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mySupermarket.co.uk – Landing Page (AWinter Wonderland)

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:20:14 +0000

Christmas Top Offers in Tesco

http://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=2031&awinaffid=!!!id!!!&clickref=&p=http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/shelves/Christmas_Top_Offers_in_Tesco.html

Christmas Bakery Offers in Tesco

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Christmas Dinner Offers in Tesco

http://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=2031&awinaffid=!!!id!!!&clickref=&p=http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/shelves/Christmas_Dinner_Offers_in_Tesco.html

Christmas Sweets Offers in Tesco

http://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=2031&awinaffid=!!!id!!!&clickref=&p=http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/shelves/Christmas_Sweets_Offers_in_Tesco.html

Christmas Top Offers in Asda

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Christmas Bakery Offers in Asda

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Christmas Dinner Offers in Asda

http://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=2031&awinaffid=!!!id!!!&clickref=&p=http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/shelves/Christmas_Dinner_Offers_in_Asda.html

Christmas Sweets Offers in Asda

http://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=2031&awinaffid=!!!id!!!&clickref=&p=http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/shelves/Christmas_Sweets_Offers_in_Asda.html

Christmas Top Offers in Sainsbury’s

http://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=2031&awinaffid=!!!id!!!&clickref=&p=http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/shelves/Christmas_Top_Offers_in_Sainsburys.html

Christmas Bakery Offers in Sainsbury’s

http://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=2031&awinaffid=!!!id!!!&clickref=&p=http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/shelves/Christmas_Bakery_Offers_in_Sainsburys.html

Christmas Dinner Offers in Sainsbury’s

http://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=2031&awinaffid=!!!id!!!&clickref=&p=http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/shelves/Christmas_Dinner_Offers_in_Sainsburys.html

Christmas Sweets Offers in Sainsbury’s

http://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=2031&awinaffid=!!!id!!!&clickref=&p=http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/shelves/Christmas_Sweets_Offers_in_Sainsburys.html

Christmas Top Offers in Ocado

http://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=2031&awinaffid=!!!id!!!&clickref=&p=http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/shelves/Christmas_Top_Offers_in_Ocado.html

Christmas Dinner Offers in Ocado

http://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=2031&awinaffid=!!!id!!!&clickref=&p=http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/shelves/Christmas_Dinner_Offers_in_Ocado.html

mySupermarket.co.uk – Banners (AWinter Wonderland)

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:16:55 +0000

468×60

300×250

120×600

To access this Christmas creative and pick up your unique banner tracking links please log in to your account and click through to Banners & Links.

mySupermarket.co.uk – Commission Increase (AWinter Wonderland)

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:11:50 +0000

Promotional Commission Structure throughout November 2009

Tier (1st Time Sent Trolleys per Month)	Registration Commission	1st Time Sent Trolley Commission	Bonus (for 1st Time Sent Trolley Commissions)	Total Commission/New Shopper
1 to 30	£1	£4	£0	£5
31 to 180	£1	£4	£2	£7
181+	£1	£4	£5	£10

Standard Commission Structure

Tier (1st Time Sent Trolleys per Month)	Registration Commission	1st Time Sent Trolley Commission	Bonus (for 1st Time Sent Trolley Commissions)	Total Commission/New Shopper
1 to 50	£1	£4	£0	£5
51 to 200	£1	£4	£2	£7
201+	£1	£4	£5	£10

Warehouse Express – Seasonal Banners (AWinter Wonderland)

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:54:23 +0000

Warehouse Express is the UK’s largest and fastest growing independent photographic reseller. To help you promote their range of photographic gifts this Christmas, they have created a range of seasonal banners.

Sizes available in this range include the 468×60 and 125×125 above as well as 234×60, 120×60, 120×600, 728×90 and 88×31. To access the banners please log in to your affiliate account and access Banners & Links in the right-hand navigation.

Default text link

http://www.awin1.com/awclick.php?mid=2298&id=!!!id!!!

REMEMBER, for the link above to track sales you must replace !!!id!!! with your unique affiliate ID and be joined to the merchant programme.

Warehouse Express – Christmas Gifts Landing Page (AWinter Wonderland)

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:45:50 +0000

Warehouse Express is the UK’s largest and fastest growing independent photographic reseller. To help ensure customers find the perfect Christmas gift for him, for her, or the photographer in you they have created a dedicated landing page:

Christmas Shop

http://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=2298&awinaffid=!!!id!!!&clickref=&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.warehouseexpress.com%2Fbrand%2F%3FChristmas%26cm_mmc%3DAwin-_-Promotions-_-Christmas-_-Christmas-Shop

REMEMBER, for the link above to track sales you must replace !!!id!!! with your unique affiliate ID and be joined to the merchant programme.

Listiti marries Twitter lists with e-mail alerts – now with added widgets! (TechCrunch Europe)

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:24:14 +0000

Whether you’re a fan of Twitter’s new list feature or not, it has proven to be a great way to discover people of interest one can mass-follow. But keeping track of Twitter lists can prove cumbersome and overwhelming.

Recently, Listiti launched, combining the concept of Google Alerts with Twitter Lists by sending out e-mail notifications based on the appearance of keywords in tweets from lists you keep track of. This is particularly useful for marketers who’d like to keep track of conversations about a company, product or brand, but only from a specific subset of Twitter users.

Listiti just pushed a new version of the service live, and has added a useful new feature that makes it even more worth checking out: badges.

With the new badges feature, anyone with a blog or website can simply insert a script and drive more followers to given Twitter lists by publishing a widget online. Try it out for our TechCrunch Team Twitter list.

Sure, Twitter boasts its own Twitter Widget, but what makes Listiti unique is that you can create badges that show tweets from certain lists but filtered down based on keywords (e.g. you could create a widget for the TechCrunch Team list but only display tweets that mention the word ‘Facebook’ or ‘exclusive’). Also, Listiti badges come with an option to subscribe to tweets from lists by e-mail.

And once again, a developer finds a way to make something Twitter built even better thanks to the company’s open APIs.

Listiti was built by Belgian entrepreneur Xavier Damman, who just moved to San Francisco to find partners and seed funding for one of his projects (he’s also the guy behind Tweetag).

Will Netflix throw its customers under the bus for higher profits? (E-consultancy - Internet Marketing News and Blogs)

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:12:00 +0000

pstrongimg alt="" height="88" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3535/3890718857_c021a4d254_m.jpg" style="margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px; float: right;" width="132" /Imagine for a moment that you're the CEO of Netflix. The movie studios don't really like you. They think low-cost rental services like Netflix are cutting into DVD sales, which have declined. So they come up with a plan to block rentals of new releases for a short time, perhaps a month./strong/p pThe question: do you oppose this plan or do you look to negotiate with the studios for some sort of benefit?/ppThis subject isn't new; a href="http://econsultancy.com/blog/4437-warner-bros-might-choke-netflix-and-itself"we've reported on it/a before. But last week it was a href="http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-dvd23-2009oct23,0,1148449.story"reported/a that Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is considering playing ball with the studios on such a plan. On an earnings call, Hastings explained the situation to analysts and investors:/p blockquote pemThe studios are wrestling with declines in DVD sales while the DVD rental market has been modestly growing. One of the mitigating steps some are considering is introducing a DVD retail sales-only window for a few weeks./em/p /blockquote pIf Netflix is going to play ball, however, it wants something in return: an approximately 50% reduction in cost. a href="http://www.videobusiness.com/article/CA6705990.html"According to/a emVideo Business/em, the studios haven't yet agreed but negotiations are apparently still ongoing./p pRedBox, which rents DVDs through kiosks, isn't taking the same approach. It has already a href="http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2009/08/19/redbox-sues-warner-home-video-over-dvd-availability/"filed lawsuits/a in an effort to fight studio-imposed availability delays. But Netflix isn't RedBox and there's a good reason why Netflix is dealing with the studios: as much of 70% of its revenue comes from catalog rentals. In other words, it isn't highly-dependent on having new releases when they first become available./p pEven so, one has to wonder if an availability delay deal really makes sense. While Netflix may not need to have the latest releases ASAP, a Netflix subscription arguably becomes less valuable to consumers who can't use it to rent new releases when they first hit the shelves. For Netflix, higher profits require the company to curtail subscriber choice. And for the movie studios, it's not entirely clear that a deal with Netflix to delay the availability of new releases will boost DVD sales. After all, if catalog rentals make up over two-thirds of Netflix's business, cutting out new releases hardly seems like it will be a panacea for their woes. Interestingly, despite the fact that Netflix's bread and butter is catalog rentals, the DVD sales decline a href="http://www.sliceofscifi.com/2009/01/15/dvd-sales-decline-in-2008/"has hit/a new releases hardest /p pThe numbers suggest that cheap DVD rentals aren't the only cause of the DVD sales slump. Obviously, the economy has played a big role. Additionally, perhaps it's time the movie studios consider that their product just isn't that compelling anymore, or that consumers are less willing to spend money on something that they know they won't watch but a few times./p pWhatever the case, even if Netflix can benefit financially from making a deal with the movie studios, I'm not sure it's worth it. A bad precedent will be set and if and when the movie studios learn that cheap DVD rentals aren't the source of their problems, consumers will have paid for this costly assumption with choice./p pemPhoto credit: a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/"cogdogblog/a via Flickr./em/p

Origin Publishing – Perfect Wedding Magazine Offer (AWinter Wonderland)

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:27:19 +0000

Perfect Wedding Magazine is the UK’s No 1 magazine for stylish brides and an annual subscription to this glamorous title is the gift that keeps on giving!

Customers can now save a fantastic 40% on annual subscriptions when they buy online through Origin Publishing. Simply use the deeplink below to drive traffic directly to the offer page. If you have any questions regarding this deal, or the programme in general, you can contact Penny at Origin Publishing who will be happy to help.

Save 40% on annual subscriptions to Perfect Wedding Magazine
EXPIRES: 31st December 2009
DEEPLINK:

http://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=2456&awinaffid=!!!id!!!&clickref=&p=https%3A%2F%2Fsecure3.subscribeonline.co.uk%2Forigin%2Foffers.sol%3Fmag%3DPEWE

REMEMBER, for the link above to track sales you must replace !!!id!!! with your unique affiliate ID and be joined to the merchant programme.

Turbo charge your AdWords campaign with ‘Sitelinks’ (Inside 123-reg)

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:15:19 +0000

Turbo charge your AdWords campaign with ‘Sitelinks’

If you use Google AdWords to drive visitors to your website, you might already be aware of an exciting new feature they released last week. Google are calling it ‘Sitelinks’, and it allows you to add lots more links onto your AdWords creative

What does it look like?

This is what an original version of a 123-reg AdWords creative looked like:

And with ‘Sitelinks’ enabled, this is what you get:

As you can see, on the original creative the only place that users can click is the headline. With ‘Sitelinks’ enabled, users can also click on the blue links along the bottom of the creative.

The headline links to the homepage. These ‘Sitelinks’ take users directly to the most relevant page on our website.

Why have Google done that?

A shortcoming of normal AdWords creative is that the person setting up the advert has to make an educated guess about the best page on their website to send visitors to.

That’s quite easy if the user is searching for a specific product. For example, if someone was looking for ‘men’s puma trainers’ then it would make sense to link the creative to the webpage where you actually sold ‘men’s puma trainers’.

In some cases however, it’s not always clear what the best page should be.

Let’s consider people who are searching using the term ‘123-reg’. We sell quite a few different products: Domain Names; Web Hosting; Email; SSL Certificates; Ecommerce packages, to name a few. Whilst all these products are related, someone who is looking for a domain name is clearly going to want to see different information to someone who is looking for an SSL certificate.

By adding ‘Sitelinks’ into our adverts we can let users choose the page that best suits them.

It’s the Google way

Google say that what they’re trying to do is create a better experience for the user. They’re giving the user the choice of where to go on a website. This is a typical piece of Google thinking. They let often let users decide what’s best for them, rather than trying to 2^nd guess their intentions.

Why this is good for your AdWords Campaign

Users will appreciate it
If you make it easy for users to navigate directly to the correct page on your website, those people are going to be more likely to buy from you. As any usability expert will tell you, positive user experience is about minimising the length of time it takes users to find the information they’re looking for. And positive user experiences will result in happy customers, and more sales on your bottom line.

You can take up more of the Search Engine Results Page
Do you have a problem with other adverts appearing when people search for your website? If you enable Sitelinks, your advert becomes twice as big – and uses up twice as much space on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). This means that your advert will dominate the eye-line of the user, and are far more likely to be clicked on. More traffic for you. Less for your competitors.

You can showcase more products

Adding Sitelinks let you show users that you sell lots of different products, before they’ve even arrived on your website. It’s possible that a user is searching for you because they want to buy some new socks. When they see a Sitelink to ‘tights’ or even ‘sandals’ they might take the opportunity to check out the other stuff you sell.

They sound awesome! How do I get going?

You can add Sitelinks from the Settings page of your Adwords Campaign, under ‘Ad extensions’.

Whether or not you’ve tried Sitelinks, let us know what you think about this development.

Author: Nick Leech of Euston Digital

How to get more when you Search on Twitter When it comes to search engines in 2009, most of...

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Kitbag – Affiliate Bonus (AWinter Wonderland)

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:08:10 +0000

Hot on the heels of their Christmas Store launch, which you can find the link to here, Kitbag.com have decided to run a great Christmas incentive – a £50 Christmas bonus for all affiliates that generate 26 or more confirmed sales on Kitbag.com between 20th November 2009 and 20th December 2009 (inclusive).

The details:
- any affiliate that generates 26 or more confirmed sales on Kitbag.com between 00:01am on 20th November 2009 and 23:59pm on 20th December 2009 is eligible to receive the £50 bonus.
- the £50 bonus will be in addition to the normal affiliate (tiered) commission rates.
- any Kitbag affiliate within Kitbag’s 3 affiliate networks (Affiliate Window, Affiliate Future and Tradedoubler) will automatically be rewarded if they reach the target of 26 confirmed sales in the incentive period.
- affiliates that have qualified for the £50 bonus will be advised in an email from the affiliate network shortly after the incentive period is over.
- the £50 bonus will be paid into all qualifying affiliate’s accounts directly as an affiliate bonus on their respective network.

If you have any questions regarding the incentive please contact John at Kitbag.com.

Default Text link:

http://www.awin1.com/awclick.php?mid=686&id=!!!id!!!

REMEMBER: for the link above to track sales you must replace !!!id!!! with your unique affiliate ID and be joined to the merchant programme.

Just Socca – 5% Discount Code (AWinter Wonderland)

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:55:10 +0000

As one of the UK’s leading online football shops, Just Socca supplies an extensive range of football products, including football boots, goalkeeper gloves, football training equipment, base layer clothing, team wear and footballs from top brands including Nike, adidas, Puma, Umbro, Asics, Mitre, Sells, Uhlsport, Harrod, Canterbury, Skins, Under Armour, Precision Training, Barret, Macron, Stanno, SoccerDoc, Pro Star and Premier Sock Tape.

Customers can save money on all their online purchases by simply using the code below:

Discount Code
CODE: JUSTSOCCA
OFFER: Save 5% on all orders
EXPIRES: 31st January 2010

Default Text link:

http://www.awin1.com/awclick.php?mid=2493&id=!!!id!!!

REMEMBER: for the link above to track sales you must replace !!!id!!! with your unique affiliate ID and be joined to the merchant programme.

Thanks to Swarovski (David Fiske Affiliate Marketing Blog)

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:54:31 +0000

I switched my a href="http://www.swarovski.com/" title="Swarovski"Swarovski/a links over to a href="http://www.affiliatewindow.com/" title="Affiliate Window"Affiliate Window/a when the program was launched there and as part of the launch there was a competition.br / br / Sadly I didn't win the performance based competition (probably a good thing for Swarovski!) but did manage to scoop a prize in the generate-a-sale-and-get-an-entry prize draw.br /nbsp;br /Read the rest of this article and comment on it over at a href='http://davidfiske.com/item/2009/11/thanks-to-swarovski' title='David Fiske'David Fiske/a.com. Remember, I don't use nofollow so you can benefit by commenting on my blog.img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/DavidFiske/~4/N7gMPyLOlDg" height="1" width="1"/

Site review: Virgin Trains revamp (E-consultancy - Internet Marketing News and Blogs)

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:52:18 +0000

pstrongVirgin Trains relaunched its website yesterday with an updated look and feel for the site, which a href="http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/965391/Virgin-Trains-overhauls-website/"apparently aims to/a 'convey the brand's new positioning of train travel as superior to other modes of transport'. /strong/p pI'm not sure whether it does that, but it does look a lot better than the previous version. I've been comparing the site with the old version... /p pimg alt="" height="228" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2686/4095328535_a2600781a3_o.jpg" width="460" //ppstrongHomepage/strong/p pThe new homepage (above) is a big improvement on the old version shown below. It has been centred and now fills more of the screen, while the background picture is better than all the blank space, which all makes for a better first impression. /p pimg alt="Old Virgin Trains homepage" height="323" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2458/4096088646_d9d011d519_o.jpg" width="460" //p pThe search box has been enlarged, and the page in general seems cleaner and less cluttered, though the Virgin Trains logo seems to be too small to me. /p pstrongSearching for tickets/strong/p pThe new search interface provides more help for searchers than the old version, the pop-up calender is easier to use, and little touches such as providing a quick link to search for trains today or tomorrow, or select a same day or next day return saves users the bother of typing in or selecting dates. /p pimg alt="" height="376" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2441/4096089202_7fcbb691b1_o.jpg" width="205" //p pstrongSearch results/strong/p pA big improvement here. Now, you can see available times and fares on the same results page, saving an extra step in the process, and making it much easier to decide which train to book. /p pimg alt="" height="216" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2692/4095329113_c60981de03_o.jpg" width="460" //p pAlso, clicking on the links to see details, such as number of changes or off peak times, produces a pop up box, so the site doesn't need to send you to another page. Also, mousing over the ticket price will provide more details, a useful touch. /p pimg alt="" height="228" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2639/4095329293_578c077668_o.jpg" width="460" //p pAlso, if you need to alter any of the details of your selected journey, you can do this easily on the same page rather than having to go back to the beginning of the process and start again: /p pimg alt="" height="359" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2726/4097938966_b0fe2d78bb_o.jpg" width="460" //p pThis all worked well when I looked at it last night, but I've noticed this morning that I cannot click to select any of the tickets, and therefore can't book a journey. Perhaps it's just me, but it is a pretty serious fault if not. /p pstrongRegistration and checkout/strong/p pAfter selecting trains and tickets, you need to either login or register to book your journey. This can be a barrier to purchase on most e-commerce sites, but seems to be par for the course on rail websites: /p pimg alt="" height="202" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2433/4096090024_4d11203fc0_m.jpg" width="240" //p pAfter this, the process is smooth and well designed, form-filling is easy, and as the screenshot below shows, available payment methods, security reassurances and little details such as card security codes are clearly shown: /p pimg alt="" height="227" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2666/4095330335_b6f71e2eb4_o.jpg" width="460" //p pThe checkout process on the site hasn't been enclosed, so clicking on one of the menu items at the top of the page will take users out of the process. After this, getting back to the payment process is tricky, since there is no basket / checkout link, as you would find on most online retail sites. The only way back in is to use the browser's back button. /p pstrongConclusion/strong/p pThe new Virgin Trains website is definitely a big improvement on the previous version. Most importantly, the process of searching for and booking tickets is very easy, and compares well with other train websites, some of which can be frustrating to use. /p

First4hampers – 10% Discount Code (AWinter Wonderland)

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:45:58 +0000

First4hampers have a fantastic new range of Christmas Hampers and Gift Baskets from only £29.99 which all include a free Christmas greeting card of your choice; the perfect gift to make the festive season extra special. Customers can now save even more when they purchase online by using the following discount code at the basket page:

Discount Code
CODE: GEYIE102337
OFFER: Save 10% on all orders
EXPIRES: Midnight Tuesday 15th December 2009

Default Text link:

http://www.awin1.com/awclick.php?mid=1286&id=!!!id!!!

REMEMBER: for the links above to track sales you must replace !!!id!!! with your unique affiliate ID and be joined to the merchant programme.

Free 'Power Up' Extreme Adventure Experience (Amazon.co.uk Associates Blog)

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:20:31 +0000

pAmazon.co.uk and Techtronic Industries Ltd currently have a great offer available for you to share with your site visitors:/p pstrongspan style=color: #ff7f00;Get a free Power Up extreme adventure experience when you purchase selected AEG power tools from the list on /spana href=http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8amp;docId=1000337833 style=font-family: yui-tmp;this/a/strongspan style=color: #ff7f00; strongpage. br //strong/span/pp/ppFrom the fast-wheeled thrills of go karting, quad biking and pro-rally driving to the white-knuckled exhilaration of white water rafting, hovercraft riding and powerboating, customers are sure to be left gasping for breath! /ppIn the below widget you#39;ll see a small selection of items qualifying for this great promotion:/p div style=text-align: center;pobject classid=clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000 codebase=http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/swflash.cab height=150 id=Player_3b78cff9-9c8d-47de-8d88-fb2efe48133f width=400 param name=movie value=http://ws.amazon.co.uk/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822amp;MarketPlace=GBamp;ID=V20070822%2FGB%2Fassocamazonops%2F8010%2F3b78cff9-9c8d-47de-8d88-fb2efe48133famp;Operation=GetDisplayTemplate /param name=quality value=high /param name=bgcolor value=#FFFFFF /param name=allowscriptaccess value=always /embed align=middle allowscriptaccess=always bgcolor=#ffffff height=150 id=Player_3b78cff9-9c8d-47de-8d88-fb2efe48133f name=Player_3b78cff9-9c8d-47de-8d88-fb2efe48133f quality=high src=http://ws.amazon.co.uk/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822amp;MarketPlace=GBamp;ID=V20070822%2FGB%2Fassocamazonops%2F8010%2F3b78cff9-9c8d-47de-8d88-fb2efe48133famp;Operation=GetDisplayTemplate type=application/x-shockwave-flash width=400 //objectnoscripta href=http://ws.amazon.co.uk/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822amp;MarketPlace=GBamp;ID=V20070822%2FGB%2Fassocamazonops%2F8010%2F3b78cff9-9c8d-47de-8d88-fb2efe48133famp;Operation=NoScriptAmazon.co.uk Widgets/a/noscript/pp style=text-align: left;Purchases must be completed (ordered, checked out and paid for in full) by 23:59 31st December, 2009 and customers must have registered their product’s serial number by 23:59 21 January 2010. Customers must have received their product in order to register.#0160;/pp style=text-align: left;Additional Terms amp; Conditions apply which you can read at the bottom of a href=http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8amp;docId=1000337833this/a page./pp style=text-align: left;Use the a href=https://affiliate-program.amazon.co.uk/gp/associates/network/your-account/stripe-settings.htmlSitestripe/a feature to link directly to items on the Amazon.co.uk website, or one of our many other tools that we make available on a href=https://affiliate-program.amazon.co.uk/gp/associates/network/main.htmlAssociates Central /afor you to promote products. /p /div p/p

Email marketing: six steps to improving customer engagement in 2010 (E-consultancy - Internet Marketing News and Blogs)

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:30:00 +0000

pstrongDespite the naysayers claiming email marketing is on the way out thanks to the snowballing impact of social networking and new forms of communication, the facts are very different. Email continues to play a vital role in both business and customer communication. /strong/p pAccording to Epsilon, email is used more regularly than social networking for personal communication, while 30% of organisations in a href="http://econsultancy.com/reports/email-census" target="_blank" title="Econsultancy Email Marketing Industry Census"Econsultancy’s Email Marketing Industry Census/a claimed an ROI from email in excess of 500%./ppWhere I think the challenge lies is in understanding how to engage customers using email marketing, integrating with other channels like social media, instead of relying on blast broadcasts and hoping that someone will respond because you’ve taken the time to email. There is so much noise in the world, you need to understand how to make your email communication relevant and worth reading./p pHere are my tips on what you can do with your email strategy to help improve performance in 2010.../p pstrong1. Drive clicks with customer reviews/strong/p pResearch from Manage Smarter (September 2009) found that 74% of people are influenced by the opinions of others when buying products. 47% of the 1,000 shoppers polled said they look to on-site reviews when making a decision. /p pThe first goal is to get customer reviews on your website. Not only good for on-page conversion, this has the added benefit of supporting SEO as major search engines like Google now place greater value on rich snippets like customer reviews./p pThe second goal is to drive site traffic by promoting your reviews. Email is a perfect channel. Start simple by sending an email with a relevant top rated product and link through to the product and a ratings and reviews landing page./p pThe next step is to increase sophistication and segment your email audience so that individuals receive review content based on their browsing/buying behaviour./p pstrong2. Increase engagement with social media/strong/p pEvery time you contact a customer, you have a chance to offer them your social media services. To make social media presence worthwhile, you need an audience to engage with. The more people signed up and staying in touch, the greater your chance of getting their attention when the wallet is open./p pHave a standard button in each email that points to your social profiles. Educate your customers on the benefits of following you. Feature comments from other customers to demonstrate the value. Why not add a screenshot of your current Twitter feed?/p pBuying cycles can be long, especially when people are more cautious with spend in the current economic climate. Keep people engaged with your brand during ‘quiet’ times, providing added value content via social forums like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Mindshare can lead to walletshare./p pSocial media can play a quid pro quo role – you can highlight newsletter sign-up on your social profiles. For example, it is possible to add a newsletter sign-up box on your Facebook business page./p pstrong3. Improve relevance with event triggered emails/strong/p pThis can be effective if you integrate with on-site functionality like wishlists and bookmarking – an email trigger alerts your customers to the ability to create a birthday wishlist on your site and bookmark to their friends./p pSet-up customer email preferences to support event dates, allowing customers to tell you when something special is happening. Use automated emails and dynamic content to tailor messaging to the customer e.g. if a customer has given you his Mum’s birthday, make sure the content contains gifts relevant to the mum./p p66% of companies don’t send emails on specific dates like birthdays – how can you use event triggers to improve customer service and engagement via email?/p pstrong4. Don’t ignore abandonment emailing/strong/p pAs I explored with a href="http://econsultancy.com/blog/4852-charles-nicholls-of-seewhy-on-driving-your-web-conversion-with-retargeting" target="_blank" title="Abandonment emails - James Gurd interviews Charles Nicholls at SeeWhy"Charles Nicholls of SeeWhy in my last blog/a, retargeting is an effective way of driving conversion by email. Adestra research shows that two thirds of UK companies fail to send emails to customers who have abandoned their baskets./p pThere are many reasons why people abandon baskets – not all you can counter but some simply leave due to frustration with the checkout process or because they’ve been distracted. Abandonment emails offer a route to tackling the issues immediately and striking while the iron’s hot./p pAccording to a href="http://www.silverpop.com/marketing-resources/white-papers/engage/index.html" target="_blank" title="Silverpop email white papers"Silverpop/a, Diapers.com experienced an increase in email open rate of 48% for abandonment emails and a net conversion rate of 129% higher./p pstrong5. Increase activity with a lifecycle approach/strong/p pIf I’m a new subscriber to your newsletter, what can I expect? Why should I instantly think of opening, clicking and buying?/p pAs a loyal lifetime customer, how do you provide me with a differentiated service that recognises me as an individual based on past behaviour? A lifecycle approach can start by splitting customers into 4 segments: /p ul listrongemNursery program for newbees/em/strong /li /ul p Welcome emails, introductory offer to incentivise activity, highlight key elements of the website/p ul listrongemActivation program/em/strong/li /ul p Test subject lines to drive open rates, test offers and content to uplift click through and purchases./p ul listrongemRetention program/em/strong/li /ul p Use dynamic content to personalise email content and segment your database to increase the relevance and impact of your emails. Don’t bore people into inactivity./p ul listrongemData cleansing/em/strong/li /ul p You need to reactivate lapsed customers with timely offers and messages. Purge ‘dead’ contacts from your database and focus your time and money on those who are interested in what you’ve got to say./p pstrong6. Increase reach with viral triggers/strong/p pMake sure that every email you send has a send-to-friend button enabling people to share your content with their friends. This button should land them on a branded form page allowing them to enter multiple email addresses. Re-assure people that you will not use their friends’ email addresses for marketing purposes as from a Data Protection angle you can’t do this./p pOn-site add social bookmarking. This enables visitors to bookmark key pages (product and content) across their social networks, increasing content reach. Add This provides a free tool that is easy to implement./p pThis is not an exhaustive list – there is always room for improvement with email so I recommend maintaining a continuous dialogue with your customers to find out what else you could be doing to improve the quality and relevance of your email marketing. Don’t let the Web2.0 and social media buzz words distract you – you need to define how they can support your commercial goals and enhance existing marketing channels like email, not replace them./p pWhat do you think? Please share your thoughts and other suggestions for delivering effective email programs./p

Google: expect a Caffeine jolt after the holidays (E-consultancy - Internet Marketing News and Blogs)

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:02:47 +0000

pstrongimg alt="" height="120" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2209/2332695752_01510b28e2_m.jpg" style="margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px; float: right;" width="160" /Google's a href="http://econsultancy.com/blog/4400-how-will-your-site-rank-with-google-caffeine"Caffeine update/a is coming. Billed by Google as "emthe first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions/em", Caffeine is not your regular Google update./strong/p pWhen Caffeine was announced, Google did something it had never done before: it offered up a sandbox so that the public could preview search results with Caffeine and provide Google with feedback. While that sandbox is no longer available, you won't have to wait long for your Caffeine jolt: according to Google's Matt Cutts, Caffeine is coming after the holidays./ppCutts a href="http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-caffeine-update/"revealed/a the news on his blog:/p blockquote pemThe feedback on Caffeine has been very positive, so we’re ready to move from the developer preview to the next stage of the roll out: going live with Caffeine at one data center. This means that a small percentage of Google’s users will benefit from the technology behind Caffeine in their regular searches./em/p pemI know that webmasters can get anxious around this time of year, so I wanted to reassure site owners that the full Caffeine roll out will happen after the holidays. Caffeine will go live at one data center so that we can continue to collect data and improve the technology, but I don’t expect Caffeine to go live at additional data centers until after the holidays are over. Most searchers wouldn’t immediately notice any changes with Caffeine, but going slowly not only gives us time to collect feedback and improve, but will also minimize the stress on webmasters during the holidays./em/p /blockquote pWhile it remains to be seen just how much of an impact Caffeine will have on the SERPs, the news that Caffeine won't hit before the holidays will certainly help some sleep easier. Any empotential /emshift in the SERPs could understandably create anxiety going into the holidays, the most important part of the year for many businesses. For a top-ranked site, a relatively small drop in the SERPs could still have a big financial impact./p pOnce the new year begins, however, you can be sure that many will be anxious to see if Google has given them the best present ever or a New Years' Day hangover. For those who can't wait to open their gift, Cutts mentioned in a comment that Google will probably reveal the IP address of the data center that gets Caffeine first./p pemPhoto credit: a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/moonsoleil/"MoonSoleil/a via Flickr./em/p

2009 Christmas Competition (LinkShare UK Blog)

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:00:31 +0000

Back by popular demand is our annual Christmas Competition which gives you the chance to grow your revenues and win great prizes!

The Christmas shopping season is a fantastic opportunity to increase your revenues and maximise your websites. To help you along you’ll find great publisher commissions and great consumer offers at LinkShare from some of the best known brands such as Benefit, Coast, Faith, LEGO, French Connection, Lipsy, Radisson, UNIQLO and many more.

Now you also have a chance to win some great prizes.

See the Competition Pages here for full details

The rules are very simple… any promotion of LinkShare Advertisers between 1st November and 31st December 2009 will automatically earn you Christmas shopping points.

The more active you are the more chance you have of being entered into a series of fantastic prize draws and ultimately win an all-expenses-paid trip to the second a4uexpo Europe which is taking place in Munich in May!

See how easy it is to build up your points:

Be click active with 10 merchant programs earn 1 point per merchant	= 10 points
Be order active with each of these and earn 5 points per merchant	= 50 points
Drive more than 1 order for each of these and earn an additional 5 points per program	= 50 points
With an average order value of £125 you will reach your revenue target of £2,500	= 15 points

Resulting in a TOTAL OF 125 points and your eligibility into Presents Draws 1, 2, 3 AND 4!!!

Log in to see a full list of merchant programs to join and get started now.

If you need any help in getting active with LinkShare please contact our Network Development Team at uksupport@linkshare.com, or call +44 (0)20 7031 0950.

Winners will be announced after 4th January 2010 when the New Year commences.

Good Luck!!

Penny Mather

Enterprise SEO with the new EPiServer SEO plugin (BlogStorm)

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:56:16 +0000

Although I’m a big fan of Wordpress & Interspire for smaller projects we use EPiServer a fair bit for enterprise level site builds. Licenses don’t come cheap (it’s in the £10k+ range) but for large scale sites it’s one of the more robust content management systems available.

We’re in the middle of a fairly major site build using EPiServer at the moment and I spotted a new SEO plugin which only launched 2 weeks ago. This plugin doesn’t actually optimise the page and site structure like the Wordpress All in One SEO Plugin – it goes much further that and does proactive things like auditing copy & title tags during the publication process, monitoring rankings and displaying popular search keywords within the CMS.

The system is ideal for companies with a lot of people creating and editing content. They would need some level of initial SEO training to ensure they don’t get carried away with features such as the keyword density tool but overall it should be a very scalable way of optimising content at the publication stage. Giving access to basic keyword analytics within the interface is something that every CMS should offer.

Here is a neat description from the detailed users guide (pdf):

EPiServer SEO, fully integrated with EPiServer CMS at both site and page level, empowers your Web team in the long-term as well as in making SEO an integrated and simplified part of the daily activities of your team – as they publish/add new content, as they quality assure or evaluate existing Web site, as they train and coach colleagues and, last but not least, as they develop or revise Web sites or templates, EPiServer SEO includes easy to understand and use SEO and findability analysis tools, prioritized work lists, SEO best practice guidance, goal setting, bench marking and SEO performance reporting.

Features

My favourite feature is the automated auditing tool during the content publication process. Authors simply need to provide some keywords that are related to the article and the system checks that elements such as titles, h1 tags and body content contain those keywords and gives helpful messages explaining how to improve things.

The system would be better if it integrated with something like Wordtracker or the AdWords keyword tool to automatically find & suggest related keywords based on the body text and search volumes but perhaps that will be added later.

The system also shows warnings about the length of title and meta description tags, something that all CMS’s should do.

The link report section works by finding links that have sent traffic in the past 30 days rather than using an external data source. It also uses PageRank as a metric to show how important a link is which is totally useless and will really confuse people using the system. The vast majority of (natural) new links are added from blog posts and news articles and all of those will be PageRank 0 because they are brand new pages. They stay PR 0 until Google does and update in a few months time. It would be far better for the system to look at something like the overall domain mozRank using the SEOmoz API.

Another feature which I’m not sure about is the keyword density analysis for articles. It’s OK for the system to look at keyword density but to the untrained operator it’s going to cause problems especially when it actually highlights in red articles where the density is too low.

The system also allows users to set up and define KIP’s such as top rankings for a keyword, traffic over a 30 day period and PageRank which is just about the worst KPI I can imagine.

One of the more useful features is pre-flight testing and continual automated auditing for errors and issues. Results are show in an “Alerts” tab so users can log in and fix errors on a regular basis.

Finally there is a section for monitoring rankings which is great in principle but appears to have a few big flaws. First of all it is giving data on the number of search results for a particular keyword in Google to judge competition which is a bit misleading – far better to show perhaps search volume for the keyword as well as an “intitle:” query if they really want to show competition.

It’s not clear if you can configure the search engines where rankings are checked but that is a major requirement for me – at present search engines included will normally be Google.com, Yahoo.com, Msn/Bing.com as well as the country specific Google version if the domain is a top level country domain which wouldn’t be very good if I wanted to check google.co.uk for my .com domains.

Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for Search engine optimisation

Enterprise SEO with the new EPiServer SEO plugin

Hacked (BlogStorm)

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:55:01 +0000

On Monday I spotted a strange issue with Blogstorm that was causing the blog to be displayed 4 inches down the page. I suspected it was a browser issue or some kind of hack but the source code was totally clean and it was displaying the same in multiple browsers which was strange.

After some investigation by one of our developers yesterday it turned out that the JavaScript file which powers the tab section on the right hand side of the blog had been hacked and an iframe inserted in the header. Luckily the iframe source was giving a 404 error otherwise my blog would probably have been flagged as a malware site and started redirecting all visitors to somewhere else.

We are still not sure how the hacker got into the blog but I am very careful to only use popular plugins and always update all plugins and Wordpress as soon as new versions come out.

Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for Search engine optimisation

Hacked

Following the Playfish exit, social games developer wooga secures a further €5 million funding (TechCrunch Europe)

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:45:13 +0000

[Germany] It seems that social gaming is where the action is right now, and we’re not just hearing that from the kids. Following Electronic Arts’ $300 million acquisition of Playfish, and the just-reported $43 million further investment that Playdom has raised, we’ve caught wind that Berlin-based wooga has secured €5 million ($7.5m) of additional funding. The round is being led by Balderton Capital, although earlier investor Holtzbrinck Ventures has also participated.

Wooga (world of gaming) launched in January this year and has, to-date, focused solely on the Facebook platform with the release of Brain Buddies in July. The game is currently listed as one of the top twenty titles on Facebook, for which the company claims 6 million monthly users. Two further games are in the last stages of development wooga tells us and should be released in the next few weeks. No confirmation, however, on which social network these will be for but our guess is Facebook again (a current job advert certainly points in that direction).

Talking of staff, the company employs 25 people from 9 different countries and says it will use the additional funding to hire new talent – the list of current vacancies is quite extensive – and to grow the company further. That said, with only one Facebook game released so far and two in the pipeline, €5 million is quite the endorsement. Did we mention that social gaming is hot right now?

CrunchBase Information

Balderton Capital

Information provided by CrunchBase

CrunchBase Information

Holtzbrinck Ventures

Information provided by CrunchBase

Farewell Dollhouse (Dominic - The Hodge - Hodgson)

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:57:35 +0000

So Dollhouse has been cancelled, its not as if we couldn’t see it coming to be honest, the fact it’s not on the November Schedule at all shows Fox has lost faith in it (faith get it? because she was faith in buf… ).

To be honest It was never one of those shows I was eager to watch anyway, I watched it when it was on but its not in the realm of 24, lost or house.

The good news though is that the rest of the season will be filmed and shown which means we might actually get a decent ending.

Share and Enjoy:

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YouTube introduces "skippable" video ads. Uh oh. (E-consultancy - Internet Marketing News and Blogs)

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:38:00 +0000

pstrongimg alt="" height="160" src="http://www.cato.org/multimedia/images/youtube.jpg" style="float: right; margin: 7px;" width="160" /Well it was good while it lasted. While television networks and advertisers morned the introduction of commercial fast forwarding on television, they have found solace online, where consumers have consigned themselves to sitting through pre-rolls and interstitials if it means streaming high quality video content. /strong/p pYouTube is trying to change all that. The video giant today announced today that it is launching "skippable" pre-roll ads on some of its videos. The move will help YouTube create better ads, charge better rates for the ads that are seen and improve its ad model. It could also lead to further erosion of video ad views overall, which networks won't be happy about. /p pThe good news: networks won't have to worry about that for a while./ppYouTube is allowing viewers to skip ads in the hopes of getting feedback on the advertising they serve — and higher revenues from advertisers. /p pOn certain videos, users will be able to click on a link to skip pre-roll ads, and just start watching content. The ads will run on videos from content partners, which have already opted into the test. /p pAccording to a href="http://ytbizblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/skip-skip-skip-to-my-video.html"YouTube/a:/p blockquote p"Abandonment rates are affected by several factors, notably length and creative. When a pre-roll is only 15 seconds, we see completion rates as high as 85%. Also, creative matters a lot: the quality and relevance of the ad itself seems to have 3x the influence on abandonment online as it does on TV. Viewers online tend to be much more active in making choices about what they watch."/p /blockquote pUnless the skip link is incredibly prominent (or the creative incredibly bad), viewers are likely to stick through 15 seconds of commercial, mostly because they're currently in that habit. /p pBut for YouTube especially, good ads are important. A dog on a skateboard may become a viral hit on the site, but viewers are less likely to partake in the equivalent of video junkfood if they have to sit through an ad to get to it, and the network is incredibly keen to minimize video abandonment. Also, ensuring that viewers are engaged in the ads the do like ensures that they can charge advertisers higher CPM. /p pThe bigger concern is if this takes off and users get accustomed to skipping ads online. For network and other less available content, users are currently willing to sit through ads. But DVRs have proven that given the choice, they will skip. And network plans to a href="http://econsultancy.com/blog/4878-tv-everywhere-has-a-lot-to-learn-from-hulu-not-that-it-will-listen"weigh down their video content with longer ads online/a are not likely to go over well./p p YouTube is going to use the data collected from this experiment to improve their advertising. As a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-google-testing-skippable-pre-roll-ads-for-youtube-2009-11"Silicon Alley Insider/a writes:/p blockquote p"If Google collects valuable user data, this could contribute to the development of a quality-score system similar to the one used to determine the placement and pricing of search ads. If the model is similar to search, Google could use data on whether it thinks the ads are likely to be skipped or elected to be viewed to establish a differentiated pricing model for placement, thereby enhancing both the user and advertiser experience."/p /blockquote p /p pAnd it gets back to a premise that Google was built on: letting consumers decide what they want to do is never a bad idea. That doesn't mean that the networks are going to like it. /p

Twitter's new retweet feature paves the way for more commercial usage (E-consultancy - Internet Marketing News and Blogs)

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:48:00 +0000

pstrongimg alt="" height="42" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2602/4095632399_1c9aebf507_m.jpg" style="float: right; margin: 7px;" width="240" /Rage is a common response when social media sites make minor tweaks to their services, and characteristically, Twitter's new retweet change is causing lots of outrage from users (Gawker headlined its post "a href="http://valleywag.gawker.com/5402292/re+tweet-redesign-helps-the-rich-get-richer-on-twitter"Re-Tweet Redesign Helps the Rich Get Richer on Twitter")/a. /strong/p pTrying to solve some of the issues surrounding the "RT" functionality, Twitter has done away with it completely in favor of reposting a tweet from the original twitterer, with a link to the person who retweeted it (an example is above)./p pThere are some drawbacks to the new approach, but helps Twitter do two things that will become increasingly important to its business model: track tweets and make them more reliable for professional users. /ppOne of the main problems with retweets til now was that any user could rewrite them, or simply attach an important person's Twitter handle to any statement. By simply republishing the statement, Twitter ensures that users will only be associated with messaging that they have personally published. /p pThere are plenty of issues with this. It will become harder to scan feeds, since the name of the person retweeting is much less prominent, which makes it harder for individuals to see who put a message in front of them. /p pMeanwhile, users can no longer comment on a retweet, which changes the entire incentive structure of sharing someone else's content. However, that should change in subsequent iterations, as Twitter's CEO Evan Williams explains on his blog. Also, users can continue using the old "RT" nomenclature that has functioned to date. /p pOn a href="http://evhead.com/2009/11/why-retweet-works-way-it-does.html"his blog/a, Evan Williams writes:/p blockquote p"The drawback is that it may be a little surprising (unpleasant even, for some) to discover avatars of people they don't follow in their timeline. I ask those people to keep in mind the following: You're already reading the content from these people via organic retweets. This is just giving you more context. My experience is that you get used to this pretty quickly, and it's a welcome way to mix things up."/p /blockquote pBut Twitter is interested in this new feature because it can pave the way for more professional usage of the service./p blockquote p"Retweets potentially reveal very interesting data," Williams writes. /p /blockquote pIndeed, the feature provides a metric to rank tweets and subsequently the results of Twitter searches and Twitter users themselves. Twitter could sell this data, provided free by its users, companies and brands that want it. /p pMeanwhile, protecting tweet content is important to making the service more reliable and useful in a longterm sense. /p pAnd paring down Twitter content to its most pertinent messages is a key to its survival./p pWilliams continues:/p blockquote p"Part of the beauty of Twitter is that you can follow your friends, organizations, public figures, or strangers you find interesting. But no matter how carefully you've groomed your following list, out of the millions of tweets written today, are you seeing the absolute most relevant ones to you? Or are you getting some good stuff, some stuff you don't care about, and likely missing a whole lot of other killer tweetage you don't even know is there?"/p /blockquote p /p p /p

The Bacon and Eggs Guide to Retweets on Twitter (Social Media and all that other internet stuff)

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:00:46 +0000

Is online video destined to look like television programming? (E-consultancy - Internet Marketing News and Blogs)

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:48:25 +0000

pimg alt="" height="156" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2726/4095221173_3a7f44efb0_m.jpg" style="float: right; margin: 7px;" width="240" //p pstrongTerrestrial television has been gutted by commercial fast-forwarding, but online that is not an option. And as much as people complain about pre-roll ads, they are increasingly watch them. As Brian Stelter notes in a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/business/media/11adco.html?_r=1amp;ref=business"The New York Times/a today: "News Web sites are starting to look a lot less like newspapers and a lot more like television."/strong/p pCan the networks reproduce the success of their old business model online by creating a limited quantity of quality video programming? Yes and no. /ppTelevision ads may have been gutted by the invention of commercial fast forwarding and the wealth of online information, but traditional video creators are slowly realizing that online viewers will sit through ads if it means accessing content they want to see. /p pThe online video segment is quickly growing. quality videos have been performing well online. Digital video earned $477 million in revenue in the first half of 2009, which is an increase of 38% from the same time period last year according to the IAB./p pOf course, that's a tiny market compared to online search, which is estimated to be a $10 billion market this year. But that growth is good news for struggling media companies. Especially since online views are not poaching traditional TV viewers. /p pDuring the daytime, online is popular, but at night viewers are switching to television. In September just under 10% of totals videos viewed online were video ads./p pThe amount of time that viewers can spend watching video is also limited, but the comparitively nascent ad market for video has plenty of room for growth, which is why so many news networks are investing in it now. /p pComScore found that the total number of internet video viewers grew over 10% in the last six months, to 168 million people. They say the number of videos viewed total and in the entertainment category grew 55% and 42% respectively in the last six months./p pMeanwhile, news companies are producing video and selling ads against it as quickly as they can. The Wall Street Journal has started airing a twice daily show called The News Hub that offers pre-roll for an impressive $75 CPM. Last fall it was selling at $50 per thousand views. /p pHowever, the advertising revenue does not always grow with popularity. And hard news, which is available in abundance online, is a harder sell for advertisers. /p pBut as in television programming, the key so far has been the limited availability of video on these sites. Brian Quinn, vice president of digital ad sales for The Wall Street Journal’s digital network tells The Times of video ads: /p p style="padding-left: 30px;"“I wish we had more, since we’re sold out."/p pThe never ending supply of ad inventory is often what drives down online ad prices. But while media companies no longer have the luxury of the set "news hour" that dictated programming for so many years, they do have the popularity of their brands and quality production teams to boost their online programming. /p pIn the longterm, merely reproducing TV content online at a quicker pace is not likely save the networks. At ad:tech New York last week, Todd Teresi, chief revenue officer at Quantcast, had this to say: /p p style="padding-left: 30px;""We need to get to solutions that are as elegant as search. The power of the search marketplace is that google does not sit there and tell you what you should buy. Google gave people control. That fundamentally is why that marketplace works so well."/p pBut traditional media companies are learning that for now, producing quality videos and sound bites for the web brings viewers and dollars online. /p

Warehouse Express – Affiliate Competition (AWinter Wonderland)

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:27:23 +0000

Warehouse Express, the UK’s leading online photo specialist, have launched an affiliate Christmas competition!

ANY affiliate that generates more than 10 sales for in November or December will have their name put into a hat; the first name to be drawn will be rewarded with £150 vouchers to spend on their site!

For more details about Warehouse Express’ products or to join their programme, read the launch post on the Offers Blog.

A New Social Media Marketing Blog: Just what the World needs (Cornwallseo.com)

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:38:57 +0000

Finally got round to starting a blog on social media marketing It’s where I will be blogging mostly these days, except for the occasional SEO rant. This blog has served me well in the past few years. But now it’s time to move on. So go check out my new social media blog

Addictive Marketing (Cornwallseo.com)

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:34:19 +0000

Bournemouth to Brighton By Bike For Bumble Bees (Apple Pie & Custard)

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:17:52 +0000

As you may know at SiteVis we’re lucky enough to get a day off work a year to do something charitable, so I got thinking about what charities I would like to help out, and my mind settled on helping bees http://www.bumblebeeconservation.org.uk/

Artist’s impression of Kelvin during the ride!

Mainly because colony collapse disorder is so freaky and scary. (even if you don’t care much about my ride you should still read this http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/02/saving-bees-what-we-know-now/)

So I thought what could I do that would somehow be tangent-ly related to the charity, so I decided why don’t I try to cycle from Bournemouth to Brighton, and to make it more interesting why don’t I take a de-tour via 13 places beginning with letter b. (Including a completely off route visit to the Isle of Wight)

I’m doing it on Friday 27th of November getting up crack of sparrows and aiming to be back in time for a beer. (so local readers your welcome to come along for a celebratory drink afterwards)

So that’s something like 150 odd miles stopping and taking a momento photo at every town beginning with the letter B, with twitter updates the whole way.

So here’s the bit you’re all expecting, me asking for sponsorship, well I wanted to do this a little different. I know how annoying is to be pointed to a JustGiving page and feeling guilt tripped into donating,

So instead if you want to help bees, want to feel a little warm inside, acknowledge the loopy-ness of the idea or just get the free book about bumblebees you can sign up to join the society for £16 here http://www.bumblebeeconservation.org.uk/join.htm

And if you donate, thanks very much!

And here’s the rough itenary of b places

Bournemouth

Boscombe

Barton On Sea

Brook, Isle of Wight

Brighstone, Isle of Wight

Blackgang, Isle of Wight

Bembridge, Isle of Wight

Bosham,

Birdham

Bracklesham Bay

Batchmere

Bognor

Barnham

Binstead

Brighton

Post from Apple Pie & Custard the blog from SiteVisibility a Brighton SEO Company

Bournemouth to Brighton By Bike For Bumble Bees

German students’ homework project aims to teach MTV a lesson (TechCrunch Europe)

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:12:22 +0000

[Germany] For years the music industry said that video killed the radiostar, but now the homework of two 7th semester students from Stuttgart could do away with MTV. Their website plays music videos too, but Semsix is more convenient than Viacom’s TV station that tortures with crappy tunes and annoying ads while you have to wait for one good song. A product of the 80’s, MTV still lacks the personalisation and interactive features fit for the internet age. That’s why at Semsix the user is the VJ and can choose the songs that play. It’s kind of like Last.FM but for music videos, or similar to Simfy or Spotify in that the user is in charge of the playlist. As of yesterday, Semsix is also available in English.

The free web application searches online video platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, MyVideo or Sevenload for music and displays the results by artist and album. Everything is programmed in Flash, with Adobe Flex as the development framework so that it works on nearly every modern browser. Users simply drag their search results into a playlist and see the videos immediately without leaving Semsix’s website. There is no registration or login required, a small button on the upper right plays the videos in full screen and all playlists can be saved or sent to friends via a link.

Semsix' video app plays Lady Gaga

In addition, Semsix evaluates the quality of music videos and lists the best version available for a specific song. For instance, an official music video will always be preferred to a mobile phone recording. The two computer science students of Stuttgart Media University, Martin Jakobus (23) and Ingo Schock (28), developed an algorithm which takes the user ratings on video websites into account and compares the recording’s duration to the original.

Semsix is also useful if you can’t remember the name of a song or an artist. The built-in lyrics search finds a song by entering just a few words from the vocals. For Karaoke fans it displays the lyrics alongside the song. Also web radio can be searched by station name, music genre or by the city in which a station is based. To top it all, Semsix will suggest other songs that fit the music taste of the user. Suggestions come from LastFM and the radio databank Radio Time is used for the web radio search. Meta information for albums and artists is drawn from the music database MusicBrainz and Lyrics are provided by lyricsfly.

That’s a really great mashup for a side project started by two students as recent as March. In only weeks Ingo developed the user interface and the server application while Martin coded interfaces to third-party video websites and the search algorithm. The result looks better than the music searches from Google, Yahoo or Bing. And of course it has less annoying ads than forefather MTV: just one skyscraper banner beside the Semsix player to cover the server costs.

Although their website looks like a professional project (with 5,000 unique users daily), Ingo and Martin have not funded a company. Only now are they beginning to think about the issue because the first investors have knocked on their door. “We have turned down all offers because investors were only acting upon only their own interests and not the interests of our users”, says Martin. “Semsix shall always be free and usable without login.”

Junaio launches augmented reality platform for the iPhone and the Web (TechCrunch Europe)

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:49:29 +0000

[Germany] Munich-based metaio, a developer of visual interaction software products, is today launching a consumer-oriented iPhone application (iTunes link) and complementary website that combines the fun and usefulness of augmented reality with social networking.

The application, dubbed junaio, is billed by the company as the ‘world’s first augmented reality platform’ but bears some resemblance to what other European startups like Layar and Wikitude have been putting out there lately.

In essence, the company aims to enable people to “bring the Internet to the real world” by providing them with a tool to add interactive notes, smileys, web links, rankings, imagery, virtual objects and even Twitter accounts to images of the real world around them. In addition, users can publish their custom augmented reality representations, edit those made by others and easily share the results on the junaio website or Facebook.

The iPhone application is rather buggy and most of the objects are graphically challenged, but there’s definitely some potential there. I’m thinking it could be especially fun and useful to document tourist attractions with relevant links, for example, so another junaio user could point his or her iPhone camera to a monument in a major city and immediately see what other users have said about or linked to before them.

Big caveat though: since no one is actively policing or moderating submissions, this is one version of augmented reality that could quickly turn into a haven for creative spammers and trolls alike. And then you can kiss the fun factor goodbye.

Drupal redirect in .htaccess (Be Fused - web design, development & affiliate blog)

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:30:05 +0000

pUsing .htaccess is one of the best ways to redirect a URL to a new URL. Particular care needs to be taken with Drupal sites for it to work correctly./p pThe following snippets needs to be added to the root .htaccess file directly after the following lines:/p p# Various rewrite rules./p p RewriteEngine onbr / .......br / # If your site is running in a VirtualDocumentRoot at a href="http://example.com/" title="http://example.com/"http://example.com//a,br / # uncomment the following line:br / # RewriteBase //p pa href="http://pingv.com/blog/laura/200511/creating-301-redirects-for-drupal"More info on Ping Vision/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/befused/~4/y0tHgZ_Db9w" height="1" width="1"/

Seeking the next SEO superstar (Distilled - Monitoring your Reputation Online)

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:08:50 +0000

Distilled are recruiting an individual with a 1 – 2 years SEO experience or a technical individual with an exceptional track record in delivering client projects.

Image via Jonathan W – Flickr

Who would win, a pirate or a ninja? Give evidence to support your claim.

This is the last question in the online application given to potential candidates for our latest SEO Consultant role.

Every time we put out a job advert we get comments about how much people enjoyed filling in the application. A typical application process involves emailing someone your CV and hoping, but when people spend the time to complete our slightly strange set of questions, we feel like we learnt much more about their skills and how they might fit into our team.

If you’ve read enough already you should read up on pirates and ninjas and complete our application form.

SEO Consultant job with Distilled

Thanks to many of you who read our blog we have built up a great reputation within the industry. This means that currently we have more people wanting to work with us than (to use a Will’ism) you can shake a stick at. So despite the economic doom and gloom we are once again looking to hire more people to join our SEO team to allow us to take on more clients

We have spent a lot of time working out how we can best deliver SEO projects, and whilst we know we can still improve we are now in a great position to take on another SEO Consultant who can add real value to our business and to our clients.

The right candidate will have a couple of years of experience either working in an SEO environment or an exceptional candidate with experience in an analytical role. We are looking for a candidate that we can fast track into a role leading SEO projects. You will need a passion for the internet, a proven record delivering projects, a strong work ethic and a spark that sets you apart from the competition.

The exact day to day role will depend on the person hired but will involve a fair bit of strategy for our clients along with the nitty gritty of execution. Link building, keyword research, analytics analysis, content creation, conversion rate optimisation and anything else to help our clients will form part of your weekly tasks. This sits nicely alongside regular team meetings, exciting internal projects and – of course – beer o’clock every Friday.

For the right candidate this will be an ideal position to expand your SEO skills and take on responsibility for delivering client projects. Not only does this role offer the opportunity to join Distilled at an exciting time, but if you’re someone who never wants to stop learning – you’ll fit right in.

The role is in our office in Central London, 35 hours / week with a starting salary between £26k and £28k.

If this role sounds like your dream ticket, then please fill out the following questions, and if you are successful we’ll be in touch.

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Good Manners Cost You Nothing (Connect - Digital Marketing Expertise from iCrossing)

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:56:25 +0000

Every now and again I am reminded me of this oft-repeated mantra from my grandmother. In the age of UGC and Creative Commons Licences, anyone who is working on producing engaging and visually delightful digital content can’t help but be excited by the super-abundance of high quality, free stuff that is available with a quick search on sites like Flickr.

If you’re planning to follow the examples of brands like iCrossing clients BMI and MORE TH>N in using materials from social networks in your content, we strongly recommend that you follow these guidelines to make sure you don’t end up inadvertently using something that you have no right to use, or offending the very people who you are hoping to engage with.

At iCrossing we have made full use of the Creative Commons Licence - regularly using pictures from Flickr’ users on blog posts for various clients, and as backgrounds for presentations. (And we publish our ebooks and whitepapers under the same licences. Our Social Media sage, Antony Mayfield has blogged about the amazing effects that freeing your content in this way can ha ve.) The high quality writing, pictures and videos that are available for anyone engaged in digital creative is truly dizzying. It’s not surprising that markerters have taken to plundering this rich library of free stuff with such gusto. Some of us (me!) are like kids in a sweet shop.

But what I do find surprising is that there are regular (if infrequent) examples of creative professionals seeming to just forget their good manners (and their good sense) in this free-for-all. They soon learn that politeness might cost you nothing, but rudeness can be a pricey vice.

Of course, to err is human. But here’s how we at iCrossing do our level best to make sure that when it comes to using Creative Commons licensed pictures and videos, we don’t get slapped by the hand that feeds us.

Always mind your Ps and Qs

There are a number of ways you can source Creative Commons licensed content for re-use. Personally, I use the built-in Creative Commons search engine on FireFox which I have set as a default to search for content which has been licensed a) for commercial use and b) for adaptation, modification and / or building upon. This means using only content under the Attribution or Attribution Share Alike licences. In theory, if you find stuff that is published under these two licence types you are free to use it without even contacting the person who has published it. But in my book, that’s a bit rude. So we will always let the person whose picture we have used know that we’re using it. Usually just via a comment under the picture. This is a) polite and b) sensible. In many cases, it starts a positive conversation with someone in your network - a kind of low-level outreach. But it also acts as a risk management step. Very occasionally we’ve found that people didn’t fully understand the kind of licence they were using - and actually weren’t keen to have their image used commercially. Or people have decided to remove the licence for some reason - in which case they are able to contact us and let us know. Being polite and contacting them at the start of the process means we’ve avoided using pictures from people who didn’t want us to.

Don’t forget your record-keeping and copyright best practice

The content team at iCrossing is staffed by people who come from “old fashioned” editorial and journalistic backgrounds. This means we have all had it drilled into us, by countless editors and tutors, that keeping accurate, detailed records of sources and permissions is an essential administrative task. For us, this rigorous process is just as necessary when reproducing “rights free” pictures from the users of Flickr, as it is when quoting an “official spokesperson” from an organisation who might sue if we misrepresent them. I was reminded just how important this is last week when a source quoted in some copy we wrote for a client contacted their PR team and attempted to claim that he should have been paid a fee. In fact the quotes came from publicity material released via a government department media centre and we were perfectly within our rights to use them. What was more, we had the email from the press officer at that government department pointing us towards the quotes. It meant that a potential legal headache for our client was avoided quickly and painlessly.

Similarly, our advice to anyone reading this is: always keep a record of permissions and the sources of quotes, contributions, collaborations and compilations. And if in doubt, ask someone who has a good working knowledge of editorial and copyright law - like the iCrossing content team.

Credit where credit is due

This is an outcome of the two points above: if you are minding your manners, and being duly dilligent, you will naturally ensure that every time you use someone else’s pictures or words or videos or ideas, you credit them. Ideally, you’ll link to the source material too. In doing so, you make it much less likely that anyone can accuse you of stealing. You also keep the web growing, and encourage people to link back to you in turn. It’s win win.

And it would make my granny smile with approval too.

IMAGES

Cupcakes reproduced via a CC Attibution licence from Flickr user Rachel from Cupcakes Take The Cake

Search screengrab detail from Creative Commons Search

Post from: Connect

Good Manners Cost You Nothing

Post-Halloween Treat: New Keywords User Interface! (Google Webmaster Central Blog)

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:45:18 +0000

Our team had an awesome Halloween and we hope you did too. Yes, the picture below is our team; we take our Halloween costumes pretty seriously. :)divbr //divdivimg src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_dvIF7szq-jY/SvnBKB-j6sI/AAAAAAAAACs/HBH8yGfOLVA/s400/091030_google_hlwn_0127.jpg" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 266px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5402561606081309378" /br //divdivdiv style="text-align: left;"div style="text-align: left;"As a post-Halloween treat, we're happy to announce a brand new user interface for our Keywords feature. We'll now be updating the data daily, providing details on how often we found a specific keyword, and displaying a handful of URLs that contain a specific keyword. The significance column compares the frequency of a keyword to the frequency of the most popular keyword on your site. When you click on a keyword to view more details, you will get a list of up to 10 URLs which contain that keyword. /divdiv style="text-align: left;"br //divdiv style="text-align: left;"This will be really useful when you re-implement your site on a new technology framework, or need to identify which URLs may have been hacked. For example, if you start noticing your site appearing in search results for terms totally unrelated to your website (for example, "Viagra" or "casino"), you can use this feature to find those keywords and identify the pages that contain them. This will enable you to eliminate any hacked content quickly./divdiv style="text-align: left;"br //div/divimg src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_dvIF7szq-jY/SvnBPAViloI/AAAAAAAAAC0/wX4g215kInY/s400/Picture+7.png" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 228px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5402561691540166274" //divdiv style="text-align: center;"img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_dvIF7szq-jY/SvnBTNMMCuI/AAAAAAAAAC8/UIPOJCUkxhQ/s400/Picture+8.png" style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 367px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5402561763710077666" //divspan class="byline-author"divspan class="byline-author"diva href="http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters?hl=en"Let us know what you think!/a/divdivbr //div/span/divPosted by Kurt Dresner, Tanya Gupta, and Sagar Kamdar, Webmaster Tools team/spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/32069983-4529297476348713268?l=googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com'//divdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/amDG?a=C-sfWset80c:c2LU8MXtnBM:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/amDG?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/amDG/~4/C-sfWset80c" height="1" width="1"/

Is this Listia ad on TechCrunch a 'scam' offer? (E-consultancy - Internet Marketing News and Blogs)

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:18:28 +0000

pstrongThe other day, I was checking the latest posts on TechCrunch and came across a promotion promising a free pack of MySpace branded playing cards. I love free things and I clicked, hoping that my next game of poker would have a MySpace theme./strong/ppInstead I was greeted by a href="http://www.listia.com/auction/17038"a charity auction/a on a service called Listia. To bid, I needed 'emcredits/em'. The parallels to the a href="http://econsultancy.com/blog/4937-is-the-controversy-over-virtual-goods-and-scam-cpa-offers-overblown"scam offers/a controversy I wrote about on Monday started to became apparent./p pimg alt="" src="http://i725.photobucket.com/albums/ww255/patriciorobles/techcrunchscam.jpg" //ppListia's credits system works like this:/p ul li50 credits are offered free./li liTo get 100 more, you need to sign up and list an item that you are willing to give away./li liIf that's not enough, you can earn 50 credits each time you convince a friend to sign up./li liIf that's still not enough, you can buy credits for 10 cents a pop, sold in $1 increments./li liCredits cannot be redeemed for cash, and unused credits that were purchased are only refundable within 7 days of purchase./li /ul pI wasn't impressed, especially because Listia's homepage reads "emEverything is FREE on Listia/em" and proclaims "emNo Fees. No Money. Just Free Stuff!/em" But this is all for a good cause (the American Red Cross) so I figured it probably wasn't worth making a fuss over. Then I read the fine print:/p blockquote pemWhen a seller lists a charity auction, we donate all of the profits generated from that auction to charity. The profit is calculated from the number of paid credits the winner uses to complete the auction. In addition, since there may not be any paid credits involved in every charity auction, unpaid and promotional credits are also transferred directly to the charity's Listia account. The credits can then be used to bid on items the charity needs. This is done either by Listia or someone who represents the charity directly./em/p /blockquote pIn other words, the charity only gets actual cash if paid credits were used in the bidding. The rest of the credits that it receives? They have to be used to bid on something that somebody else is 'emgiving away/em'. Incredibly, the fine print indicates that Listia has the discretion to bid on items on behalf of the charity! Not exactly the best deal for the charity, no?/ppClearly, this isn't what I expected when I clicked on the ad to claim my "emfree/em" pack of MySpace branded playing cards. There's nothing free about it really. With bidding currently at 150 credits, the only chance I'd have to win is to join Listia and list an item that ostensibly has some monetary value, spam my friends for referral credits and/or shell out real money for credits that I can't convert back into cash if I don't win. And if I win, I have no idea how much benefit the Red Cross would actually derive from the auction. Listia's fine print leaves me with the impression that if the Red Cross isn't on Listia (which seems likely), somebody at Listia will bid on an item he thinks the Red Cross needs and then have it donated it to them./ppFortunately, I'm not going crazy as I'm not the only one who has looked at Listia and been left with a sour taste. The company has been a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/05/listia-is-an-awesome-way-to-give-and-get-free-stuff/"covered/a on TechCrunch a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/13/lista-gets-an-angel-round-to-help-people-giveget-free-stuff/"twice/a. Some of the comments:/p blockquote pemHow are you getting it for free if you have to buy points?/em/p /blockquote blockquote pemThen there is the 11 day auction on a nice TV (a promotional item)... you have to buy points to bid on it and those points are ONLY refundable within 7 days. So, if you bid early on you are stuck with your points. One member spent $70 on points, and got outbid... and now she can’t do anything to get her money back. Great for the owners, terrible for the customer./em/p /blockquote blockquote pemOk. so i wanted to check out the Listia solution this morning... I signed up and was going to bid for the free Techcrunch T-Shirt. I was given 500 credits as a new user on Listia but can only use 100 credits of these on each item i bid for. Since the current bit on the T Shirt was 251 credits i had to buy at least 160 credits in order to have a chance to bid.../em/p /blockquote blockquote pemIDK, the site is very misleading. Any worthwhile item will require the user to pay for more credits, so essentially, you are just participating in a paid auction. In addition, their methods of interacting with charities aren’t clearly outlined, and I’m not sure how things work. /em/p /blockquote blockquote pemThat’s a really stupid concept… Use a middle person to manage giving stuff away, and allow the middle person to charge what the market will bear for that stuff? By the time the stuff gets to the end user, it isn’t free anymore… far from it… if it is free, then it’s something that certainly has very little value, assuming this marketplace is efficient./em/p /blockquote blockquote pemWhile I applaud them for coming up with (or at least expanding on a previously existing) good idea, I agree with many others who have commented on the fact that monetizing points for free stuff seems to defeat the purpose of the site, at least from the user’s perspective./em/p /blockquote blockquote pemI’m glad someone else sees the huge, gaping hole to this business plan. Looks like a charity leach, if anything. The only real winner in the process is Listia./em/p /blockquote pAnother comment a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/05/listia-is-an-awesome-way-to-give-and-get-free-stuff/#comment-2905042"raises/a some questions about potential tax implications of the Listia service, which are interesting./ppThe bottom line: if you called Listia 'emscummy/em', you probably wouldn't be alone. And for good reason: in most cases, Listia's auctions for "emfree stuff/em" aren't going to be free when all is said and done. After all, users will likely need to put something of value up for auction, or purchase credits that can't be exchanged for cash or refunded after seven days. The charity stuff? Clearly just a marketing ploy because there is no guarantee that a charity receiving credits that weren't originally purchased is going to be able to use them to bid on items that it truly needs. Throw in the fine print revealing that Listia itself may bid on items for the charity and the charity angle seems quite dubious./ppWhich brings us back to TechCrunch. Combine everything you now know about Listia with TechCrunch's ad promising a free pack of MySpace branded playing cards and you might just have an offer that Michael Arrington would call a 'emscam/em' if it was displayed in, say, Farmville./ppOkay, maybe that's a little bit of a stretch, but I think the point stands: there are lots of services that can leave a bad taste in your mouth, and it's very easy to create ads that aren't 100% true or accurate. While I'm certainly not suggesting that this example here is the moral equivalent of scammy/scummy mobile offer that you might find on a CPA network, it would be hard to argue that TechCrunch's ad isn't deceptive. It'd also be hard to deny that some parts of Listia's system seem like they were well-designed to take advantage of less-savvy consumers./p pThat said, instead of calling on TechCrunch to pull its ad or for Listia to be expelled from the internet, my next game of poker simply won't be with MySpace branded cards. And as it stands right now, it looks like I'm not the only one who has decided to keep the deck of cards I already have. TechCrunch's auction, which as I write this is stuck at 150 credits, now has a special welcome message: "emWelcome TechCrunchers - Everything is Free on Listia! All TechCrunch readers Receive a Free 50 Credit Extra Bonus When You Join Today!/em" The amount of credits being offered when you sign up and list an item has also been boosted to 150./p pNow I could go on about how foolish it is for any service that has a credits-based economy to treat credits like pork barrels, especially when credits can be purchased for cash, and I could point out that if Listia keeps giving away more points to 'emmove/em' an auction that isn't going anywhere, the people who bid first would be unfairly put at a significant disadvantage and pressured into purchasing credits if they want any shot at winning. But I think this auction's status speaks for itself: it looks like consumers just might be smarter than some of us give them credit for after all./p pstrong[Update: the ad has been removed from TechCrunch. Additionally, the promotional language on the Listia auction page has been removed along with the 50 "bonus" credits.]/strong/p

AW’s Technical Support Instant Messenger Service (Affiliate Window Blog)

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:01:00 +0000

Affiliate Window has launched a real-time communication service for technical queries that need a simple and quick answer. This handy feature will not replace our existing support ticketing system, but will run in conjunction with it, answering queries such as “I’ve forgotten my password”, “Where in my account do I find merchant banners?” and “When is the next AW payment run”. It will allow merchants, affiliates and agencies to drop the technical support team a brief message and receive an immediate reply.

We are active on two instant messaging chat service websites, please add us to your list of contacts:

MSN: support@affiliatewindow.com
AIM: AwinSupport

We look forward to hearing from you!

Bookmark It

How to Find New Offers (Affiliate Doctors)

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:59:15 +0000

Fizz wrote in and would like to know how an affiliate can stay one step ahead of the pack with new offers from affiliate programmes:

“How do you find out new offers with companies on affiliate programmes before anyone else? Where do you look for this?

Thanks

Fizz”

Here’s what Mark and Kirsty had to say:

Mark

Check emails from merchants, build up a relationship with networks, merchants, and agencies and check out the network and agency blogs as well as the affiliates4u forum.

Kirsty

Personally, I’m not sure I’ve ever found out about much in the way of new offers before anyone else. I do keep a keen eye on TV programmes and newspapers to see what they are talking about and also try to encourage merchants I’m already working with to give me the nod about any new developments coming up that they think I could do something with.

In my own experience though, I don’t benefit from being first past the post with promotion – I benefit from making sure I do a darned good and thorough job, covering all possible angles someone might want to search from when looking for the offer or hot product I’ve identified. More often than not, my competitors have taken the lazy way out and have chosen a very obvious way to target potential customers. By thinking about things thoroughly I regularly find massive galloping big tracts of untapped search terms that bear revenue. This means I get some lovely cheap PPC traffic, some easy organic traffic, and gain some margin to channel back into competing aggressively with the people doing the obvious.

SoundCloud gets its own iPhone app, new price plans and service enhancements also debut (TechCrunch Europe)

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:53:45 +0000

[Germany] SoundCloud – there’s now an app for that too. The audio sharing site that’s geared towards those who work in the music industry, has released a dedicated iPhone app. The Berlin-based company has also announced new price plans and a bunch of other enhancements to its overall service. First, however, let’s deal with the iPhone.

The new app, which costs €0.79 or $0.99 from the App Store (iTunes link), lets users browse and listen to tracks sent to their SoundCloud account directly on their iPhone. It’s aimed at artists, A&R folk and label managers, say SoundCloud. One handy feature is the ability to send a link to a track by email to contacts stored in the iPhone’s address book, perfect for those spontaneous networking opportunities.

As Music Ally notes, the SoundCloud app is a good example of a B2B rather than consumer-facing app coming to the iPhone, more evidence of the platform’s growing importance.

The browser-based version of SoundCloud has also been given a major update. The new release is called Taylor, named after Taylor Swift apparently, and offers new features including better statistics, two new player widgets, more privacy options (comments can be disabled, stats hidden etc.), and easier private sharing via a secret URL for use over email and IM.

And those new price plans? The cost of SoundCloud Premium accounts (previously called PRO) is coming down. Yearly Solo, Pro and Pro Plus accounts are now priced at €79, €250, and €500 accordingly. There’s also a new entry-level account called Lite (€29) for users who want to try out some of the premium features, such as better stats and more upload minutes.