I’ve always viewed ReveNews as a special place for affiliate marketers to gather and educate, learn or share ideas.  So, when the opportunity came to head up the next version of ReveNews, I immediately jumped at it.  We’re still in the process of transitioning to the new interface and platform, but that doesn’t mean you’re not involved. 

Please view and use the ReveNews wiki to help us make the site as good as it can be: 

My main goal is to keep ReveNews on the front line of the online marketing world in terms of content creation, thought shaping, discussion and technology.  To that end, we’re entering a new phase of ReveNews and I want your help to make it the best possible site.  So, let’s use this wiki to hammer out anything you might want covered, resolved or answered.

ReveNews - ReveNews is the leading online market…

My favorite bookmarking site (and steady traffic source), del.icio.us has opened up it’s robot.txt file to allow in Google, Yahoo and Ask spiders. 

What does this mean for affiliates?  Could be a nice traffic source if you play smartly… 

After denying search engines from indexing the millions of bookmarks stored on its servers for so long, del.icio.us has finally lifted the entry barrier but selectively.

 According to the robots.txt of del.icio.us, only spiders from Yahoo!, Google and Ask search engines are allowed to crawl and index the content of del.icio.us - all other bots are banned including msnbot of the Microsoft Live search engine.

What does this mean for sites / URLs that are popular on del.icio.us - you could see a surge in search engine traffic but getting listed on del.icio.us won’t add any link authority or google juice since all links on delicious are marked with nofollow, very similar to Wikipedia.

del.icio.us Opens Flood Gates But Only for Google, Yahoo! & Ask.com at Digital Inspiration Technology Guide

Sometimes, I wish I lived in Japan so that I could take part in the mobile revolution that is happening there.  We’re so behind in mobile, and that’s going to come back to lick us if we don’t start playing catch up (both in terms of devices and monetization strategies)… 

Mobile Affiliate and RSS Marketing have launched a new mobile based blog service. (click for Japanese article). The service is called ?PockeBlo? (http://p269.mobi only available from mobile phone) and was launched on Aug 3, 2007.

Since Mobile Affiliate is an affiliate network provider, I am guessing that the blog service will be integrated with their affiliate tracking system to allow bloggers to earn revenue from their blog. It?s still not clear if affiliate ads will be limited to those offered on the Mobile Affiliate Network or if bloggers will be allowed to place ads from competing networks.

Mobile Affiliate and RSS Marketing link up for new mobile blog service « MediaScope - Keeping an eye on the Japanese Affiliate Marketing Industry

Quite a few of us spend time collaborating on documents, spreadsheets or presentations with co-workers or colleagues. While you can’t perform edits, this is a nifty and simple platform to upload and share documents for viewing… 

View and Share Documents Online

Get rid of attachments. Just upload your document, grab the URL and share it with your friends or post it in blogs / forums. No sign up required.

Zoho Viewer - Online document viewer

“Actual CPC” is being replaced by “Maximum CPC”.  Think that’s just semantics? Then read the whole piece from Andy Beal: 

Tonight the Inside AdWords blog announced that Google is going to change the ad placement algorithm, replacing actual CPC as a factor with maximum CPC.

How does this affect advertisers?

Google Just Keeps Getting Richer ? New Change to AdWords Announced

Having an accessible and working email address is essential for any good affiliate site or program.  However, spam always follows the posting of an email address on a site. Wired has a nice write up of how to avoid the typical spam deluge that follows the posting of your email address on a website.  

You want to provide your website visitors with a way to send you an e-mail. The easiest method is to simply post a clickable mailto link somewhere on your site.

Hide Your E-mail Address from Spam Bots / Wired How To’s

As Shawn Collins and Lisa Picarille discussed on this week’s AffiliateThing, where are the affiliate networks helping us monetize mobile?? 

Well, we said we weren’t going to make it a big deal until we could serve a billion ads in less than a month. We just did! That’s right, our 5th billion took us just 28 days.
So, here we are, making it a big deal

the life and times of AdMob

Brian Caldwell just post a tweet that he noticed a new kink in AdSense. Has anyone else seen this in the wild? 

mySkitch + Skitch = fast and fun screen capture and image sharing.

It’s not enough to participate… you should also strive to succeed and make a name for yourself in affiliate marketing.

It’s not that difficult if you are willing to put for the time, brain power and allow others to learn from your mistakes and successes. Here’s a nice post that sums it up…

Tips for successful affiliate marketing can be found throughout a network of Affiliate Blogs, Forums and websites. Banners, Emails and Pop-ups are out: Blogs, Social Networks and Pay-per-Click ads are in.

Residual Victory Blog � Position yourself as a Dedicated Player in the Affiliate Marketing World

Missy Ward of Affiliate Summit and Connie Berg of FlamingoWorld are undertaking a 60 mile 3 day walk in order to support the cause of a cure for breast cancer (Aug 24-26).

Spare a few dollars and send some support their way:

Sponsor Missy and Connie at 60-milewalk.com

I’m trying to come up with a creative way to help raise some funds, so stay tuned.

Affiliates Against Cancer

The latest AffilaiteThing is out and it’s a great show featuring Heather Paulson and Shawn/Lisa’s take on the news of the week.

You can even hear the new ad for Revenue Magazine at the first break (keeping up with the surfer theme of AffiliateThing)…

Lisa Picarille and myself welcomed Heather Paulson, affiliate marketing veteran and Director of Online Marketing for KUE Digital Inc.

Topics discussed included affiliate approval guidelines, recruiting affiliates via blogs, and beating ad blockers.

Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

Instead of keeping this a text site, I’ll be transitioning the Affiliate Fortune Cookies site and brand to a short 3 minute audio podcast covering the top issues and news from the world of affiliate marketing.

There will also be interesting links highlighting tips, tricks and hacks to help you become a better affiliate marketer throughout the day.

So, tune in tomorrow morning bright and early for the first episode.

I’ll have the RSS and iTunes subscription links up shortly!

Sam