Thursday, January 31st, 2008 Affiliate Stuff, C'est Moi, Monthly Round-Up 1 Comment »

Seriously, where has January gone? As this blog started at the beginning of January, I thought I would do a monthly round up of affiliate news, my personal stuff, how my sites are going and so on throughout the year but I have work in the morning and besides, my memory is appalling. Jesse seems to have the weekly round-up wrapped up on his blog, so I’ll just throw a couple of things down.

Affiliate Blog-o-sphere

Like I say, I have an appalling memory and I don’t have enough time to go through my blogroll but the month started off with, as one would expect with a New Year, the future of affiliate marketing. It made for fairly daunting reading and set the ball rolling for a very negative month until blog title of the month popped up - ‘Accentuate the Positive - Eliminate The Negative‘ . The topic of the month was discount codes with posts here, there, everywhere and even a podcast. Oh, and a small blog was set up by a new affiliate which was met with great acclaim. Max said “I like the blog design”. That reminds me, two of my favourite blogs changed their skin. Sorry, but I did prefer the old themes. What’s with the fruits?
My affiliate stuff

All of my sites have been moved to Heart Internet and now I look forward to developing them. The Discount Blog is really rocking and rolling with daily updates and a trickle of visitors. Commission wise, the sales are starting to come in and I don’t want to reveal too much except - do people really spend that much on towels?! Google have also sent a PIN to verify my address, but I don’t live there any more. D’oh!

Next month I’ll continue designing and adding content to my biggest and most established site and hopefully launch another one or two WordPress powered sites. I purchased Price Tapestry and so far I’m just confused. I can see the support is amazing, so I’m saving it for when I’m not up all night with work the next morning…

 Personal life

I won a competition at my ‘real job’ to go see Man City vs West Ham in Manchester. Tickets included a meal in the executive lounge (we had to be suited and booted to gain entry) - I’ve never had such a posh meal in all my life! I mean - cheese and biscuits! This was the first football match I’ve ever been to so it was a great experience.

Also, I took the lass down to London for her 21st and despite spending way too much, it was amazing. We hit London Tower, the London Eye, watched Avenue Q (absolutely hilarious), stayed in a Kensington Hotel (only 5 mins walk from a Lamborghini garage!) for only £60 and had another posh meal on a Thames Cruise. Nice, but a bit exhausting.

And finally… 

I hope you all had a great - and wealthy - January 2008! Do you have highlights and lowlights, or was it just another month in the affiliate world? When I speak to you next I’ll have another month automagically appear in the sidebar. I love WordPress.

Posted in Affiliate Stuff, C'est Moi, Monthly Round-Up | 1 Comment »

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 »

Sunday, January 27th, 2008 SEO, Tips and Tricks 9 Comments »

One of the most common items in a list of things to do when SEOing your site is to create good backlinks from related sites, and in particular, blogs. Thousands of SEO guides recommend leaving relevant comments on a related blog post to your site with a link and good anchor text.

But before you rush out onto the world wide web writing hundreds of comments on blogs that talk about the widgets you sell, don’t forget that the vast majority of blogs, like this one, are built with WordPress. Whilst this is no bad thing - I recommend WordPress to the hills and back - it’s worth noting that they have automatically included ‘nofollow’ on comment links and that you have to download a special plugin to remove it.

This means when you make a comment on a blog about widgets with a nice anchor link back to your site, you’ve not actually accomplished much because Google won’t follow the link and won’t give you any link juice from that site. You may get a few extra visitors but no backlink and no juice. As it says in the Google blog:

From now on, when Google sees the attribute (rel=”nofollow”) on hyperlinks, those links won’t get any credit when we rank websites in our search results.

This can really suck because this isn’t really mentioned in the download nor is it visible in the code templates, so many blogers simply won’t know about it or be bothered to remove it. I personally have removed nofollow from this blog with this plugin but when you go out there on your link building campaigns, don’t forget to check the source code of the page. If a previously posted comment looks like this:

<a href=‘http://www.thediscountblog.co.uk’ rel=‘external nofollow’>
phil</a> posted this on January…

you won’t get a backlink and you certainly won’t get any juice.

Tags: backlinks, blogs, Google, PageRank, WordPress
Posted in SEO, Tips and Tricks | 9 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 »

Sunday, January 13th, 2008 C'est Moi, Coding, Design No Comments »

<rant>

Here I am at 5am and I feel like screaming from the rooftops with joy. I finally located the </div> that has been messing up my code and causing me nothing but frustration and anger for the past half hour.

I’m no expert coding whizz but I love designing and coding my own sites. I’m easily bored and have a redesign more often than I have Sunday dinners, something which I’m going to stop doing if I actually want to start getting traffic and money! I’m self taught in HTML, CSS and bits of PHP learning from tutorials on the web, e-books and lots of trial and error fun. But it’s frustrating as hell.

My biggest peeve is Internet Explorer. I can spend a few hours lovingly coding a site and previewing it in my browser of choice, Firefox, where it looks perfect. I switch to Internet Explorer and suddenly my site has chunks missing, features overlapping and whatever else IE decides to break my site with. This very site is a perfect example; the sidebar looks fine in Firefox but IE prefers to insert a chasm of space between each link. I think I’ve finally worked out that the issue is down to the line-height property.

Tonight I’ve been working on what will eventually be my biggest site and I’m sick of serving the minorities. I try and keep my sites to an 800px frame for those that still use the ridiculously magnified resolution but the site I’m working on requires three good sized columns and that won’t happen in an 800px frame. I’m going to make it relatively liquid, but if Amazon don’t keep to an 800px frame (go to Amazon, switch your display to 800px and notice the scrollbar at the bottom of the window), there should be little issue.

This site has more <div>s than I care to mention, and WordPress likes to throw in a few unnecessary (in my opinion) <div>s for extra measure. I make one small change, the sidebar disappears and I have to spend the next half hour counting how many <div>s are actually closed, checking sizes, margins, padding and all that malarkey. Perhaps I’m stupid, perhaps I put too much work into it but in the end I come out victorious. I have a nice three column site that works and now needs many more hours to put in content and optimise for SEO….

</rant>

Posted in C'est Moi, Coding, Design | 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 »

Saturday, January 12th, 2008 Design, Tips and Tricks 1 Comment »

Here’s another quick tip, which might not be relevant for most affiliates unless you spend more time than is necessary actually designing a website, like I do (maybe not particularly well, but that’s for visitors to judge ;)). I find that when I design websites, I find a great colour theme but obviously HTML only accepts hexadecimal values for colours, such as #FF9900 (which is this orange). In the programs I use to design the sites, colours have RGB values such as 51,102,153 (which is this blue).

There is a quick way to convert RGB into hexadecimal. Simply open your calculator (ensure it’s scientific if you’re using a desktop calculator), put it in ‘DEC’ mode and type in the first of the RGB units. So for the example blue I gave above, I would type in 51. Now press ‘HEX’ and a new figure will appear, in this case 33. Switch back to DEC and repeat the process until you find out that this blue is #336699. Simple!

More quick tips as I think of them, feel free to make requests!

Tags: Colours, Hexadecimal, RGB, Themes
Posted in Design, Tips and Tricks | 1 Comment »

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 »

Sunday, January 6th, 2008 SEO, Tips and Tricks 2 Comments »

I found out a quick trick the other week for researching keywords simply by using Google search results which also has the Google seal of approval for being contextually relevant. Say you have a website about “inks and toners”.

Google search results can tell you how much competition you’re facing and by looking at the top few results, you can see what on page optimisation they have. But try searching for “~inks and toners“. That squiggle at the beginning is the important bit.

The search results bring up pages with the keyphrase “inks and toners” in bold as usual, but also with contextually relevant alternatives in bold aswell! So for this example, we can see “refill toner”, “cartridge”, “inkjet” and so on also in bold. This suggests that Google conceives these keywords to be related to “inks and toners” and therefore your website will be relevant if you use these phrases too. Search for “~coffee” and you’ll see definitive proof that Starbucks is synonymous with coffee. Cool, eh?

OK, so it’s not the most advanced tool in the world and you probably already knew about it, but hey. I’m easily impressed.

Tags: Google, Keywords, Search
Posted in SEO, Tips and Tricks | 2 Comments »