Friday, February 29th, 2008 Affiliate Stuff, C'est Moi, Monthly Round-Up No Comments »

Yes I know, I used that title last month but it works, non?

Around the affiliate blog-o-sphere

Innovation was the common theme this month. The biggest news is Webgains have come up trumps again with their new voucher tool! There’s been plenty of talk about it so I shan’t go over it again, but it’s very exciting. Paid on Results have a voucher tool which is great too, but the interesting thing about the Webgains one is that exclusive codes will be attributed to the owner of that code, even if it doesn’t go through the affiliate link. So code stealers will actually be bringing profit to the original owners of that code! For example, if anyone wants to use the code DB1 at justsocca.com, feel free! Spread it around forums, your blog, your website, wherever. The commission will still be given to me. This could lead to offline promotion, which is really opening up the definition of affiliate marketing.

Forget the StripeAd, the peel-away ad is the must-have blog thingy this month! I wonder what’s the next thing I have to have then forget about after a few weeks (don’t say the blog itself, I’ve been busy!).

Keeping with the innovation theme was the sites such as social shopping (osoyou for example) and the flashy 3D mall (can’t remember what it was - which kind of proves they’re not that threatening). They’re pretty, sure, but nothing to worry about. Affiliate marketing is a big pie and there are enough slices for everyone!

The month kicked off with the news that the A4U awards would be voted for by select panelists, not the forum, which didn’t go down well with some members. I can’t say much as I haven’t been around that long, but it makes sense that the people who make up the A4U community should have a say in the A4U awards.

My affiliate stuff

Well I actually made less this month than I did last month, but there has been more work behind the scenes rather than front-end stuff so it’s not too bad. I’ve been very busy on my sites and hence why there have only been 3 posts here this month (that’s bad…).

Today news is spreading that Google have had an update and none of my sites have dropped .My voucher codes site, which is about 2 months old with no link building has been given a PR of 1. Taking little steps…

I finally sat down with caffeine and nicotine and got my head around Price Tapestry. It’s fantastic, it really is. Very flexible and there is phenomenal support at the forums. It’s my new toy for the next month or so and I’m sure it will prove useful.

Highlight of the month was making a particular sale on Webgains and receiving a text from my flatmate saying “Proof we can really sell anything, including a guide on how to inspect your own s**t. Excellent!”

This bit could now be called my merchant stuff because….

Personal life

…I’m a few weeks away from being a merchant! The company that I’m on placement at has finally signed off the proposals. I’ve chosen the network, got a load of ideas together and I’m really looking forward to seeing what happens. I’m not in the position to reveal anything but there will obviously be news in the next few weeks or so. This blog shall remain an affiliate blog as I will be leaving all my promotional spam and what-have-you at the forums

Apart from that life has been pretty boring this month. I went to see Cloverfield; brilliant movie - highly recommended. Oh, and I slept through the earthquake. My flatmate revealed the flat was shaking violently, our ‘home office’ was having a fit, things fell over and so on whilst I slept blissfully unaware. The apocalypse could happen and I wouldn’t know till I wake up, have a brew and open the curtains to see the city in smoulders.

Have a great March!

Posted in Affiliate Stuff, C'est Moi, Monthly Round-Up | Post a comment »

Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 Coding, Design, Tips and Tricks 3 Comments »

Really, I do. I’m not the best coder by any means but I try very hard and hand coding my own websites and they come out alright. Until I switch to Internet Explorer, that is. Coding is difficult enough without having to cater for cross browser compatibility. The first issue is how differently Internet Explorer and Firefox translate pixels, margins and padding and often means a three column layout can look perfect in FF but IE decides to push a column or two to the bottom of the screen simply because it’s 1 pixel too big. This isn’t too bad to resolve; playing around with the numbers usually solves it.

A brilliant solution is the reset css which I found at just searching, which strips out all margins or whatever else the browsers automatically add. For example, the <p> and <h1> tags automatically have quite a significant line-height automatically given to them which can affect the lining up of <div>s. The reset css puts both browsers on a level playing field and gives you complete control of every attribute.

But even with this reset css applied, I noticed a list still had indentation in Internet Explorer which made a navigation sidebar on one of my sites look really strange. The <ul> and <li> tags had no margin, no list-style-type, nothing so why was it doing this? Apparently IE needs a float:left added to the list to really force it to the left. Irritating, but solvable.

But now I’ve come across yet another strange browser compatibility issue - colour! Do browsers translate colours differently? Take a look at this site (under very heavy construction, so watch out for falling code and broken links). In FF, the background-colour of the header image and the div around it is identical but in Internet Explorer, it looks slightly different. Is it just me? Makes me think I should just give up coding and spend the time writing content using Blogger or something like Lee. Or I should drive a car through the front windows of Internet Explorer HQ in a frustrated, sadistic rage.

Tags: Browser, Firefox, Internet Explorer
Posted in Coding, Design, Tips and Tricks | 3 Comments »

Friday, February 8th, 2008 Networks 2 Comments »

I’m nowhere near being a full-time affiliate dude, so I have a 9.00 - 5.30 to help me pay the rent. I’m actually a student but this year I’m on placement at a young company in the business to business sector and, as I’m the one with the strongest knowledge of the affiliate industry, I have been asked to set up a program for them! Hurrah!

I’ve done the research, proposals and all that malarkey office types like and this week I’ve been contacting the networks to see who will host our program and it’s been a lot of fun experiencing things from the other side of the fence. I had already written up a list of networks that I recommend and definitely do not recommend based on personal preference and opinion in the blogosphere/forums (can you guess who they are? ;)) but in the interests of neutrality, contacted and researched a fair few.

There will be a meeting next week to progress things further and choose the network but like I say, it’s been a lot of fun. I shan’t give away too much information nor will this blog turn into a merchant blog but I’ll let you play a guessing game.

Guess which network answered the phone immediately, were phenomenally friendly, extremely helpful and make the whole signing-up and integration process very easy and form free? And then guess which network have a barely decipherable website to try and find the right contact, didn’t answer the phone on several occasions and haven’t returned my call?

See you on the other side soon

Posted in Networks | 2 Comments »

Monday, February 4th, 2008 C'est Moi, SEO 3 Comments »

Last year, two friends and I took part in the Student Brakeaway, a rally to the south of Spain. It’s like the Gumball Rally but just for students and with much, much cheaper cars! It was a phenomenal holiday, overtaking drunk students on a French motorway in a battered Nissan Micra (yes, really!) by day and drinking in a different town by night. The guys at Student Brakeaway have released the route for this year, a1900 mile trek through France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Slovenia and Croatia. Needless to say, I really want to go again.

Herein lies the issue. The ‘holiday’ is actually quite expensive. There’s the car and it’s servicing, accessories, petrol and insurance; the holiday itself and associated expenses such as food and (lots of) drink; accomodation for the drive back and finally, the hidden expense of last year, the bloomin’ plethora of toll roads. The majority of other cars on the route had sponsors and accessories paid for by businesses (including a sex doll, bizarrely). We had some electrical hazard tape slapped on the roof and our team number printed out on colour A4 and sellotaped to the back window. Proper students!

Obviously, we pay for the holiday and holiday expenses ourselves but I really want sponsorship or a nice slush fund paid for by fundraising to help accomodate the other costs of the trip ie. the car, petrol, tolls etc, with a substantial percentage going to charity as that’s part of the reason the rally runs. So far, the event has raised £75,000 for several charities including Teenage Cancer Trust.

How do I raise the funds, then, and will people sponsor me? I have a few ideas, and I’d like your advice on whether you think you they’re decent ideas, and whether you’d be willing to put forward a quid or two!

I was thinking about setting up a site/blog for our ‘team’ to detail the event, have a shop with stuff other drivers will need, details of last year’s event; that kind of thing. My idea is to place some kind of “sponsor a mile” bit, where you put forward £1 for a mile. Each pound gets a link back to your site, almost like the Million Dollar Pixel Page. That’s 1900 miles with the last few miles being sold for a bit more than £1 if it works out. If I could get around 500 miles sponsored, I would start taking the idea to the press releases and see if I can then get it filled that way.

However, Google obviously isn’t going to like 1900 links but perhaps I could separate these onto other pages e.g. a page for England, a page for Belgium etc. Also, I don’t have a strong domain with which to really interest potential ‘link buyers’ or sponsors. My strongest is Hanlor, a shopping portal which is currently being massively redeveloped. It has no backlinks (that I’m aware of), is almost 2 years old but has a PR of 2 with pages one level down with PR1. Our team name last year was don’t tell my mom (long story) and I have that domain which is also 2 years old but due to it being redirected incorrectly and having no content, it has no PageRank. I also have about 13 other domains, most of which aren’t yet developed but I’m open to sponsorship requests.

So other than the ’sponsor a mile’ idea, I could simply sell adverts on the new ‘team’ website or hope that this affiliate marketing takes off and I raise enough money regardless of sponsorship. Most students took the normal route of selling space on their cars, something which I would be very happy with, but I don’t know who would sponsor the car.

What do you think? And more importantly, do you fancy sponsoring me to drive to Croatia and back?

Posted in C'est Moi, SEO | 3 Comments »