I Can Be A Plonker At Times! Check Your Work Diary Before You Book A Holiday

In an attempt to keep the missus happy I booked a holiday to Cuba. The thing is that I chuffing forgot to check what was going on a the time!

Yes it's the footy tournament that I've been blogging about for just the last two years or so!! Euro 2008 may not be a big earner as it could be as we all know the home-nations are out. But it would make a fair amount more cash if I was actually at my desk blogging about it as it happened! Instead I'll be on a beach on a 'private' island off the coast of cuba trying to work out which cocktail to have next! :-( Does anyone know what the local ale is like?

Last time I went on holiday I racked up £500 of data charges sat on the beach on my n95 replying to emails and getting a rollocking off the missus - this time I'll learn and forget about work! I hope!

The Google TradeMark Policy Change Could Affect 76% Of Searches

There's so much debate lately about the impact of the relaxation of bidding against trademarked terms. However, most of this debate lacked solid data!

Thanks to Hitwise, there is bucket load of data available. One highlight is that the rate at which users type in brand names, company names, site names etc has increased from 58.2% in 2005 to 76.0% in 2007.

I'd be interested in seeing if these 'navigational searches' include 'brand + generic' terms, but it makes interesting reading when you consider that a maximum of 76% of searches could be impacted by this change in stance from Google.

Obviously it won't be that high, but we can still assume that a large number of searches will be affected.

Hitwise only looked at the top 2000 searches and we know how long the search tail is - but, in terms of volume, we can still say its significant.

Time to get my brand keyword list together .... there's gold in them darn hills!

Thortons - March's Fasted Growing Flowers & Gifts Website!

A well done to Thorntons for becoming the fastest growing site in the Hitwise Flowers & Gifts category in March. In fact they went up from 13th place to FIRST on 22nd March!!!

I'm not sure how much my 4651 clicks and 324 sales contribued to their #1 slot for the 4 weeks under review from my Easter eggs site ;-) but it's great to see a responsive merchant taking the #1 slot with help from it's affiliate and network.

Just looking at the click & sales data ... half the clicks and sales came in a three day period (163 sales in 16th - 18th March) and the average conversion rate was 8.44% which I suppose isn't bad from SEO but non incentivised or mainly non-discount code traffic.

I'm still trying work out how to get more than the 11.6% of the Easter Egg site's visitors to click on the Thorntons links - I'm sure that it'll be something I'll be working on with Buy.at and Thorntons next year.

The interesting fact was that "one in five upstream visits coming from a Rewards & Directories website during the week leading up to Easter"! I wonder how much the 15% discount code played in their success? Next time I'll be fully "vouchered-up" so let's see if I can do at least 500?

What To Do With Your Affiliate Millions!?!

Kieron may have posted a nice car that you could buy with your affiliate millions. Car's aren't really my thing - I prefer property!

Well my client just blogged about this property they've got on their books.

It's only a £12 million five bedroomed property in Bedford Gardens, London W8. And even has a white living for you matey ;-)

It's got a swimming pool with a heated slate wall where the water cascades down, gym area, steam room, refreshment area and a cineam with custom-made leather reclining chairs. It also has four bathrooms and staff quarters to house your favourite network! Oh it also has parking for two cars!

You'll have to fork out £2,062.30 council tax though - like you couldn't afford it ;-)












Now that is one awesome house!

Affiliate Account Management How It Should Be Done

It's nice when network employee's work their backside off for you.

Darren at Linkshare may support a crap football team but he made up for it by taking time out to research his merchant's offers, discounts and freebies and collate them in an email and send them over. He has said he'll give me bespoke updates based on the range of blogs that I run.

Kudos to Dazzer! I'll have to send him a United scarf to say thanks!

All Change With Adwords - Previous Query Modifications

Ah there's so much to get your head around with Google lately - what with Adwords appearing on Yahoo!, the change in policy towards trademark bidding. Now we've got something that's being labeled as "Previous Query".

Search Engine Land has covered it (thanks Ollie for pointing it out), but it looks like Google will filter ads shown against a current search based on the user's previous search history - a bit like they do when you're logged on and they re-arrange the natural results for you.

But interestingly it looks like the user doesn't have to be logged in for this to appear! And is there anyway for users to opt out? Will we have a facility in the Adwords system to manage and negative out previous queries? Probably not!

It's going to be a nightmare - well possibly. You could also say that it may actually server to filter out non-relevant searches that just happen to use the same search terms.

The biggest benefit will be for those inefficient advertisers and agencies which don't focus on the long tail - which they chuffing should be!!

And next from Google we have .......

RSS Scrapping May Not Be New But It's Fecking Annoying

I've got a Toy Robots blog which has had it's content ripped off by some gits in Pakistan that have just used my RSS feed to populate their blog: go-robots.com.

I know it's not new and actually thought about doing it a couple of years ago but decided not to. But the upshot is that Google has seen it as a duplicate content as my posts are automatically added to the offending site - so Google can't authenticate it's orginality.

I've moved the feed url for now and changed it to a short feed. But I suppose these "guys" don't really know how aggrieved I can get and what I'll do to "get even". I'm left a message for them if they don't know!

So my advice is that every affiliate concerned about RSS scrapping should change their feeds to snippet mode and keep an eye out.

The 10 Affects Of Google's Trademark Policy Changes For Affiliates

Branding Hurts!

The new change to the Google's policy towards brand-name-bidding and how merchants can protect themselves is a huge move. But my view is slightly less of an knee-jerk one as some.

Ok, so Google will remove protection from advertisers bidding on brand-owners' trademarks - they still won't be able to have them present in the AdText.

But how does this really affect affiliate marketing? Well my view is that merchant's see themselves as above the law and the T&C's that the search services offer. You still won't be able to continually bid on "Figleaves" as an affiliate and get your commissions - they won't allow it.

Merchants also often stipulate that you can't bid on their competitiors' keywords. And they also often decree you can't send traffic "direct to merchant".

So what does this mean for affiliate marketing? Well - I feel it's pretty simple:

MERCHANTS SHOULD EMPLOY SEARCH AGENCIES TO PROTECT THEIR BRAND

So if affiliates bid on a brand and go via their own site, merchant's can still stipulate that they don't want that. But each merchant will have to do the calculations on their ROI between montitoring and responding to brand name "abuse", hiring a search agency to conduct a review of the possibilities and implement a solution and just letting market forces dictate the way forward.

If there is going to be mass-scale brand name "abuse" then won't this have an impact on the profitability of the channel for the merchant? Won't this in-turn have the possible result of lowering commissions in cetain circumstances?

But overall, I see the results as:

1) More affiliates randomly bidding on brands without checking what the merchant wants;

2) Merchants devoting more time to policing their brand;

3) More merchants removing their heads from their arses and invite other affiliates to compete;

4) Google earning more;

5) Some affiliates spending a couple of months to work out how best to monetise this opportunity whilst forgetting to work on their generic campaigns,

6) More affiliates using PPC to bid on their content sites;

7) If "all hell breaks loose" then commissions may be reduced by big brand merchants;

8) The cosy life that agencies have (cough) been shattered - they'll have to do some proper consultancy;

9) Egotistical, maniac, hypocritical, established brand-name bidders shit themselves as hoards of affilates start to say "it's ok with Google now remove your closed bidding groups or we'll just saturate the SERPS with adverts for your competitors".

10)People like me just plug away with SEO getting the brand traffic for free whilst the others fight it out.

Don't you just love this industry ;-)

Another Client Blog Launched

To some this is a small-scale launch. It also is a very similar template isn't it? Well I decided that it was too cumbersome and expensive for the client to have their website updated so I've gone for a quick blog.

Another reason is that often CMS systems only allow you to do so much. So with the launch of the Chard Estate Agents Blog I've allowed Sales Manager to get the great amount of content they have ready straight on to the internet without having to go via their web designers. Also blogs give so many more marketing opportunities than traditional sites.

The one thing I do like is that they're hiring a top journalist in the field to write a summary of the industry every month as well as getting all of their area sales managers to give updates as to the market conditions - it makes interesting reading and directly contradicts the 'doom and gloom' that the BBC come out with at every opportunity!!!

So now time to market it - getting it live was hard enough ;-)

Why Do You Always Hate Photos Of Yourself?

We had some photos taken for the Pazang site (a media / pr agency I contract for) and I think I look aweful - just didn't have time to get my hair cut and forgot some change of clothes! GRRR! Nightmare!








p.s. rss feed playing up :-(

The Japanese Have More Trust When It Comes To Marketing A Website - Brand Abuse

I was pointed towards the Cabel's Blog Lol blog because it highlights an interesting insight into offline marketing of online sites in Japan.

It shows that Japanese advertisers don't use URLs to promote a website but use search boxes with recommended search terms!

I don't know the search market in Japan to be honest, but I don't envisage any marketing company having that much trust in the client's SEO company in the UK!

They may well be brand name terms they're promoting, but I don't know - I can't speak or read Japanese. But even that would be a bit dangerous.

Could you imagine what us affiliates would be saying if merchants promoted brand search terms in this way. You could see many of the few, lucky (I wanted to say corrupt) few rubbing their hands with joy!

But it is true that more and more search terms people use are in fact domain names. People seem to have lost the ability to find their browser's address bar - much to the chagrin of many affiliate managers who are unable to control their brand - and to the delight of the affiliates that exploit it.

March 2008 Archive

I started off the Month with a reviw of Seth Godin's book Meatball Sundae which is a cracking read, if not a tad biased against SEO.

I also started to enjoy more contact from merchants direct as can be seen by this letter from Red5. It was also nice to see someone with worse handwritting than myself!

Data came out that said that 24% couldn't find Google - I still can't believe it!

It was nice to get £500 from Thorntons for being best new-commmer to their affiliate programme. I also got a DVD from Affiliate Window!

I also started working with others on a few sites too. They're going nicely I must admit.

It looked like Affiliate Window would be bought, but I think it'll happen in the new year. Then there were thoughts that Affiliate Future could be bought again.

I then complained about a few merchants - no change their!