Here is my halfassed theory on what it is all about:

DarwinAW was a UK affiliate marketing network that in 2009 realised and presented compelling evidence that all forms of affiliate marketing have evolved over time from common ancestors, through the process called natural selection.

The fact that evolution occurs became accepted by the affiliate community, while this theory of natural selection came to be widely seen as the primary explanation of the process of evolution in the industry, and now forms the basis of modern evolutionary theory.

In modified form, DarwinAW’s discovery is the unifying theory of the whole of marketing on the internet, providing logical explanation for the diversity of different methods of revenue generation.

This post owes a lot to Charles Darwin – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

No doubt all will be revealed in the fullness of time.

So just what is DarwinAW? #darwinAW

Fraser has recently acquired the websites www.redwine.co.uk and www.whitewine.co.uk in order to get the word out rather than mess about with business cards he decided to get a few bottles of Merlot and Sauvignon Blanc printed up instead and distribute them throughout the internet community.

So far I have enjoyed the Merlot here is my short review.

The dominant features of this wine are black cherry, blackberry, a trace of vanilla and just a hint of nutmeg, all in a well structured wine with soft tannins. It is the ideal type of wine to age, because it has a great deal of character plus satisfactory structure for lengthy development over time. You could if you wanted drink it directly with food, or lay it down for a few years to mature.

Actually those tasting notes are complete bollocks partly made up and partly plagiarism, while some of it may be true and it was an excellent bottle of red I’m no wine connoisseur more Ozzy Osborne than Oz Clarke in my drinking habits.

Incidentally Fraser is currently running a competition where you can win a case of wine this closes at the end of July 2009, look on the sites for more details or follow @whiteandred on twitter and re-tweet to enter.

Thank you www.redwine.co.uk and www.whitewine.co.uk

Paid On Results this week announced a rebrand as part of it’s strategy to grow and transform the business. This move will help to position the company to showcase its unrivaled knowledge of affiliate marketing, innovative technology and supportive staff.

The new branding includes a new logo and corporate colour scheme which better reflects the company’s vibrant and exciting vision for the future of ecommerce. Developed after months of internal and external consultation, the new image represents the core values of Paid On Results – friendliness, clarity, simplicity, dynamism, excellence. The new brand identity has been applied to all Paid On Results marketing materials including the website, blog, presentations and stationery.

Clarke Duncan, Director and Shareholder, spoke about the company’s new identity:-

“This is an exciting time for Paid On Results as we continue to grow steadily and recruit additional staff in the face of the global recession. The rebranding reflects this excitement and optimism. The future for Paid On Results sees further growth aided by an increased emphasis on sales and marketing. Today Paid On Results can look to the future with confidence, largely because of its strong background in bringing to the fore innovative technology and in employing knowledgeable, friendly staff. We will continue to build our independent business based on these strong foundations. “

About Paid On Results:

Established in 2002, Paid On Results has always been at the cutting edge of affiliate marketing in the United Kingdom. The company has developed an incomparable comprehension of the market and has built up positive relationships with many of the country’s largest and most successful affiliates. This combination of groundbreaking, yet extremely user friendly technology plus experienced, knowledgeable account management has made Paid On Results a potent force in the industry.

Paid On Results roll out a corporate re-brand

Last year I said that I had regretted not being able to go diving or indeed visit the infamous Harbour Lights this year I managed both although the copious drinking, dancing and making merry at the latter was the most successful of the two pursuits.

Again it was great to spend some quality time networking and having fun with some fantastic people some of whom are great friends of long standing, and of the people I met for the first time I’m sure a few of them will also become more than just casual holiday acquaintances.

The Affiliate Future Barbados  event is invaluable for the Affiliate Marketing Industry, long standing business relationships and fantastic friendships are born out of it.

Thanks to the Affiliate Future team for organising the trip and being fantastic hosts, Pete, Alex, Jess and especially the wonderful J Lil who went out of his way to find me alternative accommodation when the first room proved unsuitable, thanks also to Chris Clarkson of Sunshine.co.uk for sponsoring my place yet again.

This awesome video sums up the whole Barbados experience:

Barbados Rocks

Top 10 Tweets via @AffiliateBlogs in June 2009

June’s Most Popular Tweets from Internet Marketing Blogs

*available only to ecu pro members.

An example feed can be seen here.

To use these feeds with Keith’s Easy Rss Wordpress Plugin include in your wordpress post in this format.

[ker]rss url,number of results required[/ker]

as so

[ker]http://www.easycontentunits.com/rss/6553/3/rss2.rss,10[/ker]

Click here for full details of this wordpress plugin and to download.

More about the Easy Content units rss feed can be found on the ECU blog >> ECU goes RSS – Pro Feature

Example of an ECU rss feed in a blog post Denner Cashmere voucher code

RSS for Loads More Merchants – Thanks Easy Content Units

Suitably impressed I had a little dig round google and found a number of other sites which have there own hidden easter eggs, the most impressive being http://paulirish.com/2009/cornify-easter-egg-with-jquery/

Anyway this morning when I woke up I was still thinking about Konami Code and wondered if there was a wordpress plugin so I could try it for myself (cant be arsed with hard coding anymore), well I was in luck I found this little gem Konami Easter Egg so there is now a hidden message on this site.

Type in up,up,down,down,left,right,left,right,b,a then hit [Enter]

The affiliate in me cant help thinking this could be used for business, what do you reckon?

Sunday morning geek fest playing with Konami code

The UK affiliate marketing industry was well represented across all sectors, and everyone was done up to the nines, which proves that even us “grubby affiliates” do on occasion scrub up well.

I had the honour of being invited to the event by DFDS Seaways, so a big thank you to my hosts Andrew Cooper and Tom Fotheringham.

Basically this article is a whole bunch of plaudits, the venue was excellent, the meal was adequate, catering for 500 is never going to be the same as individual attention in a Michelin star restaurant.

The entertainment was great, and the awards themselves well presented.

Of course the company was fabulous so many good friends and acquaintances packed together in one room to applaud and honour the best of the best.

While all the awards are worthy of our fine industry and the winners richly deserving, my particular favourites  are the Publishers’ Choice Awards and Community Choice Awards which were voted for only by members of affiliates4u, my bias toward these awards comes from the fact that many of the winners, highly commended and indeed nominees are very dear friends of mine.

Publishers’ Choice Awards

Publishers’ Choice of Affiliate Network

Winner: Affiliate Window

Highly Commended: DGM

Publishers’ Choice of Account Manager

Winner: Hannah Swift (Existem A.M.)

Highly Commended: Julie Wood (Affiliate Window) & Agnieszka Marchewka (buy.at / Platform A)

Publisher’s Choice of Affiliate Manager 2009

Winner: Chris Clarkson (sunshine.co.uk)

Highly Commended: Naomi Brown (Firebox)

Community Choice Awards

Affiliate Management Agency of 2009

Winner: Existem Affiliate Management

Highly Commended: Azam Marketing

Affiliate Marketing Blog of 2009

Winner: Kirsty McCubbin (affiliatestuff.co.uk)

Highly Commended: Lee McCoy (leemccoy.co.uk)

Congratulations to each and every one of you.

The full list of awards and winners can be found here

Finally massive congratulations must go to  Matthew Wood a young man (he only hit the big 30 a couple of days after this years awards) who has helped shape the entire UK Affiliate Marketing Industry over the past seven or so years, he and his fine team at Existem do such sterling work. Without Matt and the team events like this and the popular a4uexpo may never have been established.

As you can probably tell by the tone of my humble roundup I loved each and every minute of the night, and am already looking forward to next year.

Only change I would like to see is the smaller affiliates and merchants being honoured in some of the verticals, people who wouldn’t necessarily put themselves up for nomination, how this could be achieved is anybodies guess, food for thought.

Penguins and pretty girls at the A4uAwards 2009

Anyway I thought I would share with you from the hootsuite stats the most popular tweets from the 1187 click throughs  since the service started, if you find this useful let me know and I will do a similar top 10 every month.

Top 10 Tweets via @AffiliateBlogs in May 2009

Recent additions to Internet Marketing Blogs

Big Idea Media – What’s the Big Idea?

George Marshall – Entrepreneur – one man one mission one million one year

Affiliate Doctors

Affiliate Marketing Awards – a4uAwards

Skimblog – by Skimlinks

Datadial Blog

LinkShare UK Blog

TechCrunch Europe

James Reddy – ReddyGo.co.uk

Justin Parks – Social Media and all that other internet stuff – Justin Parks is a paddy, get over it. He might sound nuts but really he’s a bloody genius (his words not mine).

Easy Content Units

May’s Most Popular Tweets from Internet Marketing Blogs

Don’t get me wrong I am not against writing stuff from the ground up and probably between 6 and 12 articles daily are all my own work.

So what do I require to push your programme?

In a word CONTENT!!!

Unique content is best and it will push you to the top of the pile, I have a wonderful agency person who sends me 3 unique articles a week for one of the merchants she looks after, consequently 3 articles a week get published for that merchant.

So what kind of stuff am I looking for?

Well the answer is absolutely anything fashion related, short articles work best for me in the 150 – 200 word region.

One article will get you exposure, one a month gets you regular exposure, one a week… etc you get the picture.

Tell me and my users about your brands, your ranges, your new stuff, your best sellers, your clearance department, celebrities that use your products, media attention they have gained, anything really, it is all useful.

If you send me unique content I will use it.

If you send me generic content I may use it.

If you send me nothing I don’t have a starting point.

What else can you do?

Let me know when your products have been on TV or in the papers and magazines, the fresher the better, I got a heads up about a range of products that were featured on a Channel 4 programme recently, so I wrote a short piece about them, it wasn’t fashion incidentally but a health product which I could use on the main fashion site, from the moment I published they literally started flying off the shelves and I know for a fact a lot more publishers than me benefited, as the product was not unique to one merchant, a few more sales were diverted in the direction of the one I promoted thanks to being guided by the agency looking after them.

I have just realised it is a year as of yesterday that I wrote about this very same subject How To Push My Buttons And Get Me To Promote Your Wares just shows not a lot has changed.

A big thank you to everyone who sends me content, has already sent me content and is about to send me content.

An open letter to affiliate managers and merchants How to get me promoting you