Monday saw the Affiliate Future 2008 Barbados Trip touch down at Gatwick bringing the curtain down on an awesome week, with a fantastic group of people, it was a week of cementing old friendships and forging new ones, a week in the sun is a far better way of forming business relationships than a couple of phone calls and five minutes on msn, and you don’t need to talk work at all, that can wait until after the holiday.

Thank you to all at Affiliate Future for a wonderful, fun holiday, there were lots of highlights and many firsts.

Not going to make this a travel log , you had to be there, I will try to sum things up with a few random words and phrases in no particular order.

banks, the ship, mc turtle man, karaoke, McCoy’s driving, hey jude ragga version, mountgay rum, animal flower, buttercup, aloe vera man, street meat, oistins, strawberry daiquiris, sweet potato, flying fish, mullins bay, belini’s, crane bay, concorde, mcbrides, dover beach, bean n’ bagel, rumcake, slippery nipple, baracuda, mini moke, puff the magic dragon, pepper sauce (and the furiously drinking bird), lime margarita’s, lobster, lady(ies) in red.

Unfortunately for much of the time I was suffering from sinusitis and feeling totally grotty and I missed out on some good times (been to docs since and the medication I am on don’t allow me out in sunlight ), but I still have a treasure trove of wonderful memories and I want to go back.

My aim now is to do everything in my power to win a ticket for next year, so I can partake in some of the activities I missed, I really would like to go scuba diving and visit the infamous Harbour Lights.

Again I must extend my thanks to the Affiliate Future team for organising the trip and being fantastic hosts, thanks also to Sunshine.co.uk for my ticket and running a great series of missions in the run up to Barbados.

The BBC have recently published the findings of a spam email experiment that was conducted in conjunction with McAfee.

Now I’m not totally condemning the article and I’m not denying that spam is a problem and that the unscrupulous go to incredible lengths to acquire the email addresses of millions of innocent internet users and them bombard them constantly.

The problem that I have with this article is that it clearly accuses a website that I know to be ethical and clean of the dubious practices of sending spam emails and selling email addresses to third parties.

The website in question is Free UK Stuff and the site operator Clarke Duncan has rightfully written an open response on his personal blog >> BBC News experiment overloads brain cells of editors.

Anyway in my humble opinion the BBC should have taken more care before publishing this article and definitely contacted Free UK Stuff to see if their assumptions held water, check the full BBC article here >> Spam experiment overloads inboxes << and decide for yourself.

In a relatively short time Chris Clarkson of sunshine.co.uk has become something of a demi-god amongst affiliate managers, his tireless work promoting Sunshine since they launched in March has seen Chris scoop the prestigious Affiliate Manager of 2008 award at the recent a4uawards in London.

The series of Sunshine Missions which Chris instigated with the ultimate goal of sending three affiliates on the 2008 Affiliate Future Barbados Trip was a stroke of genius, and none of them were beyond the bounds of any affiliate, I’m not just saying that because I was lucky enough to win a place on the trip along with Chris Frost and Ian Ebbs (thanks Sunshine and Affiliate Future), no these missions / incentives / tasks were devised to get affiliates promoting Sunshine, and they worked.

Many would now look back at what they have achieved and rest quietly on their laurels, not Chris and Sunshine though, no forever the professional the emphasis is on further growing the number of active affiliates on the Sunshine program so with that end they have launched another great affiliate incentive full details can be found here.

Basically the task is to come up with an itinerary for a week in the sun, the trip must include three hotels from the sunshine site with three different Sun ratings and a brief bit of blurb about why you chose each hotel. Its in essence what those in the travel industry call a “Fam Trip” a working holiday designed to familiarize you with the product you are selling.

The travel site I set up to take advantage of the Sunshine Missions is Algarve Hotels so with that in mind my 7 day itinerary is:

Sunday 21st September Flight Teesside > Faro

21st - 23rd September

Dom Jose Hotel - Quarteira - 3 Sun Rating - on the beachfront, only 10m from the sea perfect for a lazy start to the week.

23rd - 25th September

The Ria Park Hotel & Spa - Vale Do Lobo - 5 Sun Rating - a touch of luxury and a good centre to research the Algarve’s golf courses for my Golfing News website.

25th - 28th September

The Pinus Ria Hotel - Qunita do Lago - 4 Sun Rating - close enough for the town centre bars and restaurants so a bit of the Algarve culture can be absorbed and the resort shopping centre provides a bit of retail therapy.

Sunday 28th September Flight Faro > Teesside

Its that simple, if you already have a travel site work out your itinerary and send it along to Chris (details here) if you haven’t got one yet no worries, there are plenty of good travel related domains available get one registered today and you are on your way, you might just get lucky and win a trip, but one thing is certain if you don’t enter you won’t win, entries close 10th July.

One statistic that is sorely missing from the reports of most of the affiliate networks that I use is where the traffic I am sending originates from.

Affiliate Window have today launched a report which addresses that issue, the Click Ref Report shows exactly which links your users have clicked on.

Here is an snapshot of the report taken from my stats today.

So what does this report tell me?

Basically its letting me know which links are generating traffic, most notable for me in this small sample is the fact that the article I wrote this morning about the brand ‘Traffic People’ linking to ‘Lastseason.com’ has generated traffic from three separate links.

Using the Click Ref Report

To use this report simply append &clickref=YOURCLICKREF to the end of your links like so:

http://www.awin1.com/awclick.php?mid=3&id=45628&clickref=YOURCLICKREF

Could the report be improved?

Awin admitted themseves that this is just a basic report, see article on affiliates4u.com New Click Ref Report, and that it would be built upon, what I would like to see included is a referring url for the click and a direct link into the Link Performance report (with link back via clicks column of that report).

All in all a big thumbs up to Affiliate Window, I really like this report but eagerly anticipate the next version.

Matthew Wood and his Existem team who organize the must attend affiliate marketing event a4uexpo (14th -15th October) have opened up the floor for suggestions as to the topics that delegates would like to see included this year.

The potential subject matter which could be included is wide and varied and the level that it is aimed at can also be very broad, from complete beginner to expert. To read about this call for ideas pop over to the a4uexpo website and take a look at SEO, Social Media or Paid Search Strategies? We Need Your input…

For what its worth some of the things I’d like to see included are:

• Advanced SEO Techniques
• Anything by Dr Karl Blanks and Ben Jesson of Conversion Rate Experts, their session on Conversion Rate Optimisation was the highlight of the 2007 a4uexpo in my opinion.
• Email list building and marketing - beginner / intermediate. This is an area I know very little about.
• Newsletter structure - intermediate - I suppose this is really an extension of the topic above although I’m sure there is enough for it to be worthy of its own slot.

Don’t be shy Matt, Claire and the team are eagerly awaiting your suggestions, you can help to make a4uexpo 2008 a resounding success.

Its still not too late to Save £100 on the delegate rate for a4uexpo 2008 - but be quick, as this EarlyBird rate is ending on 31st May (This Saturday).

Why should you register for a4uexpo today?

• £100 off EarlyBird rate
• Ample networking opportunities at the exhibition & pre/post event networking parties
• 2 Days of Conference Tracks and Sessions

What’s New for 2008?

• A Thames River Cruise on the middle evening, courtesy of buy.at
• Vertical Networking Receptions
• Bloggers Cafe’

In the words of the a4uexpo blog - don’t procrastinate and end up paying more! - Click Here to Register Now

I promised in my last post that I would give you a few ideas about what things to do if you are a merchant (or represent a merchant) and want to be featured on my websites. I’m not guaranteeing all these methods will work but they may move you up my priority list.

Communicate with me

Talk to me, but don’t be pushy, don’t ask how I’m going to promote you, let me know what you have that I may be able to use, tell me about promotions, special offers, sales, new lines, best sellers, what makes you better than everyone else selling the same thing.

Help me

The best way you can help me is by providing copy about the products you sell, ideally unique copy, this is a great way of getting featured as fresh content takes time and every little helps.

Bruce Clayton at Existem-Am recently asked what he could do to help me feature one of his clients so I asked for information about all the brands they sell, 80 - 100 words each I told him would be ideal, Bruce immediately accepted the challenge and said that would be his train project, a couple of weeks later he sent me a nice word document with the bio’s for all 26 brands his client currently features, so far I have added pictures and links tweaked and published three of them and over the next 2-3 months the rest will also be published meaning his client will have 26 articles on my fashion website which gets a steady stream of traffic day in day out.

Give me an incentive

I’m not really one for entering competitions but as I mentioned a couple of weeks back Sunshine held a number of missions each with its own prize but with the ultimate reward being a place on the Affiliate Future Barbados trip. I am happy to say that even though I left things late getting started I was rewarded handsomely for the missions that I took part in winning not only a years subscription to the Hotel Chocolat tasting club but also a place on the trip too. Thank you Sunshine and Affiliate Future

Send me freebies

Possibly my favourite way of being asked to promote a merchant, and the beauty is you don’t need an affiliate program, you send me a sample of what you sell and I will write about either it or your website depending on what you want doing. Over the last year or so among other things I’ve received numerous t shirts, a flashy mobile phone, pants, shoes, a cd, books, my wife and daughters have also benefited as I have been sent pashmina’s, dresses, a beautiful tailored shirt, plus a hat and gloves.

Special mention must go here to Chris Bishop affiliate manager for House Of Fraser who above and beyond the call of duty sent me some hayfever stuff when he found out I was suffering, cheers for that kind gesture Chris, more Hof articles are in the pipeline.

For further ideas regarding getting promoted by affiliates read this article Take a Ticket & Get In Line - You Can’t All Be No.1! by Jason, yes I know I am always mentioning his stuff thats because he talks a lot of sense.

Jason Dale at One little Duck recently wrote about agency’s and merchants who go to extraordinary lengths to promote themselves on forums by pretending to be something they are not here is the article Why Forum Seeding Can Sometimes Backfire!

This problem of attempting to get free links spread around the internet is not however limited to forums, it is also very prevalent on blogs, a merchant or their agency will leave comments on blogs sometimes surreptitiously but often quiet blatantly;

For example the spam comment may simply say:- those dresses are amazing and the merchant link will be in the posters url, or the comment may be along the lines of:- if you like these dresses go to www.merchantsite.com for more!!!

This thread on Affiliates4u has an example of blog comment spam

3 Reasons why you shouldn’t spam affiliate blogs

• It hacks off affiliates, making them less inclined to promote you.
• Most affiliate blogs have spam filters and once you have posted a few dodgy comments your url / email will be blacklisted.
• The default setting for links in comments on wordpress blogs is no-follow, and many of the dofollow plugins require a number of comments before the no-follow attribute is removed.

Your efforts would be better employed talking to blog owners and asking what you can do to get exposure on the site in question. Now if you would like your site or your clients site to be featured more often on affiliate blogs and websites watch this space I shortly will reveal what buttons you can press to get published.

Hard to believe that a year has passed since I wrote this post, but it still holds true so worth bumping back to the front of my blog.

5th 6th Anniversary Of Nothing

Most people have dates indelibly etched in their memory, both personal and professional, in affiliate marketing circles it is often the first sale or the first cheque (check) however the date that sticks in my mind is 15th May 2002 this was the last day I drew a complete blank, no sales or leads, no residual income, absolutely nothing no transactions what so ever. Looking back the next day wasn’t much better a $2.88 (it was all $ on CJ then) from some long forgotten merchant on Commission Junction and after advertising May 2002 actually made a loss.

I don’t know when the significance of this date came to me, possibly a couple of months later when I realised there were earnings every day since May 15th and since then it has always been there spurring me on, no way do I want another day where the tumble weeds rattle and roll though my websites.

It hasn’t all been plain sailing, a total roller coaster ride, there have been numerous days where I have made a loss Christmas Day 2004 springs to mind, someone had hit the casino hard making me a loss of about £500 however it all came back with a few more £££ on Boxing Day.

How the industry has evolved in the subsequent years, in 2002 I was working with just four networks, CJ, Tradedoubler, DGM and Affiliate Window plus Amazon, now I’m unsure how many networks and independents I am signed up with.

I have evolved too, five years ago I had a scatter gun approach, if a new merchant launched up went the links and quiet often nothing, now I’m more interested in promoting a handful of quality merchants, who I hope appreciate my efforts, to hundreds of merchants and many networks I wont even register as an active affiliate, the only scattergun stuff I do these days is on my totally neglected freebie site.

Don’t get me wrong, in no way do I consider my self a super affiliate in any way shape or form but my advice to anyone just starting out is, don’t spread yourself too thin, select four or five merchants that you are going to make a special effort for (this is your A list) and build a business around them, don’t be frightened of change, ease back if a merchant stops performing, push harder when conversions are flying, keep your eyes and ears open you may pick up a gem from an industry event or forum that you never even considered, test the water cautiously with new affiliations before deciding to push the boat out and promote to the A list and if you come across a turkey drop it, what works for someone else may not work for you.

Above all have fun and try to avoid ‘nothing days’.

Over the last week or so, in the wake of the Google abolishment of the rules on trademark bidding, I am certain you have been inundated with emails from merchants reminding and revising their ppc policies, possibly to the point where you are screaming “no more” and getting itchy with the delete button finger.

Of all the emails that landed in my inbox the one that is etched in my mind is from gadget merchant Firebox simply for this paragraph:

No Competitor Brand Bidding - Please do not bid on the trademarked brand names of our competitors when promoting Firebox.

It makes us look bad and feel icky.

(Plus we get nasty phonecalls from our competitors, which nobody likes.)

That one line (It makes us look bad and feel icky) should be enough to put off anyone from even considering allowing competitor brand bidding on their affiliate program, although it would be a bit naive to think that it would put off everyone, as unfortunately there are plenty of people of low moral fibre.

I will let you dear reader undertake your own research as to who is allowing the dubious practice of brand bidding on competitor terms.

Are Banks Targeting Good Payers In Credit Squeeze?

In my experience the answer is yes, well they certainly are not bothering with those that can’t pay or won’t pay, no point really it would just be a waste of effort.

I have a credit card that I have always used for my affiliate marketing activity, ppc being the biggest expense, in November they increased my credit limit by £900 and I thought thats cool if I decide to run any vigorous campaigns over the festive period the credit is there, as it turned out I never used this extra credit as I had made a conscious decision to reduce ppc activity so when they reduced me back to the previous limit in January I thought nothing of it.

However every month since my limit has been reduced on this card by a few hundred pounds, I’ve never had any defaults on it and quite often paid off a couple of grand a month, now because of this constant chipping away of my credit limit I am reluctant to over pay in case it drops by more, consequently there is very little spending power on that card now, luckily my seo activity far exceeds my ppc at the moment, if it had happened twelve months ago it would have been a disaster.

I’m sure that many other card users with a good payment record are also being squeezed.

And Is It Starting To Affect Online Shopping?

Hopefully not, April was a pretty good month for me ppc was at an all time low and money earned was pretty reasonable, other affiliates have reported similar results, however if the banks continue to squeeze, disposable funds are going to be reduced making it harder for consumers to make online purchases.

Have any merchants been affected by the credit squeeze?

Has anyone else seen their credit card limit systematically reduced month on month?

Any affiliates noticed a marked downturn in sales?

Anyone got anything else to say about this situation?

Just comment in the box below.