I hadn’t even stepped out of the lift when I’d collected my first business card and within 10 minutes of arriving I had to head back to my room for more and to chill. Facing merchants before you’ve even had time for a well-needed coffee (after a night of networking) didn’t seem so wise.

I soon realised that the sensible affiliates roamed the stands after lunch, so I allowed myself a lie-in for day 2.

Aside from the following, I left Barcelona with 35 business cards and I’ve not gotten around to emailing any of the people I chatted to about my website.

I didn’t have to email anyone. After a courtesy ‘we’ll give you a day to get back to the office’ the emails started flooding in and whilst I may not be a travel affiliate yet, I’m on my way to be a gaming one.

I’ve secured a few exclusive codes in this sector and a handful are live on ShopCodes for roulette and backgammon brands alongside the more traditional poker and bingo.

I’ve not even replied to all those who have emailed as dealing with gaming merchants can be quite a slow process. You have to play the 5 minute game of CPA or revshare, when all I care about is the content and creatives.

So when I get back from A4uExpo I’ll be keen to implement all the new SEO strategies I’ll be picking up. I think I’ve earmarked to attend all of the sessions.

I’ll then need to continue with my post-CAP strategy, get my October codes in order and then, just maybe, I can become a travel affiliate too.

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A4uExpo Already? I'm Still Dealing with CAP

We have an image of the product.

We have instructions on how to use the code. We even have a screen grab of the checkout process highlighting how a code is used.

So you’re telling me this isn’t content?

It’s all content in my eyes and it happens to be on a damn good domain too. It happens to be a site called Shop Codes and so primarily it promotes Shop Codes.

Some affiliates out there don’t like sites that promote shop codes but I tell you one thing customers love these sites and what they provide. As a site owner that promotes save £6 here on a Christmas present, I’m capitalising in on those savvy shoppers who want to save a few pounds here and there.

Once I’ve gone through all September’s expired codes and added all the new ones for October, I’ll add even more codes and content and screengrabs and banners and drive more sales, whilst others watch on.

You've been reading a befuddled me? article.

So You're Telling Me This Isn't Content?

The latest trip is the highly anticipated CAP Euro Casino Conference that is taking place this weekend at the five star Hotel Princesa Sofia.

I shall be flying from Leeds tomorrow afternoon courtesy of Jasper and Claire of Jackpotjoy. They held the incentive ‘Go to CAP Euro on us‘ which I noticed had no replies on the forum at least.

All I had to do was register for the promotion and then refer real money players to the gaming site. For every player referred I got one entry and as Jackpotjoy is one of my most popular merchants on ShopCodes I had good odds.

There’ll be a few faces in Barcelona that I’ll recognise around the parties and bars. As well as Jasper and Claire, Matt Wood is attending; Hayley and Sammy from buy.at and fellow discount coder Barry will be working their way through San Miguel amongst the networking activities.

It should be good fun. I don’t do anything in the gaming sector aside from what I do on ShopCodes but maybe it will inspire me to turn my ‘Ca$$$h for Beer‘ domain into a site that will earn me cash for beer.

p.s. If you don’t already promote Jackpotjoy, you’re missing out on a trick as you get a nice monthly 30% revenue share bonus from them. Jasper has hinted at exciting times ahead and that they’re changing from being Jackpotjoy Affiliates.

You've been reading a befuddled me? article.

Caps Off to Jackpotjoy

You've been reading a befuddled me? article.

Slanket Prezzy is a Plus

In a recent television interview at the a4uExpo Manchester roadshow, Hero discusses the role of voucher codes in marketing.

“Recently because of all the credit crunch fears and the financial downturn there’s a lot more people now looking for vouchers looking for the best prices out there.”

That’s good news for me and my ShopCodes but with the impression that it is ‘easy money’ there does seem to be a lot of new voucher code sites appearing. Hero validly points out that it’s not just a case of shotting up some codes and that maintaining such a code site is really hard work.

“It is not an easy thing. A lot of people think ‘Ooh I can hook up some codes and put them up there’. But it is a lot of work and a lot of attention to detail to make sure you are representing the merchant correctly. It actually creates lots of problems to the customer service for the merchant if it’s not accurate, so you need to be aware of it as an affiliate.”

Hero will be on a panel at the forthcoming a4uexpo (London 14-15 October) with affiliate Chris Frost, Richard Clark, Marketing Manager of the Dixons group and Martin from the agency Equator.

They will talk about voucher site implementation, how you can resolve and raise issues and showcase how they can be addressed.

“This is a very powerful tool. Merchants shouldn’t be scared of it, provided it is well planned and well executed.”

You can watch the full interview from Chris at affiliates4u.tv.

You've been reading a befuddled me? article.

Credit Crunch Boosts Voucher Codes

A very good turnout filled the Vodka Revolution bar and I got to meet up with some old friends and new faces amongst the crowd.

There wasn’t a free bar but R.O.EYE had a kitty to get the cocktails flowing. I only had to put my hand in my pocket once and that was because I was one of the first there.

I’m convinced Mark from Existem was deliberately trying to get me drunk as he went to the bar and got three trays of vodka shots. No wonder I’m already on my fourth coffee of the morning.

Highlights for me …

Meeting up with Liane from LinkShare who I last saw in a San Francisco diner in January, as she then worked for the US arm of the company. With another Summit trip to win next year, I’ll be proactively promoting their merchants to stake my claim.

Chatting to Jess from dgm who I couldn’t quite persuade to get her to update my site for me but she’s volunteered to send me lots of information to save me some pain.

We talked a lot about JD Williams and how I’m still clocking up lots of sales for them but they don’t generate me any money. It would be Christmas for me, if JD Williams got back into affiliate marketing in some form.

Aside from them, I do very little on the dgm network, so it’s another that I’m going to just blitz and add more merchants. I’ve shied away from them in the past because I don’t like their interface but it sounds like there’s improvements on the way.

Finally, the evening ended talking to Existem new girl Hannah who even brought her mum and dad. Bless.

All in all it was a brilliant night. It cost me approximately £100 for the train and nice stay at the ABode (who kindly gave me a breakfast to go). That cost is more of an investment though and if you’ve not been to a network event before, please do.

There’s plenty coming up. The next stop for my dancing shoes is Barcelona for Cap Euro 2008.

Until then, it’s time for another coffee.

You've been reading a befuddled me? article.

Blame it on the Vodka

I started planning running my own mobile version of ShopCodes a year ago but that project is on hold.

I do believe the site can work and be profitable but I’ve got to get my infrastructure in place first so that I am more efficient in how I manage my codes. As a tester of mobile Internet sites I know how technically challenging it can be to get the user experience right.

So that’s why I’ll be keen to listen to mobile expert Peter Glaeser, at the 2008 a4uexpo, at Excel London, 14-15 October 2008.

During his time as Associate Director for online marketing technology at Jamster, a joint venture of News Corporation and VeriSign, Peter launched a mobile tracking solution and one of the world’s first ringtone affiliate programmes for the mobile internet.

The mobile affiliate marketing pioneer willl be talking about how you can embrace mobile within the affiliate channel.

The session will cover business models, monetisation methods and traffic sources and will be aimed at both affiliates and merchants and concludes with a Q&A.

With over 40 other sessions including Landing Page Optimisation, Developing Profitable Websites with Mash-ups & APIs and successful Voucher Code Implementation, this year’s a4uexpo Conference will provide delegates with best management practises, complementary channel activity, useful tools as well as expert views on the market and its future potential.

Matthew Wood, organiser of a4uexpo, says:

a4uexpo is all about learning, not sitting through sales pitches. This year’s agenda has been driven by the delegates, debated by the 20,000 members of affiliates4u and responds to the real issues facing everyone working in this dynamic industry.

Hmm, ‘Successful Voucher Code Implementation’. Guess I should take a sneak peak at that session too.

You've been reading a befuddled me? article.

Is mobile still not 4u?

As my site doesn’t drop cookies for simply breathing the name, I can only assume that visitors have been at Dorothy Perkins checkout; searched for a Dorothy Perkins code in Google; spotted my site; then clicked on one of the promotional links that I’ve built for them; then they’ve gone back to Google and repeated the search process looking for a code.

That could make sense if I even ranked for ‘Dorothy Perkins voucher codes’ in Google.

Over the 8 months of this year I’ve listed 9 different promotions for Dorothy Perkins, including a 50% Summer Sale, 15% Exclusive voucher and a free gift promotion code and so on.

The page has been viewed 1,241 times by 995 unique visitors.

Those 995 visitors made a total of 83 purchases, spending over £4,500.

Of those 83 sales, 22 were declined.  This represents one-third of my total declined sales made on the Affiliate Window network, where Dorothy presides.

22 declined sales equates to £99 worth of commission.

These figures put me off wanting to promote the merchant further. They are obviously doing something different than other merchants are. Maybe they are just more dilligent at checking last referrer stats.

Either way, I’d have rather have not made the sale in the first place if I wasn’t going to be paid for it.

22 other affiliates received that commission or maybe one other affiliate received 22 lots of commission for doing what I did but a little later.

Who knows? Does Dorothy?

You've been reading a befuddled me? article.

Dorothy Perkins - Not Last Referrer

Dear Kirsty,

I’ve just relaunched a site that was badly neglected. It regularly had thousands of visitors daily peaking at 125,000 and I didn’t think anything of it but only recently that figure dropped to a lowly 200.

I’ve removed all of the original content of the site and I have spent the first few weeks of August re-building up the pages based around my previous most popular keywords and images.

After it’s redesign launch four weeks ago, I’m now attracting 1,000-4,000 unique visitors daily looking at between 5,000-22,000 pages and this figure is climbing daily.

I’m not quite sure of the traffic as Servage, Statcounter and Google Analytics are all giving me different results. This may be down to how I am presenting the content. The graph above displays the lowest figures of the three, so it’s looking promising.

Speaking of Google, they have been in touch to say that I can’t promote Google Adsense on the site. You see the content is a bit risque, as you’ll soon tell from my most popular pages:

/drunkcelebs/drunk-celebs-upskirt/
/drunkcelebs/drunk-celebs-see-through/
/drunkcelebs/drunk-celebs-flashing/
/drunkcelebs/drunk-celebs-nipple-slip/

I’m wondering how I can monetise the site. I don’t want to fill it with full adult porn adverts, so is there anything more subtle I could do?

I’m sure many merchants in the affiliate marketing space won’t want to be associated with a site that focuses on drunk celebrities and includes the odd not-safe-for-work image. The site has profited in the early days though from promoting the likes of Figleaves and JackpotJoy with traditional banners.

I’ve also spotted that a link from my Befuddle home page to an rss feed of my shopping site ShopCodes is ranking highly for some voucher code related keywords. So whilst that page was created as an experiment, I think the site has the potential to exploit the retail market.

Google certainly seems to like the influence of it’s status, being eight years old with a PR4 and it’s Wordpress formatting.

My pages are being indexed within hours of posting. The quickest I’ve spotted is two hours between page creation and the page to be indexed by Google on page 1 and for someone to search for a celebrity and land on my site.

The site is on page 1 of Google for the following terms if not the #1 spot itself.

# drunk celebs
# drunk celebrities
# celebs
# uk celebs

Who or what can I promote? You’ll see there’s an advert on there for an adult dating site but that is merely a place holder as I want to see what click-throughs it receives. (At the time of writing, it’s got a CTR of 1.02%)

I also know I’ve got a worldwide audience. Visitors from 147 different countries have visited just recently and this is broken down as such …

The UK appears low at 8% but Analytics says the UK accounts for 33% of my traffic and the visitors spend an average of 4.5 minutes viewing content. They seem to stick around

All the best. Cheers,
Ray

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Dear Kirsty ... My Site is Sticky & Looking Up

I installed the latest version of WordPress, uploaded my bespoke theme and then played with a few gallery plug-ins. With this new format I can easily create a gallery around a celebrity based on the pictures that I’ve had stored for the last eight years.

The site is now live. I’m aware of a few small things that need tweaking which I’ll crack on with during August, once my tax deadline is out of the way. There is one major bug that I’ll be monitoring. Just like this blog there are often WordPress ‘unable to connect to database’ errors. So I may need to move hosts if I feel that will resolve it.

Below, are the subtle different faces of Befuddle. You can see a lot more at Wayback Machine.

This grab from May 2000, just 3 months after the site was named a ‘Yahoo! Pick of the Week’ and I was featured in national newspapers. The content is primarily story driven ie my friends drunken tales. Further down the page there’s a ‘Scooby Doo’ drinking game, which I still get in my keywords list to this day.

Look at this. It’s 2004 and this site has a bit more colour and begins to love itself. The adapted logo tells you the site focuses on drunk celebs. Traffic peaked at 125,000 visitors daily. The stories are relegated to neglected pages. Look on the right to see ‘Trolleyed’, my shopping portal.

Jump to 2007. Ooh that logo is moving on now But what happened to that partner site ‘Trolleyed’? Well Shop Codes is the same site as Trolleyed. It just never made any money when it was called Trolleyed! The success of Shop Codes though lead to the downfall of Befuddle. Traffic was at a reasonable 1,000 a day before it crashed and burned in September 2007.

Hello to today! New logo, keeping with the spirit that you’re drunk and a little homage to Paris Hilton. Little content at the moment but I’m in no rush. I’ve got another eight years to enjoy working on my own original first website again.

You've been reading a befuddled me? article.

Changing Face of Befuddle