VigLink

A Recap of LinkShare Symposium West

January 26, 2012

This post is a short recap by Erin Mead, Affiliate Manager at VigLink, of LinkShare Symposium West. 

Last week I had the pleasure of heading out to San Francisco for LinkShare Symposium West – the event is hosted by LinkShare as a way to bring the organization’s merchants, publishers, agencies and team together.  Not only was it a great opportunity to skip out on the chilly Chicago weather for a few days, but as I’ve mentioned in the past, these types of events are a great opportunity to stay connected with our top merchants and strengthen relationships with new ones.  I was also able to meet with our LinkShare account manager in-person for the first time.  It is amazing how a face-to-face meeting really helps build the relationship.

Though the event is just a couple of days, it is packed with great sessions and amazing keynote speakers.  Not to mention a multitude of meetings!  I’m excited about what the coming months hold with each of the merchants I sat down with and finding innovative ways to grow our partnership with each.

The event wound-down with a cocktail hour at The Tonga Room. It was my first time at the venue and I really enjoyed it.  I will definitely be telling my friends to stop by for a drink the next time they are in town!

All together it was a great week! I’m already looking forward to next time –

Erin Mead | Affiliate Manager | VigLink

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Posted in News and Updates, Relevant Reading

Publisher Spotlight: Audizine

January 25, 2012

About Audizine

Audizine was founded a decade ago by Anthony Marino, a graphic artist and avid car enthusiast.  He started the website as a place where he and his close knit group of friends could discuss all things automotive, namely their passion for Audi. 

The site steadily grew and several years ago Anthony decided to focus full-time on building the auto-enthusiast community he started as a hobby.  Today, the site boasts a comprehensive editorial section, photo gallery, video gallery and classifieds section, in addition to the forum component which was the initial draw. 

The site also sees a sizable amount of traffic each month.  Audizine has over 77,000 community members, and nearly 1 million readers visit the site each month, collectively viewing over 5.5 million pages. 

Anthony driving a rare Audi Sport Quattro (courtesy Audi of America)

 

The Challenge: Keeping the Focus on Readers

Anthony initially turned to Google AdSense banners and market-related sponsors to cover the costs of the site, but he chose to remain cautious when it came to other monetization methods.

“My number one responsibility is to the experience and safety of our members,” said Anthony. “While I do have costs to cover, I don’t want advertisements to impede on a reader’s ability to use the site effectively. Early on I made it a point to keep the site design clean and muted. I wanted the content to shine, and certainly not be filled with advertisements. I also went into it with the mindset that I didn’t need to be the biggest Audi-enthusiast site, but I did want to be the best.”

In regards to Google AdSense, that meant keeping ads below the site fold.  And in the case of his direct relationships with advertisers, Anthony was careful to check each one out himself to verify a fit for his readers before accepting them onto the site. 

Beyond AdSense and banner ads, Anthony is very careful about other monetization methods. 

The Solution: Unobtrusive Content Monetization

In late 2010, Anthony found VigLink. The solution’s seamless integration with content was appealing, but he was unsure how much revenue it would actually generate for his site.  Because the solution appeared to be so unobtrusive, he decided to sign up and test the solution.

“The VigLink implementation was probably one of the most seamless ones we’ve had,” said Anthony. “And once VigLink was live on the site, I was extremely surprised by the amount of revenue that was coming in, particularly from something that is basically invisible. It’s the proverbial win-win!”

The VigLink service automatically affiliates outbound links to merchants and advertisers on the Audizine site, and also weaves new links into the content when it detects references to products.  When a reader clicks on a link in the site’s content that goes to a qualified online merchant, VigLink ensures the site receives a payment or commission on the resulting sale, easily and automatically.

Today, VigLink comprises around 15% of Audizine’s monthly income.  VigLink helps Anthony to continue focusing on what matters most to him: keeping Audizine a free-to-use and easy-to-navigate website with great content. 

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Posted in Publisher Spotlight

Community-Building: Necessity or Nice-to-Have?

January 23, 2012

This post is a short recap by Oliver Roup, Founder and CEO of VigLink, of Affiliate Summit West. 

Earlier this month I was in Las Vegas to lead a session on the value of community-building and social behavior at Affiliate Summit West.  It’s no surprise that social media has transformed the way consumers are reaching purchasing decisions, but it’s less clear what that means for affiliate marketers and online publishers.

During the session, I focused on the ways website owners can leverage the monumental shift towards “social-buying” by including spaces within their site where purchasing decisions are made. Easier said than done, of course, but here’s a quick recap of the things we talked about:

  1. If you are doing something “non-social,” and it works — keep doing it.  So, if you are successfully purchasing paid traffic, sending it to a landing page, and earning revenue, great. Don’t stop. But do augment.
  2. Create a framework for interaction within your site. This could be a robust commenting system or a forum component.  Facebook pages are great, as are Tweets, but building a community goes beyond what you are doing on social media sites — it brings the community to your site.
  3. Don’t overdo it. The goal of a community is to create a richer site experience for visitors, which will in turn create additional opportunities to earn revenue (via banner ad sales and affiliate marketing). If you attempt to force the monetization piece of a community — by introducing excessive advertisements or overly commercial product content — you will not succeed.  Twitter, which was founded in 2006 and has an estimated 175 million users, has only recently begun to focus on monetization (of course, this is an extreme — for most sites there is no need to wait that long or for that many community members to start monetizing — but it’s an interesting point of reference).

An increasing number of marketers are succeeding at introducing a community component to their site.  But, similar to a decade ago when some companies still considered websites “optional,” today many still view community-building as optional.  Those that realize that shaping their user-base into a community is a necessity, rather than a nice-to-have, will be leaps and bounds ahead of those that don’t in terms of traffic, revenue and influence.

A few more details on the ins and outs of community-building and driving social behavior can be found in my slides below…

Oliver Roup | Founder & CEO | VigLink

View more presentations from VigLink

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Posted in Building Communities & Forums, Content Monetization, News and Updates, Relevant Reading

Announcing ForumCon 2012: San Francisco June 12

January 23, 2012

It’s nearing that time of year again! We are pleased to announce that ForumCon 2012 will be held in San Francisco, CA on Tuesday June 12, 2012.

ForumCon is your opportunity to connect with the world’s leading forum and community managers. At past events representatives from Internet Brands, Vertical Scope, VW Vortex, phpBB, eBay, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Boardreader, Groupon and other experts in the forum space were in attendance.

What You’ll Learn

ForumCon is an annual one-day event dedicated to sharing tips, tools and best practices for managing, growing, and monetizing your forum.  The day will be anchored by keynote presentations from industry experts, but will also feature panel discussions and breakout sessions on content monetization, advertising, SEO and community management, allowing for a high degree of interaction and collaboration.

Where We’re Meeting (And How to Register!)

We’ll be meeting at the Kubuki Hotel in downtown San Francisco. Immediately following the event we’ll be hosting a complimentary cocktail hour at a nearby restaurant.

If you’ll be flying into town your airport options include San Francisco (SFO) andOakland (OAK).

If you register before the end of February, tickets are just $69.  Click here to reserve your spot!

See you in San Francisco!

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Posted in Building Communities & Forums, Company Milestones, News and Updates, Relevant Reading

[SF Blog Club] Email Marketing Do’s and Don’ts for Bloggers

January 20, 2012

At this month’s San Francisco Blog Club, we talked about email marketing, specifically how to manage your blog’s email subscriber list. A few of the key takeaways Lydia Sugarman’s shared…

DO find a way to sum up the point of your email in less than three sentences.

If you are sending blog subscribers a summary of recent blog posts, ensure that the first few sentences of the post get straight to the point. If not, be sure to include concise introductory text.

DO build an editorial calendar.

Similar to how you would plan out blog entries for any given week or month, it is crucial that you plan in advance how frequently, and with what content, you’ll be reaching out to blog subscribers.

DO offer an incentive to subscribe.

While some will surely subscribe to your blog for the daily (or weekly) updates alone, you will generate a greater number of subscribers if you sweeten the deal.  Consider offering new subscribers an eBook or other guide that directly relates to your blog’s content.

DON’T overwhelm subscribers.

Be careful not to inundate subscribers with a high volume of email. When you do send an email to subscribers, ensure that the content is relevant / timely / helpful.  Recipients will quickly unsubscribe (or worse — simply start ignoring your emails), if they perceive them to be “fluff.”

DON’T forget to measure results.

Like any other marketing initiative, track your results!  Measure open rates, as well as click-through rates — and be sure to test different email creatives and send times to find what works best for you.

Check out Lydia’s slides below for even more details on how to maximize ROI on email marketing.

Looking forward to next time!

Anna Cunningham | Social Media Manager | VigLink

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Posted in Building Communities & Forums, Publisher Best Practices, Re-Inventing Affiliate Marketing, Relevant Reading

3 Content Tips to Jump-start your January Revenue

January 11, 2012

December was a record month for online shopping, so you may be wondering how to keep your January sales strong.

Here are a few tips you can implement now to ensure your January revenue measures up!

Jump-start your Revenue

Tip 1: Help Readers Reach their Resolutions

Many of your readers have set New Years Resolutions for 2012 and many of those resolutions center around fitness and financial goals.

Help your readers achieve their goals by building content and sharing product tips that center around health and fitness, as well as financial planning.  A few easy ways to do this:

  • Share deals on gym memberships (as an example, 24 Hour Fitness, with locations across the country, is an eligible VigLink merchant).
  • Ask readers what their favorite ways to get in shape are — and the equipment they use to do so (this will encourage links to be shared).
  • Share your favorite financial planning books, and ask readers to do the same (be sure to include a link where readers can purchase each one).

Tip 2: Help Readers Keep up with their Favorite Teams

Weekends in January (in the U.S.) will be dominated by football in many homes. If your readers are some of the millions of Americans whose weekends will revolve around watching NFL playoff games, help them get the most out of it by building content around the following themes:

  • Gear for fans. NFL.com is a VigLink merchant and has fan gear for all your favorite teams. Share your favorite jerseys and other gear with your readers to generate additional clicks and revenue.
  • Memorabilia. eBay (also a VigLink merchant) has some great finds on sports memorabilia. Share your favorites with readers, and ask them to share their favorites as well.
  • Sporting equipment.  Why just watch when you can play? Share content that includes information on sporting equipment — special deals and favorite picks. DicksSportingGoods.com and SportsAuthority.com are both eligible VigLink merchants.

Tip 3: Test, Test … and then Test Some More!

Finally, be sure to use this month to A/B test content, landing pages, design, and ad options.  The risk of running an A/B test this month versus a month like December will be lower — and your wallet will thank you come the next holiday shopping season when your site is better optimized for engagement and revenue generation.

Here’s to a profitable January to each of our VigLink publishers!

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Posted in Content Monetization, Publisher Best Practices, Re-Inventing Affiliate Marketing

eBay Shares the Hottest Shopping Trends of 2011

January 9, 2012

Late last month, eBay released it’s annual “Top Shopped” list for 2011. Below is the list in infographic form.

Billed as “the pop culture crazes that inspired shoppers the most over the past year,” at first glance several of the categories may not appear explicitly product-related (unless Charlie Sheen has released action figures that we don’t know about).  However, the list provides a great deal of insight into the keywords that eBay sellers were using to describe the products that were most frequently being sold.

We hope the list will provide insight into the areas of content your readers are interested in and provide a few ideas to jump start your 2012 content creation efforts!

image courtesy of eBay

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Posted in Building Communities & Forums, Content Monetization, Publisher Best Practices, Relevant Reading, Value of Data

[Jan Blog Club Meetup] How to Increase your Email Subscriptions

January 4, 2012

Happy New Year bloggers — we are looking forward to our first meetup of 2012 for the San Francisco Blog Club!  This month Lydia Sugarman, President of Venntive, will be discussing how bloggers can grow and monetize their email subscription list.

As always, there will be free drinks, pizza — and lots of time for networking and sharing tips.

The Details

When | January 17, 2012 6:30pm – 8:30pm

Where | VigLink SF Offices in SOMA

Here’s a little bit about Lydia, our speaker for the evening…

Lydia Sugarman is president at Venntive, a groundbreaking, comprehensive customer engagement platform that is replacing the traditional model of multiple applications that require integration for a complete overview.

Ms. Sugarman, an experienced sales and marketing professional, has been helping clients from start-ups to Fortune 10 financial services companies to build awareness in the online space for more than fifteen years. Prior to that she marketed and sold syndicated television programming, negotiated IP rights internationally, produced art exhibits in Moscow and New York, and worked as a producer and 1st assistant director in independent films and music videos.   Offline, she avidly pursues cycling, swimming, hiking, reading history, great food, and great wine.

Register here, space will be limited!

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Posted in News and Updates

Access Top Affiliate Marketing Programs

December 14, 2011

Ever find the process of enrolling in, or getting approved by, a new affiliate marketing program painful?  It can mean endless emails, follow-up and hoops to jump through. Not to mention that there are literally thousands of merchants with affiliate programs, and it is frankly impossible to manually enroll in all of them.

VigLink can help. We streamline the process of accessing new affiliate programs:

  1. When you create an account with VigLink you automatically have access to over 12,500 affiliate programs. Yes, AUTOMATICALLY. This includes all the big guys (Amazon, eBay, Overstock, Zappos, etc.).  If you install VigLink on your site and start sending traffic to one of these 12,500 advertisers, you will be immediately eligible to be compensated for that traffic.
  2. For those few merchants and advertisers that wish to approve which publishers send them traffic, we do the work of getting you approved. You send us an email, and we’ll contact the advertiser to get you approved by their program.

The end result: you maximize your affiliate revenue AND save time.  You’ll avoid the scenario where you add a link to an online merchant only to realize you haven’t been approved by their program yet, and you will never have to worry about having a link that is out-of-date or expired. Plus, with VigLink’s top-tier payouts, you’ll earn more as well.

Click here to get started — and then tell us what you think!

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Posted in Merchant Best Practices, Re-Inventing Affiliate Marketing

Help for Affiliates: A Federal Sales Tax Solution

December 14, 2011

If you’ve been following along, 2011 has been a turbulent year for affiliate marketers in those states that have passed an affiliate nexus tax law.  Affiliates in impacted states have been forced to move to a different state, make do with less revenue, or in some cases, shut-down their business.  You may recall that VigLink opted to move our Chicago office to Indiana this past spring after an Affiliate Nexus tax bill passed in Illinois.

However, last month, a possible solution to the proliferation of state-level Affiliate Nexus Taxes appeared.  Federal legislation was introduced in both the House and Senate that would create a national framework for collecting sales tax at the state level on online purchases, thereby pre-empting state-level affiliate nexus tax laws that have already been enacted or proposed for passage.

We’ve long felt that a Federal solution to collecting sales tax on online purchases is the best solution to the Affiliate Nexus Tax Laws — and would lead to the reinstatement of affiliate marketing programs in affected states.  Over 60,000 affiliate marketers around the country have been affected by affiliate nexus taxes so far, making the business benefits of a national solution immediate and substantial.

As a result, we encourage you to learn more about each of these bills, and to stay up-to-date on what you can do to help as the bills progress through both the House and Senate. The Performance Marketing Association will be shifting their grassroots campaigns to focus on these Federal bills and will be sharing information on how individuals can voice their support in the near future. Submit your contact information here if you’d like to be kept up-to-date on developments.

Here’s to a great 2012 for affiliate marketers everywhere!

Posted in Relevant Reading

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