething-060109.mp3) This week on the Affiliate Thing podcast, Shawn Collins and Lisa Picarille talked about the Inbound Marketing Summit in Dallas last week, Internet Week in NYC, LinkShare’s Bento Box, and a change to Google AdSense Link Units...

I heard about an article in Forbes on Wicked Fire a couple days ago and was curious to read the piece. But I was surprised by the position of the article, “Taxing a Virtual Presence,” by Lee Gomes...

There is a resource page for bloggers covering Affiliate Summit East 2009, taking place August 9-11, 2009 in New York City...

Google AdSense now displays an image ad to the bottom of each of link unit pages, and they indicate that their testing showed revenue improvements for many affiliates. Just like regular AdSense, these image ads are contextually targeted, based on the link unit topic users clicked to reach the ads...

Download audio file (inbound-marketing-summit-2009-edited.mp3) The “Five Successful Strategies for Monetizing Blogs” presentation was given by Affiliate Summit Co-founders Missy Ward and Shawn Collins at the Inbound Marketing Summit on May 27, 2009 in Dallas, TX...

LinkShare has launched a new area called LinkShare’s Bento Box (what’s a Bento Box?) where you can find all their early-stage features and 3rd party plug-ins...