It’s like one of those e-book millionaire “You’re shit, I’m brilliant” types mixed with an 11 year old’s MySpace blog. Add the grammatical and spelling errors, the structurelessness (that’s a word, honest) of the rants, lack of proof/research/discussion/etc and so on that whenever I read a new post it makes me hope in sheer desperation that it isn’t Lee McCoy or another blogger that I respect behind the scenes.

Here are some of my favourite quotes from particular posts:

“So someone copied your site that you put time and effort into. Who cares, you should be flattered, when they get half a brain cell and do their own design, copy it. Revenge is sweet.” (Get Over Yourself - It’s Only Money)

Do you hear that Kieron and Matthew? You should be flattered about your content theft, then copy their design that they are supposedly going to come up with one day, which will be professional enough for you to use on one of your sites.

Just because they are making money they think it gives them the right to flaunt it in peoples faces. Who gives them the right to make the smaller newer people in the industry feel like crap because they are not acheiving the same results. (Look at me, Look at me)

Actually, affiliates like Max, Ray, Kieron and Chris inspire me, not make me “feel like crap”. If I’m not making as much money as them, it’s not their fault by “flaunting” cheques in my face. It’s mine for not reading and learning from their advice which they so generously give away for nothing.

To be honest, you probably don’t deserve it. Are you working until your faces bleeds and you no longer know your name, nor where th past few months of your life went? No? Then work harder. These things take time, and alot of hard work. you have to be the best at what you do, and google isnt going to give you high page rankings for moaning! If your product or website is niche, has the best prices and has lots of content, you should be onto a winner. If it isnt working, you are a dumb ass. That or you are spending too much money on PPC or staff and cant handle your accounts, again - you are a dumn ass. Quit spending time moaning and do something about it! (Boo hoo I’m not making any money)

Yeah, because this isn’t making newer, smaller affiliates feel like crap is it? Oh, and I’ve highlighted in bold a few mistakes that make me wonder if this anonymous writer “deserves” to be making any money.

And that’s why the latest post, Get Over Yourself - It’s Only Money, made me pluck up courage and slap the bitch. What a complete and utter load of tosh. If I want to read a rant, I’ll head over to someone who can write with structure, passion and persuasion like Lammo, Kieron, Jason or even Lee.

I look forward to the bitch’s next post!

P.S. I fully understand the irony of bitching about Affiliate Bitch’s bitching!

P.S.S. Sorry if I just sent pings flying left, right and centre!

I think the biggest issue here is that there are so many issues surrounding discount sites.
Unethical practices

Probably the most prominent complaint is the ‘click to reveal’ dispute. Should code site owners be allowed to hide the codes until users put an affiliate cookie on their machine? Or rather, who else should be allowed to use ‘click to reveal’? Can a price comparison site tell users they must ‘click to reveal the cheapest price’? Should review sites have one paragraph, then a ‘click to reveal the rest of this review’?

It seems most affiliates agree this method is OK, as long as there is a valid, working and in date code behind the ‘click to reveal’. But the grey line appears again when the code happens to be a sale, a free delivery depending on spend offer or other offer that doesn’t require a code.

Savviness of customers

We have to face the fact that customers are getting more savvy. I’m sure, just like me, you have used a price comparison site to quickly find the lowest price for a particular product, used a cashback site to get money back / points and used a discount code site to get a discount. Thanks to the phenomenal expansion of the internet and it’s users, you’re guaranteed to be able to find a product in many different online stores and therefore there is a cheaper product somewhere.

Discount code functionality

It’s pretty clear that most discount code sites are catering for users who get to the basket, see a box saying “voucher code” and then decide to search Google for “brand + voucher code”. I’d hazard a guess that the vast majority of merchants who offer discount codes only do so by adding a box during the checkout process to enter a code, therefore enticing customers to go find one. After all, why spend 100% when there are other customers who are utilising this box?

So should this box be removed or used in a different way? For example, a cookie based solution where users must come from a particular code site in order to have that discount code activated, or maybe we should have less generic codes that take X% off the basket and more codes that are only for particular categories/products?

Merchant marketing

If merchants are going to put a box during the checkout process for a discount, surely they expect the vast majority of customers to go on the hunt for a code, so why not apply a blanket discount to all products, rather than giving out discounts?

Discount codes are a marketing tool, a psychological ‘trick’ for consumers to believe they’re getting a better deal, just like they price products at £9.99 rather than £10.

Last referrer wins

And here’s one of the core issues at the heart of the debate - are voucher code sites overwriting cookies previously set by affiliates? The content affiliate persuades a customer to buy a TV, they’re at the checkout and ready to buy, see a code box, go to a discount site, click to reveal and buy the TV. The code site owner gets the commission. Should the code site get the commission for what was effectively the content owners’ sale?

Perhaps, but then if we rewarded everybody for the sale, there would barely be any commission to go around. There are so many points in the marketing chain, how do we know who really made the sale? I sees a videogame on a TV programme, then watch a TV advert of merchant selling the videogame, go on Google and click PPC advert which is just an Adsense site about the videogame, click on a link to a content site, I chat to someone else about the site, read a review in a magazine, do a price comparison, get a discount code then get some cashback… who sold the videogame? Which point in the chain was the point that truly persuaded me to buy the game from the merchant I bought it from?

Finally

And on a final note, it seems a shame that despite all the whinging and debate, that this post on the forums was overlooked.

The first domain I ever bought was philhancox.co.uk, unsurprisingly because that’s my name. That was two years ago. A few weeks ago, I received an e-mail saying it was due to expire and so I went over to UK-reg where it was registered but, due to the fact I’ve bought every other domain from 123-reg and therefore haven’t visited UK-reg in 2 years, I had forgotten my password.

So I sent a forgot password request and carried on with my work. I didn’t get my password, I didn’t get any more reminder e-mails and I forgot all about it until today and now I find that my site is now parked on Sedo.

There was no content there (as with quite a few of my domains :S), no backlinks or PR so it’s no great loss but obviously it has some sentimental value! Domains is one of the subject areas I’m not too hot on; has my site been caught by a squatter type and then parked until I decide I want it back?

I’ve got a few more domains up for renewal soon but they’re much more valuable so I’m going to make damn sure noone grabs them, and I will be adding all my other domains to my calendar so I get a reminder nice and early. Another lesson learned in affiliate marketing - when you have so many domains floating about, be sure to keep on top of them!

Edit - After a very kind message from Lee via A4U, I’ve learned that my domain has not yet been captured by someone else, merely suspended, explained on Nominet here. I haven’t received an invoice from them though, so I will have to contact them directly to get my domain back. I’m very surprised that it will cost £94 though! :O

So, first of all, I just want to thank Sam and Maximuscle for this lovely prize, which will no doubt be donated to the pubs and clubs of Leeds in exchange for one or twenty intoxicating beverages.

Upon catching up on my favourite blogs, I decided to use this example of my affiliate winning streak to put forward my opinion. Jason asks if incentives are nice prizes, or impossible tasks that most affiliates won’t bother with. Zak questions whether affiliates really do want incentives, or would higher commission be preferred. Kieron, not discussing incentives per se, used my Barcelona site as an example of a thin site created just to win an incentive.

At this stage in my affiliate career (!) I’m not overly fussed about commissions - I’m just happy seeing the pounds rolling in. I’m also not bothered about incentives - as I’ve said before, I simply don’t think I’m worthy of them.

The truth is I’m developing a portfolio of sites to explore my design, creative, copywriting, SEO and affiliate skills and that, to me, is my biggest reward. My discount code site jumped two units to a PR3 this week, a site that was exposed to Google probably about six months ago. I know TBPR means sod all, but I’m still dead chuffed. A few other of my sites also received PR. I enjoy seeing my new sites being indexed by Google, seeing traffic coming in organically and, of course, seeing commissions rolling in.

Whilst browing the A4U forums I spotted the Maximuscle incentive and realised that I wasn’t promoting them on my discount site. So I built a Maximuscle discount code page, broke my virginity with the Affiliate Window branded widgets and thought it quite pretty, so sent an e-mail to Sam with the URL.

But my plans for Maximuscle don’t end there. I used to use whey protein and went to the gym before turning into a lazy student. I still have some in the cupboard, and I’m adamant I’ll start training again. This, in turn, will inspire me to create a website tracking my progress with tips for others doing the same thing, thus having unique and interesting  content and this, in turn, will have Maximuscle banners and links, therefore creating more promotion and (hopefully) mo’ money.

The number of sites with traffic I have is growing, the amount of commissions I’m earning is growing and one day I may (and hope) be a well performing or ’super’ affiliate. Now that I’ve been to Benidorm, I can (and have started to) build a fatter affiliate site dedicated to Benidorm. Sunshine will, naturally, be promoted. Now that I know Maximuscle has an affiliate program, I will promote them on my future training site.

Naturally, incentives where only super affiliates can win will put me off - but only the competition itself. But incentives can peak (or pique?) my interest, expose an affiliate program and initiate a relationship.  Who knows, maybe I and other smaller affiliates who win incentives will become super affiliates and bring in lots of dolly for the respective merchants.

Regardless of the prize (I’d be happy with a keyring), winning stuff is fun and motivates me to promote the merchant more. I will still promote merchants on sites I think they would fit and all that jazz, but with so many ideas floating around my head and so many of my sites floating round the web, a nice incentive can tie down an idea and receive my full time and attention.

And if the super affiliates don’t want to play, I’m willing to win anything else thrown my way

P.S. Thanks again to Maximuscle!

I haven’t been on a plane since I was a little’un and I don’t remember having a fear of flying something which amused the lass greatly as I sat on Row 13, next to an emergency exit on the wing of plane as it landed very bumpily (apparently it’s normal for the engines to make a loud whirring noise as if the pilot misjudged his landing and was ready to take-off again for a second attempt..).

We had a nice apartment overlooking the Benidorm skyline albeit a 15 minute walk from the beach and the other winner, Ray, seemed to have bagged a posh hotel with salsa dancing and everything. But we had german MTV where we discovered the delights of Tila Tequila, scary rock music and what Family Guy sounds like in german.

The week was spent burning on the beach (I’ve come back white than when I arrived as all my skin has peeled off), walking, enjoying all the British bars, more walking, a bit of shopping, more walking, a spot of drunken karaoke (a vodka influenced rendition of New York, New York if you’re wondering), a bit more walking, a trip to the zoo and yet more walking.

Anyway, here are a few pictures of the meals we enjoyed whilst there:

The only taste of Spanish cuisine I had was this paella. Probably the most boring thing I’ve ever eaten.

A mixed grill consisting of chips, sausage, bacon, pork chop, egg and that stuff some call salad.

Spaghetti bolognese with what appears to be a the scraps of a pepper sitting on top.

These were cool - mashed potato balls with minced beef inside.

Perfectly cooked pork chops I’ve ever had with fries.

Absolutely cracking home made steak pie and chunky chip shop chips served by a pale guy in shorts at a pub called the Yorkshire Pride. Home from home.

A cheeseburger with chips. Tasted better than it looks.

So that’s it. Big, massive thanks to sunshine for this holiday and I’ll be working non-stop on my Benidorm website, which will be fatter than the site I won with

Some more pictures to end the post:

The view from our apartment at night.

A view of the resort.

Me meeting the locals.

The sun had taken it’s toll on the lass.

Adios…

Go To Barcelona is the domain and subject. I think it’s a great domain because I can use it again for other destinations if I wish to do more travel domains, e.g. gotomars.co.uk or whathaveyou. I chose Barcelona because I briefly stayed there last year on a road trip, albeit on a campsite and not any of the lovely hotels featured!

Naturally, I used WordPress to create the site because it’s a fantastic CMS tool, I practically know it inside out and there are loads of plugins to extend the functionality. It’s also my first time with the brand new 2.5, which is quite nice and seems more fluid and easier to use.

Each ‘post’ is a hotel and the ‘category’ is the resort. The great thing about WordPress is that when I add a hotel, it will automatically be added to the category page, but I can customise it to include more information like this hotels in Eixample page which has a brief biography of the area surrounding the list of hotels.

Each hotel has a picture and description (reworded from the sunshine site), followed by a search box to find availability and book that particular hotel. This is followed by a list of similar hotels, thanks to the related posts plugin.

I quite like the design that I quickly whipped up; a clean text-based logo sits above the content, which is backed by a beautiful picture of a beach (which isn’t actually in Barcelona, apparently it’s in Japan). Above the fold has a beautiful summer blue sky and it’s only when you scroll that the whole picture is revealed. Yes, there’s a bit of a crease where I tried to attach a reverse image of the same photo to extend the length, but that will be fixed.

As usual, Internet Explorer doesn’t like it; ignoring the transparent background of the main content box amongst other things. Again, I’m sure there’s a fix somewhere and I will get on to it at a later date, but I think it degrades well with a white background.

The sidebar links are automatically generated thanks to WordPress, firstly with a list of resorts and then a list of articles which I will write throughout the site’s life with information, guides and suchlike.

All of this has been put together with the aid of sunshine’s fantastic affiliate area which allows you to choose your own banners of which there are generic and some customised to the resort of your choosing. I’ve used a generic in the sidebar and resort based on the category pages. Then there’s the search wizard which allows you to create a search box customisable to the hotel, and thanks to the chat tool and a friendly fellow called Alan, I was able to find the boxes I wanted. The spreadsheet helped list all the hotels with URLs of images. It really is a fantastic example of how an affiliate program should be managed.

So there you have it, how to create a site in just over a day thanks to WordPress, a few good plugins, the amazing sunshine affiliate area and a bit of motivation. Your comments are appreciated! Click here to see the site in action.

That’s right, the sunshine.co.uk affiliate promotion. I’ve been watching with keen interest the fantastic incentives put forward by the sunshine team such as the Macbook Air and now the Barbados trip. I really like their website and the affiliate area is a fantastic example of communication and tools for affiliates. It made me wish I was a good travel affiliate.

Now sunshine have started their missions, it makes me really want to get involved and I’ve decided to take the plunge with mission one, getting a domain and throwing some sunshine content on there (aswell as mission four with this blog post!).

I know that the travel industry is one of the most competitive and that one small landing page type site isn’t going to make me a millionaire. I have little knowledge of travel nor have I dabbled with travel sites.

The thing is, I love seeing little projects like this but I simply do not have the time. With my full time job, a nicely maturing discount site to maintain, an easily bored girlfriend and sleeping to do, I simply don’t have much time to create new sites and get them out there (which explains why this blog hasn’t been touched much either). I have loads of domains which aren’t even parked, let alone include content.

I don’t even want the trip to Barbados (well, that’s a little dramatic) - I’d feel out of place and undeserving of such a phenomenal prize. It’s the mere excitement of this well planned incentive and the idea of setting up a small site to add to my portfolio with motivation behind it that makes me want to do it.

I’ve bought the domain based on a destination I visited last year - Barcelona. Well, we camped on a beachside campsite there - and I’ll be developing it with a few pages of content, photos and banners at the weekend.

Massive kudos to the sunshine team - this is a brilliant incentive and you’ve got another (albeit noob) affiliate on board.

Are you like me and taking the extra time available to work on your sites? Instead of getting stuck behind a caravan on the way to Scarborough, are you tweaking meta tags, writing copy and optimising your CSS? Or are you lounging around in your pants drinking a beer (maybe both?)?

I’ve taken ten minutes out to post here - I know I haven’t posted in ages which I’m a bit annoyed about but I have been very busy. The last few weeks have been spent getting to know Price Tapestry and incorporating it into my oldest, biggest and most Google friendly site.

I will write some stuff about the site and about Price Tapestry in the next few weeks. There are some fantastic things that can be done with it and I don’t see many other people writing about it so it might prove useful.

In other news…

I’m now a merchant as well! I wrote some time ago about seeing the networks from the other side of the fence, and I’m now happy to announce Webgains have been chosen and the affiliate program for The Retail Factory is now live. I shan’t take up too much space here writing about it; the sign-up page is here and some incentives are over there. If you’re enjoying all the chocolate the Easter bunny has kindly provided, you might like the chocolate hamper we want to give away!

And despite having Friday and Monday off from The Retail Factory, I’ll still be checking my work e-mail so feel free to e-mail should you have any questions/problems/comments/requests etc.

Happy Easter everybody and don’t work too hard!

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!

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.