I Thought It Was A Legal Letter, But Phew It Was Just Good Affiliate Management

I got a letter through the post. I always thing C4 envelopes are going to be legal ones, or payments from Buy.at. So when I got a letter to "www.rovio.co.uk" at this address I was a tad worried - especially when I've found out Google has fallen out with the site at the moment:


So I was supprised to get a letter from the Red5 gadgets merchant on DGM. I did a load of gadget sales over last Christmas and was intending to use them but had an absolute nightmare logging into their own indi prog. Passwords wouldn't work and the reminder tool was just a pain in the backside. I didn't have much luck with the support either - It was just the time of year I suppose. During that time I spent most of my time on the other networks so didn't twig they were with DGM.

I've had a load of great experiences with networks and merchants lately so today it was great to get a proactive letter targetting an individual product:


This is the sort of stuff that affiliate managers should be doing. I've worked hard to, er, work harder with merchants and networks, and it has proven to highly beneficial. I just wish more affiliate managers / website administrators would start thinking ahead, getting their target affiliates sorted and worked on their communication.

So well done Red5 and Scott! I'll be dropping you a line today and will sort out my crummy site!

Also I expect others will be jumping on this product now - but hey, you've got to say well done where it's due!

And for you that were interested, I also got a "remittance advice" from buy.at and a "bill" from BT highlighting that I've geot a £90.04 credit balance!

Should Merchants List Expired Codes On Their Own Sites?

"Purple" (Martin Warn) pointed out that BuyAGift was #1 for "Buyagift Discount Code" which got me thinking ...

What would happen if merchants started creating pages about the avaliable discount codes on their own site, but maybe didn't make a big play of it on the site itself? How many merchant sites would appear 1st for "[merchant name] discount codes"? And what impact would that have affiliate sales driven by the discount code mechanism?

Also to prevent unscrupulous affiliates knowingly promoting expired codes as a cookie-cutting excercise, should merchants list all the codes and optimise for them on their sites?

I reckon tonnes of commission could be redirected back into merchant coffers this way - but would it be a good thing? Personally Thortons' 15% discount code helped generate bucket-loads of sales for me and I would probably had lower conversion rates without it.

So, a question for all you affiliates, merchants, networks etc; should merchants use their own sites and optimise for expired discount codes, and in the process redirect a degree of relevant discount traffic away from affilites as a by-product?

Or should we view the situation that this is just another sales-mechanism us affiliates use that will ultimately be closed down by merchants for their own use?

24% Can't Find Google - You're Having A Laugh

I know many people think Jakob Neilsen is a bit of a Usability nut, but apparently I think he's reached the zenith of outrageous conclusions. Apparently his study found that 24% of users in his sample when placed in front of a computer couldn't conduct a search on Google.

As I'm writing this I was finding it hard to use his Useit.com site. Perhaps he should provide a top navigation anchored into the main sections on that page - just a bit of a usability tip there!

He comments:

How difficult is it to perform a search on Google?

I'm not talking about the challenge of formulating a good query, interpreting the results, or revising your search strategy to reap better results. Those are all very complicated research skills, and few people excel at them.

I'm talking only about the very first step in searching the Web: Getting to your favorite search engine so that you can run a search there.

But it was this bit that made me chuckle the most:

I doubt that any Web designer would be incapable of running a Google search. So, the fact that 1/4 of users can't do it is a striking demonstration that you can't rely on your own experience if you want to reach a broader audience.

I spend my day explaining the benefits of blogging, exploring the long tail of the search distribution, removing barriers that prevent users from transacting and creating sticky content. Some of which I don't expect my non internet-savvy clients to understand first or second time - that is fine.

But how the heck are we supposed to design and market websites when 1/4 of the internet-population are supposedly unable to find Google and conduct a search on it?

The thing I have trouble with is that nowhere did he say how large his sample was, where they were obtained from, their age and gender distribution, the length of internet experience.

To my mind this is just another "internet study" that should be thrown into the e-wastebin!

Best New Thorntons Newcomer Prize - Thanks

I just had a nice call from Nicola White at Buy.at saying that I've won the "Best Newcomer" prize for Thorntons I was given £500, but it was suggested not to spend it on chocolate after all my Easter egg reviews.

It's actually going on a trip away with some affiliates to watch Real Madrid V Barcelona in May for a few days. Giddy up!

I've been to Barcelona a few times so it'll be great to go to Madrid for a change. I may even turn it into Stag Night #1 ;-)

It was a pleasure working with Nicola and Buy.at as they really saw the value of the site before the Easter period and it paid off with several £k's of sales. It was also great working with a merchant that not only converted well but saw the true value of a great discount code as well as having a product range which consumers loved. So thanks again everyone!

The Benefits Of Affiliate Joint Ventures

I'm like most affiliates: we get excited with a project then two minutes later we're on to the next.

One way around this I found was to add to my selection of product blogs a number of event blogs - such as Easter, Christmas, Valentines etc. This way I've always got something current to work on.

But sometimes that's not always enough. My nature is to be competitive. In fact sometimes I'm too competitive. The first thing I do in the morning is load up Analytics on one screen and Facebook's Speed Racer on the other - I have to get the Veyron before anyone else!

But the thing is I'm equally collaborative, I enjoy working with others and is one of the reasons I started doing consultancy work. So I was approached to do a joint venture blog from another affiliate I've known for a while. So I was thinking about starting a new blog with them, but what's the point when I've got a PR4 site with a Dmoz entry .... so let's get jiggy with that.

But when I looked at the Analytics it gets about 600 visits a month with no work and has some top rankings and a good variety of key phrases - so it should be fairly easy to make a success of the blog together.

So the benefits of affiliate joint ventures appears to me to be:

1. Mutual motivation - you don't want to be the slacker in the venture;
2. Two pairs of eyes on the market - you're less likely to miss opportunities;
3. Double your skills or extend them - the person is quite good at SEO, but better at other areas such as great content-writing skills. This can only be good for the both of us;
4. Increase your linkability - you can link from both of your other sites if relevant;
5. Network support - we've both got different contacts with the networks to leverage;
6. Merchant Involvement - the same goes from the merchant P.o.v.;
7. Holidays - keeping blogs fresh is an important factor. I won't get nagged for blogging on holiday when I know the other person is doing their bit;
   

But what are the downsides?

Well the most obvious is money. The way we've sorted it is that we both monetise our own posts separately. When it comes to "off-post" revenue generation, this is 
something we'll come  across at a separate date. My strategy, however, has 
always been to keep it to a minimum so it shouldn't be a factor;

Trust - can you trust the other person not to abuse the blog? In this case yes.

So, has anyone else ever done this? Do you have any advice to give to other affiliates?

Update: I've been given clearance to say what the site is. Of course its a discount codes site - which I feel is perfect for this sort of duplication because codes are made avaliable all the time so we can keep on top of it. I also think discount codes sites are perfect for joint ventures as we can each spend more time on each post - something I think is significantly lacking on most blogs of the type. We'll see how it performs!

Also does anyone have any views on the blog? We haven't SEO'd it or categorised thoroughly yet!

Affiliate Window To Be Bought Before The End Of The Month?

Is this one of the industry's worse kept secrets of the year? But it looks like Awin will have a new owner next week!

It may be pure speculation, but with the rash of bids and purchases it wouldn't be that much of a suprise! I just hope the new owners continue to invest in technology just as much as the current team has.

0 To 4,000 Visits A Day In Ten Weeks Using Blogging

Who said social media is crap? I started off blogging as an affiliate a couple of years a go and have seen a flood of other affiliates doing the same. It's taken me that time to really hone my strategy.

I seeded one of my blogs last year and made a couple of sales - which I wasn't bothered about. But I really started to work on it on 2nd Jan and since then it's grown to 4,000 visits a day purely on the back of writing loads and loads of content.



I didn't even do uber-seo, no "black hat" stuff and I didn't have to steal any discount codes either.

My strategy was pure and simple:

1) Find A Niche
2) Find a good domain (the great ones for me had gone)
3) Build a simple blog
4) Do the bog standard onpage SEO
5) Write some unmonetised content
6) Get a few links to it
7) Work out how to get the most relevant information quickly
8) Post about it
9) As traffic starts to grow work out how to get relevant products on to the site quickly
10) Make sure you offer something unique
11) Allow your users to contribute and take ownership
12) Work hard talking to the networks and merchants - build up relationships
13) Continue to slave away even when traffic reaches your target
14) Look a year ahead. I'm thinking of what I should be doing to make the traffic grow for next year. I'm also thinking about if I should do ppc based on my product and merchant knowledge

What surprised me most about the site's stats that there were over 12,000 different keyphrase variations drawing visitors in. This proves that if you write good natural content you'll be able to encompass the keywords that people search on. You don't have to force keywords - think of what's best for your visitor.

In a couple of weeks I'll be posting about which merchants worked well and information about how to work with networks - they can be great! Oh, and if some of you don't know the site, I'll be naming it too.

Affiliate Future To Be Bought Again? Who cares about AOL?

I'm not sure if anyone has blogged about this already! But it looks like the new company that owns Affiliate Future is target of a takeover from Tangent Communications.

Tangent have made an offer of about 50p per share of TMN. It's not an all-cash offer however - 19.14p in cash and 2.572 new Tangent share for each existing TMN share.

The thing is that talks are apparently at an early stage so there's no certainty that a deal will go through but they have recieved acceptances for 11.1% of the TMN capital on condition that a higher offer isn't made.

And the share price has obviously reacted positively - moving up to and over the 50p valuation / offer by Tangent:

However it is still a fair amount under its 2007 high:

Then this afternoon M Danson, former Finance Director at Carlton TV and founder of DataMonitor has raised his stake to 7.6% of its capital by buying 5.74 mln shares at prices between 45p-50p, spending somewhere between £2,592,000 and £2,870,000 on them in total. Which is a good deal as the offer of 50p was made three days earlier.

Why did the market miss it? Do they think the take-over won't go through? Did they value TMN less than 50p a share? Who knows! But it does show that Affiliate Future is truly a fantastic asset to have with its pretty strong revenue streams.

Back in February Investec rated it as a buy when it was around 28p-ish - they weren't wrong (at present).

Good luck guys and I hope it all works well for the employees too!

Why Do So Many Merchants Have Their Heads Up Their Arses?

Email systems can be an unfortunate thing. If you send out emails to everyone instead of one person you can open up a can of worms. This happened with an email about Woorlworths and their brand bidding policy and was exposed on "the forum".

It has transpired (correct me if I'm wrong!) that Woolworths have a closed brand bidding "group" of one!! How many bloody times do seasoned affiliates have to tell merchants that this is stupidity of the highest order?!!?!

There have been so many blog posts about this that it unbelievable that people are ignoring this sage advice and instead being exceptionally lazy had preferring the easy option of placing their heads up their arses:

• Get Rich Quick by Selling br$and to the Arabs for £75m
• BBG’s (Brand Bidding Groups) - Do You Take the Red Pill or The Blue Pill?
• Another Look At Brand Name Bidding
• The Economics of 0% Commissions, Brand Bidding And The Long Tail
• Cookies.. and a can of worms
• De-Duping and brand name bidding - part 2 of 2
• Woolworths - Opportunistic closed bidding group on brand just before Christmas

I can't believe that Woolworth's Shareholders would accept the flagrant wasting of their marketing spend on this stupid closed brand-bidding group.

I'm just about to buy some shares in Woolworths Group PLC so I can attend their AGM and raise the question of the probable million or so they are wasting. It is no wonder they made a reported loss of £40.9 million in the half ear to 4 August 2007 if they operate their business without a keen eye on the bottom line and their marketing costs which totalled £264.6m (including selling costs).

With negative cash flow of £82.8m over the same period surely 
they have to cut out as much unnecessary costs as possible?
I wonder how much their £8.5 million
overdraft they had on 4th August 2007 has grown because of their naive brand bidding policy?

They should NOT be using the affiliate marketing channel and its cookies to manage its online brand management campaign. They should be paying their Search Marketing Agency a retainer to look after it and cut the associated costs by at least 95% and not let one lucky affilaite walk away with the profits!

Nice New Feature From Google - Domain Recommendations

If you type in the wrong domain name now into your address bar and its wrong, Google does a look-up and recommends another domain - which they hope is the right one - v. cool!


Are there any implications for you?

p.s. don't buy that domain as I'll be after you!

Happy Happy Affiliate Talk, We're Talking Happy Affiliate Talk

Ok, so the pressure of builders drilling a few feet away, client work and realising that it's getting closer to Easter and I've got loads of stuff to add to my Easter site has made me want a break from the serious affiliate and SEO posting that I'd normally do.

So here's an introduction to the personal(ish) blog of our very own Zak Edwards.


The Bearded Warrior (come on Zak! its not as good as that last domain you bought ;-) ) is a blog about his views on affiliate marketing that may not be specifically related to Prezzy Box.

I'm really looking forward to him getting his typing fingers out and letting us know what his highly experienced thoughts are about the challenging nature of the industry as well as the lighter side of running one of the most responsive and pro-active retailers online.

So get posting Zak!

Yahoo! Buzz And The Supposed Death Of Social Media

I love it when people talk out of their backside when it comes to Socail Media. It's often the case that because people don't understand something that they call it a fad and it "just won't last".

Well whilst researching new social bookmarking services for a E-PR client of mine I came across a post by Heather Hopkins at Hitwise.

This post was about the new Yahoo! Buzz variant of social bookmarking.

One of her comments was:

Visits to News Aggregators are growing. US visits to Digg were up 89% year on year in February. US visits to Stumble Upon were up 4-fold and to Reddit (the #3 News Aggregator), up 7 fold.

But when you read another part of her post:

The thing that's interesting about these social news websites is that they are really about celebrity gossip, gaming news and video sharing. (I'm not saying that Lindsay Lohan's wardrobe choice isn't news, but...). I am basing this conclusion on clickstream data for these websites.

... you may wonder why I'm still looking at Social bookmarking for my investment finance client?

Well the first reason I can understand people disagreeing with me on. It's better to be trying this generic stuff on niche clients just for your own sanity to see if it works. If you follow the crowd in thinking it'll be irrelevant then you're only ever going to be as successful as the mainstream.

The second is that with digg and the suchlike, you'll get a "vote" score. With this if you can obtain the traffic from the variety of sources then if the content is any good then the score goes up.

If people aren't inclinded to comment there is no actual way that others will see that the blog is awash with like-minded people and will feel less inclinded to contribute. People like to feel part of a group, it'd be no fun for them to talk to themself or the blog owner.

So, I use social bookmarking tools as a beating heart of a blog - not necessarily as a traffic driving tool!

But with Digg, Stumbleupon and Reddit being seen as a bit "geeky" - would Yahoo! Buzz offer an oportunity to get into the target market? Well I'll only know if I try it!

You can find out more about Yahoo! Buzz here.

Thanks Affiliate Window!

I'm not sure if my first birthday gift from Play.com was from Affiliate Window too? I got the DVD "Old Boy" - highly relevant for my current state of advancing years! But it was nice to get something after a long drive from the South East on Sunday.

But then today I recieved the Wii Console Game Driver! Now driving games are my favourite kind of game! And if anyone that's seen me drive around Barbados will know that I need as much practise as I can get.

My games room is full of building stuff at the moment. But as soon as its gone I'll be loading it up and wasting a good few hours (a day)!

So again, thanks Affiliate Window! Play.com have halved the price you paid for it - I'd have words if I were you! ;-) And if it wasn't Awin that sent me Old Boy then could you please step forward!

I Love Trusting / Responsive Clients

In my last post I menetioned about how SEO and Social Media isn't necessarily an 'ice cream sundae' that is inconsitent with tradtional business and that companies just have to trust good consultants.

Well, within a flash one of my clients wrote up a load of content for their new blog and its up already.

They're Angels Den and I've set an Angel Investment Blog for them (it's in Beta until we move to new servers and install WP).

They may be an internet business but it still proves the fact that if you're going to make anything work online you have to talk to your market the way that they want to speak to; convey trust, experience and knowledge; and keep people abreast of new ways they can do business with you.

This was the objective of the blog and how we make their offering more open and transparent. So shortly after requesting content the guy (Bill Morrow) wrote some nice pieces and I've added them to the blog.

What are your thoughts? I still need to add images, improve the social bookmarking option and add links in the nav, but I think its a good start:

How to Pitch To An Angel Investor
5 Tips On Writing Business Plan For Angel Investors
How do Start Up Companies Go About Raising Money These Days?
What Do Business Angels Look For In A Deal?

Now time for all the blog directory submissions and social bookmark marketing.

Does anyone own any sites that we could work with?

Has Seth Godin's Meatball Sundae Gone Off?

In Seth's Meatball Sundae book he talks about marketing not matching the business or products on sale, and I basically think he's right. He talks about how traditional businesses doing marketing traditionally have done well. Those mainstream businesses have done the bread and butter marketing correctly by really getting to know their customers and not taking extreme risks but making sure all of their marketing is understood by the organisation.

The premise continues that these companies, in the pursuit of growth are trying the new marketing strategies offered by the internet because the company feels that their audience isn't responding to those old marketing methods. But he contends that these new horizons aren't always suitable for the old-fashioned "meatball" companies.

All that is fine and well, but its when you get 34:50 into the audio book that I get a bit miffed.

He states that with the investor pressures these meatball companies are facing, the management start playing with the ice cream Sunday parts, and he rattles off "blogging and Search engine optimisation".

Now I can understand why he'd say blogging isn't suitable for all companies, but SEO? A sundae is something that may taste nice but it doesn't really suit old-fashioned companies and certainly doesn't go with 'meatballs'.

I'm sorry Seth, but I don't agree with you. SEO is not a "Sundae". I've been involved with it for the past 12 years. To me its a strategic foundation of any business whose market can exist online. Today, it appears that every organisation has a website. If you don't then Google will let you set a up a free site. You just have to go through Yahoo! or DMOZ and you'll see sites about every facet of society. Just Look at Chris Anderson's The Long Tail book. It's all about boundless consumer demand in ever decreasing fractions of niches.

Perhaps I'm wrong but Seth describes the implementation of SEO as the "desire to be a little flashier" (35:06) and that it can't be a fundamental core of every business's marketing strategy as a little naive.

There are so many degrees of SEO. You can simply 'SEO' by changing your title tags, by including a sitemap or by asking relevant sites to link to you. It doesn't need someone to pay a consultant like me a significant sum to increase your online sales. Its all about degree. A consultant like me would still offer ROI just as there would be ROI (albeit smaller, I hope) for an owner-manager reading a few (the correct) ebooks about SEO.

To me there is nothing flashy about SEO, it's the nitty-gritty, unglamourous older-brother to affiliate, banner, email and social marketing.

I also disagree when he says the successful companies are the ones that are organisationally created around their marketing. I've done SEO for solicitors, investment organisations, the public sector, recruitment, education, FMCG and none of these organisations have had their entire marketing strategy (bar one) based on SEO or online marketing and they have all been successful organisations. I've even done SEO for a company that removes white-lines off roads, a carpet shop and a haberdasher. The ones that have succeeded online are the ones that have trusted me to utilise the 'sundae' where it's most relevant. That's the role of an online marketing consultant.

He contends that these old 'meatball' comapnies have to be 'in-sync' with the new marketing to be a success. I'd disagree. I'd say they have to 'trust' new marketing. They don't have to understand it, they don't have to live or breath it, they just trust it and take balanced risks.

I'd do agree that internet marketing is about making "noise". But the successful internet marketing campaigns are the ones that makes the right noise in the right place. Perhaps that's where diversifying your risk into affiliate marketing and trusting the affiliates you work with comes into play? Balancing that with hiring hte right consultant that has the balls to say that you shouldn't spend your money on X, Y or Z.

Update:
I'm getting more annoyed. He states (40:02) "new marketing is about fashion, about stories, about promises. New marketing doesn't understand top-down comand and control thinking". I'm sorry Seth, but it often does. I have a degree in Economics, I have awards in Business & Finace and Banking. I understand the collective marketing strategies, I know what the bottom line is, I've run a company so I know about organisational obligations and priorities. Seth you're a tad patronising. Please don't lump SEO with viral marketing or with social media optimisation or email marketing. It simply is different.

February 2008 Archive

Here's an archive of posts from February 2008:

One of my pet hates is duplication in blogger so I gave a few
blogger tips that many of you found useful. I also interviewed James Little who is a legend of the industry.

I found it interesting that there was a report that there was a report that 24% can't of people can't find Google but Thorntons manged to find me as they gave me £500 for being the Best New Thorntons Newcomer and I said a very big thank you! I also had to thank Affiliate Window for making me feel even older!

I started some
The Affiliate Joint Ventures and they're still going strong - even though we both still do get distracted - nature of the beast I suppose!

It look like
Affiliate Window would be bought before the end of the month but it all fell through at the last minute! And there was the gossip about Affiliate Future to be bought again?

I had great success with my Easter Eggs blog and commented about it
here.

I complained about stupid merchants and commented on Nice Google's Domain Recommendations and also mentioned Yahoo! Buzz

And during that month Seth Godin stopped by to add his thoughts to my mellow criticism of his Has Meatball Sundae book.