Affiliate Marketing Blog

Quick SEO Tips: Taking Remedial SEO Action Using GWT

2009-10-26T14:02:00.003Z

If you've got a page that's not ranking and you want to use your own internal link juice rather than spend considerably more time getting external links, then pop over Google Webmaster Tools and check "Links To Your Site" (found under "Your site on the web") and see which of your pages have the most links in and then establish if you could legitimately link to the page you want to bump up a bit - obviously not forgetting the relevant anchor text.

Then also check the "Internal Links" report and see which are the strongest pages internally and then leverage those pages too.

Obviously you'll often find your homepage has the strongest link juice, but you can have some surprisingly strong internal pages which could be leveraged.

If you want to enhance this "strategy" you could use the mozBar and their Strongest Pages tool too.

But wait, there's more ....

If you run a blog as part of a main site then you've got the weapons for mass destruction at your finger-tips. Have two browsers open. With your list of target keywphrases at the ready in the one search Google (and the other engines afterwards) for:

site:www.mydomain.com "target keyphrase"

in the other do:

site:www.mydomain.com/blog "target keyphrase"
[if that's the location of your blog]

this will give you a list of your strongest pages on your site for that keyphrase and the strongest in your blog. If your objective is to rank higher for the main site then use those linking opportunities in your blog to increase page rank and relevance (via anchor text) to that page.

Simples. I'm currently testing it with a Top Christmas Presents 2009 post.

Google Gauges Site Authority By Visits

2009-10-14T14:02:00.002+01:00

I've just finished listening to the Google UK Chief Matt Brittin on Jeremy Vine's Radio 2 Show today. Apart from Jeremy being obsessed with user privacy, a notable statement was from the Brittin where he stated that they gauge site authority by visits. Now I hope I didn't misshear it as it'd make me look a plonker. But I'm absolutely sure that's what he said. You can double check on the BBC iPlayer later on today.

Let's hope he got it wrong, or I'll start buying the cheapest, nastiest traffic going ;-)

Make Yourself Generally Followable on Twitter: Mark Shaw

2009-10-05T11:58:00.002+01:00

Here's some basic tips about how to productively use Twitter from Mark Shaw.

The Social Media Guru - Social Media Distilled

2009-10-02T09:31:00.002+01:00

I fooking love this video!! And its so apt! There's so many people out there that pretend to be experts in Social Media. But to me social media is so frigging simple. It's reputation management online mixed with a bit of buzz and a dash of autopilot link-building and you're away - right?

An Interview With Someone You Should Know: Jim Kinloch

2009-09-21T11:10:00.004+01:00

It’s always nice to be sought out to offer a merchant more promotion on one of your most important sites and that’s what Jim Kinloch from Signature Gifts did. From that introduction we met up and had a good chat at the Manchester A4U Roadshow, done some client linking stuff and started the process of adding some content to my Christmas gifts site with a Personalised Manchester United Book. But I wanted to find out more about Jim and the range of sites that Signature Gifts are involved in.

Hi Jim, could you give a brief rundown of who you are and what you do at Signature Gifts?

I’m the Online Marketing Manager for Signature gifts. Our best known sites are Historic Newspapers and Gonedigging for personalised gifts. I run our affiliate programme, opt-in email, social networking, content creation, and conversion programme. There are two other members of the team who I work with, Paul Sheridan who manages our PPC and Sam Georgeson responsible for all things SEO.

How do you find the role of being an Online Marketing Manager with having to swap hats from PPC, SEO, Content writing, analytics, email marketing, competitor analysis ..... ?

I enjoy the mixture of disciplines needed to create the elusive ideal online marketing mix. I’m helped by the fact that we have a large team in house including a PPC specialist, and a SEO person. We also have an IT team and in-house developers for our main sites. We do all our online and offline design in-house. We also retain a digital marketing agency, Receptional [ed: never heard of 'em ;-)], for digital marketing consultancy. Most of my time is dedicated to our affiliate programme, I spend a set amount of time each week creating copy for our personalised gift blog, www.notmoresocks.com and supporting PPC, SEO, and our designers. There is a lot on the go at any one time which makes for fun and games and a lot of activities in the air at one time. This week has been a mix of writing, liaising with a major PPC affiliate, attending the Google Retail Summit, working with Webgains on our FREE caricature for affiliate’s activity at the A4U Expo, and launching a US site, www.simplypersonalized.com also with Webgains.

I see you’ve had a vast level of experience in the online industry having moved from being a software engineer to offline marketing and then onto online. But if you had to choose one role, which do you prefer the most and why?

I enjoyed doing technical support as solving problems is always satisfying and when I worked for Apple Computer (at their database company, FileMaker) I enjoyed the mix of organising events and meeting customers, supporting a developer network, and putting PR campaigns in place. But I can put my hand on my heart and say this role is the most fun-satisfying-sometimesfrustrating-involving-fun-learning-work-experience I’ve ever had.

Signature Gifts Ltd is involved in a number of websites, what are they and do they target different particular gift niches?

We specialise in personalised gifts and bringing the best and most original ideas to market. Our premium site is www.gonedigging.co.uk which carries all of our gift ranges including our best sellers like original newspapers (we have 7 million in warehouses on the west coast of Scotland), Personalised Football Books for all the major teams in the UK, and recently we’ve brought out a range of personalised calendars, spoof newspapers, and personalised wine and spirits. We also have Historic Newspapers and www.backissuenewspapers.co.uk, and recently we’ve launched www.simplypersonalized.com in the US which carries a similar mix to GoneDigging.

Do you ever think of the £1m of stock you’ve got to shift when creating your marketing plans, or you do you just look at how to make incremental sales?

Our newspapers sell very well all the year round and yes we have a huge amount but we don’t have to worry about them not selling as customers love them especially for anniversaries and birthdays. All the gifts that we have created ourselves are made to order. Occasionally a big order with a major retailer may fall through and we’ll market that excess with a promotion like a 2 for 1. So we are a lean organisation in terms of inventory. We’re always looking to build incremental sales with new PPC campaigns and our affiliates being our prime focus.

As an affiliate I often find it difficult to manage a number of different sites, but how do you cope looking after your sites and getting the most out of each?

I was shocked when I was first introduced to the affiliate world and the amount of sites some are running! I deal in the main with 5 sites (we white label for a substantial number of newspaper sites) and I focus on just those five. Yes it can be a headache so I use a combination of a big notebook, post-it notes and a database (built in FileMaker) project management system. Despite that I do end up with the occasional fire-fight as several projects collide. It can be like a scene from Armageddon around here with me acting like Steve Buscemi (only with his hair burnt off).

I see you’ve been at Signature Gifts since March 2007, but how has the company and affiliate industry changed in that time?

I still think of myself as a newbie in the affiliate world but even in two and a bit years I’ve seen a few changes, the rise of the all dominant voucher code site, more integration of data feeds, and the rise of the content unit. Affiliates remind me of our developer programme at FileMaker both groups are characterised by being independent thinkers who live in bedrooms getting through buckets of work but affiliates are defiantly more entrepreneurial and have a lot more social skills (wink).

It’s nice to see that other affiliates rate your work highly with Ray nominating you for “Publisher’s Choice Of Affiliate Manager 2009”, although you didn’t win (there was some very stiff competition), what do you think makes a good affiliate manager?

I think an affiliate should be asked that question. I’m always looking for tips to support our affiliates and chatting to other affiliate managers, using the forum and Linkedin has helped a lot. I’ve tried to give our affiliates what they need before they ask for it, support their activities and help increase our coverage with increased commission and other incentives . I’ve also worked on our image as the leader in personalised gifts with fun ideas (supported by Sheema Luca at Webgains) like personalised photographs at the A4U Awards and having a Caricaturist at the upcoming A4U Expo. Recently I came up with the idea of an Affiliate Support Pack. This is a matrix (a big word for a list in a table) of what we can offer our affiliates in return for activity. Email me at firstname.surname@signature-gifts.co.uk
if you’re an affiliate and you’d like to know more.

I’ve always wondered how merchants choose which network to offer their programme on. For me it would be a balance of trust, technical competency, promotional tools, ability to offer relevant affiliates and their availability to sort out any given issue quickly and correctly. But how and why did you choose Webgains?

I’ve worked a lot with agencies (networks) in the past and the above points are all valid. What I look for is a good fit. All the networks we’ve had dealings with have had a lot of the above on offer. Webgains has become our main network because of it’s a much leaner organisation compared to the big boy networks and therefore you don’t feel lost and we also value their well trained account management team, their reporting is also excellent, technical support is first class, and they are also willing to adapt and promote new ideas very quickly.

If there is any one thing you would like to change about the affiliate industry, what would it be and why?

I wouldn’t change anything in the industry. What I would like to do though is give everyone in the industry a ‘secret hour.’ This would be an hour each day that you can have to yourself and cannot be disturbed. Think of all the ideas you could put into action with just one hour a day.

I know you’re a bit of comedy writer. Share one of your favourite skits with us :-)

I love comedy. What made me want to write were two sketches; ‘Constable Savage’ from Not the Nine O’Clock News and this one from Amnesty International’s Secret Policeman’s Ball, the great Peter Cook. If you want to read one of mine have a look here (this one made it onto ITV1 a few years back, very, very late at night).

Other than putting pen to paper to induce giggles, is there anything else you like to do with your spare time?

I love a good movie so I have a vast DVD collection, I like to just hang around with mates talking nonsense and generally trying to rid the world of evil, cook lots of different types of food, go to the gym, watch International Rugby, listening to all music except Jazz, and I may get back into Tai Chi time willing.

And as a parting note ... I’m looking to buy a new work machine. PC or Mac?

Lee: Mac? [Ed: Too late, I've bought another Dell machine :-(

10 Quick Link Building Factors

2009-09-03T10:13:00.001+01:00

In my post: Top 10 Tools To Improve Affiliate Productivity I mentioned that I use SEO Spyglass to find useful links for my clients and to establish the link landscape for their competitors (you can dig up some hilarious stuff!). But, I usually take things a bit further and get the TrustRank from SEOMoz to build a more holistic view.

I must admit there's just so much garbage spoken about link-building, its unreal. Some people like to say they're experts when they've on ever read a handful of blog posts and hardly researched the impact of any campaign they've implemented. For me the impact of any link-building should be assessed after a week, month, six months and beyond - not just a report saying we've got "x number of links for you this month".

So cut through the bollocks I thought I'd give my list of factors to look out for. Then its upto you to say which you agree with, which you'd like to look at in more detail and those where your own empirical evidence suggests otherwise.

First off, here's a quick screen grab of the sort of information available fro SEO Spyglass:

There's a whole load to cogitate on in there. But when ever you use information such as that, keep these value factors in mind:

1) Leave "Page Rank" at your office door - it induces laziness and is the currency of the ill-informed.

2) Authority/Trust of the page - consider the number and nature of the links to that individual 3rd party page by viewing its link profile both internally and externally.

Look at how many links the site gives to it internally.

3) Anchor text - Think about the contents of the anchor text and try and make it relevant to your target keywords.

Don't make the link text standardised across all of your link-building efforts.

On the domain buying front this concept adds weight here.

4) Other Links Out - look at how many other links there are pointing out on that page and build that into your calculation of the value you'll get out of them.

5) Other Off-Page Links - look at the number of links out of the page to other pages on the site.

6) Link Location - I've said this for years. Links in footers, separated by pipes are big give away and, I believe, are devalued to a significant amount. Links in blogrolls, I believe, I reduced a touch.

7) Contextual Nature of Links - I'm lumping a few factors here, but I believe the distance other keywords on the page are to the link has a relative impact on the relevance of the link.

8) Relevance of the Page - This is related to 7) but looks a bit more holistically. I can't put my finger on it, but I'm roughly putting this at 8) but could well be lower.

9) Reciprocal Linking - My views on this have changed over time. Just like the other factors, I've come to view this a case of degree and context. If you over do it (say 80% of your links are reciprocated) then you may have a problem. But then this is further factors by what is the "norm" in your niche. If everyone is doing it, and the search engines don't view your industry as being one of the highly competitive ones, then it may well prove not to be an issue.

10) Anchor Text Age
If you're looking at a potential site to get a link from because your competitor does, consider that that link may be imparting more weight because its been around longer. If you get a link you may get a quick boost for it, but that benefit may decay in the short/medium term.

Consider this when you look at the benefits you could from your link-building campaign - do you need a short term boost, or a long term benefit?

There are many other factors with decreasing levels of importance. But its crucial to understand that each of these factors not only depends on the competitive nature of your industry, but how you apply them will further depend on what you actually need to increase your link profile by a given %. What you need to implement may differ greatly from a site which you THINK has a very similar link profile to yours.

Very Quick 25 Factors For A Successful Affiliate SEO

2009-08-24T15:03:00.004+01:00

Just following up on the SEO Search Ranking Factors (before I spend the next few hours going through some hotjiggedy research) here's my very quick 25 factors for a successful affiliate SEO):

Apologies for "SEO speak", and they're somewhat in order of importants

relevant links from valued and diverse external sites.
Keywords at the front of the page title
organised architecture of site design parent / child relationships in the inter-category sense
external anchor text matching target keywords
get geo-targetting right
as much unique, useful content as possible and make sure that its not copied (or if it is, make sure its referenced)
useful, to a degree, to have kwd, domains i.e. product domains
use other H tags wisely
Variable KW phrases in h1's
target KW in internal crawlable anchortext
ensure that you have suitable linkability of your domain/page
try and increase the number of internal links to the most important pages
use of error-free sitemaps in GWT
get KW phrases within variable text at the top 50-100 words on the page
make the title/snippet more attractive to increase CTR from SERPS with the resultant secondary effects
check regularly for server issues
reduce template similarity between sections and avoid nasty boilerplates
server response time / page load time
grow inbound links organically (or make it look like they are)
get away from long, complicated url structures
take note of searchwiki and try and influence it
adding fresh content / feed content from other sources
appropriate alt text
site neighbourhood (linking and hosting)
largely different meta kw and desc
and a free one: try and link out to other relevant sites

The above is just meant to be a starters whilst I update my own (more comprehensive) list of influencing facors (or golden rules as I call them to clients).

And sorry for not blogging recently, I've been a tad busy. But the upshot is I should be blogging soon about my multi-industry review of link-building strategies which looks at a few affiliate sites and tries to accurately determine which factors do actually improve rankings.

Lesson In Life: Remove The Weakest Links

2009-08-05T10:30:00.004+01:00

I'm a lazy git. I'll do what ever's easiest when it comes to my affiliate stuff as I'm just so busy with client work. As part of that laziness I'd use the ShopWindow from Affiliate Window to find products and deep link. I wasn't that lazy as I worked out a way to include tracking codes into it to give the product details etc. After spending some time doing this I "reverted to type" and started to irregularly check my affiliate emails - preferring instead to use them to find product info etc.

Big mistake! I've missed all of these "Less than 10% of Shop Window quota remaining for account" emails and now the tool that I use for a good proportion of my deep-linking is down, kapput, with no sign of life.

soap_error Object ( [sCode] => ns1:Client.LIMIT_1 [sString] => Insufficient Quota [sDetails] => getMerchant: You have used all your operations quota )
1
soap_error Object ( [sCode] => ns1:Client.LIMIT_1 [sString] => Insufficient Quota [sDetails] => getMerchant: You have used all your operations quota )
1

I'm glad I started using Short URL to track deep links and merchant category pages, but its still going to be a pain in the arse waiting for the Shop Window quota to reset.

So a quick tip: When you're in Affiliate mode, ensure that you try and cut out as many weak links, or opportunity for failure as possible. Get yourself a decent deeplinking / link-cloaking tool and try and find a productive way of sifting the important emails from the unimportant ones.

p.s. my fecking hosting company won't even let me upload a robots.txt to prevent the bots from crawling the shopwindow site - fecking great!

Wednesday morning affiliate FAIL!

Update: George has refreshed it. I need to get my arse in gear big time on it!

Google Now Monitising Google Products With Adwords Space Inclusion

2009-07-21T08:29:00.005+01:00

I may have missed this as I've been "offline" pretty much the last few days. But has anyone else seen the inclusion of the "Show products from this advertiser" in the Adwords space?

I don't hang around Google Base much these days so haven't seen anything asking me to integrate with client Adwords campaigns. Nor can I see anything in the Adwords interface or even their Adwords Blog.

I take it this is just a test?

But it looks like either a particular affiliate is lucky enough to be a guinea pig or they've got some pretty good leverage. Also to my mind, Google are monetising those Google Base products too - about time I think ;-)

http://www.google.co.uk/aclk?sa=l&ai=CyJJJ1m1lSuuiIs6AjAeMlIDPDt20i3jhkYu5DO622g4QCCD
HmPgFKAhQ54qCBWC7vq6D0AqQAQKgAY275_4DyAEBqgQeT9AvsKdjyJQWt
VUVj0Dks1jNgq3tTmiiyHBoD0bF&num=16&q=
http://www.allposters.co.uk/-sp/I%2520Love%2520Vinyl_i4969
967_.htm%3FAID%3D1023776824%26GCID%3DC15100x057%26lang%3D1
%26dom%3D1%26SEM_GBASE_ID%3D1&docid=5314898454986533757
&sig=AGiWqtxwEqJz04OEhDuDQy5GeV4fz6r4fQ

http://www.google.co.uk/aclk?sa=l&ai=CyJJJ1m1lSuuiIs6AjAeMlIDPDt20i3jhkYu5DO622g4QCCDHmPgFK
AhQ54qCBWC7vq6D0AqQAQKgAY275_4DyAEBqgQeT9AvsKdjyJQWtVUVj0Dks1j
Ngq3tTmiiyHBoD0bF&num=16&sig=AGiWqtwfqyTaALWheFWYMCXRS
zdGzXYPTQ&q=http://affiliates.allposters.com
/link/redirect.asp%3Flang%3D100%26c%3Dc%26search%3D44031%26AID%
3D1629062913%26keyword%3DT-shirt

Interesting - now I've got another bloody thing to add to my "to do" list :-(

If Affiliates Were T-Shirts - Barbados Chargrilled!

2009-07-09T10:50:00.010+01:00

To celebrate the launch of my Barbados-inspired Funniest T Shirts site today, I've decided to look at the site that the main inspiration (Charlie Shiner) runs - Chargrilled and see if there are any t-shirts sum up some of the people that also went on the Affiliate Future trip. Oh and I've got the obligatory twitter profile for it!

So here goes, and sorry if I've missed anyone out - it chuffing took ages to get this selection up!

Tom Quinn - Top Dad
There's no explanation really - "Dad" is Tom's nickname!

Tom - Magic Freebies - I Do My Own Stunts
Tom managed to injure himself wrestling an inflatable dolphin in the pool at 3am - nuff said!

Ray - Viagra is for pussies
I'm really not sure I should go into details here ;-)

Nadeem - Work Is Fun! (thanks to facebook)
The lad couldn't get away from Maryln (is laptop) and did too much work.

Mike Tomkins - Cashback
Obviously he runs a cashback site! It's a top one!

Me - It's All Fun And Games Until The Cops Show Up!
After a very late night, I got a call at 8am from the car hire company saying that five days after I returned my car that they're going to get the police involved as they couldn't find it - it was where I left it!! The dozy feckers!

Max Bramwell - Me Love You Long Time
Well Max became "very close" to another member of the group - say no more!

Stacey Alexander - U=QT(pi)
Not at all related to the above entry, but there was a certain person that thought Stacey was a QT(pi) - OK, so we all did!

Matt Wood - Where The Hell Is Matt?
Matt had the knack of turning up when the beer started flow - I think its called "pacing yourself?"

Martin Burge - The Ginger One
I couldn't bloody remember his name when we were there and had to refer to him as "The Ginger One"

Lee Bradshaw - Boobies Make Me Smile
I love this one. I won't say much as his wife may read it, but McBrides, gorgeous lady, boobies, camera says enough!

Karel - I Love Lamp
The lad had to snuggle down with a lamp in my room before we flew. I'll have to ask him or Laura what its like to be constantly woken with a lamp prodding you in the back!

Joe Connor - Slow Children 1000 points each
This may have been on the previous trip, but joe nearly killed half of the population of the Barbados school system with his driving!

J Lil - What Goes On Tour, Goes On Facebook
James probably had a few issues when he returned due to the odd photo that was uploaded to Facebook. The problem was that he did absolutely nothing to be concerned about - honest!

Hannah Swift - Stop me if i am gurning
Hannah has the ability to pull daft faces seemingly without thinking whenever a camera is in front of her!

Charlie Shiner - I'd like to apologise in advance for my behaviour tonight!
He runs Chargrilled and so many of his t-shirts in the "offensive category" were very apt to sum up his Barbados trip. However, some things should stay on tour, so I've settled for the "I'd like to apologise in advance for my behavior tonight!" t-shirt as he should wear one of these every time he is out on the lash - a disgrace, but funny as f....

An Interview With Mike Field - MDS Battery New On Webgains

2009-07-03T10:16:00.001+01:00

So MDS Battery are now running their programme with Webgains, and to celebrate their relaunch I'm giving away 1 ticket to the Existem Summer BBQ to top MDS affiliate on Webgains this month.

From what I can recollect MDS Battery is merchant ID 1 on Affiliate Future and first began in the world of Affiliate Marketing back in 2001. Although there weren't by any stretch of the imagination the first merchant in the industry, I'm sure their MD Mike Field has some views that many of the more recent merchants may find interesting.(*)

1) Back in 2001 what made you take the bold step and start an affiliate programme and why Affiliate Future when there were some more established players in the market such as DGM and Commission Junction?

IBG were developing our eCommerce website and decided that it would be a good idea to test their affiliate tracking solution and so set it up for us - we just went along with it as we thought it would be interesting to see how it turned out. There wasn't a conscious decision to look at affiliate marketing as method to increase our sales back then - we just fell into it.

2) Over the past 8 years or so you must have seen a huge change in the industry, not least the nature of affiliates. How have those changes affected you?

We've seen a huge number of changes in the industry not least the greater number of professional organisations that have affiliate marketing as their major revenue generating method.

Previously we would see a number of niche sites just adding the odd link in to our site. Today we've seen a substantial growth in generalist sites that don't cover any niche in particular, just shopping or offers in general.

3) I would have thought that you'd have hundreds of affiliates climbing over themselves to promote you guys seeing as you've got a great number of high-value products that can't be bought in the high street and with the model numbers it should be really easy for affiliates to PPC them. What is the nature of your affiliate base? Is it highly geared towards PPC or SEO?

The affiliate base is actually very reflective of the UK marketplace, with an even spread of affiliates in the PPC, reward and voucher code sectors accounting for the majority of sales. It would be fair to say that there is great potential as you say in PPC as there are lots of very specific searches. Similarly customers searching for the MDS brand will naturally gravitate towards reward sites if they are members. As MDS believes in providing the best prices it does not issue voucher codes, however the ranking of certain voucher code affiliates in natural listings accounts for their sales. There is a wider and untapped opportunity with content driven affiliates that will be the focus of the coming months.

We do have a very substantial PPC affiliate base as it would appear to be much easier for them to find keywords from our website or glean them from our product feed. I would put this down to the fact many professional affiliates wouldn't have websites targeting our niche.

Furthermore, there are relatively few battery merchants compared to gifts or more traditional electronic products so some affiliates would not consider it worthwhile to targeting our niche - even though you're right in saying we stock a good number of high value batteries.

4) I recommended that Existem AM took over the management of your affiliate programme after I spotted and valued the "abuse" of brand-bidding. Is that something you're looking to continue?

We're still in early days of our new more professional approach and we're keen to have a better understanding of what affiliate marketing adds to our bottom line and the benefits of leveraging the knowledge and experience that using an agency offers.

We've never had our campaign professionally managed so are looking forward to seeing what Existem can offer us.

5) Many affiliates just don't understand (sorry) how affiliate marketing fits into an overall internet marketing strategy (this is just my view as a very basic rule of thumb), let alone a complete strategy. How steep has the learning curve been for you with working with affiliates?

The main issue is that we have to work together. I feel that often other retailers use affiliate marketing because their competitors are using it, without actually understanding the pro's and con's. I see affiliate marketing as filling the gaps or niches that we can not fill as well as giving us greater exposure and sales in the more generic areas where we just could not hope to cover ourselves. There's so much demand for batteries and there's a lot of knowledge that affiliates have that allows us to mutually benefit from that fact.

One thing it took us a bit of time to realise is the exact nature of how affiliates promote us and which product ranges they advertise. Obviously they gravitate to the higher value products and we need to make sure that we still cover the lower unit price but higher sales volume products ourselves with SEO.

6) What have been the biggest mistakes you've made with your affiliate programme and how have you rectified them?

Basically not to manage the programme for the past 5 years. It's a definite mistake. Affiliates can offer you so much when you work with them - that's something that we've neglected. At first Lee [Ed: that's me] made us aware that of a few issues that we had with the programme whilst he worked on other areas and recommended that we hired Existem AM to get to grips with the programme and sort it out by ensuring that our affiliates got all the information and tools that they needed. We've rectified the situation by taking on professional help and making sure we're aware of our targets and that the programme is heading in the right direction.

Not managing it properly for the past 5 years. This is rectified by myself and Existem AM.

7) You've now launched your affiliate programme with Webgains. What was the impetuous for that decision and how do you feel it will enhance your customer acquisition strategy?

Basically when we took on Existem AM we thought it would be a good idea for a clean break, to start again and push forward with a new mindset. We'll be looking to grow the programme rapidly and feel that we are able to really do this with a fresh start as we'll be forced to re-evaluate every aspect of our programme without falling to the trap of taking the easy route of letting things stand as they are.

We've also made massive strides in the last 6 months / year to improve our conversion rates by constantly improving the shopping cart and user experience. So combined with that new start with the other forms of online marketing, we thought it'd be beneficial to continue that through our entire marketing efforts.

8) With the range of batteries you offer being so diverse and with the knowledge that you are incredibly popular for motorcycle batteries, do you feel that a future strategy to increase your affiliate base is to look for more generic affiliates that know how to drive volume, or to look for niche affiliates that have the ability to productively target specific niche audiences?

Both really. I'm interested in niche markets as we have a real passion for batteries and how people use them and it would be nice to increase our exposure on motorcycle websites, computing sites and the such like. However, I'm realistic and understand the fantastic volumes that the generalist sites can offer, hopefully some of those sites will choose to give us more exposure as we'll be offering them more communication and the site does convert exceptionally well.

9) Personally I know affiliate incentives can work really well. But I also know that it’s very easy for them to fall flat on their face if you can't get the coverage. Do you have any planned?

Affiliate incentives are tricky things to administer to ensure that they achieve sufficient exposure. However they do provide a benefit to affiliate recruitment levels and ongoing sales. Given that the MDS product range includes items that would be dear to an affiliate’s heart such as Laptop batteries, I would envisage that we will run an incentive at some point in the not too distant future.

10) Its all doom and gloom at the moment. But how is business?

Business is booming here. When people get into financial issues they don't buy new products they just try and "mend" them with a new battery or chargers. For instance, new motorcycle purchases are down 17% on the year. We've got a good selection of motorcycle batteries and chargers and they've been flying out of the door recently. The same can be said for our large selection of laptop chargers and accessories - they're doing really well at the moment. Also we've been selling quite a few digital camera batteries as people just aren't buying new cameras and instead just looking to spend much less on a new battery.

11) If you could give one tip to retailers launching an affiliate programme for the first time, what would it be?

Get someone to manage it that knows what they're doing.

Great Quote From Awin - And So True For SEO

2009-07-02T13:11:00.003+01:00

The following quote can be found on an intriguing page on the Affiliate Window website:

But I think it makes so much better sense as:

But to me SEO is not only a science but an ART!

I'm sure most SEO's recognise the problem when those people you're involved with too easily see a set of circumstances and automatically assign causality to something that best suits their agenda.

I'm anal about getting down to real cause and effect. I obsess over data. I've proven over and over again that each visitor is not created equal.

The issue often arises in communicating cause an effect. This is difficult in traditional industries, but when you mix in the huge number of factors that affect rankings and revenue per visitor it leaves even more room for misunderstandings to arise.

Here's an example. Say you change the focus of your "intent" keyword and achieve a nil-sum improvement in terms of traffic numbers, but you get better converting traffic, what data should you be looking at?

Ok, here's some "intent" keywords from a client and the conversion rates from the keyphrases that include that particular keyword:

(site average) 3.54%
buy - 2.66%
best - 5.56%
cheap - 2.79%
cheapest - 3.70%
deal - 5.26%
price - 2.65%
delivery - 5.88%
" uk" - 6.56%
sale - 11.25%

Now it's just too simplistic to say that you should focus primarily on "sale" as it converts at 11.25% when you need to build in the volume of traffic available into your strategy.

Good SEO, to me, is about weighing up the keywords that drive traffic, those that convert, the product data available, their/your ability to implement SEO improvements and the overall marketing objectives of the organisations you're involved in.

One thing that does annoy me in this industry (Mark - I'm moaning as requested) is that people too easily say "X" is a cause of "Y" when there are several factors that go into event "Y" occurring - some in our control, some not; some are as a result of SEO, some not.

My biggest fear is SEO has turned into an "in box, out box" industry where people only care about visitor numbers and don't look into profitability or completely disregard the impact of SEO.

To me SEO isn't necessarily about increasing total visitor numbers, its about increasing the value gained from each visitor whilst ensuring that SEO contributes positively to the bottom line - just like affiliate marketing should do.

My hope is that affiliates, merchants and website owners become a bit more analytical and use the power that the analytics tools availabe to them. The only issue is that we all need to look at the data that matters and think long and hard, explore all other less convenient answers before assign causality.

Luckily I've been in the game for 12 years and spent the previous 3 years studying statistics and causality via an Economics degree, so I've seen all the "~~excuses~~" "reasons" under the sun. The real reason is often something a bit more tangential than you think.

Now go and read Freakonomics for real world examples of why relying on the most obvious conclusions can be the most misleading - and this has never been more true than with today's Search Engines.

N.b. I'm still catching up on emails sent during my jollies. So if I've not got back to yet, hold tight.

Thanks Guys For Barbados But I Won't Be Going Next Year

2009-06-30T11:13:00.004+01:00

I must admit that this year's Affiliate Future Barbados event was fantastic and I must really thank Chris from Sunshine for making it happen and the guys for making it so enjoyable. The biggest thanks to two people though: firstly J Lil for being a great host and being there for me when I nearly went to prison! And also Charley Shiner making the nights hilarious - I still don't believe you found those knickers on the floor of the McBrides! I'm sure they were personally retrieved! But also thanks to him I've got inspiration for a cracking blog! A cracking domain name has just been purchased :-)

Also a big thanks to Ant from Love it Large (launching soon) and Cho Yung Tea (going to put an order in!) who sponsored the Rum Ball Rally and made it such a hoot. It was hard work trying to organise it with J Lil but I'm sure everyone enjoyed it.

The thing is that I won't be trying to win a ticket for next year. The reasons being that despite there's talk of even more people going next year, I feel that its about time that people that have never been before should have more chance of going - I've now been 4 times (3 with Affiliate Future) and its such a hoot that others should enjoy it. Another reason is that, what with getting married this year, hopefully Laura will be about 7 months pregnant (if all things work out) so I can't really leave her.

But here's a few pics to leave you with (I didn't get my camera out much)

Risking life and limb:

Team Fun II Celebrating finding a goat, or was it a sheep?

Birds do it, bees do it. Even educated snails do it:

Might as well get another pic in whilst we wait for the beers to arrive:

Is it illegal to drink and drive in Barbados?

Didn't find any

Not the only day that Tom wished he didn't get up in the morning:

He was pretty pleased to catch this fish

Nadeem takes a break from Marilyn:

Sexy Beast Ray:

Its Still There:

Fat Rain:

Bird:

Lizard thingy:

Kat hitting the waves

Scene From James Bond:

Not Scene From James Bond:

Just look at the colour of the sea:

It was only a couple of feet:

I just love Crane Beach:

The effects of over-exposure to the sun:

Avoid Paid Posts - So Official It Hurts (Or Should Do)

2009-06-17T08:55:00.001+01:00

Don't you just love those people that start businesses based on a misunderstanding of Google's T&C's or at least don't modify them as they change?

Going back over Matt Cutt's presentation "Straight from Google: What You Need to Know" (.ppt) there's a slide (44) that is entitled "Avoid paid posts" - how much more obvious does it need to be? But if you still can't grasp the concept here's the slide:

But what does "spam" mean and what does "not contain unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites" mean? To my mind it's a bit too muddy for my liking.

If people take the "spam" element as content that is completely, or largely unrelated to the theme of the site the "content for links" sits on then there are a number of people that should be VERY worried!

And what's more, the declaration element is getting even fuzzier when you consider that Matt allegedly dumped Shoemoney on Twitter for a paid-per-tweet. As a side note, I did think Shoemaker's reply a bit childish!

Ahhh! So There's A Name For It: Katamari Philosophy

2009-06-15T10:22:00.000+01:00

I've always believed in this tactic but never knew the name for it. My view has always been that as an affiliate blogger that you should focus on a small niche such as "trainers for one-legged pygmies" (no offence to people with one leg or pygmies of course!) and then you should gradually roll out of that niche as you gain a level respect and coverage of that is sufficient to sustain it.

So reading Matt Cutt's presentation: “Straight from Google: What You Need to Know” from WordCamp San Francisco and in particular slide 33 and then searching on it I found Andrew's description of the Katamari Philosophy:

I know that I missed this presentation, but I can't be aware of EVERY piece of SEO dialogue :-(.

Other things that Matt said was that you shouldn't obssess about links and page range. And I completely agree with that. If I'm in a niche that I'm totally confident about then I spend about 0.5% on overtly thinking of links, 95% thinking of content and 4.5% thinking of (and implementing) the on page SEO.

There's many affiliate blogs that have worked well at gaining a reputation that in term generate inbound links and it doesn't take me how to do it, every second tweet seems to be about it these days, but just try and be original and don't fall in to the trap of having a formulaic approach to building reputation by thinking that if a post has A,B and C that it will DEFINITELY work.

I'm currently implementing the Katamari Philosophy on the small niche (relatively) that I bang on about into a less small niche and its a fascinating process. What's more interesting and satisfying is when you work in only slightly related niches and as you imply the Katamari Philosophy they're consumed by the new site:

An example of this would be my Easter Eggs site linking towards my generic chocolate site - relevant and fair to link.

But then you can also use other, generally non-related sites but which has a slightly related post to help gain support (links and traffic) to both your other niches and the Katamari site. This may be a post about a chocolate football on my old Euro 2008 site linking to both the chocolate site for that product or the Easter eggs site via a link to a general post about football Easter eggs.

Again, as you dominate the micro-niches and then the larger niche then you can use those to spawn new micro-niches and start the process again.

Am I the only one that finds affiliate site evolution interesting? :-(

Want To Work With/For Get Visible? SEO Consultants Required

2009-06-09T13:44:00.003+01:00

Things are going a bit mental here. I'm getting a flood of potential business through and I'm just not able to deal with it all. I'm looking for some people with a proven track record to initially sub-contract and then, if desired, become an employed SEO Consultant.

Things are a bit fluid at the moment and I'm yet to work out the final details of what's needed based on client requirements etc, but if anyone is provisionally interested as consulting for Get Visible, then could you drop me a line with your experience, location and details.

Obviously your details will be kept in the strictest confidence and IR35 would need to be considered.

The Day The Media Died [Video]

2009-06-09T12:35:00.001+01:00

Ahh I remember the day when offline media was "woop-woop". I actually worked for the first internet company to advertise on TV in this country. Back then I was thinking "why waste your cash offline". They went bust.

But this video is about the death of traditional media advertising - but its more interesting as its sung to Don McLean's Amercian Pie.

Thanks For The Cheer Guys ...

2009-06-03T15:37:00.002+01:00

... and for voting me second in a great bunch of nominees - Kirsty thoroughly deserved her award!

There's a few things that came to light in the whole process; one of them was that I realised that all those nominated offer something different, be it great advice for new and seasoned affiliates; the tackling of issues that desperately need raising as well as lot of insights into their affiliate lives - and the odd bit of showing off ;-).

Another thing I realised was this blog is appreciated for taking on those contentious issues that some may not wish to tackle. In fact Mr Pearson was "annoyed" that I hadn't bitched about him as much the last few months ;-) - what are you like? You can spend some of that £2,218,000 you had cash in the bank on 31st July 2008 on me you cheeky bugger! (That's not an invitation for prostitution, well maybe ;-) )

Perhaps I've got a bit of time before Barbados to go through all the voucher code sites and see what the state of play is for them to keep Mark happy - I'm thinking, however, that I'll have to make the data anonymous?

Also I'd like to say well done to all the others that won, were commended and nominated - even to those that didn't make it to that stage. Some of the decisions I found a tad strange, but you're always going to get that.

And the highlight of the night? Well it was all great, but hooking up with the Jmeister is always a hoot - see pic. But it's gotta be the reunion of "Team Fun" - a great bunch of guys and gals!

Testing Google Moderator - Anyone Got Any Questions?

2009-06-01T08:48:00.004+01:00

I know you guys are all clued up to the nine's but I'm testing Google Moderator to see how well it can be used for Consultant -> Clients (with many peeps) and wondered if it could be good for an SEO / Affiliate Q&A.

Feel free to drop over some if you have any? You can access it here.

Who Says Work Has To Be All Reports And Invoices?

2009-05-31T19:56:00.002+01:00

Last month I thought I'd redistribute some of my affiliate earnings in the form of chocolate to a client who I knew had young kids. I decided to spend some of my Hotel Chocolat bonus on their own range of fantastic chocolate for kids to say thanks for being a great client (ahh gush). It was nice to get a nice little thank you back from the kids too:

So all you miserable buggers out there, buy your clients some nice stuff every now and then - you make enough! And if you're an affiliate, you don't have to have a yacht to treat networks, agencies or merchants - the odd small gift here and there would be much appreciated by them!

And if you're wondering what's in the picture, I think I got them some Fruity Chocolate Puddles, the Strawberry Sensation Egg Sandwich and some other stuff.

Crutial Data To Track For Large Sites - It's Not All Visitor Figures

2009-05-29T08:08:00.005+01:00

I was doing a post about how to decide on what information to take on board as a new affiliate, but as the content below began to grow, I decided to leave that bit until Monday and extend this bit - what data should you track?

Back in 2007 I had a post that was featured in the search cap of the day on the Search Engine Land site. That wasn't my intention, but my post "Google Analytics Please Give Me For Christmas" was aimed at trying to get more useful information for affiliates and SEO's. Now, obviously Analytics has improved immensely, and Google Webmaster Tools has become a source of essential information, but I still feel site owners should do a fair bit of their own leg-work.

For many of my client sites I track a number of non-obvious KPI's that will help you gauge the impact of any changes that you'll make after reading "hints" and "tips" from affiliate or SEO blogs and forums.

* Obviously track the total number of pages indexed in each section. Also keep track of the total number of pages present in each section, which will allow you to do the next one.

* Track the total number of pages in a given section against the total number present in Google's database (site:www.sitename.com/section/ or site:sitename.com/ "unique text") - this shows you the level of indexation - your goal should be to try and increase this ratio. (Be careful to track actual pages indexed and not just the links to those pages being indexed)

* Another element to track is the total number of pages in that section against the landing pages to that section (for the site as a whole data you'll need to track total search engine traffic). This will show the effectiveness of the changes that you make. The chart below gives an example of what it could look like (with fictitious data)

Obviously there's no ratio to aim for - its the change in the ratio that counts. You could set yourself targets, but remember, if the total ratio is going up, you may have a certain sub-section doing well, but other pages may be declining. This could be the case if all the pages within that section aren't linked to equally.

* Track the relative performance of "intent keywords" which you should be building into your site's structure. Choose keywords such as "best", "buy", "cheap", "cheapest" etc then make sure you create reports that show you the performance of those keywords. If you start to target specific keywords then make sure you track visits from key phrases that include those keywords.

- * From that look at which pages get traffic from those keyphrases and then look at the other keyphrases that deliver traffic to that page and then consider tracking some of those keyphrase stems.

* If you can, track the ratio of users that use your search service when they actually found your site from a non-brand search phrase. This may indicate that Google isn't delivering the user to the most relevant page and would suggest that you should re-optimise that phrase or extend your content to cover it.

Obviously you should add other KPI's such as:

* Ratio of non-paid search traffic to referral traffic (and the net figures)

* Ratio of brand to non-brand related searches - your brand, of course.

* And a whole host of goal/sale orientated KPI's - but that's for another post.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is, look beyond visits and the how much you're getting from Google. There's stuff under the hood that you need to know about and track whilst you're listening to information on the 'net and modifying your site following guidance from "gurus".

But whatever you do, keep a change-log, if you're tweaking so you can match your "improvements" to site indexation and traffic - and don't be afraid to un-do stuff.

As a parting note, make sure you're aware that different changes you make will take varying lengths of time to be reflected in the search engine databases.

Online Marketing Job Vacancy London

2009-05-28T11:31:00.003+01:00

As a favour I'm posting an "online marketing job vacancy". Feel free to review the details below and then send your CV & covering email to the address below.

We have an exciting opportunity for an online Marketing position with a high growth business (online transport marketplace – www.shiply.com). This is a challenging role, with a wide scope and excellent future opportunities. The candidate will be working with the company director on the various marketing methods in London.

If you are passionate about the internet, are marketing savvy and up for a new challenge, then this is the role for you.

The role will include the following;

SEO and PPC marketing

Keyword Research – search market volumes, brand and product awareness
Competitor research – identifying common trends and competitor weakness/strengths
Onsite optimisation – internal linking, meta data, page title propositions, optimised page content
Link building – natural ways to build links (brand and generic) – unique content distribution
Creating, maintaining and optimising Google Adwords campaigns
Landing page optimisation
Report and analysing – Google Analytics - increase traffic - Enhance site conversion – maximise ROI

Online marketing / branding

Planning and establishing relationships with potential web site partners / advertising opportunities
Finding new, relevant traffic sources

Social Media marketing

Establishing presence on the major social media sites / relevant forums
Monitoring, building and engaging conversations online
Rolling out new interesting content / link bait
Adding new content to the blog

Affiliate marketing

Setting up affiliate campaign and working with network (Ed: no cold calls from networks please)
Establishing new affiliates
Liaising with affiliates to showcase new products and updating product feed
Preparing and sending new banners
Checking commissions

Other marketing methods

Assisting with Offline PR marketing where needed and liasing with our PR agency.

The right candidate should be able to demonstrate the following attributes:
- Good proven experience with managing SEO & PPC campaigns
- Highly creative and keen to give ideas and suggestions
- Bright, enthusiastic, proactive and dedicated
- Self motivated and not afraid to take on a challenge
- Good IT knowledge as well as a keen interest in all things internet related
- Has a high attention to detail
- Has excellent written and spoken English/copy writing skills
- Has a high proficiency in Excel and Word
- Has good analytical skills
- Is a team player

A starting salary will be proposed according to relevant experience.

Please apply to this advert with a covering letter by email to the following address: recruitment@shiply.com- with the subject title - Online Marketing Position

STRICTLY NO AGENCIES.

You're Getting Rat-Arsed - Courtesy of CantBarsed & Your's Truly

2009-05-26T15:03:00.002+01:00

Ok, so £200 won't go a huge way with 50+ of us going. But Joe from the promotional codes site CantBarsed (cough, anchor text) has decided to convert the £200 of chocolate he won into £200 of Barbados Dollars to spend on my stag do! So everyone say thanks to Joe!!

An Interview With Someone You SHOULD Know - Judith Lewis Search Director at i-level

2009-05-21T13:32:00.004+01:00

Don't take me posting two interviews in a row as me being too busy to expose more of my successes and failures, just take it as a good thing - I'm not bitching about stuff ;-)

I heard about the i-level affiliate SEO and content surgery from the mighty Matt Bailey and thought it'd be worth finding out more about the event and the person behind it - Judith Lewis, so I fired her off a few questions and found her responses intriguing and enlightening.

Hi Judith. Give us a quick run down of who you are, what your background is and what you do at i-level.

I’m one of the Search Directors here at i-level but I work across a variety of different departments as we offer fully integrated solutions so my expertise in various fields helps me work within several different departments.

One thing I love about your blog - SEO Chicks is its down-to-earth nature. I often say that a blog should be like having a conversation in the pub - are you really that much of a "hip chick" in real life? What do you get up to away from SEO and i-level?

If you ask my husband, all I do is network when I’m not networking :-) I got online in 1986 and I have to admit that I have had experiences with trying to be someone I’m not online. I got it out of my system and now I’m completely me online and offline (though I try and not swear as often online as I do offline)

If you're like me, you'll have a million and one ideas to blog about, how do you sift through what is useful, what is entertaining and what could offend those in our industry? Do you care?

I do care that I’m adding value somehow. Sometimes it’s just my thoughts about what is happening, sometimes it’s about conferences or new trends. I also write regularly for Technology Weekly so no matter how many ideas I have, there are never enough.

Talking about SEO. I love all these people that bang on about links as if they're the most important invention since Marmite. When you first beginning reviewing a client site where do you start? In-bound links, internal navigation, title tags, scope of content, coding errors, positioning, competitor sites? And why?

I like to start at understanding a clients marketplace and keyword targets. Then I like to look the site over with a technical eye which as I have been doing this for years will include a peek at title tags and meta descriptions. You *MUST* get the basics right first and that means the coding is correct, the title and descriptions are unique and contain a call to action as well as keywords, each page has a focus and the site has a theme.

Once you get the basics right you can look at link building, baiting, competitor sites and the like. If a spider can’t crawl your site, or if you’re trying to target the same keyword in each page, there is no point in adding to the mess., Clean it up then start getting fancy.

I'm amazed that many SEO's still recommend each other. Here I am, MD of an SEO Agency openly recommending that affiliates turn up to your event. Why do you feel that SEO's regularly recommend their "competitors", are we a particular breed?

I think at heart we’re mostly engineers and as such, we don’t feel threatened by competition. Rather it is something we recognize as offering something we don’t, or don’t have time to, or simply don’t work in that vertical. I think we do need to present a unified front to CMOs and the like and embrace the diversity of the agencies around us.

I see you're offering an SEO Surgery for Affiliates but what place do you feel hands-on, Q&A-style events should play in the improvement of affiliates' SEO knowledge seeing as there's just so much miss-information on the internet?

The misinformation out there at times upsets me so much. I am passionate about helping everyone do a better job at their SEO because at the end of it all, everyone will have clarity, focus, excellent build and understand user intent. It makes the web easier to use, celebrates diversity and enables a small jewellery seller to compete with HR Samuel.

Which part will be most interesting - your's about SEO or Matt's about technology in the affiliate space?

I think they will both be interesting to different people :-) I would say that though, wouldn’t I?

You obviously look at many affiliate sites on a daily basis, what would be the most-common mistake you see people making?

Not adding value. That’s the biggest mistake. Thinking you can slap anything up there and let it ride and make a million. Being a good affiliate can be like a full time job at times. You need to add value, differentiate yourself and stand out.

I have a friend who blames me personally for the quality (or lack thereof) of the search results in the travel vertical. That’s not a vertical I play in but it is one I pick on regularly as giving excellent examples of SEO gone wrong and thin affiliates and bad results.

I see many affiliate sites using technology to build a database of offers or products which are often very similar to others in terms of the content and structure. Do you also feel that many affiliates don't do enough differentiate their offering or their content?

Yes :-D

If you could highlight the biggest revolution (event or technology) in the past year for Affiliate SEO what would it be and why?

London A4U Expo. I’ve chosen a conference which may seem weird. I could have chosen update Vince which favoured brands or new ways of getting reviews on sites but I chose a conference. Why? I feel that A4U Expo brought together in London some of the best names in affiliates and SEO and get them together and they SHARED and didn’t hold anything back. It was the most amazing thing to be a part of. I haven’t been to the London CAP event so I can’t comment on it but A4U Expo London was revolutionary.

I'm a big believer in the future of behavioural advertising for online retailers. But what impact do you think that'll have on affiliates? Is it an opportunity or a threat?

Behavioural targeting creeps me out a bit but then again it might be my surfing habits :-)

I think that looking at peoples patterns of behavior is a mistake for a few reasons. One is that I am a very complex person. What you se doesn’t touch on all things I’m interested in nor do I surf the web looking at the medieval re-enactment sites I’m interested in, fantasy book sites or technology sites. If you fail to serve me an ad about a new steam punk computer because I’ve never shown an interest then you’ve potentially lost that sale and possibly that brand awareness.

Is it a threat? Depends – brand awareness is key. If you can get out there, build trusty and awareness within a niche, it could make a huge difference to your sales but the key is exposure - early and often.

Many are saying that Facebook is diminishing as a marketing channel in favour of Twitter. Would you say they're correct, or do different opportunities exist with each of them?

I think different opportunities exist in each market. Each one is used in a different way, at different times. Understanding how people utilize Twitter differently from Facebook is going to be key to leveraging both those channels effectively.

Time though is a factor and possibly the most critical one. Do not try and engage over social media unless you have the time. If you start and abandon it can look as though your presence has been removed from the web and you are possibly no longer trading. Perception is critical – make sure you get it right.

Now I know you love your chocolate, perhaps as much as I do. But if you were a chocolate, which would you be, and what would Matt be?

If I were a chocolate I could be a "Frrozen Haute Chocolate," a blend of 28 cocoas, including 14 of the most expensive and exotic from around the globe. The dessert is infused with 5 grams of edible 23-karat gold and served in a goblet lined with edible gold. At the base of the goblet is an 18-karat gold bracelet with 1 carat of white diamonds. [Ed: I best get one of those (on expenses) to review :-)]

The sundae is topped with whipped cream covered with more gold and a side of La Madeline au Truffle from Knipschildt Chocolatier, which sells for $2,600 a pound. [Ed: Someone want to tell them to do a html version of the site and ditch the flash?]

It is eaten with a gold spoon decorated with white and chocolate-coloured diamonds, which can also be taken home.

I think Matt Bailey would likely be an Espresso truffle – looks innocent but packs a powerful punch ;-) [Ed: I bet he doesn't look good in a pink bow like my reviewed Espresso Truffle (see link)]

And finally the details for the Affiliate Surgery, where and when is it and how do affiliates book to attend?

The surgery is May 26th at the i-level offices here in W1 Fitzrovia from 5pm – 7pm. You can email matt-bailey@i-level.com - he’ll be giving away tickets until there are none. We’ve got limited capacity but if the demand is there we will add more seats if we can. You can ask right up to the day but I won’t guarantee that there will be spaces that late ;-)

An Interview With Purple Martin - Someone You May Not Know

2009-05-20T09:44:00.012+01:00

Here's an interview with a hero of mine - Purple Martin! Its not his real name of course! Purple, as he's affectionately known is a successful affiliate who doesn't like to brag about it. He's also very open to his close circle about his successes and failures. I've been nagging for a while for him to do an interview - and he finally gave in!

So Martin, you're an old-timer in the affiliate world. I remember talking to you on Messenger about 7 years ago about useless rubbish to do with the industry back then, but when did you get started in the industry and how did you get yourself into this racket?

Hi Lee, and thanks for asking to interview me.

You are making me feel old by looking back to when I first got started!! I first went on the internet when I was at Uni at Anglia University in Cambridge in 1993. In those days the internet was all text based using lynx. In my final year the uni got some apple macs, and we were allowed some webspace, so I did a little webpage there.

I did not go on the internet for a few years after that until I got the internet at home, and some free webspace. I did the usual shopping directory sites. The first affiliate programmes I promoted were probably Amazon and Streets Online (An online music store owned by Woolworths at one point). The site got very little traffic but I made money by buying CD's online for mates and pocketing the commission.

I then started promoting music festivals and on a search for companies, I found Latestevents.com. This site was run by Kevin Brown who later expanded his affiliate programme with a few more merchants, and he called the service Affiliatewindow, I was one of their first affiliates. Affiliate Window had a message board and a employee of Affiliate Window at the time was Jessica Luthi who pointed me towards the affiliates4u forum run by Matthew Wood. I pretty much lived on the affiliates4u website at this time, sharing knowledge and chatting to other affiliates through the night. I started setting up sites in lots of different verticals.

Most people know you as "Purple" - how on earth did you get that nickname?

Hmmm why the nickname Purple? Well I get asked this a lot and I would love to come up with some amazing story but it is all together quite boring!! When I lived in Essex I used to go out with my mates and we all had different nicknames over the years. On one night out a mate of mine mentioned that he was watching a wildlife show and there was a bird called a purple martin . The Name Purple stuck so when I signed up to affiliate4u message board that was the nickname I chose.

I do not particularly like the colour purple, however when I went to my first big get together in London, I turned up at Tradedoubler office, dressed in Purple Shirt and Tie !!!

Most people actually know you for your concert and festival ticket site "Warn Tickets" but is this your main site, or do you do niche sites off it as most affiliates do?

I do not have a main site any more, I had one site for about 8 years and then Google torched it and my whole income stream went. Over the years I have gone from just the one main site, to having 100s of domains and sites. In the last couple of years I have clipped back my sites to about a dozen which are all in different sectors and get busy at different times of year.

I know you work full time in your day job. Well I use the term "work" loosely. How do you find time to do that, look after the kids, manage your sites and look after your social marketing strategy?

I do not know how I fit everything in, I have been asking fellow affiliates if they have found the 40 hour day yet, when they do I will be using every hour. I manage to do everything as I enjoy all of it. I still enjoy working my day job which gives me some security and a change from affiliate business. My Blackberry has been a revelation it allows me to keep track of my emails , MSN and Twitter wherever ever I am.

My wife is very supportive without her I would not be able to balance everything. My wife and children are everything to me, I still do not see affiliate marketing as work as I just love doing it, and if I was not earning money online I am sure I would be wasting time on the computer in a less productive and profitable way.

I know you're keen on Twitter as a useful marketing tool, but does it work and can you give an insight how you go about using social media (without giving too much away)?

I love twitter it is a very important tool for me, it is instant gratification. I have a decent following for some of my twitter profiles and you can get to know your visitors better, I ask a question or make a comment and I get loads of replies in a instant.

Twitter is also laser guided for finding new customers, it is customer acquisition on acid - it’s awesome. However, it is addictive and if you get too involved your hard built following will unfollow you as quickly as you found them.

I remember talking to you 2/3 years ago about Squidoo and other social content sites. To me they're no longer part of my social media strategy, do you use them now, and which would you place more importance on now; Facebook or Twitter?

Social Media is evolving all the time, Squidoo is still a excellent Social Content site, I do not use it as much as I did when I mentioned it to you a few years back, However Squidoo if you put the time in can give you instant presence online and can help you own the SERPS. Other Social Content sites I would recommend include Wetpaint, Hubpages and Pagerank10. Leeky who runs pagerank10 is a genius and I would recommend giving his pages a go.The secret to these social content sites is how much effort you put into the content you put on these sites.

If you slap on some spammy, affiliate thin content they will not succeed. However if you put together something generally useful it will succeed.

Depending on what niche you are in there are some awesome Social Media site, ones are like that people might not know include ZiiTrend - the Social Prediction Site. All social media sites you get the most from the from getting involved, slapping a RSS feed to Facebook page, or twitter profile is not getting involved, Join the debate, it is all common sense at the end of the day. If you want to stay on top of the latest social media trends and news, Mashable is a must for your RSS Reader.

And blogging, how has blogging changed your affiliate strategy? I know you've embraced Wordpress, but do you spend any time now installing new features, or do you focus most of your time on content?

I mentioned that I started using the internet in 1993, but for my sins I have never really learnt how to code, be it HTML or datafeeds. I have done sites using basic HTML editors and have had a few sites coded for me using scriptlance etc. However my affiliate strategy changed forever when I started using Wordpress.

Wordpress is so easy to use, you could get your Gran blogging, if they can type they can blog. I am not one for messing around with design and the backend of a website, to me Content is King so Wordpress allows me to churn out lots of content without worrying about all the messy backend stuff.
I do use Wordpress plugins, and I tend to listen to what the experts suggest, like Yoast.

Without giving stuff away, as I know you like to keep things under your hat and don't like bragging about things, but what other niches are you involved with? I know you're giving voucher codes a go with your Twitter account but anything really sexy?

Yeah I have joined the bandwagon and have a Discount Codes which is powered by Leeky's fantastic Icodes site. Other sites I am involved with includes a Horse Racing Tips site which is a joint venture with Keith Bond and Lammo and my latest project is a World Twenty 20 Cricket Site

If you could name three tools and three people (or companies) that have had a positive impact on affiliate marketing for you, who and what would they be and why?

I have worked with lots of amazing people so to list just 3 means I am missing out lots of people.

Tools:

* Wordpress - It has revolutionised the way I build and run sites
* Tweetdock - A excellent idea by one of affiliate marketings rising stars Mark Boyd aka hairycornflakes
* A4uforum - Without THE FORUM as it is known, I would not be doing affiliate marketing today,.

People:
* Keith Bond - Has had a huge influence on my affiliate marketing career, he has helped me no end since I first come across him on a4u forum. Any hour of the day he listens to me, but also has been a great role model. I am pleased that last year I got to work with him on some joint ventures.
* Lee McCoy - He is not everyone’s cup of tea, a bit of a marmite! But he has kept me motivated to keep working hard at a time when I was ready to jack it in, lots of his posts on this blog have given me the buzz back and got me thinking in a different way and not to follow the crowd.
* Chris Bowler ( Aquanuke) Chris was a early influence on me back in the day, this guy was a genius and he provided tools to make fellow affiliates life easier when, content units and datafeeds were not even born. He made me realise they was gold in these websites!

Does your wife get involved in what you do? I take it she understands it, but does she help out with content or stuff, would you want her to?

My wife is very supportive, and she is starting to get involved with a Holiday Parks site. I would love her to do more sites, she has a much better idea for design, and she is very in touch with modern culture and fashion. She has a few fashion sites that she is planning which I hope she can launch in the next quarter.

What's the best ever prize/incentive you've ever won being an affiliate?

I always think I have never won anything in affiliate marketing but over the years I have won all sorts. The best was at Christmas when a merchant treated me to see Fulham v Chelsea in a corporate box, as a huge Chelsea fan this was awesome.
However the best prize could be yet to come as I am off to Barbados with Affiliate Future thanks to sunshine.co.uk.

I know you work late into the hours and often hear about you falling asleep at your pc and waking up at 3am with a keyboard imprinted in your forehead. How do you keep motivated to put the long hours in?

My motivation to keep getting keyboard print on my face at 3am is the love of the industry, there are so many great people working in the industry, and I still get a huge buzz from a new site, or with a new merchant.

If you could give any new affiliate any piece of advice, what would it be?

I would say read Kirsty's Blog for getting started info and the other affiliate blogs, read the a4uforum. I would suggest starting by thinking small. I would say get a Wordpress blog and write about something you’re interested in and keep it fun. Affiliate Marketing is not a get rich scheme, you reap what you sow.

What are your general plans for the rest of the year in terms of affiliate marketing? Is there any tactic or niche you're going to focus on?

I plan to go to the A4Uexpo in October as I still haven't been as well as starting a few sites hosted in the US and targeting the US market.