Seán Crotty

Valentine's Banners

We've made some new banners for our affiliates to promote Valentine's Day items ... and we're actually pretty proud of them.

For AllPosters.com we have:

Click Here to Buy Valentine's Day Poster!

And we already had good ones for Art.com:

You'd be amazed at how many kiss posters and photos there are ... (and I don't mean the band ...).

Article on Long Tail affiliates

I was quoted in a November 27th article, "Online affiliate marketing's renaissance", in DM News (“The News Leader in Direct, Database, and Internet Marketing”) about the resurgence in affiliate marketing, written by Jeff Molander.

My main message is:  make it easy for bloggers and social networkers to use your affiliate links.  It also helps to have hundreds of thousands of products (like the AllPosters.com and Art.com Affiliate Programs), so people will always find something relevant to their interests.

Jeff helped found the affiliate network Performics.  I know him from affiliate industry events, spoke on one of his panels, and kick affiliate ideas around with him.  He's now a principal at The Partner Maker, where they help connect premier advertisers and affiliates.

Running an affiliate site

Running an affiliate program is a lot of fun.  There are so many moving parts:  from banners to tracking to payments.

One of the most important things is staying in close touch with your affiliates.  This helps them promote your website and enables you to keep on top of anything that needs to be fixed. It also builds a relationship of trust and cooperation between you and your affiliates.

One of the things we do with the AllPosters.com affiliate site is post notices of things that the affiliates need to know.  For instance, we've just put up an "Important Announcement" about some routine maintenance we're doing on the Affiliate site (which will speed up performance).  We're not working on the main AllPosters.com site, but on the affiliates.allposters.com affiliate area.

What I want to stress to my affiliates is that their sales and commissions will continue to happen and be recorded during the 7:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time tomorrow, Tuesday 21 November 2006.  The only thing that will not be available during that time is access to the affiliate area.

It's also fun to see some of the new products that we carry.  We're over 400,000 products now.  For instance, here's one that we've recently added:  "The Road to Enlightenment".

The Road to Enlightenment Framed Art Print
Barbey, Thomas
Buy at AllPosters.com

Short video from Affiliate Summit

Shawn Collins just e-mailed me to say that the video from his July Affiliate Summit conference is now available.  I have a short piece in the "Lessons Learned" session.  As the second speaker, I'm sandwiched between Vinny Lingham and Jim Lillig (august company indeed :-> ).

You can see the quick video here.  My main message is that the most effective pitches are short, focused, and avoid the "we do everything" sinkhole.  I'm most likely to follow up with people who have an identified specialty and can articulate that clearly and quickly.

New job

Excited to announce that I’ve taken a position with Art.com as their Senior Manager of Affiliate Programs.  I’m running the affiliate programs for all of their properties:  Art.com, AllPosters.com, Poster.de, and others in the works.

I really enjoyed working at eBay and was there from July 2004 through May 2006.    The people were awesome and the company mission something to devote yourself to.  Being in the heart of the rapidly evolving world of e-commerce, internet marketing, and user-generated content is a rush.

As the first Manager of eBay’s Affiliate Platform, I got to create cool tech tools & features for affiliates:  Affiliate-tagged RSS feed, GetPopularKeywords API call,  XML-to-HTML Transform, and others.  I increased the number of my affiliate developers from 20 to 1,700, and brought in a big jump in revenue (even by eBay standards).

An added bonus is that I got to take vacation for a few weeks between jobs for some fun travel.

Went to my Wharton reunion, networked and reunited.  Ended up at Jim’s Cheesesteaks at 2 a.m. with a crew of friends, all still in our suits & cocktail attire from the Ritz Carlton dinner & dancing event.

Survived a four-day party in Vegas for my brother …

Had a wonderful family visit back home in Maine, with lobsters, friends, & favorite places.

Went to my Yale reunion, wandered the campus and caught up with a ton of friends.  Tossed some frisbee on Cross Campus, closed the Anchor Bar, sang Scottish rigdam ballads, visited the Fencing room on the 7th floor of the gym, and heard the Whiffs in an acoustically exquisite gothic archway.