Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 Affiliate Stuff, C'est Moi 3 Comments »

Noone wants to be the kid who’s never even heard of a Yoyo let alone own one and that’s why I’ve hopped on to the bandwagon with these cool kids and got myself a stripe ad. ^Up there, like. I’m not going to use it for advertising as this blog is very new and I only get a very faint trickle of visitors so I’m going to sort of copy Ray (sorry!) and just use it to show off some posts I’ve written with my very own hands.

I thought it would be cool to use on my discount code blog to display random codes and visitor retention stuff, but it appears someone else has had the same idea. I wonder how long it is before a) they become really tacky and unoriginal b) someone creates a different StripeAd without the mandatory ‘Powered by’ link (even if it does have your clickbank hop thing in it) or c) I forget to update the bloomin’ thing.

Tags: Plugins, StripeAd, WordPress
Posted in Affiliate Stuff, C'est Moi | 3 Comments »

Saturday, January 26th, 2008 Affiliate Stuff, Merchants, Networks No Comments »

Last night I signed up to a merchant on Affiliate Window. This morning I wake up to find no less than 9 e-mails from said merchant which included 2 Christmas e-mails, 3 discount codes and and a customer focussed newsletter. They tell me that they’ve created nice links for me but actually they’re in the banners section, not embedded in the e-mail. Not only that, but apparently my name is 7XXX8, which is my Affiliate Window ID. And the strangest thing is, I’m still pending approval.

I really don’t mind receiving e-mails from merchants but how about ensuring only one of each is sent out, that the e-mails are in date, that it starts with my real name or ‘Hi affiliates’ and that I’m actually approved first? And if I recieved 9 e-mails just for signing up, how many am I going to receive once I’m approved?

Tags: E-mails
Posted in Affiliate Stuff, Merchants, Networks | Post a comment »

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 Affiliate Stuff, C'est Moi, Networks No Comments »

In December, Affiliate Window ran a promotion where affiliates of AW had to collect gold coins then log on to the website on Christmas Day at 3pm to claim a Christmas gift. Whilst some were not happy with this, and possibly rightly so, there were some cracking prizes to be had with all 8 coins such as an HD telly or an iPod Nano.

Well I had all 8 coins but I thought I wasn’t eligible for any prize due to the fact I hadn’t been promoting AW merchants for long, otherwise I would have hopped on to the computer at 3pm, Queen or no Queen!

Luckily for me, my flatmate logged on and managed to claim us a prize. Unfortunately the higher tier prizes had gone but I’m well chuffed with what I got; a DVD voucher from CD Wow (yes - that’s an affiliate link. Well, on the off-chance you’re browsing marketing blogs then buy a copy of 300 on DVD, I wouldn’t mind 10p or so for telling you 300 is a cracking flick on DVD!). So, Affiliate Window and CD Wow, I thank thee very much for my first affiliate prize/freebie. Hopefully there will be more to come And congrats to everyone else who got a prezzie!

Tags: Earnings, Incentives
Posted in Affiliate Stuff, C'est Moi, Networks | Post a comment »

Saturday, January 12th, 2008 Affiliate Stuff, Debate 10 Comments »

 Like my dabblings with a different industry before it, I was surprised to find the affiliate marketing industry a ridiculously friendly arena. As a member of the UK’s biggest affiliate forum, it’s easy to see that affiliates big and small, merchants and networks all come together to share ideas, discuss projects and even self regulate problems that occur. It’s a fantastic thing to be part of and I love the fact that despite affiliates are all, essentially, in competition, they still come together and offer advice to others.

However, there has been one particular issue that has been discussed time and time again at the forums concerning one affiliate (who we will call Mr. A) who fails to even adhere to common courtesy. Mr A has a fantastic website; very well designed and extremely successful and for that they deserve hearty congratulations. However, he is using methods that are disrespectful to other affiliates by listing their URLs in the footer with statements that are belittling, amongst other things. These URLs don’t contain a hyperlink and used partially for the purposes of SEO in that anyone searching for a competitors URL may, in fact, land on Mr A’s site and be told that Mr As site is much better.

I’ve not really got involved with this discussion as I’m not in the position to, but my opinion is that I am disgusted at the lack of courtesy and ignorance to polite requests for the removal of these unfounded and disparaging statements. Mr A has a brilliant and successful website and is in no need whatsoever to use this, or any other unethical methods to get visitors to his site.

The trouble is, like I said earlier, affiliate marketing is not really regulated. Affiliates work hard, they share their knowledge and in the end, are careful not to break the rules that are in place or tread on each others’ toes. There is noone to stop Mr. A from breaking the rules, and the networks and merchants certainly won’t because they will lose a lot of money just to please what they might consider whining affiliates who are making less than Mr A.

But I was pleased to see one affiliate fighting back. This affiliate, Mr B, is also quite successful, but like many others, is irritated at the lack of action taken against Mr A and so has decided to belittle Mr As website on his own (new?) site. Hurrah! I love to see a vigilante in action.

So what does this mean? What does Mr B hope to achieve by, what one could call sinking to Mr A’s level? And will this trigger the start of other potentially childish attacks by affiliates who are all competing in the same sector, but irritated because Mr C is not playing by the rules?

I’m not putting down Mr B by any means; in fact I’m really pleased that someone has taken at least a small amount of action against Mr A.  I’d also be interested to know if any interesting search results or other actions come from it. But I want to know what this means for the future of affiliate marketing. Will rule breaking become more common and what will happen to the rule breakers? Is this is a job for the new IAM Affiliate Marketing Council? I’m new to the game, so I’m interested to know your thoughts.

However, if you’re just confused by all the Mr As, Mr Bs and my nonsensical warbling then feel free to just ignore me!

Tags: Competitors, Future, Industry
Posted in Affiliate Stuff, Debate | 10 Comments »

Monday, January 7th, 2008 Affiliate Stuff, Debate 1 Comment »

I’ve just commented on Azam’s post about the future of affiliate marketing but I realised afterwards I a bit more to say. Read his post then pop back. I’ll still be here. To summarise, Azam talks about the future of the affiliate industry or rather the death of it, thanks to cashback, comparison and coupon sites. This makes for gloomy reading, particularly for new affiliates like me. Is there a future for me? Can I squeeze some money out of customers who aren’t yet loyal to one of these sites? Will a small minority of sites within these categories kill off the rest of the affiliate industry? Well, maybe, but let’s consider a few things.

A strong point was the rise of the cashback site. Sure, affiliates may sell a product to a customer, but this customer will go to his/her cashback site and purchase the product through there. With cashback sites growing in popularity and users, how many potential customers are lost because they have a cashback account?

After initially being concerned, I decided it’s not that scary after all. Firstly, how many people actually have cashback accounts? I certainly don’t, and to tell you the truth, I didn’t really know about them until I got into AM. Secondly, do those with cashback accounts religiously use them for every purchase? My guess is that an impulsive purchase doesn’t involve logging into the cashback site and seeing if the retailer is featured, so they can go through the whole process again.

And what would happen if affiliate marketing were ruled only by the cashback sites? From a merchant’s perspective, I might get a little annoyed that my product isn’t actually being sold and distributed to a wider audience. If I wanted to give a reward with a product, I could do it myself.

Lee pointed out that content based sites are still in huge demand and I agree with him. These sites also have loyalty, but in a different sense. A lot of affiliate sites have communities, large mailing lists and returning visitors.  Niche, content based sites will be in high demand in 2008 but I want to throw in an extra ingredient into the mix: originality.

Original content like videos or games improve the value of a site and I believe that affiliate sites of the future will need stickiness. Product feeds and merchant supplied copy just doesn’t excite the customer. Connected to this is the inevitable fact that social media will simply grow and grow and I believe it’s not the amount of pence you get back from a product that will persuade a customer to buy, but it will be the content behind it and the viral factor.

I don’t think affiliate marketing is dead just yet. For my fellow affiliates and my sake, I sure hope I’m right.

Tags: Future, Industry
Posted in Affiliate Stuff, Debate | 1 Comment »

Friday, January 4th, 2008 Affiliate Stuff, C'est Moi 4 Comments »

Hello one and all to my new affiliate blog. My name is Phil Hancox and this blog is about affiliate marketing and my experiences as an affiliate marketing guy. It’s quite fitting that it’s the first week of January, I have a new blog and my affiliate career is really just starting. I’m hoping that come the start of 2009, I will be linking back to this post in my annual review and saying ‘Look where I started’.

So far I have about 2 or 3 websites that I would consider developed and ready for the world to see, with another few in development and almost 15 domains waiting to be built upon. In terms of earnings, I am very much inspired by the likes of Ray, Max and Kieron but so far I’ve had about 10 affiliate sales and a bit of Google Adsense. Now that I’ve stopped ‘dabbling’ and started to get a bit more ’serious’, I’m hoping my earnings will increase and this blog will follow that progress.

This is the initial theme that I’ve created but as you’ll possibly learn if you read the blog in the future, I get very restless with design so it could change fairly regularly! I’ve added a blogroll of other affiliate blogs I enjoy in the sidebar (if you want to be removed/added/edited please let me know) and hopefully I’ll be adding other articles and stuff soon.

Here’s to 2008, and I hope you pop by again soon.

Posted in Affiliate Stuff, C'est Moi | 4 Comments »