Thanks Guys For Barbados But I Won't Be Going Next Year

I must admit that this year's Affiliate Future Barbados event was fantastic and I must really thank Chris from Sunshine for making it happen and the guys for making it so enjoyable. The biggest thanks to two people though: firstly J Lil for being a great host and being there for me when I nearly went to prison! And also Charley Shiner making the nights hilarious - I still don't believe you found those knickers on the floor of the McBrides! I'm sure they were personally retrieved! But also thanks to him I've got inspiration for a cracking blog! A cracking domain name has just been purchased :-)

Also a big thanks to Ant from Love it Large (launching soon) and Cho Yung Tea (going to put an order in!) who sponsored the Rum Ball Rally and made it such a hoot. It was hard work trying to organise it with J Lil but I'm sure everyone enjoyed it.

The thing is that I won't be trying to win a ticket for next year. The reasons being that despite there's talk of even more people going next year, I feel that its about time that people that have never been before should have more chance of going - I've now been 4 times (3 with Affiliate Future) and its such a hoot that others should enjoy it. Another reason is that, what with getting married this year, hopefully Laura will be about 7 months pregnant (if all things work out) so I can't really leave her.

But here's a few pics to leave you with (I didn't get my camera out much)

Risking life and limb:


Team Fun II Celebrating finding a goat, or was it a sheep?


Birds do it, bees do it. Even educated snails do it:


Might as well get another pic in whilst we wait for the beers to arrive:


Is it illegal to drink and drive in Barbados?


Didn't find any


Not the only day that Tom wished he didn't get up in the morning:


He was pretty pleased to catch this fish


Nadeem takes a break from Marilyn:


Sexy Beast Ray:


Its Still There:


Fat Rain:


Bird:


Lizard thingy:


Kat hitting the waves


Scene From James Bond:


Not Scene From James Bond:


Just look at the colour of the sea:


It was only a couple of feet:


I just love Crane Beach:


The effects of over-exposure to the sun:

Avoid Paid Posts - So Official It Hurts (Or Should Do)

Don't you just love those people that start businesses based on a misunderstanding of Google's T&C's or at least don't modify them as they change?

Going back over Matt Cutt's presentation "Straight from Google: What You Need to Know" (.ppt) there's a slide (44) that is entitled "Avoid paid posts" - how much more obvious does it need to be? But if you still can't grasp the concept here's the slide:



But what does "spam" mean and what does "not contain unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites" mean? To my mind it's a bit too muddy for my liking.

If people take the "spam" element as content that is completely, or largely unrelated to the theme of the site the "content for links" sits on then there are a number of people that should be VERY worried!

And what's more, the declaration element is getting even fuzzier when you consider that Matt allegedly dumped Shoemoney on Twitter for a paid-per-tweet. As a side note, I did think Shoemaker's reply a bit childish!

Ahhh! So There's A Name For It: Katamari Philosophy

I've always believed in this tactic but never knew the name for it. My view has always been that as an affiliate blogger that you should focus on a small niche such as "trainers for one-legged pygmies" (no offence to people with one leg or pygmies of course!) and then you should gradually roll out of that niche as you gain a level respect and coverage of that is sufficient to sustain it.

So reading Matt Cutt's presentation: “Straight from Google: What You Need to Know” from WordCamp San Francisco and in particular slide 33 and then searching on it I found Andrew's description of the Katamari Philosophy:



I know that I missed this presentation, but I can't be aware of EVERY piece of SEO dialogue :-(.

Other things that Matt said was that you shouldn't obssess about links and page range. And I completely agree with that. If I'm in a niche that I'm totally confident about then I spend about 0.5% on overtly thinking of links, 95% thinking of content and 4.5% thinking of (and implementing) the on page SEO.

There's many affiliate blogs that have worked well at gaining a reputation that in term generate inbound links and it doesn't take me how to do it, every second tweet seems to be about it these days, but just try and be original and don't fall in to the trap of having a formulaic approach to building reputation by thinking that if a post has A,B and C that it will DEFINITELY work.

I'm currently implementing the Katamari Philosophy on the small niche (relatively) that I bang on about into a less small niche and its a fascinating process. What's more interesting and satisfying is when you work in only slightly related niches and as you imply the Katamari Philosophy they're consumed by the new site:



An example of this would be my Easter Eggs site linking towards my generic chocolate site - relevant and fair to link.

But then you can also use other, generally non-related sites but which has a slightly related post to help gain support (links and traffic) to both your other niches and the Katamari site. This may be a post about a chocolate football on my old Euro 2008 site linking to both the chocolate site for that product or the Easter eggs site via a link to a general post about football Easter eggs.

Again, as you dominate the micro-niches and then the larger niche then you can use those to spawn new micro-niches and start the process again.

Am I the only one that finds affiliate site evolution interesting? :-(

Want To Work With/For Get Visible? SEO Consultants Required

Things are going a bit mental here. I'm getting a flood of potential business through and I'm just not able to deal with it all. I'm looking for some people with a proven track record to initially sub-contract and then, if desired, become an employed SEO Consultant.

Things are a bit fluid at the moment and I'm yet to work out the final details of what's needed based on client requirements etc, but if anyone is provisionally interested as consulting for Get Visible, then could you drop me a line with your experience, location and details.

Obviously your details will be kept in the strictest confidence and IR35 would need to be considered.

The Day The Media Died [Video]

Ahh I remember the day when offline media was "woop-woop". I actually worked for the first internet company to advertise on TV in this country. Back then I was thinking "why waste your cash offline". They went bust.

But this video is about the death of traditional media advertising - but its more interesting as its sung to Don McLean's Amercian Pie.

Thanks For The Cheer Guys ...

... and for voting me second in a great bunch of nominees - Kirsty thoroughly deserved her award!

There's a few things that came to light in the whole process; one of them was that I realised that all those nominated offer something different, be it great advice for new and seasoned affiliates; the tackling of issues that desperately need raising as well as lot of insights into their affiliate lives - and the odd bit of showing off ;-).

Another thing I realised was this blog is appreciated for taking on those contentious issues that some may not wish to tackle. In fact Mr Pearson was "annoyed" that I hadn't bitched about him as much the last few months ;-) - what are you like? You can spend some of that £2,218,000 you had cash in the bank on 31st July 2008 on me you cheeky bugger! (That's not an invitation for prostitution, well maybe ;-) )

Perhaps I've got a bit of time before Barbados to go through all the voucher code sites and see what the state of play is for them to keep Mark happy - I'm thinking, however, that I'll have to make the data anonymous?

Also I'd like to say well done to all the others that won, were commended and nominated - even to those that didn't make it to that stage. Some of the decisions I found a tad strange, but you're always going to get that.

And the highlight of the night? Well it was all great, but hooking up with the Jmeister is always a hoot - see pic. But it's gotta be the reunion of "Team Fun" - a great bunch of guys and gals!

Testing Google Moderator - Anyone Got Any Questions?

I know you guys are all clued up to the nine's but I'm testing Google Moderator to see how well it can be used for Consultant -> Clients (with many peeps) and wondered if it could be good for an SEO / Affiliate Q&A.

Feel free to drop over some if you have any? You can access it here.