As some of you know, one of the niches i like to dabble in is Experience Days. There are some really great sites out there, and one of the best ways to get across the message of how exciting an experience is via the medium of photos. Now you would think that companies providing experience day gifts would have plenty of their own photos to show how great the experience is right? Well imagine my surprise when i was asked to promote the new Exhilaration program and i saw this…

Cant see it? How about here? Notice the watermark?

I guess Exhilaration were in a bit too much of a rush to get their new front page online!

Oops.

Thanks to Neil for the spot.

Image credit: orangachang

Reading Clarks excellent blog post on how affiliates could be missing out on hard earned commissions reminded me of a post i noticed whilst travelling by Doug Scott titled “Super Cookies for Super Affiliates“. As is Dougs style, the post caused a bit of a stir, but my general understanding was that some affiliates cookies are “worth more” than others. I.e. a “super affiliate” places a cookie, then no other cookie can overwrite it. Or if they do, the sales get cancelled.

At the time i was somewhere in Northern Argentina so didnt really have time to look into my own stats. But now that i am back at my PC i thought i would investigate a little bit…

I have a merchant that i make around 800 sales a month for. Doug published his blog post on the 4th of April, so i thought i would look at my cancellation rates before and after this date (see below). The theory being that Dougs exposé might have some affect on cancellation rates.

Januray cancellation rate: 4.23%

February cancellation rate: 5.01%

March cancellation rate: 5.01%

April cancellation rate (after the 4th): 1.24%

May cancellation rate: 0.74%

June cancellation rate: 0.83%

Now it could be just be pure coincidence. My numbers are by no means big enough to prove anything. It could be that this merchant changed their cancellation policies around this time anyway… it could be that i suddenly started sending better traffic… it could be seasonal… but as a paranoid affiliate it does look suspicious.

I think the point that i am trying to make is that the affiliate industry really needs much greater transparency. At times it feels like a bit of a boys club, or at least that some “dodgy practices” go on. I know that the industry has been taking massive steps forward in recent years, and that has come in no small part from the IAB (who are talking at this years A4U). So i thought i would submit a question from my blog, and twitter.

What can the IAB do to help improve transparency within the industy, inparticular regarding “dodgy” cancellation policies by merchants?

During the “big trip”, Friedi and i constantly wanted to share with friends and family exactly what we were seeing and feeling. And whilst uploading and sharing photos on Flickr was a great way for people to get an idea of what we were going through, it sometimes didn’t capture the whole experience. So as we travelled round i would occasionally take “panorams”, essentially just taking a series of photos along the horizon line with the idea of “stitching” them together when i got back. Well now I’m back, and thanks to Hugin, with an explanation courtesy of Lifehacker i have managed to work through a few of the images. So here is the first batch!

Note: You will need to click on the images to get the best effect.

1. Iguazu Fall (Argentina)

2. Mt Bromo (Java, Indonesia)

3. Sydney (Australia)

4. San Ignacio (Argentina)

5. Queenstown (New Zealand)

6. Bali (Indonesia)

Last year i wrote about  couple of incentives that really worked for me. This year it seems that merchants are looking to get affiliates excited nice and early, with some mouth watering prizes on offer. One of the nicest looking incentives is once again the Buyagift offering. You can even vote on what the incentive will be between now and Sunday (i went for Iceland). The great thing is that they offer prizes for both big and small affiliates, so it’s open to all!

However, once again my top affiliate incentive of this year (at least so far… it’s still only September!) is the one from Red Letter Days! The key thing for me is that if you generate X amount of sales then you are guaranteed a prize. And there are some very cool prizes at some very achievable sales targets, which really motivates me to keep hitting the next sales target (and so on)! This year they have taken things even further by offering some amazing sounding holidays as prizes, which adds an extra level of excitement. Last year i was fortunate enough to reach the top target and won myself a tv, but this year the bar has been raised even higher! I am already looking into ways to increase my Red Letter Days sales in the run up to Christmas 09.

For most of 2009 I have been travelling the world whilst keeping my affiliate business going at the same time. Before I left I realistically expected to see a drop in visitor numbers, site earnings, conversion rates etc. as I would be working a lot less, and when I was working it would be from countries such as Bolivia, Indonesia and Peru!
Much to my surprise, and thanks to the following essential affiliate travelling tools I have managed to exceed my expectations! Not only did I manage to keep traffic levels pretty constant, I also managed to slightly improve on my performance from last year. And all this whilst sailing round the Galapagos, trekking the Inca Trail, swimming with sharks at the Great Barrier Reef and much much more.!

Asus EEE 900 – This little mini laptop is the perfect travel companion. Small enough to fit in your day pack, light enough to carry anywhere, robust enough to survive the inevitable bumps along the way, powerful enough to run the basic software required and cheap enough not to worry about it getting stolen! Without this, there is no way I could have kept the websites running.

Affmeter – After spending 8 days on a boat without the internet, a quick login, update and I can then instantly see how the sites have performed. The number of hours that Affmeter has saved me is uncountable. I can then use this time for much more effective tasks, such as adding new content or fixing broken links.
Affmeter now supports a huge number for different networks!

Gmail (plus Gmail offline) – I discovered this about a month into the travels (the offline part that is..), and it was a real boost to productivity. It allows you to download all emails and work on them offline, essentially interacting with Gmail as if you were online. Then when you reconnect to the internet it will upload all your changes. This is perfect for the countries with limited wifi connections!

A decent host. (34sp.com in my case) – The moment I got on the 12 hour flight to leave for South America one of my main sites got hacked. Thanks to some friends back home, and the amazing support at 34sp.com the damage was limited. If I was still using my old hosts the problems would probably still not have been resolved!

Multi Country Power Adapter – It sounds obvious, but you really dont want get to a country and not be able to power up your laptop!

Tomorrow we fly back to Europe after almost 8 months of travelling round the world!

Our final destination was Hong Kong, where we have just spent an amazing week with my great aunt and uncle. We stayed in Discovery Bay and enjoyed everything Hong Kong had to offer! (It is 1am at the moment and still need to pack, so going to keep this blog post (very) short.)

Here are the photos.

As an added bonus, here are a few photos from Jakarta that i forgot to upload….

Just a quick post before Indonesia is forgotten… We spent a week in Yogyakarta followed by 3 days in Jakarta before flying out to Hong Kong last Thursday. In and around Yogyakarta (which was pretty touristy) we visited the Dutch fort, the sultans palace, the bird market, the sultans water palace a puppet maker, and the two giant temples of Borobudur and Prambanan. Borobudur is the largest Buddhist temple in the world!

This Friday we fly back to Germany signalling the end of our round the world trip . Really looking forward to catching up with family and friends though!

Solo is where Friedis grandparents and father lived about 50 years ago, so we spent a great week here exploring the past. We managed to get a booking for the final 3 days in the hotel that Friedis father lived in (Hotel Dana), and although much has changed we still managed to see alot of things Friedi had heard about. (Photos above)
We also took a couple of day trips outside of Solo to see the surrounding villages and temples. Both trips were fascinating, learning all about how the local goods are made, and how to ride a broomstick!
(Photos below).

3 days in Malang were great, even though we seemed to be the entertainment for the town! On one of the days we got up at 1.30am to go and see the sun rise at Mount Bromo and to look into the smoking volcano. On the way back we visited several temples but were “attacked” by a group of school children who found our names highly amusing!
After Malang we took an 7 hour train ride to Solo where we are now.

We arrived in Bali late Monday night and stayed in a great little place set amongst the rice fields 20 minutes outside of Ubud. The first 3 days we just spent wandering around taking in all the new sites, the many temples, statues, monkeys roaming wild, rice fields and the great food. For our final 2 days in Bali we stayed right in the centre of town. We took a (down hill) bike tour of the local hills, passing through and learning about the villages and the way people live, more temples and giving “high fives” to all the school children we passed. Bali must hold the world record for the happiest children on the planet!
So after 5 great days in Bali it was time to leave for Java to learn more about where Friedis grandparents and father lived for 4 years. The 14 hour bus ride proved to be quite an experience. When we arrived at the bus station to leave Bali we were literally herded around by a group of 5 guys
.
Where you going Mister?
To Malang
Yes, we go there. Very good bus Mister, very cheap price.
(We had read in the guide book to aim for the executive class buses) Is it an executive?
Yes, yes. Very nice!
What time does it leave? (It was 7.40am) Soon?
Yes yes. Very soon. 8am.
(And finally…) Is it direct?
Yes yes. Of course Mister. Direct to Malang.

Normally we would take our time and ignore the pressure sellers, but this time we could only see one bus that might be going to Malang, and they told us it was leaving soon! We bought the tickets. It was only once were sitting on the bus (which had somehow managed to squeeze 5 seats into a row in place of the standard 4) that we saw another much better looking bus pull up right next to us. We finally left at 10.45 with our maniac driver (far worse than anything South America could throw up!), with his driving philosophy being that if he tooted his (fairly quiet) horn then he could drive on what ever side of the road he felt like (didn’t matter if it was a blind summit or we were taking a sharp bend!). Anyway… even with the dodgy ferry crossing we somehow made it to Java, having to change buses to an even more dodgy one, (so much for direct) and eventually making it to Malang at around 10pm.