Fortunately if you’ve been taking the Michael this month, for example if you’re the merchant with a Christmas blog splattered with voucher code and cashback sites and then thought we’d send you free traffic or you’re the affiliate who’s claiming to be giving away cars and holidays but are just inserting third party leadgen stuff and who thought we’d promote you, then you’re in luck as you’re spared a bit of public outing.

However, the main reason for no blogging is that quite simply there’s not been the time!

First up has been trying to figure out why our server either runs really well or as slow as Simon Cowell pondering whether to keep Jedward in X Factor or send home a real singer. Slowly, but surely issues are being identified and with news that page load may be an issue in 2010 it’s something worth spending time on.

Sorting out the back end of Loquax has also been on the agenda. Whilst the pretty side of things for users is usually the main focus, when you have a custom CMS, and especially one that’s been developed, patched up and cobbled together, it’s often worth revisiting it to see if you can make improvements.

Christmas as well has played a part! Now I did say back in September about planning for affiliate Christmas and for the most part have stuck with that. However, there are offers, deals of the days, bargains, codes, competitions, promotions and what have you coming in at all angles. The Affiliate Window Christmas Blog does deserve a mention mind – great idea and well executed.

Staying with Awin you can also blame David Fiske for the lack of blog updates here at OLD. David has written an excellent article on completing your Darwin Profile. I’m amazed it’s not been heavily backed on A4U but it did feature in the AWin newsletter. By taking David’s suggestions the Loquax Darwin profile has been rewritten to be in a more punchier format.

Finally – being organised has taken it’s toll. Over the last 10 years or so of doing this full time there’s been little or no structure to my working week. That’s changed in the last month or so so that specific tasks are being done at roughly the same time. For example article writing for a blog will be done on a single day at a certain time and then scheduled over the week, rather than a haphazard approach previously used.

This “being better organised” initially took the enjoyment away of working.

And a loss of fun and enjoyment of doing affiliate stuff is another reason why this blog has suffered in the content department. However, being organised is proving to a better way of doing things and other than the occasional server blip it does make life a lot easier.

Hopefully it will free up more time for writing this blog.

And the reason for that is it’s good to be grumpy. According to scientists “being grumpy makes us better at decision-making and less gullible”. So if the scientists are right (and who’d argue with a scientist eh) a grumpy affiliate should be better at picking the right merchants to promote and not be taken in by a boatload of flannel.

So that explains why I wrote planning for affiliate Christmas!

Hmmm…

Talking of grumpy affiliates, Clarke Duncan has helped explain the mysteries of the benefits of Twitter Lists to me in his latest blog – Twitter Lists to Discover Affiliate People. I’m not a listy person and quite like the anarchy Twitter brings, but Clarke’s made a pretty good case for creating them. All I need now is to sit down and start listing.

Doing lists is the in thing this year – next year it’ll be mobile!

There are Twitter Lists, Kieron’s Share My Play Lists (coming next year sharemylistlists) and the inaugural Top 100 Affiliate Marketing Companies List. This interesting survey from the guys behind A4U aims to “provide the industry with an unbiased view on the top Affiliate businesses working across the entire channel”.

If you want to get involved then sign yourself up and let them know how well you’re doing. You can also nominate a “most respected company within the Affiliate Marketing Industry” and “most respected individual within the Affiliate Marketing Industry”. Note the 100AMC is only for affiliates.

I can guarantee you’ll be above us because we’re opting out, at least for the first year. This isn’t a reflection on the concept, I’m sure a lot of people want to know where they rank or more importantly where their peers rank in such list. We did check up with Matt and Chris on a couple of issues first, to get some points qualified, and then discussed things after that. So it’s not a knee jerk reaction but a business decision.

All said and done, our personal reasons for not being on such a list far outweighed those for being on it (had we actually qualified). A bit of grumpy decision making if you like because of a few “what if…” type worries, but sometimes you have to go with those instincts.

Now that last statement may set off a few fireworks – hopefully not – or at least hopefully not as many as those sent to us by the lovely St Minver. Thanks for the prize for being a good affiliate last month – all we need do now is figure out what to safely do with The Armoury (perhaps a cash bonus next time might be good eh? LOL).

If I’ve understood the talks right it’s claimed that cashback shoppers now go direct to their cashback site to shop. What this means is that when studying customer journeys it’s noted that they do their shopping in a single cookie setting session. That on the face of it is quite a revelation, and completely contrary to what many affiliates believe actually happens. The conclusions drawn from the stats may well be right, but stats don’t often paint a true picture.

For example – do the stats analysis take into account that cashback shoppers are encouraged to shop in a single session.

Here are some lines from Quidco’s user guide with regard to best practice for tracking sales:

2. Clear cookies & cache, disable pop-up, ad, & image-blockers.
4. Don’t use voucher or other discount codes unless they came from the Quidco site.
6. Complete your purchase online, all in one session.

Friend of cashback Martin Lewis also has some useful advice for cashback shoppers:

Step 3: Clear your cookies.
If you’ve clicked through to several different sites that collect cookies, which will often include the product site itself, through a comparison site, this site, or another cashback site, it may not track unless you clear your computer’s cookies first.

Could this be a reason for seeing cashback shoppers shopping in a single session?

Now, it may well be that those studying the stats have taken into account this data. My initial inclination is that they haven’t! I’m not sure many people would seriously believe that on significant purchases people would not click around for a good deal, do a price comparison or head to a review site.

The data can’t pick up when people are using different computers (work to home, pc to laptop), reading reviews or doing price comparisons but being careful not to click on any links (so as not to burn cookies).

If, as demonstrated above, cashback shoppers are being told or encouraged to watch their cookie activity, then that in itself throws a significantly large sized spanner into the works. The data for looking into customer journey becomes seriously skewed even if a small number of cashback shoppers are deleting cookies or taking steps to make sure they’re only clicking one link.

The data may well be telling us one thing, but without knowing the full facts about why it’s telling us things means that it could actually be impossible to make serious judgments on bringing in cookie attribution systems over the current last click wins system.

Understanding customer journey and cookie attribution should make for interesting discussions over the coming months.

The overall result was a much more enjoyable expo experience underpinned as always by enjoying a few chats and a few beers with the usual suspects and some new ones too, including Chris Brocklesby who’s a local Swansea affiliate.

The highlight had to be the ‘Conversion Squirrel’. Had it not been for this amusing little critter I’d have not found my way to stand five for a free eye tracking analysis of Loquax. Within a couple of minutes a couple of issues on the “new user journey” were spotted and these have already been addressed. If things turn out as expected then it’ll be a massive thanks to Conversion Rate Experts for their time.

The squirrel did give me an idea for next year – all stand holders should have a mascot and at the end of the Expo there should be a “last mascot standing” bundle. Bets could be taken too just to add spice.

It might be noisy and messy but no way as noisy as The Breakout Party, which was the lowlight of the whole 2009 event. After last year’s River Thames experience the party at The O2 had a lot to live up to… and it failed badly. Wrong location, wrong setting, wrong choice of loudness – but these things happen.

The seminars we attended were ok, although it might just have been me but the lighting at times was uncomfortable on the eyes. The Affiliate Apocalypse session was probably the best of the bunch and one that left me with many questions and annoyances.

The most agitating moment (as spotted by Geoffblog – and thanks for the comment – appreciated) was hearing that that many cashback shoppers now go direct to their cashback site to shop (no price comparison, no visiting other sites, no deletion of cookies etc).

The customer journey and commission attribution also cropped up in other talks. Whilst it’s good to know networks and agencies are looking at stats and considering the winners and losers of the “last click wins” rule – it’s important that when this data is used that far reaching conclusions aren’t drawn on a narrow focus.

Anyway more on that another day!

Other highlights of the Expo 2009 included getting a free caricature from Gone Digging at the Webgains stand, the lunch time food which was a big improvement on last year, free teddy bears from the lovely people at Jackpotjoy/Market Ace, freebies from Shopzilla and Naomi of Firebox fame, Darren Newmark for his endless comedy (next year’s host for A4UAwards 2010 maybe?), the sharing of cup cakes from Total Search Solutions and Affili.net (much needed sugar boost in The Fox) and the king of the meat eaters Mr Mark Russell for dinner at Rodizio Rico (as recommended by Tom Quinn Medicine Woman).

Overall a good couple of days of work and fun. Being organised most certainly had it’s benefits and a big thanks to everyone we had meetings with in our new “London office” outside Expo – aka the coffee shop!

A4UExpo 2009 is definitely worth shouting about… just turn the music down in 2010 please.

Either that or include pipes, slippers and ear plugs in next year’s delegate bags! ;o)

As affiliates we sometimes think we’ve got it bad and that our commissions are being “lost” or “stolen” by voucher code affiliates using click to reveal and/or cashback sites. Proving that this actually happens isn’t always easy and perhaps that’s why many affiliates remain frustrated, especially at networks and merchants.

So what if you could say “it happens” because people are encouraged to do it?

For example, in this week’s News of the World Martin Lewis explains how a Kent grandmother got her car insurance for just 96p! Martin explains how to get the best insurance deal…

First you combine comparison services in the right order, eg Money Supermarket, GoCompare and Confused.com to maximise quotes in the minimum time. Then you see if you can get money back on the cheapest quotes by buying it through special cashback websites.

In consumer terms this is a fantastic story, but in affiliate terms it’s even better.

Firstly, we’re being told that the customer goes to a comparison engine to find a good deal then the cashback site gets the commission for the referral.

Sounds awfully familiar doesn’t it?!

It does makes you wonder how GoCompare et al feel about this. Perhaps it’s not a big issue as they can afford to lose sales to cashback or are paid in different ways? Perhaps it’s not something they’re aware of yet? Perhaps there are agreements in place between cashback sites and the comparison sites? Or perhaps cashback doesn’t get paid out if a customer has used a comparison site to generate a policy?

It’s a commission conundrum and a half! Should the comparison site get the commission for their part in creating the lead or is it the cashback affiliate who’s jumped in at the end to claim the reward?

It’d be interesting to see what happens in the affiliate world if and when large comparison companies start questioning why their “revenue” appears to be going “elsewhere”.

Another point is this – if you’re thinking of becoming an insurance affiliate the above is probably as good as a reason as any as to why you should look at other sectors. Ask yourself if you can compete with the price comparison sites and then can you afford to lose any effort you put in to cashback?

If you’re a network, guess why we’re not racing to promote your insurance merchants? Frankly, it just doesn’t seem like a good use of time.

Affiliate stuff aside – it’s a great situation for cashback consumers, but not for others! If an insurance company can insure someone for 96p on a fully comprehensive policy (which seems economically irresponsible) then isn’t it about time that they start paying back the hundreds they take off everyone else?

Perhaps a case for Mr Lewis to take up once he’s finished with the bank charges stuff?

Anyway, back to affiliate Christmas and I can exclusively reveal what we’ve planned for this year…… erm, actually it’s nothing!

No new gift site, no excessive updating of our Christmas Shopping site, no over excitement about all the cool incentives already on offer, no nothing!

The reasons for this are many fold.

1. Christmas Can Be a Big Distraction
It’s a big time of year for retailers, and with so many starting their festive lines now you sense that this year is even more important than usual. However, it can be a huge distraction for the 365 days a year site owner. We’ve now learnt that Christmas has to be part of our day to day work NOT let it take it over for a couple of months (as it has done in previous years).

2. Christmas Can Be Demoralising
There’s nowt worse for an affiliate than spending time putting together content and promotions for a merchant only to see that Mr Cashback, Mr Voucher Codes, Mr Big Brand or Mr A.F.Filiate has a humongous promotion (or special dispensation to break rules) that’s going to seriously over shadow anything you do (and they will, they always do every year!).

3. Christmas Can Be No Fun
Even before Santa’s emptied his sack down the chimney I’ve had enough of Christmas. Spending loads of time looking at trees, gift ideas, decorations and other stuff takes away the fun of the festive season. It’d be nice to enjoy it again!

4. Affiliates Aren’t Just for Christmas 1
This one really gets my goat! Merchants who for 9 months of the year never contact you but are suddenly your best mate because they’re offering an iPod Nano in their Christmas incentive and are hoping that you’re going to plaster your site with their Father’s Day creative. Erm, no!

5. Affiliates Aren’t Just for Christmas 2
Similar to that are the merchants who have never ever looked like they’re going to generate a sale in a million years (perhaps related to 2 above) who suddenly are expecting to feature in premium positions and/or replace your known converters in exchange for an extra % or two (remember extra percentage of nothing is still nothing before switching to unknown performers).

6. Planning Ahead
One of the biggest reasons is that I know we’re better off using our time planning ahead for the non-Christmas weeks and months ahead by focusing on what we’re doing, than spending time looking at retailers who may or may not convert in a comparatively small window of opportunity.

7. Time Management
Running competitions, updating extra content and doing extra promotion takes time. Time we often don’t have and time that’s often not paid for. For example we’d love to do some prize draws but don’t have time to badger sponsors, deal with their idiosyncrasies, keep them all happy and then run round come January to get prizes sent out.

Christmas can be a good time for affiliates and retailers do like to paint a pretty picture of loads of sales and commissions to be had. That’s possibly true, but in our experience going “above and beyond” for any retailer for affiliate Christmas isn’t always the best use of time.

Seriously, it’s worth stopping for a moment and thinking about your festive ROI in time and commitment terms.

Retailers are only considering their business and will do what they have too to get maximum affiliate coverage over their competitors. That’s fair enough, but you, as an affiliate, need to consider your own business. Do you have time to do extra festive promotion? Can you integrate Christmas into your current working day and campaigns? Do you think it’s actually worth the time you invest?

This is especially true with regards to incentives!

Whilst the Christmas incentives a merchant offers to affiliates are great, do be careful before running off in search of gold at the end of the rainbow. It might be worth merchants revealing just how much help and assistance they are offering the big boys and how much that could distract from any effort you put in or limit your opportunity in selected prize categories.

This is not to say we won’t do anything festive related, it’s simply a case of we’re not going to go too far off our current course or out of our way to accommodate Santa, Frosty and co. in an often desperate attempt to chase extra Christmas commissions.

Perhaps we have a plan after all?

Thankfully Day 2 starts a little bit later than Day 1 and for affiliates “Killer Link Building Strategies” sounds the best of the “should I stay in bed with my hangover and watch Jeremy Kyle or go to a talk instead” time slot sessions. Link building is something we’ve never gotten into so learning “how to build high-value link targets and how to acquire them” may be useful as could be the Link Swap Shop proposed by Joe!

The next set of sessions is a mixed bag. If I was a paid search affiliate then Sri Sharma’s talk on “Strategies To Earn More From Your Affiliate Paid Search Campaign” would definitely be worth a look. “A View From Across Silicon Valley” with the co-founder of Commission Junction, Per Pettersen and a panel session on “Barriers to Conversion” make up the rest of the talks. A cup of coffee and a leisurely look round the Expo Exhibition may just win in the what to do at this time stakes though.

Deciding what to attend after lunch is going to be a tough decision.

The Extreme SEO Moderated Debate was a good one last year and should be a fun and informative session again this year. However, the panel are up against “Start-up And Launch Strategy” with Seatwave and some music sites called Spotify and Sharemyplaylists – never heard much about either of them – explaining how they did what they did.

“Beat Your Merchants At Their Own Game” is the other talk in this group which judging by the blurb will be full of merchants making sure their affiliates aren’t getting the edge on them via Adwords – one for the PPC people!

Apart from roads, hospitals, sanitation, voucher code management and Matt Bailey what has The IAB done for us? would be a much better title for a talk than “Regulation, Promotion and Education – What Can The IAB Affiliate Council Do For You?”. However, do make sure you catch Matt explaining what The IAB is all about and how you can also get involved in the 13.30 to 14.15 slot.

If you like the sound of Matt’s voice then good news as he’s on again at 14.30 with “Adding Value Within The Purchase Chain” but sadly he’s up against the “Affiliate Apocalypse Panel”, which sounds the better option. This should be a fascinating session as it will cover issues like transparency and the last click rules. Helen Southgate, Duncan Popham and Seth Richardson are the doom-mongers panel.

One of the most popular talks at previous Expos has been “Meet the Super Affiliates” and you can expect a packed room again this year when the 4pm talks kick off. Expect to hear something about a music sharing site once or twice as DJ Mix Tape himself, Kieron, is on hand as the panel moderator. This year he’s joined by Tina Judic, Sri Sharma and Philip Wilkinson (who I vaguely remember emailing a few times back in the early days of Loquax?).

Day 2 ends with a choice of two sessions, one about domain names and the other about writing killer proposals and selling yourself to merchants. Usually by 5pm though a power nap awaits as there’s the Ice Party to come and close what hopefully will be another successful A4U Event.

I wonder if Matt Le Tissier will be there this year?

As ever Matt and the Existem team have put together an intriguing mix of talks aimed at merchants and affiliates.

The first highlight is the lack of keynote speaker at the start of the event. Praise be to the affiliate marketing gods! I can’t even remember who did it last year, but it really didn’t electrify the audience. The only downside is there’s no “welcome intro” by Matt, but I’m sure he’ll say a few words at some point during proceedings.

So this year it’s straight into the nitty gritty with talks about Red Letter Days (sounds a great idea, but I’m afraid I’m out), affiliate marketing and media (sounds merchanty) and SEO strategies with Dave Naylor (recommended as Dave is an interesting speaker).

Following Dave is one of the stand out talk titles of the whole two days is “Are Networks Dying?”! It’s a panel session and includes a network, an agency, a publisher and an advertiser. It promises to be an intriguing session and hopefully discussion. From our experience, network earnings have been getting worse whilst independents improve.

One network has gone from best earner to worst performer in less than 12 months. It does make you wonder if it’s just us or a reflection of other affiliates across the board, so this session will be of interest.

Sessions for affiliates and with affiliates on the panel are always busy, and “The Affiliate Doctors Live!” involving Duncan Jennings, Kieron Donoghue and Chris Garrett shouldn’t be an exception. They will be offering “frank advice on issues within affiliate marketing, start-up strategy, conversion, blogging and SEO”. Sounds good, but have to say I’d like to see other affiliates involved (Lee, Kirsty, Joe, Matt, A Struggling or Successful Newbie?) as well as the usual suspects.

The next “sounds good” session involves Kevin Edwards and Michelle Boxall (Affiliate Window) – “The Truth Will Out: Disproving Common Misconceptions In Affiliate Marketing”. Although the blurb says that this session is aimed “at affiliate managers and merchants” I’d have thought that affiliates would also be interested in knowing the truth about the the myths and legends of voucher code sites, cashbacks and brand bidders.

For newbies Nadeem’s “12 Biggest Affiliate Marketing Mistakes” could be worth checking out in the 4pm slot, but for those who have probably made them already then “Advanced Site Architecture And Product Feed SEO” with Judith Lewis looks a good alternative option. Judith got rave reviews via Twitter about her Thinkvisibility session so hopefully this will be more of the same (plus even more hopefully free chocolate).

The final session of the day will probably be “You want to Tweet What!?”! This could be the weirdest session of the whole expo as by this time most of the delegates would have been on Twitter at least once to say they’re at A4UExpo. If Thinkvisibility was anything to go by, no one was listening to the talks as they were too busy Twittering to each other

Still, it sounds a fun session and so hopefully we’ll all learn how to tweet better in time for Day 2 (coming later).

If there’s a good session on Day 1 I’ve not mentioned why not leave a comment and say why it’s worth attending?

It’s an interesting move from Ask, but the initial implementation is fairly basic.

For example a search for Argos, Argos Vouchers, and Argos Discount Codes will generate a code result, but a search for a Sony TV voucher code (as that’s the offer currently being promoted from Argos) and you don’t get a result.

According to Hitwise apparently food vouchers are quite popular! So what happens with a search for just a “Pizza”?

Well, you can find a Pizza Hut voucher code under a search for “Pizza Hut” on ‘Jeeves but if you just want a “Cheap Pizza” then they don’t tell you they have a code on offer. Most surprising though is if you search for “Voucher Codes” you’d never actually know that Ask Jeeves have their own code system implemented.

Perhaps that will change in time?

From an affiliate perspective any movements in the voucher code arena are not always good news. It’s going to be tough as it is with the PR campaigns of the big voucher codes sites gearing up for Christmas activity. Already MVC are planning an offline promotion whilst Vouchercodes.co.uk seem to be becoming the Jordan/Katie Price of the VC world as they’re in every newspaper we pick up these days (e.g. The Sun).

The one good thing we’ve noticed about the Ask Jeeves codes is that you don’t need to click to reveal any of them, so a user searching for a code whilst at checkout may not feel the need to click around and reset their cookies? It’s a small crumb of hope if nothing else.

Obviously the natural question is can we expect the same from the likes of other search engines?

Given their desire to earn revenue and the fact that voucher codes are a huge online business, both here and abroad, it wouldn’t be a massive surprise to see a similar feature roll out. Something similar from Google or Bing before Christmas and that certainly could put a cat amongst the presents this year!

To conicide with their return to their original name, and the one everyone used even though they had a new one, they’ve revamped their homepage into something that looks pretty good actually. Now, hopefully, if whoever did the front page could have a go at the internal workings of the CMS and make it a bit more lively then that’d be quite cool too.

One of the things that really frustrates me about Buy.at is the internal navigation.

For example, for some reason I’m only allowed to read 5 pieces of news that are linked on the first page after logging in. None of the news articles link to their relevant programs and after you’ve read the news – guess what you can’t read any more or go to the next article! It’s not really user friendly.

So come on Buy.at – now that Platform A has gone (let’s never speak of it again) have a look around the CMS as a user. A few tweaks should make it more navigable (is that a word) and easier to use.

What’s That Coming Over The Hill?

Staying with “prodigal son” week in affiliate land it’s just been announced that Prezzies Plus have returned their affiliate program to a network footing.

Hmmm – Christmas is Coming!

Prezzies took their ball and other gifts away from Affiliate Window earlier in the year due to various issues with voucher code sites and tried to go it alone (January 2009).

With so many programs it’s hard for an independent program to attract affiliates and I think Prezzies Plus have done the right thing in returning to a network. They have said that “voucher code catalogue sites will be excluded from the program” so hopefully that will mean things run smoothly for them.

In their email and post on A4U Prezzies do admit to being wrong about taking the independent option, and fair do to them for admitting that publically!

Will it be enough though to get back the affiliates they lost earlier in the year?

So what can we learn from Prezzies Plus and Buy.at today?

Well, sometimes you have to go back to go forwards and if it’s not broke don’t tamper with it ;o)