New Client - Anyone got any property sites?

I find it so much easier to take on new clients when they're just getting their site together and you can build it with the design team from scratch. But I'm taking over the SEO / Usability / Online Marketing from someone else and it's not going to be easy overtaking the competiton.

The client I'm talking about is Chard who are "central london estate agents" (another seo plug), but does anyone run any property type sites that wouldn't mind reviewing their site and linking? I need to get some link love to them and get a bit of exposure as I work on the onsite content?

Any ideas, then email me at lee (at) getvisible.co.uk.

Amazon Customer Service Redeem Themselves

I tried to get some books delivered to a client's address from Amazon. Admittedly many sat-nav shows the postcode to be on a parrell address - but the Home Delivery Network has been plonkers for not finding the front of the building and attemting delivery.

They said a card was left but there's generally 400 people there during the day and a reception that is always staffed. No one has forwarded a card to me so I think they may be telling porkies ....

Then you try and contact Amazon and it's a nightmare. The contact us form doesn't work, you can't forward them any information. Then you use their call back service. If you put in a land line then it goes off to India and the line is absolutely crap - you can't hear a thing.

So think if I put in a mobile number they may route it to the UK and thankfully they did! The guy on the phone must have had a few complaints recently as he said that "all they've got to do is deliver a parcel and if they can't do that they're idiots". He said he was going to raise the issue with the management and take the matter further.

At last an online retailer that takes the matter seriously - that was even before I told him I run the "Delivery Hell" forum!!!

I've had a fair amount of other people comment on my "City Link are crap" post so I'm not the only one that has problems with couriers! How has everyone else got on with them?

It so often seems that merchants are only as good as the last link in the chain - the couriers. I wonder how much of merchants' time is taken up faffing around with non-delivery?

Using Facebook Apps to Increase Traffic by 300%

I asked the question before "Why aren't more merchants developing for Facebook"? Muhammad Saleem has given his reasons Why Facebook Is Not A Viable Marketing Platform and he's totally right!

But the problem is that US companies are expected to spend $2billion advertising social media sites by 2011.

Muhammad's interesting conclusion is:

"This research coupled with Fox Interactive Media's earlier research shows that not only is the return on investment for social-network-based marketing campaigns better than the alternatives but that more and more marketers are making the leap of faith and opting for this non-traditional strategy."

Also:

"Interestingly enough, the research also found that sports apparel manufacturer Adidas and video game developer Electronic Arts attributed more than 70% of their marketing return on investment to the "Momentum Effect", which is marketing-speak for how your brand propagates through a social network beyond the extent to which you advertise (i.e. word-of-mouth)."

So can the next person that calls social media marketing "bollocks" a bit of research first?

It's just like anything online, if you don't do it properly you'll wasting a bucket full of cash. If you think outside the box and inside the consumer's mind then it's you that will be earning the loot.

Buy.at Just Didn't Send Their Affiliates' Email Details Out To Everyone Did They?

I've just logged in to my email account and saw 44 emails from Buy.at. I thought that they must have been busy boys and girls working hard on new affiliate offers. But no, it's 44 emails and it looks like each has 50 email addresses to their affiliates.

I'll have to speak to the missus about the data protection implications as she's an "expert" in the field, but at least I know who to contact at europa-pet-food.co.uk and studenthealth.co.uk.

I've not seen a apology as yet - perhaps they're still working out their response. But now everyone's got my personal email address - I'm sure I didn't want the guys at Alcopoints (a former Sterling Rock brand) to know that.

Miffed - yeh! But at least I know shit happens but a nice big apology and good will gesture would go down well!

The Great Big Social Land Grab - Call it Bubble 2.0

Nokia has just bought the social media site Twango and when you add it to the purchase of MySpace by News Corp, YouTube, Last FM by CBS, Mybloglog by Yahoo! as well as others, there have been plenty of web 2.0 companies changing hands recently.

It just reminds me of the ol' days when companies not making a dime in profits where being sold for extortionate amounts in the anticipation that they'd make a fortune in the future.

The Internet is obviously very mature now but it doesn't stop hype and hyperbole. It doesn't stop people with too much spare cash buying companies that don't offer anything new. Look at Friendsreunited.com which was bought by ITV for £120 just 18 months ago. It's traffic has bombed whilst other sites offered more flexibility and interactivity - web 2.0 anyone?

Look at the chart below:


If ITV would had done their job properly they could have really leveraged the 12 million users they had. However, less miopic people spotted the web 2.0 opportunities earlier and created sites and flogged them on for megabucks. It's just the same as before, sites don't have to be great or current revenue streams to offer great potential revenue in the future. But that's the problem - it's all "potential". It seems what big business is buying now is not technology but user data.

This information can be milked for all it's worth. I've got a client that gets 20,000 visitors a day and does he offer site registration where people can leave their details for relevant information? No! I'm tearing my hair out thinking of the 6 / 7 million visitors a year he gets and they're wasted.

Google and all companies in the sector are fighting for sites that have consumer data and it'll only get more gutting when you see sites being bought for £100m when they've got thin usefulness but a full wod of users.

But it looks like some of the glory and hype for some of the web 2.0 sites may be waining. Just look at this chart for some of them:


Has the shine started to come off already? Well no.

Just like before there were sites like Boo.com and Altavista which got all the exposure and the visits that came with it, but then "failed"; there will be web 2.0 sites that are doing the same now, but we won't hear of them in three or five years. There will also be 2.0 sites that aren't even on the radar now that'll be huge in the future. It is down to us marketers and affiliates to spot them as early as we can so we'll keep the bank manager happy in the future.

There'll be some out there that don't see the internet having changed much. They'll see the charts above as supporting their argument that web 2.0 is just a flash in the pan. But, perhaps they should read some Hitwise blog posts about LinkedIn, Flikr and CafeMum and then they may see the bigger picture. So is there something to this bubble? Well yes, it's a 2.0 Bubble filled with all our user data! Nice!

Google Goes Social With Local Search

Is it me or has Google added some social features into their local search results? I tried "recruitment agencies in warrington" and there you can write a review and score the company.

How will this affect buying decisions of punters reviewing merchants? How big could this review feature grow and will it supercede other review sites?

Space Invaders Anyone?

I can't be bothered writing loads about how social media is a good tool in an affiliate's armoury or how merchants can be numpties so here's a quick game of Space Invaders.

P.S. there's some really cool web 2.0 widgets at Widgetbox

P.s. my score was 33,710.

Sandbags Provide Great Lessons For Site Owners

You're probably wondering if I'm the loopy juice or something. But when I was doing a pretty much mundane search for "sandbags" I came across some interesting sites that together provide some lessons for website owners.

Yes, I was looking for sandbags to protect my house just in case we got hit up here.

1. Branding and domain names:
   The first site I looked at had the domain "argoss.co.uk". Obviously there was the possibility of domain confusion. My first thought was that it was Argos and that I wasn't going to click because I didn't want to buy from them. Then I thought latterly. I've made a fair few quid out of miss-spells in my time and wonder how much traffic they get from the typos? But then I became concerned for the small company as they're the type of company that so often gets shafted by the huge, faceless companies like Argos.
   
   My thoughts - always look at your brand when you set up shop online. Will there be any conflict with established brands or with companies that could get litigious? Always have a back-up plan.
   
   
2. Utilise Interesting and Informative Sales Tools
   The site that came up top in the Adwords was Aqua-Sac. I've not finished the research and buying process yet, but this sales video worked fantastically at informing me about the product and am likely to buy from them because of it. The testimonials page and trial data all work to do one major thing - MINIMISE PURCHASE RISK. This is the risk that the product the consumer buys will not meet expectations. The video, data and testimonials all go towards informing me about what the product does.
   
   My thoughts - website owners, and even affiliates, should place themselves in the mind of the consumer and create ways to remove all the possible barriers to purchasing you can think of. I'm doing this with my clients. I'm recommending to the Spanish Properties site that they put videos of the properties, more detailed testimonials, better contact information and basically everything I can think of to reassure their target audience (who are in their 50's) to contact them. You should do the same for your website.
   
   
3. Huge Demand without negatives can cost you a fortune
   The people at JaneShilton.co.uk need to have words with their online marketing agency. They're either being really clever keeping their ads for "luxury leather bags" showing when people search for "sandbags" or they're being being lazy!
   
   I bet that people that are looking for "sandbags" don't have luxury spending at the forefront of their mind. They're probably thinking about all the damage that is, or could be, happening to their home or business.
   
   Their CTR would be appalling with the number of impressions that are probably going through Google with this term, it'll be hurting them on that front as well as irrelevant clicks. Not Good!
   
   My thoughts - monitor your traffic and if you're getting irrelevant clicks - turn them into negatives.

The question now is do I get 25 or 50 Aqau-Sacs or do I go to B & Q on and get them on the way home tomorrow?

DAB Radios & GHD Domains For Sale

I've got DAB-Radios.co.uk and really don't have any enthusiasm for it. I know it's hyphonated so many will not be interested, but if anyone is interested then drop me a line on lee at get-visible.co.uk.

I've also got a ghd 4 domain for sale if someone wants to make an offer on that too?

Post For Facebook Lovers and Haters

For all those that view Facebook as irrelevant, here's something to make you a little bit happier! It's a little "badge" that show my latest photos that' I've loaded there.


For those that are interested in Facebook's ability to build communities and introduce people to your company, here's a list of events I'm attending:

Why I Wasn't At The Affiliate G2G - Good Reason

Well I would have gone to the Summer Networking event in Bristol today, but a new client (Direct Mortgages) who offer mortgages in ellesmere port” had the opening of their new offices with a couple of celebs from Coronation Street attending.

A great load of networking was done and I picked up some new business so it was well worth it.

The highlight was meeting the actress Tina O'Brien. I expected her to be offish but she was absolutely fantastic and more than willing to give me a signed photo for my "mum" ;-)

I know there are more than their fair share of very attractive people in the affiliate marketing industry - but you can't beat a bit of real celebrity!

All Those Social Media Knockers: Start Listening

It's amazing how many times recently I've read people say that they "don't understand social media" and then in the next paragraph they'll say "it's of no benefit to business or to me as an affiliate"! It's got to be one of the funniest things I've heard since the UK and US went into Iraq because they've got weapons of mass destruction.

People are deluding themselves. They're stuck in their ways because their methods are still working. What these people lack is "vision". They can't see the the impact that social media is having on the internet. People are caught in the mindset that the only company that can impact their business is Google - be it algo or Adwords rules changes.

The growth of blogging is getting faster and faster. Consumers are communicating with each other about products and merchants - and their voice is swamping the voice of the affiliate. People are less reliant on affiliates to create content to affect buy their buying process as they are using blogs to do this.

I use face book to build communities around products which drive traffic to my sites. It would take me a huge amount of cash to build useful technologies that achieve the same results and I would hate to think how much it'd cost me to get my sites out in front of 34,000,000 people!

It also amazes me that people slag off Google because they believe their results are crap and then wonder why people turn to blogs with their rss feeds, forums with their fresh content and social media with their informed information!

Why do you think that Google is interested in buying Facebook and why they bought Youtube? They're not daft! They know the importance of communities and user generated content.

It's about time that affiliates started to join the dots and realise that the time of relying on Google and other search engines for natural and paid traffic is over. Successful affiliates will watch where the herd is going and get their first.

If anyone wants a good read on this matter then take a look at "Future Trends in Affiliate Marketing and the Web" by Anita Campbell. It's an interview with Sam Harrelson - you've probably heard of him - if you haven't, find another career!

Welcome to Spam City. Population Unknown

I've just taken on another client (thick and fast I know) that offers property for sale in Costa Blanca and other areas of Spain. So the second thing you do when you get a new client (the first is review the on-page SEO) is to look at the competition and see what they're upto so you know how overt to make the client's SEO.

I do some searches and find some pretty good sites with loads of content then I came across this one. If you look at at the bottom there is a horrendous list of pages targeted at each town, city and keyword variation. My view is that it breaks Google's Terms of Service as they're not created for search engine use. I also think that "content" that is created solely to push the crawlers should be only placed in the sitemap. I'm not sure what others think?

To me it's sloppy and lazy SEO. The site should take every opportunity to link to the pages when they mention those keywords in the actual descriptive content. It's my view that any links that are used in this way carry more weight than just keyword/link lists at the bottom of pages.

At least they've saved me an arduous job of creating keyword lists for ppc!

Increase in UK Usability and SEO Spend Planned

Don't you love it when big surveys miss out important areas of marketing such as "social media"? grr

From EMarketer:

Internet marketers in the UK are spending an average of 13% of their Web site design budgets and 9% of their ongoing site maintenance budgets on usability, according to e-consultancy and Bunnyfoot's "The Usability and User Experience Report 2007."

Nearly three-quarters of UK firms planned to increase their usability budgets over the next 12 months.

Other digital marketing areas slated for budget increases were SEO (62%), paid search (60%), e-mail (52%), affiliate marketing (40%), online display advertising (34%) and mobile (20%).

At Last Some Sense In An Affiliate Article

I've been reading some utter drivel lately from people that seem to think they have an "inside scoop" on affiliate marketing.

Slim does sum up the industry quite well:

To be an affiliate marketer is not an easy task. You have to learn the techniques of marketing your product or service. You shouldn’t be looking at every chance because marketing is all about attracting you to look at this or that particular opportunity. To be a successful affiliate marketer, you should learn how to listen and to be taught because in life we need to learn skills to get by.

There are so many arrogant affiliates out there that like to flash the cash and make enemies rather than friends. In this industry there are a number of affiliates that don't have a problem talking about our failures as much as our successes. We do this because we know that that fella in your MSN messenger list will give you a heads up about a merchant not performing days before the merchant or network would.

You should also be creative. The real key to being successful with affiliate marketing is to develop a good content based website and weave your affiliate links into all your content. You have to provide your prospects with good, quality content to keep them coming back to your site.

Obviously this is one way. You can make it worth an affiliate manager's while (I so wanted to use a one word noun!) to let you stay promoting merchants via PPC that you shouldn't or let you in closed groups. But for me, I prefer to work on content sites and have done for well over a year. I'm nowhere near an early adopter in this method of affiliate marketing. But they're the one's that can pretty much weather any storm created by Google et al.

Damn - A list of posts

I know Jimbo keeps telling me to get Wordpress sorted, but I'm too damn lazy! So I'm creating a text list of past posts.

The issue is that blogs are great. But with the replication of content between the homepage, post pages, label pages and archive pages it can be easy to fall foul of the Google Duplication filter.

I can't seem to work out how to create title lists by date so I'm going to add some by hand. Ideally I'd be storing the data from the RSS and then just printing it out again.

• At Last Some Sense From In An Affiliate Article
• Anyone Know How To Promote Podcasts?
• Is Digg The New DMOZ? Social Media Sites And Googl...
• How to Benefit Most When Choosing an Affiliate Pro...
• Social Media Optimisation 1,427% better than PPC
• Complete Rubbish About Affiliate Marketing
• Give to Charity and watch me suffer!
• £2.16bn Is The Magic Number - But there's more to ...
• From AffiliateDirect to World Domination
• What's Your Most Obscure Domain?
• Surely there's a better way?
• Why Aren't More Merchants Developing For Facebook?...
• How True are Horoscopes?
• Who are you?
• The Blurring of Boundaries and the Importance of B...
• Why No Major Ad-Supported Telephony Services?
• The N95 Continues to Amaze Me! And BT Customer Ser...
• Dixons No Deeplinks - GRR!
• Why I love the SEOQuake Firefox Extension
• Big Companies Getting Mobile Internet So Wrong
• Merchants: Find a Royal Mail & TNT Alternative
• And now I'm an E-PR Account Manager
• SEO Jobs
• Affiliate Marketing Jobs
• Google Breaking EU Data Protection Laws also?
• How To Fight Spam
• How Far Will Google Go To Rank Results?
• Initial City Link Are Crap - Merchants Please don'...
• Strange Character in Google SERP URL
• Leave me a voice comment!
• What I'm Listening To
• Daily Telegraph Wants to Sue Google & Yahoo!
• Big Companies Still Getting SEO So Wrong
• Who Said Doorways & Hidden Link Spam Are Dead?
• Quick SEO Tip of the Day
• UK Search Engine Share Stats
• Ex Agent: CIA seed money helped launch Google
• Ocean Finance Join Numpties Not-So-Anonymous
• Selling Links? You've Gotta Label Them as Such
• Google to Hit "Hidden Links" Sites Harder
• Hilton.com Robots.txt Gaff
• SEO Search Engine
• Get To Know Matt Cutts - 5 Part Video
• SEO Ranking Factors
• Where ASOS Get's Its Traffic From
• Fastest Growing News and Media Sites
• What's Going To Be Hot 2nd 1/2 2007
• Product Feed Scripts Reviews - ShopWindow
• Top Appliance And Electronics Sites - Hitwise
• Merchant Fraud Endemic In The Industry
• Affiliate Marketing Conference - A4UExpo
• Google - Place your adverts in video games
• Big Companies Get E-Commerce So Wrong!
• AOL Learning From dot com Farces
• Don't Forget Your Old Sites
• Best and Worst Performing Online Advertising Tacti...
• Fixing Supplementals With Blogger
• Great Keyword Combination Tool
• Google Adwords Suggested Optimisation - Don't Make...
• Nick Robinson - ASOS Numpty?
• Track Me Around the UK
• A little bit of knowledge is dangerous - SEO Mind ...
• Fraud on the other foot?
• Adwords - Functionality Request
• What my readers are into ... What No Privacy?
• Don't you just hate it when ...
• Viewing Scrapping Sites Easier - Thanks To Google
• Are UK Affiliates Being Pushed Out?
• Are You Using The Google Cache Checking Tool?
• Why I Love Google Webmaster
• Apologies to Affiliate Window
• We're All Going To Barbados
• What Can You Learn From The Affiliate Marketing Le...
• Let There Be Light - Page Rank Update
• Create Feed Subscription Buttons
• Add Social Bookmarks To Your Blog
• What do I feed on? Bad Joke Alert! Which Blogs I R...
• Who Were The Big Winners Last Christmas?
• A Miserable Failure No More
• How Much Is Your Blog Worth?
• Google: "We've got rid of scraper sites" - My ...
• My Take On The Affiliate Census
• Mechants: Not Thinking Like Customers (Annoyance #...
• Wohin ist es gegangen? Google.de no more!
• Merchants - Don't Use URL's with "Affiliate In" (A...
• Keyword Suggestion Tool
• Page Similarity Checker - Useful Tool
• Google Adwords: We want true demographics!
• Introducing My Brother: Freelance Web designer
• Podcast Review: The Web 2.0 Show
• Down to the Social - Twitter
• A better 2007?
• Dissecting Affiliate Marketing
• PPC for Link Building
• Thanks Advanced MP3 Players
• WordPress is good enough for Matt Cutts ...
• Merchants: Keep your site updated (Annoyance #1)
• Matt Cutts Leaving Google?
• Unacceptable Affiliate / Merchant Communication / ...
• So how do you start a new site?

Anyone Know How To Promote Podcasts?

I've a new client who are employment discrimination solicitors (never miss an opportunity to promote a client), but do podcasts about disability discrimination etc.

I've never promoted podcasts so don't have a clue. Does anyone have any ideas how to promote them? Are there any decent directories to register them to?

Obviously the podcast issue is just one that the site faces, but it's an area they're interested in. So any pointers would be much appreciated.

Also if anyone has any sites that list:

• sex discrimination lawyers;
• race discrimination solicitors;
• disability discrimination legal advice;
• age discrimination lawyers
• discrimination based on sexual orientation

I'd be most grateful!!

Is Digg The New DMOZ? Social Media Sites And Google Votes

Traffic and rankings have improved markedly on this site and I was wondering why. There's been no massive increase in links from other sites and I've not been messing around with the on-page SEO so why the increase?

I'm not saying this is the reason, but wouldn't it be great if Google used other types of votes to play a part in it's Google Algo - other than traditional links and a "thumbs up" on the toolbar?

There used to be stories that a link from the Yahoo! directory weighed more than the TBPR would indicate - purely because it was Yahoo! And the same was said about DMOZ.

But, when I was looking at my Google Webmasters link stats, I saw loads of links from people submitting this site to Digg.com. Would Google view these submissions as relevant "votes" and view them as being more authoritative than links on a random site with the same PR?

I'm not coming up with some wacky suggestion that they are. It's just theoretical - saying wouldn't it be a good idea to cherry pick social sites for vote casting? What are your thoughts?

How to Benefit Most When Choosing an Affiliate Program - Started So Well

I was just reading an article by John Farina entitled "How to Benefit Most When Choosing an Affiliate Program". It started so well by giving a very brief introduction to what affiliate marketing is and how to choose a programme. But then I read this bit:

"The affiliate program should offer a large percentage commission and have a solid payment policy in place. That is to say, the program should pay no less than 50% and tell you up front, when you will receive your commission payments."

I thought, "chuffing heck" I can't think of more than a few merchants in the UK that offer this sort of commission. If you're flogging ebooks, dating services or porn sites maybe. But which, product selling, merchants could afford to give 50% commission? It reminded me of a post a couple of years ago on the A4UForum about one US-based guy that says he doesn't touch affiliate programmes that offer less than 40% commission!

In my mind, you can still find hugely profitable programmes at 5%. Any less than that you've got to be getting a load of free traffic to make it worth your while.

So my advice would be to:

1) Work out how you would be promoting the merchant;
2) Establish the levels of competition;
3) Work out how much time/budget you can afford to spend;
4) Get in as early as possible;
5) Be anal about your stats;
6) Find a twist on the flat landing/product page theme
7) Revise your methods;
8) Expand on your theme.

They're my top eight tips. But I'm sure there should be more.

Social Media Optimisation 1,427% better than PPC

I've just blogged on my new social media blog about a study which highlighted that Social Media Optimisation (SMO) produced nearly a 15* times better return than PPC. This may be indicative of the highly competitive nature of PPC these days whilst we're still in the pre-"gold rush" (in my opinion) with Social Media Optimisation.

I suppose just with PPC at the beginning, before people really understood how to calculate ROI and knew about keyword tools etc, there were fantastic opportunities but still pretty large risk.

The same can be said about SMO. There are fantastic opportunities if you take the social networking strand, but the risks in terms of wasted investment and damaging brands is quite high. People are getting fantastically high ROI's with blogging, but there will be tools, features and learnings that will increase those returns in the future.

So, if you wanted to leverage SMO to add to your bottom line, what should you do? Well we've listed some basic steps of social marketing.

Complete Rubbish About Affiliate Marketing

I was reading and article about affiliate marketing by Josh on the Career Ramblings blog and there were some comments that made me chuckle:

Have you heard about something called “affiliate marketing”? It’s the latest innovation on the internet, and it is single-handily revolutionizing the way that business is done online.

The ability to generate a stream of revenue automatically is one that anyone can accomplish with affiliate marketing- all it takes is time, a bit of hard work, and a lot of patience.

There were two words that stood out for me: Latest and automatically. I've been involved in affiliate marketing, one way or another since 2000. So for me it's 6 1/2 years old. Amazon and another company (US CD's) started at least 3 years before that - so you really can't call it latest.

Then "automatically". I wish affiliate marketing allowed you to earn "automatically". I'd just sit here and spend the day watching crap on TV then get round to do a bit of "automatic" work. I wouldn't have to research keywords; review competitor sites; refine my seo and ppc knowledge; build pages; research industries; build relationships; review stats; refine pages; communicate with merchants, networks and other affiliates - piece of piss really!

When you read his third point I'm sure you'd break out and laugh also:

3. Open playing field. Affiliate marketing is still new enough that it’s still anyone’s game. There is no one person or company that is dominating the market (a la Microsoft), and anyone can come along and make their mark. With the sheer amount of money that can be made with affiliate marketing right now you are actually losing money the longer that you delay.

Any of us that have been around a bit have noticed the landscape change massively. There are loads of new affiliates and many new ways of promoting merchants. Many of the easy ways have been closed by networks and merchants are a lot more "on the ball" than they used to. More merchants are disallowing brand bidding and where it is allowed it's often in closed groups.

Money used to be very easily earned. Now you do have to put your back into, put the hours in and roll up your sleeves.

Then:

6. There are no “bosses”. When you start affiliate marketing, you run the show. You call the shots, and there is no one standing behind you waiting for the opportunity to pounce.

More rubbish. You can't fart in this industry without someone knowing. Other affiliates are always quick to notify merchants and networks if you're not doing what you should be doing. I've felt in the last couple of years that we're being watched a lot more closely. Transparency is good, but uneducated affiliate managers are always watching what you're doing for the wrong reasons - they don't understand what you are doing.

Tripe alert:

8. It’s easy. There’s no magical secret to becoming a successful affiliate marker. It comes down to method, repetition, and strategy. If it’s winter, launching websites about summer may not be a good idea. However, launching your websites about snowboarding might be a great idea a week before the skiing seasons begins.

Easy? Bollocks is it! If it's winter it's the perfect time to be launching websites about summer. It isn't easy and it takes time for sites to bed in. Numpty!

I'm fed up of misinformation in this industry. Has Josh ever worked through the night launching a new site or reviewing his ppc bids whilst on holiday or getting calls from networks to say that a website you've been promoting has just found out their tracking isn't working?

I wouldn't dare write an article on mechanical engineering because I wouldn't have a clue. Please don't patronise affiliates with this nonsense.

Give to Charity and watch me suffer!

I've been roped into to doing the Great North Run in September for a charity a friend is involved with - Bolton Lads & Girls Club. They're not a well known charity but given the latest press stories about kids not having anything to do, they offer them constructive activities.

Seeing as I haven't run anywhere for about 15 years since I was forced to at school and I'm not the active of people it should be a painful experience!

So I'm sure you'll all love to watch me suffering as I try and run 12-odd miles in the cold and rain! Of course I'll be adding photos etc and I'm sure you gits out there will be taking the mickey, but I'm sure it'll be worth it.

You can donate at Just Giving. (I'm sure you'll enjoy yourselves laughing at my expense!)

£2.16bn Is The Magic Number - But there's more to it!

E-consultancy has commented that afiliates last year generated £2.16bn of sales for UK-based merchants.

I'd be interested to see if that included Amazon.co.uk because they're actually based in Luxembourg now - but that's an aside.

So lets look at their reasons to affiliate:

• Cost-effective Customer Acquisition
  There is no payment to affiliates unless they refer a visitor who subsequently becomes a customer. As such, there is no wasted budget in affiliate marketing.
  Ofcourse they have to simplify the subject, but there is still wasted budget in affiliate marketing - for two reasons. There's the fraud aspect. If you don't manage your campaign properly you can easily pay for fraudulent transactions. An example of a merchant that does monitor fraudulent transactions is CDWOW. My bank card was cloned and today I got a load of CDWow transactions through. It looks like they spotted that they appeared to be fraudulent and started rejecting them - well done.
  
  A second reason that affiliate budget can be wasted is from incentivised traffic. I know it's big business but I don't like it. There are affiliates that will pay consumers in low cost items to complete loan requests etc. Certain demographics are elligble to take out loans, but certain affiliates don't care, they still encourage it. Ho hum!
  
  
• Fixed Costs
  The bounty paid to affiliates is cost of sale. You set the bounty, and you pay when sales are made. There aren’t any variables beyond that (unless you choose to pay different levels of commission as sales increase). Merchants need to pay network fees, which differ (see our Affiliate Marketing Buyer’s Guide for more details), but otherwise affiliate marketing fees are a steady cost of sale.
  
  There's no argument with this. However, I'm sure that many merchants pay what their competitors are rather than what they can afford. As business costs change they really need to check that they can still afford to pay the same rate.
  
  In economics and accounts they aren't actually fixed costs, they're very "variable". Fixed costs are the same regarding how much business you do - like rent etc. So this is a bit missleading - but unimportant in the greater scheme of things.
  
  
• Brand Visibility
  Affiliates can secure high search engine listings and / or display your ads on their website. This is all free brand exposure and a nice side benefit of affiliate marketing.
  
  Ooh I really don't like this! Why don't you drink my Mount Gay and sleep with my girlfriend at the same time? Next time I order from a merchant that has this view, could you please send me some extra free products too? It's just the same. Paying naff commission or rejecting legitimate leads in the hope of getting free branding won't serve merchants well in the long run.
  
  
• Customer Acquisition - Targeted Prospects
  Affiliates choose the ads they wish to place on their websites. They know their audience and will pick the campaigns most suited to their demographic. As such, the ads are targeted by humans. It is in the affiliate’s interests to pick the ads that their audience is likely to respond to.
  
  Completely true. However, many merchants think that they can simply launch a programme and they'll get prominant positions on high-trafficked niche sites. It takes time to build relationships and and offer creatives that are effective.
  
  
• Outsourced marketing team/s
  Many affiliates are experts in search engine marketing, providing you with a way of potentially getting to the top of Google without needing to spend a fortune on SEO or PPC.
  
  Now this is something I think is totally correct. But merchants need to realise they can either embrase their affiliates or work against them. The latter normally happens when agencies get in the way. Many of them spend their time letting affiliates find the opportunities at the affiliate's expense and then expliot themselves and cut that route off from them. And before any agencies get on their high-horse about it - it happens!
  
  
• Find-ability
  With the above point in mind, if a consumer visits Google and multiple listings ultimately link to you, then you’re going to have a much better chance of being found than competitors with only one or two (or no) links on the first page.
  
  But don't let us affiliates take those risks for you to mess up the conversion. Many affiliates are expert at spotting leakages in the buying process. Listen to us and seek our views - we'll be cheaper than most agencies. Also reward affiliates that create their own content or promote you in imaginative ways.
  
  
• Transparency
  A key appeal for merchants is the transparency of return on investment, through the ability to track the origin of sales. You can see exactly where and when sales are made.
  
  But you've still gotta be hot on spotting those that try and exploit your rules. They key is to clearly define the rules and if you want to change them give affiliates plenty of notice.
  

There's plenty of scope for both parties to make buckets full. Treat each other with respect and work together. If you don't play by the rules then expect it all to be taken away from you - and don't complain if it happens.

On a brighter note, there aren't many other industries which offers such great returns in such an interesting manner.

From AffiliateDirect to World Domination

The press release from Doubleclick states that their heavy duty affiliate tracking solution is now available to smaller companies in the form of "Affiliate Direct" via their Peformics SEM and Affiliate Solutions company.

Call me stupid, but isn't a bit worrying when you've got a company offering cpm, media buying, affiliate management and now a search engine under one roof?

Surely their competitors should be rightly worried? Would their clients get preference over competing merchants/affiliates?

Also, wouldn't the amount of data about search behaviour and purchases be massively powerful and valuable?

When things were small, they were beautiful. Competition was great and now search monopolies exist and people only ever suffer when this happens. The usual reason business give for their monopolies being beneficial is that they reduce cost. But, choice and competition reduces cost and increases R&D - it's an economic fact. Without adequate competition the pace of progress and innovation will be less and when you consider that all these acquisitions are in fact erecting barriers to entry to for new competitors.

Now there's talk that Google are looking to spend US£2 Billion on Facebook - how good will that be for users? The problem for Google is that they have to put their cash to use, they're not allowed to keep their cash in the bank as investors expect a greater return. Google has to invest it to keep the earnings/share growing. They've let themselves become ubercapitalist which in effect destroyed capitalism to a large degree in the search market.

Anyways, best log off blogger, read some of my Gmails and have a play with YouTube and the check what I'm doing tomorrow on my Google calendar and load some more pics onto Picasa. Why don't we just start a charter to call the world "Google" - it'll just make life easier?

Or could we just stop whinging and develop something better ourselves? Anyone got a couple of billion to chuck at some ideas?

A Look Back At June 2007

You're only as good as the tools you use. When trying to work out why one site ranks over another it's good to have some summary information. I blogged about this seo firefox extension which gives you just that - I think its worth a read.

I then had a moan at big business still getting mobile internet wrong. Many just don't grasp the concept - and it looks like nothing has changed either.

It's apt now with the Royal Mail Strike, back in June I warned people about it and said they should find alternative suppliers. I hope many of you did!

I also mentioned that I'm working with the Manchester PR Agency, Pazang. (they're a boutique PR agency, so I think a bit of link love is ok??). Pazang work with big companies and small. It's good fun, although I do work with an office full of girls :-)

I also found a cool widget that allows me to list seo and affiliate marketing jobs. I don't think I've seen anyone else use it though.

Well June, all in all, was a quiet month for this blog with holidays etc.

What's Your Most Obscure Domain?

I was just having a quick surf and came accross one of my sites, and started to think "why the heck did I set that up?" Well it's one about Charles Manson and I was scratching my head for a good couple of minutes and realised that it's because a film is due to be made about him and he's sure to pop his cloggs in the not too distant future.

The reasoning I now remember wasn't to make some money, as it seems a bit wrong really, but I wanted to clear some of the missinformation about him. But then money got in the way and I forgot about the site.

Then I started thinking about other domains that I've bought recently such as solar-eclipse.co.uk, solarstorm.co.uk and I've even got kennedyassination.co.uk (doh kennedyassissination.co.uk - it was late!) For this one I remembered that in the next few years some top secret documents are due to be released which should shed some more light on the case - there could be a few quid in it?

But which domains do you have in very niche markets?

Surely there's a better way?

One thing that's really started to pee me off is the mountain of merchant emails I have to trawl through in the morning before I get down to some serious work. Merchant emails are now seriously hindering my efficiency!

I'd easily get over a hundred emails a day. There are a couple that really get on my tits with their constant communications - I'm sure you know who they are!

My recommendation, something I'd dearly love to see is an option next to a merchant application for us affiliate to choose to receive emails when:

1) The merchant it put on hold, pending removal or removed from the network;
2) Notifications about payments (late, batch issues, etc)
3) Merchant offers - sales on products, promotions, we're in the press sort of stuff

Affiliates should be able to pick and choose which notifications they get. They should also be able to choose a different email address from the network-specific emails, for example being emailed your self-billing invoice etc.

I understand that networks are under pressure to get as many affiliates to be active on a programme as possible, but's its starting to wear very thin!

Ideally all broadcasts should be kept within the system so affiliates can go in and search for news about a particular merchant, product or industry. Then if I start a new site about a product I can go and get a list of all the offers.

If there's a techie out there, you could automatically post them to a site? Hey Matt, isn't this an opportunity for A4U?

Right, off to read my many buy.at and TD emails. If I'm still here in the morning can someone put the rubbish out?

Why Aren't More Merchants Developing For Facebook?

Why aren't there more merchants utilising social media sites? I admit you see loads of them "marketing" their offerings by communicating with others they know. They may set up groups around their products or services such as the Warner Bros one for The White Stripes. But very few go out of their way to build applications to go with them.

I found a great one on Facebook today. It was the Firebox Wishlist Application. I don't think it was created by Firebox, but they should have. Wishlists are perfect for the social network model. There are some great examples out there including eBay and Amazon.

Then there's retailers that have applications that allow you to buy products for other face book users directly or suggest products for people to buy for you:

• Social Flowers
• Delivery.com
  

It just amazes that me that there is a real lack of UK merchants that offer their products on Facebook. It would be perfect for companies such as Advanced MP3 Players as they offer products that create a buzz. A potential application could be for people to list their gadgets and rate them. Then accessories could automatically appear as well as upgrades etc.

I couldn't see any dating sites that target the UK site. I'm not sure how any gadget could work because I'm sure that many people wouldn't want their friends to know that they're on a dating site.

Another one could be useful to our friend James Avery of FlightMapping.com. Here's a couple of ideas. You could have a "I've done this trip - do you want to?" - basically a list of trips people have made utilising their flash-based routes tool.

Another idea would be for people planning on taking a trip or holiday and offering people the opportunity for others to join them by giving a price comparison tool.

There are some ticket exchange sites. People could say which gigs they're going to, or want go to and they could include an application for Viagogo to buy the tickets.

There is one affiliate entrepreneur that has created the Price Comparison application. I'm amazed that there aren't more affiliates out there doing this.

I'm not technical enough to do it. I best get "networking" to find someone that is!

How True are Horoscopes?

For a moment of not doing important stuff and not wasting time on Facebook, I decided to have a poke around on MSN. On there they Russell Grant does a range of horoscopes. So I thought I'd have a poke around what he reckons will happen for next week.

On the Pisces page there was a couple of comments that caught my eye:

This is a good week to submit a piece of writing for publication. Alternately, you could get media coverage from a blog. You might even get a chance to sell handmade jewellery or clothing at a boutique. Although you may not feel comfortable going commercial, it will be nice to have some extra cash in your pocket. The public loves your distinctive style!

Well this made me chuckle! The bit about the blog, he he! Which one I wonder? Then the jewellery bit was funny too. I'm hoPublish Postpefully going to seal a deal to promote a new jewellery retailer that offers handmade jewellery!

It's been a crap week with bills appearing from everywhere, including a £583 one from T-Mobile - with most of it dubious data charges which I'm going to contact them about. So any amount of good news is welcome!

Who are you?

Has anyone done the PersonalDNA test to see what your personality is like. I've done mine here. Apparently I'm a "Benevolent Leader" - do you really think I'd post it if it said "Dodgy Northerner"?!!

If anyone wants to put a link to their results go for it. For a laugh I'd invite you to use a two word discription - and no Darren you can't mention anything about my origins or doubt whether I know my parents!

The Blurring of Boundaries and the Importance of Brand Image

Everyday it seems that the distinctions between the different types of media and the ways in which marketeers engage with them are becoming more blurred everyday.

The first type of media I suppose was by voice and "word of mouth". Back in "days of old" people would try and attract" consumers by shouting "a dozen apples for a groat" from their market stall. The natural progression of this was getting people to talk about your stall because you had the best apples in town.

About the 16th Century the printing press came about and overtime people started putting adverts in them and then PR was born.

Then at the start of the century the radio was invented and eventually people started placing messages in broadcasts too. PR people found another medium to promote their clients' services.

This naturally progressed onto TV in the middle of the last century. Again PR agencies got their teeth into television too.

The next big thing was the internet. Despite media agencies getting to grips with branding clients' with nasty 468's and then interstitials, they moved onto viral marketing but it has only taken the social networking-type sites and web 2.0 for them to generally move into the 21st century and understand the importance of managing client's reputation online.

It still amazes me that so many big brands don't utilise blogs or monitor their brand image online. Companies such as Nielsen Buzzmetrics and Cymfony (amongst others) offer great solutions for monitoring your brand reputation. Even Google Alerts offers a simple way to monitor companies' online reputation.

It's the surge in blogging and social networking sites like Facebook which has brought about a massive explosion in unfettered free speech. Previously ordinary folk found it difficult to maintain sites, blogs gave everyone who could type a voice. Now companies are being rated and reviewed like never before. Companies such as Dell and Wal-Mart are being blogged about every single second of the day. And people use other people's opinions greatly when they're in the buying cycle. It is essential that companies can respond quickly to negative online press. In my mind, every merchant, at least should sign up to a Google Alert for their brand. This would show when they're mentioned in the news and on blogs. If they could afford it, they should be hiring a PR agency that knows the online game (this isn't a cheap plug - but it should be!).

Sites like Facebook have product groups, just like the Pleo Dinosaur one I've created. Within these groups we can sway demand from one merchant to another, consumers will give feedback and even set-up anti-groups. Any marketeer in any company should be searching on Digg.com, Facebook and elsewhere for instances of their brand.

When you consider the demise of traditional media where people are "consuming" TV, radio and print in fewer numbers, it is essential that any marketing function is fully up-to-speed with the online-PR environment.

So if you're not, then start now. Use Google Alerts for a starting point. Subscribe to the various social networking sites, actively search for your brand online and keep it under control as ordinary folk can make or break your company with a few choice words in the right/wrong place!

Further reading:
Online Reputation Monitoring & Management Beginners Guide
Brand Reputation: What is it and why it matters a lot
Social Media Optimization

Why No Major Ad-Supported Telephony Services?

I may have missed a trick here, but I'm not aware of any services that offer ad-supported telephony services - the only one I could think of that was remotely similar was JaJah. But this to me is an "old hat" version of what I'm thinking of.

With JaJah it uses VOIP technology and a web interface to connect people at a small cost but show banner ads on those pages at $2CPM.

They may have a million users and doing very well but why can't they actually insert 5 second adverts prior to connection - just like those adverts at the beginning of podcasts? With Google going in to radio advertising surely it's the next logical step?

It may not work for national calls as the costs are minimal and most people get free calls on their mobile. But what what about those with families abroad. With the barriers in Europe coming down every day and the free movement of labour surely there's a huge market for this sort of thing?

I'd be grateful if anyone knew of any company offering this type of service!

The N95 Continues to Amaze Me! And BT Customer Service is Shite!

I've had a bit of a nightmare recently what with T-Mobile messing up my roaming access, my car not being returned to me after being fixed, Barclaycard's courier company messing up getting my replacement card to me before I went away and BT Business Internet disconnecting me because they messed up my Direct Debit.

So I'm at home and have a million emails and sites to update. I try and connect and find that BT have disconnected me because of an unpaid bill. The letter didn't arrive in time and whilst I was away they disconnected me. They have a very rude recorded message and no-one is avaliable on a Sunday - despite many businesses these days being staffed 24/7!

So I thought about using a client's access to update sites then I realised I may be able to connect my laptop to my N95 and get it on the 'net that way. With this Sony Vaio I could have connected via Infrared but I thought I'd get the software on and connect via USB. And boy is it quick! My old Vodafone connect card will be relagated to my "ex-gadgets" draw! :D

So thanks Nokia - my bacon has been saved!

Dixons No Deeplinks - GRR!

Surely campaigns shouldn't be launched until they're properly set-up? I've got a pre-order product I can shift loads of via Dixons on Awin and I can't deeplink to it! How chuffing annoying!

I've been away in Antigua and haven't yet seen any emails about Dixons' deeplinking - has there been a notice?