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I’ve decided to manage my affiliate program with iDevAffiliate software and I’ll be integrating it with PayPal. The product I will be selling is an ebook, and I’d like to know how I can set up automatic delivery for it. I would prefer to keep things inhouse as much as possible and avoid paying outside services. How can I do this with iDevAffiliate and PayPal, or is there a software I can use to integrate the two?

I am not familiar with how to integrate the two, but I’m sure there are hacks to do it. iDevAffiliate should be able to help with that issue.

Personally, I wanted to do the same thing a couple years back, and I went with a company called PayLoadz.

PayLoadz will manage the whole process for you: hosting the digital product, tracking and reporting sales, integrating with PayPal, and an affiliate program.

It’s a quick and easy solution. You upload your file there, create some confirmation e-mails, and provide your PayPal account information. They handle the fulfillment and copy you on sales notifications.

While you could do this a number of ways, I think many other options will result in manual fixes and hassles.

I just had a call with my Affiliate Summit co-founder Missy Ward about our affiliate marketing and personal resolutions for 2008, and I thought I’d share it.

Both of us came up with three new year’s resolutions.

Missy

• Quit smoking and stop hording conference giveaways.
• Meet at least 20 new people at each conference and learn more SEO at the conferences.
• Go greener at home and with Affiliate Summit.

Shawn

• Lose a total of 21 pounds by Affiliate Summit by Affiliate Fatblogging.
• Focus on affiliate projects more, since I am no longer an affiliate manager for the first time since 1997.
• Start up a series of one-day niche Affiliate Summit events.

On January 1, 2007, I made a bunch of resolutions for 2007. I’m glad to say that I was true to my resolutions for the most part.

I wanted to expand Affiliate Summit, and that happened with three shows in 2007 (Las Vegas, London, and Miami).

I also planned to get more into video, and I churned out hundreds of videos this year, while learning new tips and tricks, and sharing that information at a new blog, makevideo.info. Check the earlier posts for information on getting into Internet video.

Additionally, I vowed to update my book, Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants, which I did in video form.

Lastly, I resolved to keep a regular schedule with he Affiliate Thing show, and I co-hosted it weekly with Lisa Picarille, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Revenue magazine, throughout the year.

Two that I didn’t come through on were helping with an affiliate marketing trade group and hosting an industry BBQ.

Oh well, on to 2008.

I just got my (daughter’s) new XO Laptop from Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child initiative from laptopgiving.org.

Basically, it’s this great, little laptop that was designed for children in developing nations. It was designed to handle extreme environmental conditions such as high heat and humidity, as well as technological issues such as local-language support.

You can participate in the Give One Get One program through 12/31/07. For a donation of $399, one XO laptop will be sent to empower a child in a developing nation and you will receive one.

According to the site…

Up to $200 of your donation may be tax-deductible (your $399 donation minus the fair market value of the XO laptop you will be receiving).

The XO laptop is tiny, maybe 2/3 the size of my MacBook. It’s meant for a child, but it has the core functionality to be a productive, extra laptop for any adult. It runs on the Linux OS.

It comes with a bunch of applications installed, and there are a wealth of programs you can download and use with it for free.

And back to the part about the good cause. If you get one before 12/31/07, you will receive your XO laptop in early 2008. Your donated laptop will reach a child in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, Mongolia or Rwanda in the same early 2008 time frame.

I got this one for my eight year old daughter and she totally loves it. Since I couldn’t pry it from her little hands, I decided to order an extra one yesterday.

More information at http://www.laptopgiving.org/.

I was catching up on some Tweets (Twitter posts) from Robert Scoble and saw an interesting one about a functionality to track keywords used in Tweets by others.

It turns out this feature for Tracking Twitter has been around for months, but I hadn’t checked out the Twitter blog, so I was in the dark.

Anyhow, it works over IM and text messaging and sends notifications when a Tweet is posted for keywords you set up.

Similar to my use of Google Alerts, I am using it to monitor mentions of various names, companies, and industry specific keywords.

So it’s something affiliate marketers can use to keep up on news about merchants and networks, general industry happenings, etc.

Plus, it’s a networking tool that enables you to find folks you didn’t previously know who are talking about topics that matter to you.

Come follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/affiliatetip.

I was just reading a thread on Wicked Fire about a presentation given by Jason Calacanis, founder of Mahalo.com, at the Le Web conference.

The gist of the presentation was that spam ruined Usenet, and we are seeing the ruination of search from affiliate spam.

This quote from Jason pretty much sums it up…

“There is a generation of people who are becoming entrepreneurs today who believe that because the Internet technically allows you to do something that you are within your right to do it. You are allowed to pollute the Internet, because you can.”

I agree, and this is definitely a problem. Some folks on Wicked Fire disagree with his statements.

In the thread there, he is labeled “the kid who always got picked on and hassled,” “a whiny little girl,” and “the hitler of the internets.”

The interesting thing is that Jason emphasizes that we must be self regulating, and not have the government come in and fix the problem.

I hope to see it work out that way. Otherwise, we may well see a CAN-SPAM equivalent for affiliate and/or search marketing in the near future.

I’m anxious to hear Jason’s further take on affiliate marketing when he keynotes Affiliate Summit in February. It should be an interesting Q&A.

We’ve got an opportunity for exhibitors of Affiliate Summit 2008 West, taking place February 24-26, 2008 in Las Vegas, to get some free, targeted advertising.

Any companies with a booth in the exhibit hall (120 booths) or a table (72 tables) in the Affiliate Meet Market are encouraged to make a video promoting their company.

Just submit the video at the Affiliate Summit Video site.

We’ll promote your video in the Affiliate Summit newsletter and blog.

Don’t miss out on this chance to get in front of your audience. your competition will probably be too lazy to take advantage of this opportunity - will you?

Is it possible to become a super affiliate without sending a single e-mail campaign?

Absolutely. E-mail is just one of many methods for marketing affiliate links. There are many super affiliates who don’t use e-mail at all.

For instance, some affiliates run content sites that rely on organic traffic from search engines and other sources.

There are affiliates that concentrate on e-mail, but they’re typically focused on pushing leads vs. retail offers.

Super affiliates run sites based on data feeds, there are bloggers on niche topics, PPC arbitrage players, etc.

Any way you can market online can be leveraged by affiliates, and e-mail doesn’t have to play a role.

E-mail is not essential to make it big as an affiliate, though it makes sense to me to incorporate it in your strategy.

Why not include a double opt-in e-mail list, so you can mail out newsletters or updates to interested folks?