Affiliate Marketing Blog: September 2007

Did he tell Paul Wheatly it was a closed brand bidding group?

Is this the Career Doctor stand?

ASOS's Nick Robinson was shortlisted for the A4u Industry Champion Award for 2007

Every man and his dog is giving blogging tips these days. Most are damn obvious like add social book marketing linking options.

But there is a real dirth of great tips relating to the nature of the posts to attract readers and feed subscribers.

I was doing some ground work on some affiliate blogs (my preferred route to market) and thought about a book that I'd nearly finished reading.

The book is BuzzMarketing by Mark Hughes of Pepsico and Half.com (sold to eBay within six months of launch for $500 million) fame.

The book is basically about PR and creating "buzz" about your products or services but could easily be transplanted into the world of blogging with it's near instantaneous mass-publishing.

Mark states that to create vast amounts of buzz you have to push on one of 6 buttons with the public or opinion formers. They are:

Comment about a taboo subject
- He used the experience of using urinal advertising with the creative "Don't piss away half of your money - head to Half.com".
Be unusual
- Just like the guy that wanted to take on Match.com in the dating field, he issued fliers outside a restaurant chain for OverweightDate.com - people both thin and rotund got the fliers. It was certainly an unusual strategy that worked very well.
Be outrageous
- Mark rightly says that when you're being outrageous that you still need some connection betweenn your message and the product or service you're trying to promote.
Be hilarious
- He used the example of French's Potato snacks that were bombing in the States. He used some clever gimmicky men in potato chip suits, but did it in a clever, well-thought out way.
Be remarkable
- write about something ground-breaking or thought-provoking. Don't get caught up in the usual drivel that most bloggers come out with.
Comment about secrets that you have
- Create curiosity, discuss information you have that others don't. Show exclusive news or reviews. Give people a reason to visit your blog other the 100-or-so others about your topic.

Most bloggers, social media, web 2.0 people get caught up with their egos, they think just because they're in this fast-paced industry, just because they've done well for themselves that they have nothing to learn from marketing's past.

What a load of crap. There are many leaders in the old economy who's views are more legitimate than the legion of internet or affiliate marketing gurus. What noobies and the industry as a whole needs to do is see this form marketing as just part of the evolution of marketing and not see it as the destination - the final play in the affiliate game.

Affiliate marketing has gone full-circle. From BBS and newsgroups around to shopping portals, then on to price comparison sites and then cash back sites. Most affiliates don't recognise that its a big circle full of fads and phases. The most successful affiliates are those that get out of a route to market just as its getting "over-ripe" and moves on to the "next big thing" when the noobies and the followers are still thinking about the old way of doing things.

As markets become profitable, more people enter, the costs associated with attracting new users rise, merchants and agencies change the rules to make sure they profit from it and no-one else hence making profits fall.

So what next? Well that's my secret- I'm sure some of you are already there!

ZiiTrend is a great tool based on the post of social networks.

It works by an individual submitting a possible, public event and the community rates the probability that it will happen.

I've just added that England Qualify for the Euro 2008 finals and it will be intersting to see what the public think.

I haven't analysed it closely yet to see how easily it can be spun for affiliate or merchant advertising. But, what springs to mind is that it could be great for market research and competitor analysis.

I'd apprecieate your feedback on it.

Well I was supposed to visit Ad:tech but got caught outside Euston on the train as the station has be evacuated and then had to meet James and Ciaran from Altogether Digital about co-presenting at the A4UExpo next month. (note to self to send pic and biog). We're doing the bit on Social media and how merchants (Ciaran's bit) and affiliates should / are making the most of the revitalised media-type.

So it was a quick meeting, setting out who's doing what and outline the content etc. Had a quick pint with Jimbo and headed off to meet the gang just off the Olympia centre. The only issue is that I walked from South Ken to Earl's Court (don't ask) and then eventually met up with everyone at some random pub.

It was great to see Helen Southgate who I haven't seen in years and regret not keeping in touch!! The was the odd face around that I'm glad I haven't seen in ages (but we won't go into details). Also thanks to Matt Bailey for the pint and the photo of Helen in a Citeh top!

The Buy.at piss-up was great (they always are). After being (attempted) chatted up by a wedding planner that kept stroking my leg and calling me darling I made a sharp exit and escorted Nic Cordingly to the tube.

The Affiliate Summit was actually very good. It came be summed up with "quality rather than quantity". The right people were there, I had a great chat with RO Eye again (great bunch vote for them!). It was also good to finally meet Julia Stent from Affiliate Window. They're now back in my good books and will be working very hard on my gadget projects with her.

And a blast from the past and who also most brought tears to my eyes was Carla Arrindell - an awesome, honest, truthful, caring person. If there's only one reason to work with OMG it would be because Carla's there.

And Jess, what can I say. A true legend. And if she was old enough (she's not by the way) she would be a surrogate mum. We've got the same views on the industry, it's problems, its solutions and the future.

So my to do list for October now includes:

1) Start to look at DGM for merchants - don't dismiss them out of hand because of their past problems;
2) Have a good play with Awin's new widgets and get back on to their gadget merchants like I did last year when I was told to stop promoting some because I was selling too many;
3) Forget my log-in headaches and start to take a good look at their current merchants and their new big one ;-)
4) Do stuff Jess was encouraging me to do;
5) Get secret project with secret agency implemented secretly;

So, all in all, a great time was had by all. And get your backside down to the A4UExpo if only to heckle me!

It looks like Magnify.net has the makings of a very useful tool.

Prior to Maganify.net I didn't know of a way to directly monitise video content or add fresh, relevant content directly into their site without having to search for it. - Magnify.net does that for you. Only the other day I was thinking about the future of search being video content search rather than relying on people to correctly categorise their creations.

For affiliates wishing to add relevant content then this could be ideal you can also share in the ad revenue created from the content too.

The one below is a widget version of some Web 2.0 video content:

I've just created an "Affiliate Marketing UK" one - just waiting for the confirmation email ...

So true! If you could take over or create a Facebook profile of somebody else, who would it be?

I've had my eye on Compete for a while now.

It does look awesome. The bit I didn't like about the demo, however, was that the first thing it mentions was credits and costs. Show us the benefits before the costs! Come'on!

Basically it's a bit like Hitwise but at the simplest level not as good, but it is far better than Alexa. Their homepage says that it allows you to:

Discover new keywords you should be bidding on
Find the gaps in competitors' search strategies
Invest in terms that drive the most engaged visitors
Track your performance against competitors and peers

You really have to visit their blog rather than the demo to find the information that will actually make you buy. Take a look at their example about Halo 3, and the differences in demand for the three main types of console.

If anyone has tried it yet, I'd appreciate your views. I don't have time at the moment to give it a thorough going over, but over the next week or so I'll give it a good test-drive.

I can't leave it now! Here's some of the output - an Alexa-type graph:

Play.com's most popular search terms:

Virgin Atlantic's top search terms:

And for HMV:

If you don't have an affiliate stiffy by now something's wrong with you!

It'll be a much cheaper method for brand name bidders to collate keywords and provides an alternative to other tools that show just what people search on based on a keyword you put in. This shows you what the sites are actually getting. It has so many advantages over the other tools!

So, what impact will this have on Hitwise? Well, not a great deal yet as the quantity and quality of the data isn't up to their standards, but I don't think it'll take them to start competing!

Sign up and start playing now!

I have some news that a new affiliate network will be launching in a couple of weeks with some major exclusive merchants and some juicey ones on other networks at the mo.

I know the guys behind it and they have loads of experience in the industry so it'll be a success.

I've obviously been embargoed from mentioning any details so it won't mater how many tequillas you chuck down my throat tomorrow night - I ain't telling. ;-)

I'll post just prior to their hard-launch to let you know the details and get your views.

What the heck is all that about?

They're reportedly planning to lay a couple of cables across the pacific in association with some other telecoms companies.

They've also got a job listing for a "Strategic Negotiator, Submarine Cable" (nice bit of seo link love for ya guys!).

Why? Well it may be part of their much discussed move into telecommunications, but not for it's own sake, or to take on mobile operators or anything - but to allow them to better service Google users across Asia. Internet usage is growing rapidly there (up 41% from mid 2006 to mid-2007 according to TeleGeography Inc.) and they need a decent backbone to serve results and offer an alternative to local data centres.

With the future growth in Asian internet traffic expected to continue its rapid growth, should us affiliates and merchants be seeing if we can leverage any of that traffic?

The report sponsored by buy.at and conducted by e-consultancy isn't for public release yet. But I'm sure I'm allowed to comment on its findings.

As a bit of a background the report's aim was to survey how merchants view affiliate marketing. The survey sample was 700+ with 239 classing themselves as UK merchants. With the affiliate market growing by around 60% a year and 80% of the respondents planning to increase their spending on this channel over the next two years, the industry is certainly one that businesses, both large and small alike, need to take very seriously.

One of the interesting findings is that 95% of the respondents found affiliate marketing to be 'very' or 'quite' cost effective which is more than PPC that came in at 90%, email marketing at 81% and display advertising which only managed 52%.

Another interesting factor is that, when you look at success as defined by volume of sales, it comes in second behind paid search. Affiliate marketing is still in it's pubescent stage and even though paid search post-dates affiliate marketing, it is certainly much easier to get a paid search campaign off the ground as compared to affiliate marketing.

I also agree with the report's finding that networks must continue to innovate and expand their offerings, but my view is that both merchants and affiliates much put more pressure on the networks to do this. If there is no incentive, they will not evolve and improve.

The report also stats that "affiliates must continue to professionalise and invest in their businesses", but I feel this falls short. Affiliates must also increase their education levels on a wide range of topics with business management and communication just two of them.

The report also states that "advertises must continue to allocate the appropriate level of resources to support a successful affiliate programme". But it's not just about the money and the personnel. It's also about creativity and willingness to adapt and learn.

A worrying statistic is that "less than 50% of respondents claim to have good direct communication with at least their top tier affiliates". Achieving this feat is one of the key drivers in affiliate marketing success. It is crucial that merchants have direct, and mutually-beneficial, relationships with their affiliates.

Looking at the numbers, 31% of respondents were UK merchants,13% were agencies, 4% were from a network, 9% were affiliates and the rest had another type of interest in the industry.

A good benchmark for any merchant is that on average, according to the survey, 16% of their sales were generated by affiliate marketing.

The industry is doing well, 67% of the respondents said they were getting more affiliate sales than they were two years ago. It makes you wonder what the other 33% are doing!

And an interesting face to go with this is that 7% were spending less on affiliate marketing. So it many circumstances the merchant is doing more sales but spending less on this marketing channel - interesting.

The budget allocation is commensurate with the level of affiliate sales earned as a whole. Merchants were spending on average around 18% of their online marketing budgets on affiliate marketing, but were generating 16% of sales. When you look at the marketing budgets as a whole, they were spending just 10%.

The following statistic proves that merchants are never happy! 81% which they could get more out of affiliate marketing whilst 16% said they were satisfied - even thought the majority said it was the most effective marketing option. doh!

Another interesting finding also proves that there needs to be a massive educational programme for affiliate managers. I'd advocate an affiliate marketing accreditation. 33% of merchants rated having a lack of internal resource being a barrier to successful affiliate marketing.

Agencies such as RO Eye should be rubbing their hands in glee when they find out that 20% of merchants view the "difficulty in attracting affiliates" as a major barrier to affiliate success.

And the 18% that said "restricted budget" need to ask themselves the question about affiliate marketing being the most cost-effective channel and if they moved some budget from less cost-effective methods wouldn't it positively affect the bottom-line??

And the 19% that said "poorly converting website" need to give me a call!

It's good to see that 21% of merchants say they have a dedicated affiliate manager. But when you add it to the "lack of resource" at 33% being a barrier and that 34% saying they have limited communication with their affiliates then I start to get a bit concerned.

The obvious view is, hire good people to manage your campaigns, have a personal touch with them and get your site converting. True?

This is the bit where networks should take note. 47% of merchants view the network's relationship with affiliates as being extremely important when choosing a network. Having a bad perceived relationship with affiliates will harm your ability to take on new merchants.

Other areas include tracking and analytics at 40% and level of account management at 34%.

There is so much in the report that I can't go into full detail as I'd be here all night. But wait for the report - it's worth it.

My view is that having a successful affiliate relationship is more important than the product or market itself. A successful relationship will allow both businesses to flourish. Affiliates will point out conversion barriers, merchants will develop great content and widgets etc. Networks and agencies have an important role to play in all this. They should be focusing on the next merchant sign-up, but look at the next affiliate sale. They should strive with each party to build the merchant's brand and sales.

And merchant's take note, 47% of merchants view the affiliate / network relationship as extremely important when choosing a network. You've got to add value to our business before the merchant adds to your client list.

If anyone has any sites about weddings or has sites targeting weddings or women then could you contact me (on the right) and let me know if you'll be interested in running a competition to win a hot date with a millionaire castle owner as part of a promotion to publicise his castle wedding venue?

We're just getting the press release sorted and working out the details of the competition as well as compensating people for their time to help promote it and how exclusive we can go.

So drop me a line if you've got any ideas.

p.s. time to get back to everyone that's emailed me the past couple of days. Sorry I've been manic and not particularly well!

... bollocks!

The current issue of Business 2.0 magazine has a great piece on "The Facebook Economy".

They talk about two guys called Shen and Tokuda who started the slideshow app on Myspace. Their uptake was doubling everyday and was costing them $20,000 a month in hosting fees. It wasn't until Facebook and their encouragement of developers to create their own aps did they start making serious wonga.

Within two months of converting the slideshow app to the Facebook platform they had accumulated $200,000 in ad revenue. By July this year they had created another 14 apps and had 22 million users.

If you looked at the whole app thing there were 2,500 new apps in the first ten weeks which triggered 139 million downloads. And the investors eye's are glinting.

Venture capitalists Bay Partners have set aside $12 million to fund 50 new Facebook applications. Salil Deshpande is a partner in the company said to Business 2.0 magazine that the "current apps only scratch the surface of what is possible ... We're looking for much more sophisticated applications that can make money."

If you've used a Facebook application, you'd probably see that the revenue generating model is basically built around Google Adsense. The future is much brighter than the odd cpc click. The magazine outlines that there are four main ways to generate revenue from Facebook:

1) Sell Adds
2) Attract Sponsors
3) Sell Services
4) Sell Products

You've probably seen the Slide applications, their CEO, Max Levchin has said that they "intend to build a giant company on top of these social operating systems ... It's an opportunity for us to build the next Electronic Arts, Intuit or Adobe."

And I'm sure they can do it.

So what would make money with Facebook? Well senior platform manager Dave Morin says "the stickiest applications are those that tap in to the "social graph." Just like affiliate marketing it's the applications that are more content that sales will make the most money, in my mind there are direct parallels. Business 2.0 talk of the (fluff) Friend application - which is a virtual animal your friends can pet and feed etc. To me, crap, but to loads of people out there - fantastic. In just seven weeks they had 1 million downloads and is increasing by 10,000 a day.

If you wanted to research which applications have the most users and which are the fastest growing then I'd recommend you pay a visit to Appaholic.com. It's pure Facebook apps pornography. If you're interested in Facebook apps, I'd recommend you spend some time on there.

So what makes a successful Facebook App? Well it has to:

1) Be simple;
2) Ideally mimic existing Facebook features (like poke etc);
3) Match the social process.

But what of the future?

With so much revenue being generated, application developers could be forced to pay per download if Facebook goes public. Facebook itself is making good ammounts of money. But when you see what's happened to Google since their float (grabbing every dollar they can), you can expect to see Facebook doing the same.

What should I do know?

If you got a few quid and a degree of determination, take a look at Appaholic and see if there's anything you can learn from there. Look at your current offering and see if it can be Facebookacised. Then try and find a Facebook developer.

I'll be going into more detail over the next few days about how I think people can make money from Facebook - I may be wrong, but what have you got to loose?

p.s. get ahead and read about Garage Sale and Web 2.0 List now.

Just a quick one to say thanks to Chris at Hotel Chocolat and the team for the fantastic slab of chocolate I've just received through the post.

It's great seeing a fantastic brand such as Hotel Chocolat doing well. At the Affiliate Future Get2Gether just, people were saying how fantastic I am at preparing sites well in advance, but I think it's a bit early to start on my Easter eggs site for next year!

What I was suprised with that site was that I hardly did any work on it for this year's Easter and I did have a good smatering of sales with them. I'll have to try and do something with them for Christmas this year as I'm sure they'll convert like a dream then too!

It's a shame that they're with Commission Junction as I'm sure that many more affiliates would take them up if they had a secondary network - I even forget to even look at CJ these days for new merchants :-(.

But if you had a choice, which network should they use?

er - just use the top Affiliate Window entry - I liked them so much I entered them twice ;-)

After chatting with Josh from AMP3 last night Id' thought I'd have a look at my mp3 players blog that I'd stupidly forgotten about. I was surprised to find out that it's 19th in Google for "mp3 players" and had a fair bit of traffic! Just a shame it wasn't monetised!

Sop my advice would be for affiliates to go through your their list of domains and see which are live and then go through your logs to see what sort of traffic you're getting. Then do some serious research into which merchants you can promote on them.

Most affiliates, myself included, do two things that make it easy to effectively loose money:

1) Buy domains at a whim;
2) Start sites and then get bored!

So don't do too much, keep to a niche and keep on top of your sites!

I think I'm going to have to flog off some sites and domains so I can focus on the ones that interest me the most. Anyone in the hunt for new decent domains?

P.s. I've now found out that my route planners site is getting around 200 visits a day! Doh, best get some advertising on there ASAP!!

I love these low-key, relaxed, have a laugh, no sales people bombarding you with rubbish get2gethers.

The Afffiliate Future crew: Maz, Sinead, Luke, Pete, Mary, Nic and everyone else did a fantastic job of keeping us entertained and lubricated (not in that sense Luke).

The event was also great from a business point of view as I'd reaquanted myself with Naomi at Firebox and Josh at Adavanced MP3 Players and walked away with some DVD's, PS3 and Wii games from The Hut.

The fashion show was certainly a highlight. I just wish I wasn't talking to Josh the whole way through the underwear section fantastically created by Tights Please.

So here's some of photos I took. Admitedly there weren't many.

Wardy and the lads get stuck up the roller-coaster. LMAO it would have been funnier but those left on terra firma were dodging wasps. Should have left Gav the Citeh fan up there! ;-)

Wardy and the rest finally touch down after 15 mins stuck up there!

Jimbo is happy in the knowledge that its safe for me to drive into him with rubber tyres around the "car":

Luke looking pissed off that he broke his motor:

Jimbo high on O2:

So again thanks for the day was fantastic.

Here's some affiliate marketing books that you may want to consider.

There appears to be some good one's coming out in the next few months that may be worth a read. However, with affiliate marketing changing so fast its difficult how up-to-date they can be. It looks like I'm going to have to do a post on affiliate marketing ebooks soon.

Amazon.co.uk Widgets

One of the reasons post this was to see how the new Amazon widgets perform. So far they look extremely easy to include. I'll have to try the other stuff now.

Addendum:
Hero - this is what it should look like. I'm wondering if you've got some sort of security setting or software on your machine that's blocking it?

I'm always telling my clients to get blogging about your products, industry and company. One of my clients is in the education sector and its great to see them get enthused about blogging and how they can communicate in a more relaxed manner with both consumers and corporate clients.

I've been struggling to find a perfect example of a big brand that is doing corporate blogging well. And at last I've found one. Whilst looking for information about the new iPhone, I came across the Dial-a-Phone Blog.

So what do I like about the Dial-a-Phone blog?
1) Its useful! - There's information about HSDPA with a little video-type thing to say how much faster it is than 3G. (Yep my N95 has it). There's tips about how to upload pics to Flickr using your moby, there's industry news about the new PSP and so much more.

2) It's light-hearted - I like the post about the Beyoncé mobile phone and Jon Tickle.

3) It's not plastered with advertising - I just hate blogs with so much self-importance that they plaster advertising all over it. People want accurate, timely information not to be physically assaulted with flash banners.

4) They tell you who the bloggers are - On the right its got a list of the five bloggers and you can find out more about them. I find it always nice to know the face and the details of the people behind the posts.

5) They let you add the RSS feed to multiple readers - This is something I'm falling down on with my own strategy and need to fix asap.

6) You can search the blog - another important feature especially as the blog is n the same domain as the main site, using site:dialaphone.co.uk in Google may not give you what you're looking for.

7) They understand social media marketing - they do give away an iPhone in the blog - you've got to find the post though.

8) The design is pretty good - it's not crap like mine. The colours match the brand, the design is tidy and, even thought the SEO is a bit lacking, it's one that I'd add to my feedreader as I'd be wanting to come back.

With the launch of Google's Shared Stuff the reliance of companies on SEO is eroding day-by-day and the importance of Social Media Optimisation (SMO) is ever increasing.

For me, Google has been very slow to get social. They've used it on their Google Maps and local listings for a while. But its taken them far too long to do anything del.ici.us or Stumbleupon-like!

One think I'm surprised with is that they haven't tried to come up with some funky name for it. Perhaps they're trying to appeal to the mass market that feels uneasy with all this "social bookmarking stuff"?

SEO and PR agencies now have even more need to lean about social media so they can start to build it in to their clients' media schedules. Relying on PPC and SEO these days will mean you're missing out on a huge audience!

Take a look at Google's new Gadget Ads where you can reach 75% of unique Internet users with flash based adverts.

To me it's part of their assault on interactive agencies after the news that Google is to scrap its European "Best Practise Funding" by the end of next year.

Agencies would typically get between 3% to 8% of their ad spend back each quarter. To me its just a cynical ploy to improve the bottom-line in the short term.

But back to the Gadget Ads, they are putting the control back into merchant's hands but I think Google forgets that the Internet doesn't revolve around them. There are other media owners and search engines that clients need help working with.

It's a weired juxtaposition between them being forward and creative in developing new advertising mediums, but being backward and destructive when it comes to agencies.

I wouldn't like to think how many of the large media buying agencies will react and if they try and spend more of their clients' money on non-Google ventures such as social media ....

The news is that Google are planning to use some of the mobile phone spectrum that Vodafone and 02 has been using for a couple of decades to allow new entrants to come into the market.

Apparently Google have been looking to spend about $4 billion in the US on part of their spectrum to launch a mobile device.

There's speculation that Google would offer an access package supported by advertising rather than a set monthly commitment.

If they're willing to spend $4billion US for this bit of spectrum and support it by advertising they must have total confidence in the ability to raise mobile revenue . You can see this by the launch of their AdSense Mobile product.

If I were the incumbent mobile operators I'd be buying new underpants.

Read more: Guardian.

I've come across the Internet Retailing Event to be held at The Novotel in Hammersmith on October 2nd and am surprised that not many other merchant bloggers have mentioned it.

Most merchants, I believe, just plod along, happy with their lot without looking at how they can increase their sales and improve their users' buying experience. This is where the Internet Retailing Event comes in.

It has been asserted by the event organisers that the Internet will account for 25% of all retail sales by 2009. And is also expected to account for £122 BILLION of sales this year. So getting internet retailing wrong could cost you millions.

The guys at Blue Barracuda will be attending (in fact they're sponsoring the podcast). DGM will be there also but am surprised that there aren't more networks attending. Ok, so it's just a few days after Ad:tech but this is a must for all merchants who need to source new fulfillment or transactions companies.

There's talks n how to Maximise RIO with SEM and affiliate marketing, how to build customer loyalty, email distribution, publishing customer feedback etc etc.

And for all you Hitwise junkies out there, Stephen Newton - General Manager of Hitwise UK will be a speaker as well as our very own Bolton-lad (or was it Wigan ;-) ) Chris Bishop of Hotel Chocolat, the eCommerce Director of SDGi, the Marketing Director of Otto, the Marketing Director of Tesco, and a company I own shares in - Retail Decisions, a guy from Doubleclick, the Head of Interactive at o2 and loads of others.

Hopefully the merchants that still don't quite get "online" right will be popping down and start talking to some of the experts and solutions providers.

You can register here.

Disclosure: This isn't a paid post. But they have given me a press pass after I asked for one.

As promised here's this week's installment of "SEO Tip of the Week".

This week I'm looking at advanced link building.

The process of increasing the number of links to our sites has changed massively over the past few years. I no longer feel its appropriate to do mass link building campaigns where by you email loads of sites, relevant or not, and ask them to link to you in a given fashion. I never liked doing it and thank Google there's a reason not to do it.

One method I've been encouraging my clients to look at was to build fantastic sites with loads of juicy content that people would love to link to. This became a lot easier as blogging started to become more popular. Sites would naturally link to fresh, authoritative and non salesy content.

That was then (and still is), but it's time to think beyond the obvious. One method I like takes this content generation to a new level. It uses tools like Responsesource or Features Exec to resource journalists that are looking to write on a given topic.

If you can't tie up with a PR Agency (shameless plug - I'm sorry) then you should, as a merchant or affiliate, look to have your "expert comment" placed in as many relevant publications as possible. Not only does this generate genuine traffic but you're always (nearly) reference in the publication's only edition with a link back to your site.

If your site doesn't already have a press area where you talk about who is avaliable for expert comment and your creditionals, sign up to Response Resource and make yourself available.

I've got a peice going in HR Magazine soon about HR SEO and I'll be getting links back and potential clients visiting. The benefit of a bit of PR will work wonders for my natural rankings.

In Summary;
1. Look beyond traditional link-building campaigns,
2. Keep blogging and all ther marketing strategies that go with that;
3. Get some clever PR going for your site.

P.S. This isn't a sponsored post or any rubbish like that!

I've got a site about toy robots, and I've had it on my list of "things to do" for a few months. I know it's Christmas around the corner but I just can't be bothered. I know me 'ole affiliate mucker has a nice toy robots site and that should be motivation enough but ...

... what tricks do you have to get yourself motivated on a site that doesn't get much traffic but could??

I'm not saying that we're heading for a recession, but people that don't have any economics training (I managed a 2.1 degree) are also worried about the economic signs at the moment.

Without going into boring detail; the level of personal debt is horrendous - at low levels of interest rates you can cope with it. But look at the level of bankruptcies and how they have doubled in the last couple of years, the lack of confidence in the banking industry, the increase in oil prices and international conflicts, consumer confidence is being knocked.

Now, I agree with The Independent on Sunday that they'll be no meltdown. But how should affiliates review their business and strategies in an era of economic uncertainty?

What every affiliate should be doing now?

1) Review your ROI on every programme you promote. You should be doing this already, but if you're a PPC affiliate go through your costs and returns and set out a minimum ROI you are willing to accept now, and what you accept in a downturn. Some may say that if you're making a profit then you should still still run a program. This is fundamentally incorrect.

This is the wrong view to take for a number of reasons:

- If you're concentrating on a programme giving you a 5% ROI, is it really worth your effort? Are you earning an effective rate of £5 an hour or £50?
- Could you be spending the time monitoring the campaign developing more profitable campaigns? Perhaps campaigns that work better in that economic environment?
- Will the risk of merchant non-payment or delay in payment too great and affect your cash flow? Increased economic uncertainty would also put pressures on your merchants. In an economic downturn all companies look to extend their payment terms and pay even later than normal - how will that effect you?

2) SEO affiliates should look at their ROI too. How long does it take to make a new site profitable? Some of my sites I'm not looking to make returns for 6 months, a year. How would it affect your cash flow if you had to wait that long? You should be trying to make your SEO self-sufficient. You should be focusing NOW on building authority sites.

3) MFA (Made For Adsense) sites should also be looking at the potential fall in CPC rates and hence your ROI. At the moment CPC rates are particularly boyant. In an economic contraction advertisers cut budgets. During my time at TopJobs I went from spending £60k a month on advertising to nothing in a few months during 2001 - others will be doing the same.

4) Review your target industries. Consumer electronics and foreign travel sites would suffer as people cut back. However, traffic to debt consolidation, personal finance and recruitment sites would increase. I won't do your market research for you, but it'd be wise to have a think of which products and services do well when people are cutting back. Look at the switch between premium brands and "low cost brands".

5) Build or maintain your "war chest". I've made a few quid out of the industry but I'm a boring git with it. I don't go out and waste money on fast cars or big toys to make myself look cool or massage my ego. I prefer to have the piece of mind that money in the bank gives. The best time to grow your business is when others are crappng themselves about their own. This brings me on to ...

6) Be prepared to invest now. Start to build a sustainable affiliate business now. If you've got total conviction in your ability to still make good levels of cash when it will be difficult for others and you've got some great ideas, don't be afraid to invest in them. Large returns will still be available for those that have the balls to take risks. Invest in website technology, spend time on research and ...

7) Build a support network. I'm lucky to have people that look-out for me. And I support others when they need a bit of advice or promotion. If times are going to be hard it will be important to help others and be helped in return. Never be afraid to ask for help and make the effort to go to get2gethers. This would also help if you need to ...

8) Build an escape route. If things do go "tits up", you'll need to find something else to do. If you're in position to ride out the storm or retire - good on ya. But others won't be that fortunate. If you've recently come out of an industry to go full time in the affiliate marketing area then make sure you keep the contacts you made before and keep up-to-date with the career path you could get into if you needed to.

9) Build up a mailing list NOW. If you can you should be building up a mailing list on every site. This way you won't have to go to the expense of attracting new customers. You should also be looking at other low or now-cost marketing strategies such social networking groups, blog comments, link building etc. etc.

10) Don't bury your head in the sand. Be aware of the fact that the economy is changing and look for products that will be coming to the market in 2 years time and get prepared for them now. Even if affiliate success isn't solely related to the domains you own, but having good ones can make life so much easier. Do your research and look for future products now. I won't tell you how to, that's my secret, but start looking for next Christmas' products and the ones after that!

There is one thing to consider: even if we don't go into a recession, what harm would there be to review your affiliate proposition anyway?

I know I can be a numpty at times. I don't have a lot of time to go into an advertising solution such as affiliate networks or contextual advertising solutions etc.

I can't remember how I came across adjug but when I realised Satish Jayakumar was behind it I thought I'd give it a go.

For me to continue to use a service such as this it has to be easy to use as well as profitable. There are so many networks that seem to try and make it as difficult as possible for you to promote their merchants. Setting up adjug was a piece of piss. I generally don't read instrcutions online but I still managed to get some adverts created.

They haven't paid me to write this review but I do generally like what they're trying to achieve.

I don't like Latitude Group much (I think they're arrogant) but I do listen to what they have to say. And about Adjug they've said:

Advertisers have very limited transparency on the quality of their media purchase when buying from ad networks. It's very difficult to figure out which websites really deliver sales and allocate spend to the publishers delivering those sales. Services like AdJug help us optimize our ad spend towards the publishers who deliver sales. - Richard Gregory, COO.

If you wanted to find out exactly why you should at least take a look at them, then click here.

I popped along to the Online PR seminar at the Cube on Portland Street, Manchester the other night. It was held in conjunction with Manchester Digital (trade association for digital companies)and The North West CIPR and was a good introduction into e-PR for those in the traditional PR industry.

It did have its annoying features. As it was for PR with years of experience in traditional press advertising it (without biging myself up) didn't expand my mind. But for others I could see they found it useful.

One of the speakers was Jane Smith of Smith and Smith PR. Her presentation was all about how and why to use blogging as a PR tool for PR agency clients. I couldn't fault her on 99% of her speech. But there was thing that annoyed me (I only wish I had time to raise it in the Q&A at the end) - and that was one aspect of her list of "Abuses of Blogging". I'll list them here and you can guess which it was:

1) Astroturfing - Lobbyists faking grass-roots support;
2) Ghosting - pretending to be others;
3) Libel
4) Deepling
5) Disclosure

Yes, you guessed it - its deeplinking. I've already blogged about deeplinking and how people think they can prevent people linking into particular pages in their site.

Jane said that you shouldn't deep link if people don't want you to. She said that you should always look to see if a site has a deeplinking policy before you link in. Two points, if I did that then I'd spend more time looking for site policies rather than getting on with writing content. Another point, there is no legal precedent to stop me from doing so.

My solution. If you do need to link to a particular resource and the site says don't you should respect the request to a degree. They may do it because they want to control internal page rank or prevent "Googlebombing". I'd recommend that you just do rel="no follow" to lessen the impact.

I'd also add another rule: Keep your blog branding consistent. There are a number of other blogs called "PR in a Jar". I got confused when searching on my N95 for her blog on my way home on the train. If I was Jane, I'd come up with a distinctive name for her blog and brand it. I'd also not host it at the free Typepad domain. I'd make it as part of their corporate site on the same domain - it's all about branding and consistency.

Oh, another rule. If you've got a blog, try and add a contact option so that people can ask questions or comment in a way that they wouldn't want to do publically by replying to a post.

BTW: Jane is a nice person though!

Labels: ePR

This is just meant as a way for those that don't subscribe to NMA find news stories that they may wish to research elsewhere.

P1/ GCAP shuns social network trend
Its nice to see a media owner not jump on the social media bandwagon. I'm getting fed up of every site trying to add a full-blown social media section. Most sites have social media aspects - they often have forums and "send to a friends". It's not always necessary to spend many thousands redesigning your site to "keep up with the Jones'".

P2/ Vue and Cineworld sign up to run Bluetooth ads
I'm getting fed up with "interruption advertising". There's been the story in the past with a bank that sends you a message via bluetooth if you walk past their branches and have bluetooth on. If cinemas want to send offers related to movie releases such as videos clips and a discount code to get the sound track from an online retailer this is marginally acceptable, but bombarding people with advertising messages when they're in the cinema is something different than when they're sat in front of the screen because they can ignore them. With you're mobile you'll either to have to turn bluetooth off (which would piss me off as I use it for my handsfree system in my car) or actively decline the message. I'm just generally getting annoyed with the pervasive nature of advertising these days.

P3/ Online gaming and gambling firms to invest more in SEO
I bet loads of SEO companies are licking their lips and rubbing their hands in glee. This will be short-lived when they look at the scale of the problem they'll be facing. The problem with affiliate marketing is that it encourages hundreds/thousands of people to compete with you on the SEO front. Granted, you'll have the PR advantage (both types) but you'll need a highly experienced and imaginative SEO company if you're going to get true ROI.

P3/ HMV offers voucher to promote new website
I didn't see any network or merchant emails about this (but I probably wouldn't have read it anyway). But HMV have changed their branding; the logo and nipper have changed and they're pushing people to use their HMV.com site. On page 9 (I don't know why they didn't put it on the same page, the new site has increased sales by 12%.

P9/ Barclays gets into social networking
Why-o-why-o-why?
Apparently "Barclays in the Community is expected to include user-generated content like videos and blogs. But when you look "under the hood"; they're doing a lot of hard work in local communities, funding sports projects etc. So they'll be adding videos about that effort and not simply videos from ordinary old savers talking about how great their interest rate is. Good on them!

P10/ Seeing the brand value of Faceboook groups
This is a good quick read from Robin Goad from Hitwise UK and looks at how brands can benefit and suffer from Facebook groups being created about them. He mentions that over 1,900 retailers received traffic from Facebook in August.

You could take it further - should affiliates join the NUJ?

Bloggers write unique content, look at different angles, don't follow convension and often have massive audiences. So shouldn't we have Press Cards?

I think that bloggers are always ready and willing to write about their target audience and often getting your name in the press can seriously help traffic - so joining their freelance journalists directory should be a good thing nes pa?

Has the offline age of cloak and dagger in the journalism industry caught up with the scope and the ability of the internet to make and break bands?

My view is yes, we should join and yes we should shout about our hard-earned place in the journalistic industry. But what are your thoughts?

This week has seen Facebook has shortlisted 12 PR agencies to provide their new UK office with PR Services. LinkedIn have signed up Bite, Bebo have appointed Portland PR and last month Myspace appointed Lexis to look after their brand reputation.

It's either the case that the social networking sites are either looking for an edge to steal a march on their competitors or that they're gearing themselves up for a media onslaught as is generally the case when the euphoria and general excitement for a new kind of service subsides and the media decide to turn the tables?

We've already had the stories about "social sites becoming too much of a good thing", the concerns over Facebook and privacy and the potential impact on children's learning. I feel that the media will be scrutinising over the next big negative story and the social media sites will need as much help as they can.

We've had all the bubbles of the past where the public relations was a shambles in the majority of cases and with so much money at stake its not surprising that they would want to make sure the machinations of the media don't exert too much of a pressure on the already waining public confidence.

P.S. If you want some staggering Facebook usage stats then read the Guardian Blog Post.

I must admit Tradedoubler put me off these types of tools for a long time. And that's my loss! Now Buy.at's Content Creation tool entitled "ContentEngine" makes content creation so damn easy only need a couple of minutes at most to get as useful list of relevant products to drop into a blog post of or align with your written content.

Products
Simply you choose a search phrase and refine it by category. Then you get the option to conduct the product search by the Boolean method or natural search. You then select which merchants you'd like to promote and then choose if the products you want to show have offers or show all of them.

Design
This is the bit that normally lets these tools down. You've got so much control over the look and feel. Its great!

Content
You've got loads of control over the length of product names and descriptions - fantastic.

Tracking
This is important if you're working across sites or within different sections. A standard element but crucial.

Template
If you're working with the same design across a site then you can save the templates and load them up at later date.

Get Code
This is the bit that lets it down. I'd like a php include option, and I'd expect others would too. Also the string is sooo long. I know its because they give you loads of options, but I think the variable names could be shortened. There is a benefit however of having these longer names and that's to simplify inline editing - so its still very good.

Preview
It's also great in that you get a preview mode. It's obviously expected, but But.at offer it with no bells and whistles and you've just got to click the button and it's there without loading it in a crappy pop-up.

Well done guys!

But there were a couple of things I didn't like. When it does show the drop down to search it didn't show a sub-category, if there isn't one then it should show the sub cat box (Ajax?).

Also we should be able to limit the categories that can be showed (unless I missed it).

Every week I'm going to try and do my "Quick SEO Tip of the Week".

To start off I'm going to do one that's close to my heart: Duplication.

We're all aware of the onpage, visible duplication and we're all focused on that. But the duplication that, in my mind, causes many problems is that of duplicating content between the Title, Meta Description and Meta Keywords.

I'm of the opinion that if these three tags are too similar Google will rate them as more likely to be spam pages as many spammers (unprofessional ones)would forget to create different content for each tag.

The problem is that its so easy to do this when blogging. If you use Blogger than you can get around it with a look at the Blogger-tags and a bit of imagination.

So in summary: Use your < Head > wisely and make sure each tag is unique as possible on the page and between pages. You'll be suprised with the results.

Labels: TOTW

13:28

Has anyone been looking at the bottom of the SERPS lately? Or are you lucky enough to be ranking above the fold?

They've started asking users to recommend sites for the search they've conducted and state that it'll always show for that user, as well as "help improve results for everyone".

Google Serp Question

I wonder if a new industry will spring up with people being encouraged to do searches and submit their clients' (or their own) sites?

Will Google look to see the frequency of sites/pages being submited and do a page rank type calculation on them?

Interesting times in the search industry!

Every now and then I'll list some stuff in NMA that's worth reading.

P. 1/ Burger King shifts spend online
Following on from the success of the Simpnsonize Me digital campaign, Burger King have appointed Crispin Porter + Bogusy to spend wisely online. And they've got to be clever seeing as McDonald's spends 10 times the amount on marketing!

P. 3/ Debenhams to build online relationships
I believe the mighty Deb don't have an affiliate program anymore, but they're looking to get consumers to interact with them more. One way they're going to do it is to run promotional competitions, interactive ads and campaign sites - nothing new there, but at least they're using the basic online methods.

P.4/ Google files patent for mobile payment system
Will this tie-in with a new pack of tools for mobile phones? I think so. I don't go down the route of them getting involved with hardware - but I could be wrong.

P.4/ Faceparty plans major redesign in a bid to push its market position
They need to do something fantastic to beat Facebook! I don't think they can achieve major strides forward.

P.5/ HMV's online sales under threat from Guernsey VAT investigation
I've got a strong dislike for HMV, and this feels a bit like karma to me.

P6/ Five CEO Lighing hits out at lack of regulation surrounding Google
Damn right! Google is not only a media owner but are now media buyers and planners. "Anti-trust" anyone?

P7/ Former Micoroft mobile boss launches local info community
They don't give you the domain, but it's Tipped.co.uk, it looks pretty interesting and reminds me take a look at them for my client Chard Estate Agents who offer property to buy and rent in London. I love it when former execs create the sites they wish they could do when they worked for a major corporation.

P11/ UK online ad spend predicted to rise 25% to top £2.5bn in 07
Ooh I remember the days when a few hundred million was big news. But the continual increase in online ad spend for me is down to the improvement in web analytics and a better understanding in how to calculate ROI and a move away from the "bums on seats methodology".

P11/ Holiday makers rely more on the Internet
Nearly 1/3 of holidays will plan and book their holidays entirely online in 2008 and only 4% would avoid it according to an YouGov for Logan Tod.

P19/ Happy Shopper
This is a great article about Otto UK and how they see brand development being strongly affective by online "word of mouth". And its been working as they take 25% of their £3bn revenue online.

I've removed the Beauty Icon page - you can now buy beauty products online on my crappy product feed site. I'll find time to reskin it sometime!

Every month I'm going to do a review of the month before. I'm going to do this for two main reasons, the first is that I'd much prefer a streamlined list of posts than the way Blogger does it, but also because I'd like to recap on the posts I've made and the comments others have added to the mix.

The month started off with a review of Facebook and how you can very easily add affiliate links to your profile - [Monetising Facebook Easily]. I then went on about how advertisers appear to look like they've got a social conscious as was seen by the The Facebook / BNP Controversy. I also got pissed off by the great Yahoo! Search Marketing Rip Off! However, a nice employee there sorted it out for me.

A couple days later there was a Call To Ban Travel Affiliate Sites because the guy from Travel Rants was unhappy with how they carry themselves online and potentially confuse consumers. I thought he had a point James Avery supported to a point the views of TR.

On the 6th I asked if there'd been a Google PR Update? And Kieth Bond and Dio Bach handn't noticed anything.

A couple of days later I posted about the other "PR" - Public Relations and how my client Pazang managed to get coverage in the Sun for Caverswall Castle. Dispite the case they had a massive spread in the Manchester Evening News, their web designer still hasn't implemented the very minor changes to the site I'd asked for - like spelling "Staffordshire" correctly in the homepage [Title] tag. Grr.

I then reviewed an article about the 5 Most Common Affiliate Mistakes it's still a worthwhile read even if others are constantly adding their own versions.

I don't often post about Webgains but I felt the need to say how great their blog was. I made some suggestions and then Kier implemented some of them. Kudos to the guys there.

One thing I've got burned with recently is credit card fraud. I was well cheesed off with CD Wow who let a load of fraudulent transactions to go through, whilst Play.com were hot and asked me to contact them before a transaction went through.

One of my problems is that I have too many domains and not enough time - just like most affiliates I suppose. I've got a domain about franking machines and I asked if I should try and work on it or try and flog it. I've decided that when I get time I'll whack it on ebay and see what I can get for it.

Later on I spotted a site that was stuffing keywords and doing dodgy (I thought) redirects but still managed to rank highly for a decent keyphrase. What's even worse, they've moved up a place and are now on page 1. Time to do a spam notice.

I also commented on My New Carlos Tevez Blog. With my work load I've struggled to keep it as up to date as I'd like especially as I've thought it wise to look at my Euro 2008 blog seeing as we're into a crucial few days.

I was very surprised that no-one comment on my post about the reduction in confidence consumers have with Price Comparison sites. I was sure that some of you comparison dudes would have wanted to give your thoughts.

There was another important issue to do with Google Proxy Hacking: How A Third Party Can You Removed From Google which I found interesting and just as worrying.

Not a massive bit of news, but it was nice to see the BBC Getting Social.

I then posted on the 3 Reasons to Avoid Affiliate Marketing. And Carsten brought to my attention the totally crap entry in Wikipedia for "Affiliate Marketing" - I agree it sure needs an accurate review!

I then wrote a bit of an incendiary post about How the Affiliate Marketing Industry Killed Itself. this was picked up by the mighty Linda Buquet at 5 Star Affiliate Programs. Then Kieron did a quick post in his usual style. I then thought it right to do an update post as I didn't think Kieron's post was totally accurate.

I'm known for not restraining my views lest they upset people. And I felt that when Jim Hedger wrote about the death of SEO my reply "SEO is Not Dead - Its Been Evolving For Years". People weren't up for a debate on that so i left it.

When Doing Nothing is Best was a post I regretted. No sooner had I posted it Google started removing, then they came in and out. It just solidifies my view that the greater the number and quality of links to your site the more tolerant Google are with cross-site duplication. I wonder what others think?

I then went off on one about "Why do some see deeplinking as illegal?" and the affiliate foot soldier Kerry Kasim gave her views and recommend Countdown with Keith Olberman.

Then I seemed to have lit a bit of a touch paper and it really did bring a nice smile to my face when some of you guys posted some great comments when you saw me leaving for good. The post Why I Effectively Left Affiliate Marketing had loads of comments many of them promoted by Jess. I was then forced to quickly pen "And Why I'm Back". I'm trying to find more time to do my affiliate stuff. With Laura moving in and people wanting to use more and more of my time to help promote them online, it's got a bit difficult. I'm going to have to do some clever juggling now or end my relationship with some. This is something I'll need to have a good think about.

Friday, 3 August 2007
Yahoo! Search Marketing Rip Off!
Censorship 2.0 - The Facebook / BNP Controversy
Monetising Facebook Easily
Buzz / Viral Marketing Guide

Sunday, 5 August 2007
Call To Ban Travel Affiliate Sites

Wednesday, 8 August 2007
Why PR Is Great - Client Has Major Coverage in The Sun

Thursday, 9 August 2007
What are the 5 Most Common Affiliate Mistakes?
And The Award For Best Network Blog Goes To ...

Friday, 10 August 2007
A half decent domain, trickle of sales - but you decide.
Why Can't CD Wow Be More Like Play.com?

Thursday, 16 August 2007
My New Carlos Tevez Blog
Why Title Tag is "King" And Keyword Stuffing Won't Get You Banned

Wednesday, 22 August 2007
3 Reasons to Avoid Affiliate Marketing
BBC Gets Social
Google Proxy Hacking: How A Third Party Can You Removed From Google
Affiliate Marketing - The Way Forward - Comparison Sites Out

Thursday, 23 August 2007
Should Women Be Band From Shopping On Thursdays?

Friday, 24 August 2007
Castle Corporate Venue For Hire & Rich Single Man Available
How the Affiliate Marketing Industry Killed Itself

Tuesday, 28 August 2007
How the Affiliate Marketing Industry Killed Itself - Update
SEO is Not Dead - Its Been Evolving For Years

Thursday, 30 August 2007
Affiliate Classroom Magazine
E-Consultancy Affiliate Marketing Report / Questionnaire - Last Few Days
Why do some see deeplinking as illegal?
When Doing Nothing is Best

Friday, 31 August 2007
And Why I'm Back
Why I Effectively Left Affiliate Marketing

Continuing with my "house cleaning" aka sorting the interlinking of this blog and making the archive a bit more Google-friendly, here's a look back at what happened in SEO / AM in July 2007.

I took on Chard Estate Agents in London and was looking for property-type sites that could review it and link ... nothing happened on that front. But at least the designers are ready to switch the new site live anytime soon.

I then had a moan about delivery companies and foriegn customer support. This time Amazon customer service witnessed my disatisfaction. Now all's well now and I've never been buying more with them.

I went through a faze of moaning about Facebook and why people aren't leveraging it and how most don't even understand the opportunities. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then and it's getting more press mentions. I then followed this up with a post about the falling traffic levels of some social networks - it was an interesting read I think, but no-one commented. Another post that missed the mark was one about Google becoming a social player with their user interaction. I then had another swipe at those who are blind to the social media opportunities. I then did a post about how Digg et al could be playing a part in Google algorythm.

Then there was the balls-up with Buy.at publishing a load of user email addresses by mistake. The guys apoligised and we all got on our merry way.

I did a post about PPC mistakes and opportunities for affiliates and referenced a sandbag retailer.

I offered some domains for sale but had no interest. At least its reminded me to offer them on eBay.

There was a very good reason why I wasn't at the G2G that month. Boy was it worth it!

I had a go at spammers (again) and then mentioned an increase in SEO spend :D.

I then started a range of posts about how people don't really understand affiliate marketing. And there was to come!

Monday, 30 July 2007
New Client - Anyone got any property sites?

Saturday, 28 July 2007
Amazon Customer Service Redeem Themselves

Friday, 27 July 2007
Using Facebook Apps to Increase Traffic by 300%
Buy.at Just Didn't Send Their Affiliates' Email Details Out To Everyone Did They?

Thursday, 26 July 2007
The Great Big Social Land Grab - Call it Bubble 2.0
Google Goes Social With Local Search

Sunday, 22 July 2007
Sandbags Provide Great Lessons For Site Owners
DAB Radios & GHD Domains For Sale

Friday, 20 July 2007
Why I Wasn't At The Affiliate G2G - Good Reason
All Those Social Media Knockers: Start Listening
Welcome to Spam City. Population Unknown
Increase in UK Usability and SEO Spend Planned

Tuesday, 17 July 2007
At Last Some Sense In An Affiliate Article
Anyone Know How To Promote Podcasts?
Is Digg The New DMOZ? Social Media Sites And Google Votes
How to Benefit Most When Choosing an Affiliate Program - Started So Well

I'm going to start ad-hoc reviews of merchants for the sake of it. I'm not getting paid to do them so they'll be honest appraisals.

There are many merchants that I'll promote for a bit and then drop them when I realise they're poor performers. But Advanced MP3 Players on Affiliate Future is one I really do like for a number of reasons:

1) They Communicate well - I'm always getting emails from then about new product launches which is great for ppc and blogging!

2) They're responsive - I told Josh a year or so about the Zune MP3 Player and that he may like to get prepared (they normally are well ahead of everyone else) and within a few hours they'd created a landing page and I was able to point some content links to them;

3) They've got products that shift - even though there is a major jump in sales in the run up to Christmas, they sell well through out the year which is important when you're trying to make steady sales;

4) They're price competitive - whenever you're promoting one merchant over another its important that they're price competitive, especially in this kind of market. Despite the evidence that people are moving away from price comparison sites people often still buy on price.

5) Small player gone big - I also like it that Josh started the business and has grown it into one of the premier players in the market. I always try and help the smaller guys and I don't expect they'll become arrogant like ASOS did.

6) The site is informative - They go the extra mile to educate and inform the user before they buy. This is great at giving the purchaser confidence that they're buying the right product.

7) The site is well designed - its very easy to find what you're looking for and you're not led down blind alleys.

8) The buying process is very simple - some sites are a pain in the backside to buy from, Advanced MP3 Players makes very easy.

9) They always try and up-sell - affiliates should always look to see if a merchant tries to sell the user more than they intended. For you it means you get higher commissions.

10) They've got good customer support - all the numbers and email addresses are on the site and they respond to them quickly. This is essential for repeat custom.

One thing I didn't like, however, was that they use City Link, I think they're crap. But as long as their customers are happy that's the main thing.

Overall I'd give Advanced MP3 Players a LM score of 7/10.

They also offer an exclusive "advanced mp3 player discount code" which is a big plus in my book! Following the link you can see how I've implemented it!

Sunday, 30 September 2007

Saturday, 29 September 2007

Thursday, 27 September 2007

Wednesday, 26 September 2007

Tuesday, 25 September 2007

Monday, 24 September 2007

Saturday, 22 September 2007

Friday, 21 September 2007

Thursday, 20 September 2007

Tuesday, 18 September 2007

Sunday, 16 September 2007

Saturday, 15 September 2007

Thursday, 13 September 2007

Wednesday, 12 September 2007

Sunday, 9 September 2007

Saturday, 8 September 2007

Thursday, 6 September 2007

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