I took the opportunity to install a Twitter tool for the blog which you can see sitting on the sidebar. It’s called simply Twitter Tools and it seems to do the job it was designed for perfectly well. Was just a simple plugin download and didn’t requite any HTML editing or anything more than activation and installing widget.

I took the opportunity while I was there to clean up the blog a little, I switched from three columns to two as I think it was looking a little cluttered and I took away some things I considered unnecessary like archives. I mean who really uses those archives?

Well I hope you like the changes and if you want to follow my ramblings then my twitter page is: http://twitter.com/stevekinsey

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Yes I Am Now A Twit Or Is That Tweet?

Here’s a more detailed list of whats included in the sale:

• Mature domain names, google likes mature domain
• gethatbargain.co.uk domain
• gethatbargain.com domain
• gethatbargain.net domain
• gethatbargain.org domain
• Easy to use and customised blog theme from uniqueblogdesigns.com
• Site and email hosting for you if you need it, first 12 months hosting included free (subject to traffic levels)
• Complete site ready to go
• Over 40 existing posts with comments

The blog theme is a new affiliate focussed one from UniqBlogDesigns and is very easy to use and includes lots of little features for monetising a blog. This site is an ideal startup project for someone moving into affiliate marketing.

If you are interested in purchasing this site, post a comment here or get in touch via the contact form and lets discuss.

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I’m Selling One Of My Sites

I was out of the office most of this week attending a free small business course provided by the welsh assembly government. I actually only originally booked to go onto a half day module on the first day. The module was on marketing for business startups, but once I arrived the guy told me that I was welcome to attend the whole three day course if I wanted to.

Overall it was definitely worth taking the time out, although the majority of the course seemed to be focussed on financial management, tax returns etc, there was enough useful information overall to make the three day commitment worthwhile and who can turn down three days of free expertise.

There are other good reasons for taking the time to attend these kind of events, they can be a good way to network with local small business owners and as the attendees are likely to be startups there is also a possibility that some of them will be looking for websites, online setup advice or programmer resources.

If you have any interest in working with local small businesses I recommend that you so some local searches online for government or private sponsored events, training courses, meet ups etc. You never know, not only might you learn something but you make some valuable new contacts.

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Making The Most Of Local Resources

I’m deciding at the moment whether to set goals for this blog in future or to just relax about it, post when I have something to say and focus instead on goals for my other sites / projects. I do enjoy blogging, which may sound hard to believe given the amount I post. So I think if I put pressure on myself to achieve things with it, I take the fun out of blogging in the first place.

The blog is actually doing pretty well and some of the posts like my recent one concerning Affiliate Window are getting a lot of reads, plus comments in general seem to be increasing nicely. So I think I am probably better off writing when I have something to say, rather than trying to make myself do x posts per month.

So that’s it for today, just a little post to say “Hey I’m still here”.

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Believe it or not, I am still around.

I just wanted to write a little something about one particular affiliate network company called Affiliate Window and how they are using email communication in such a useful way for me and compare it to how some other companies communicate via email.

One of the sites I run is a bargain / special offer blog. It’s a pretty simple site in concept, if I see a deal online I post about it (when time permits). Now I like to try and keep the posts simple on this site and ideally it should be just something I can put together in a few minutes here and there. So I really need the affiliate networks to make this process as easy as possible for me.

How Affiliate Window Get It Right

Let’s pick a company on the Affiliate Window network, say Comet, the electrical retailer just as an example. Comet may have a promotion on for say 10% off various electrical lines, with a voucher code to enter.

Affiliate Window will send me an email, just about this subject and nothing else. They will include pictures, sometimes just the company logo, sometimes pictures from the product lines. They will include some write up for each deal, normally just a line or two. Finally they will also provide hyperlinks already embedded with my affiliate code.

So for my site all I have to do is create a new post, paste in the email, rewrite it a little to make it more unique, mask my affiliate links, include some pictures, post it and bang It’s done. I don’t need to visit the site, I can do everything I need from the email. Couldn’t be easier, thank you Affiliate Window.

How To Get It Wrong.

Here’s some of my experiences of other affiliate networks and some things they do to get email communication wrong. I won’t name any particular companies here just individual points.

• No Communication at all – Yes some affiliate networks never send anything at all, neither do they have other ways of getting information other than logging in and taking a look yourself.
• Summary Newsletters – You get a big email, usually weekly, highlighting all a summary of some of the things going on in the network. While this has it uses for finding new advertisers it isn’t particularly useful for anything else.
• No Links – Yes you send me an email to highlight something, then I need to log into your site, find the advertiser, dig through countless banners etc just to find the link I need. Or I have to manually create loads of deep links.

Other Ways To Get It Right

Just to balance things out a little, there are other ways some of these companies get it right. Some of them now keep regular blogs, where they post the latest deals on the network. The good part about this is you get to see deals from companies you may not be affiliated with yet. The bad part is you still need to log in and go and create those links yourself.

I know I’m picking on a very specific example here and not all publishers would need these emails to suit their particular business model. But it just seems to me that it’s not exactly rocket science, to get this working as well as Affiliate Window manages to do.

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Why Affiliate Window Gets Email Communication Right

When I signed up with the SEOBook website I saw a list of recommended reading materials for online marketers, web designers etc. One of those books on the list that looked like an interesting read was Don’t Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, by Steve Krug. It looked interesting because it wasn’t the normal, heavy, programming books I usually seem to end up reading. It was more about the fundamentals of web usability, making a website that actually makes sense to navigate for a user.

I think as someone who thinks like a programmer, it’s very easy to miss this vital part of the puzzle completely and actually make a website that is overly complex, hard to navigate or just overwhelming at first glance. So I was quite keen to see if this would offer any inspirational ideas to improve my sites.

Don’t Make Me Think

The first thing that struck me about the book is the writing style, its very light, funny and easy to read. The author isn’t a technical person and his writing reflects that, he really gives you the perspective of the end user, something that it is so easy to miss. From the very first paragraph it really got me starting to see some things that should have been staring me in the face and I started to get all sorts of ideas of how I could tweak or even redesign some of my sites.

The book is actually quite a small and light read, at just under 200 pages many of which have lots of images, it is possible to get through the whole thing in one or two good sessions. It’s broken into 12 chapters ranging from Design 101 to how to get usability testing on 10 cents a day.

Many of the pages show real site examples of what the author considers to be good and bad site usability. He shows sites with good navigation, good light homepages and it really helps to focus the mind on what an average user will see the first time they hit your page.

One of the things that really struck a chord with me was the chapter on removing needless words from text. Now I know I have a real problem with being overly wordy when I write things, just look at this review lol. But it really got me thinking about how a user skims a page and doesn’t read it in detail. So an excessive amount of wordy text is just going to annoy them.

Another thing it spends a lot of time going over is navigation in all it’s aspects. From the quick navigation through site areas through to the detailed sidebars for deep navigation. It really got me thinking about the navigation of some of my sites and how I could improve them.

Real World Application

After I finished the book, I was overloaded with ideas on how I could improve a particular site of mine, so I decided to put it to the test and see how I could improve the usability of the site. Here is a link to the result on my caravan rental website, personally I think it’s a big improvement on the old design, but I’d be very interested to hear what any readers think.

Link to Caravan Rental Website.

Buy Don’t Make Me Think!, From Amazon UK

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Book Review: Don’t Make Me Think By Steve Krug

I think it’s clear that I rather failed on my October goals for the blog. Now I could run off a load of excuses here and I do have them. But the simple fact is I set myself some goals and didn’t achieve them, excuses or not.

So I’m not going to overly dwell on it, I am going to set myself the same goals for November only this time I am going to challenge myself a little more by publically setting myself a penalty if I don’t achieve them. More on that a little later.

November Goals

So as I say I am going to set November goals to be the same as Octobers. Just a reminder of what they were:

• Write at least 10 quality posts by the end of the month.
• Approve or delete all comments as soon as possible.
• Increase RSS readership by 50%

I decided to change the rule on comments as there is no way I can guarantee I can always approve them in 24 hours, especially on the weekends. But at least I can make sure I get them done.

The Cost of Failure

I have decided that I am going to set myself a penalty for failure this time, maybe it will help me have a better month. So if I do not reach my goals in November, I will give away $50 paypal to one person who comments on this post.

I think the prospect of losing cash will spur me on to make this a much more successful month. Stay tuned.

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October Goals Results And November Goals

While I’m putting together some decent posts at last (I am honestly, no kidding), I thought I’d mention a freebie bag I was just sent called the Bloggers Relief pack from Berocca. Seen as they sent me a bag of goodies, the least I can do is give them a little plug and I’m also going to give some of the contents away on this blog, to one of you lucky readers.

I’d not really tried Berocca before having this pack, but it was such a cool bag of goodies including a Stress Ball (Which I’m too addicted to, to give away), a USB panic button, a “Dead Fred” penholder, a bubble wrap keyring, a Berocca glass and pen as well as of course a tube of Berocca.

Berocca itself for those like me that might not have known is a kind of vitamin tablet with B vitamins, Vitamin C and some other ingredients. You basically drop it in a glass of water and drink it as an orange drink. Now I’m not generally much of a vitamin taker, but after reading something about this on the web I can confirm that one of these actually really helps with a hangover. So I think I will be keeping some handy for those odd moments when I’ve hit the sauce a bit much.

Well I want to thank Berocca for the cool bag of goodies and the hangover cure, they were very gratefully received. If you’re a blogger yourself, you may even be able to get the pack for yourself at http://www.berocca.co.uk/bloggerrelief/

Giveaway

Now for my little giveaway, as I work from home I think things like the Panic Button could have a more needing owner than me. So I am going to give away, the Panic Button, The “Dead Fred” penholder, and the bubble wrap keyring to one lucky reader. All you need to do is comment to this thread and be a UK resident and you’re in with a chance. Please state in your comment that you live in the UK and I will put your name in the bag then choose a random name for the prize.

Not sure when I will end the competition yet, I’ll need to see how many responses I get first, but good luck to you all.

P.S. If anyone else wants to send me free stuff, go right ahead

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Berocca Bloggers Relief Pack, A Nice Surprise

I feel that I haven’t done so well in this blog for September, I haven’t made enough quality posts and I haven’t been here enough or tried to grow it enough. While I am happy with the things I have posted about I feel that they were too far and few between. So I’ve decided to set myself some goal for this month to have something to reach for.

Initially I haven’t set them as too demanding as I feel it’s important to be able to stretch a goal a little further if you manage to achieve it. So here is what I plan to do for the month of October.

• Write at least 10 quality posts by the end of the month.
• Approve or delete all comments within 24 of them being posted.
• Increase RSS readership by 50%

So that’s pretty much it, as you can see I haven’t set anything too demanding but if I achieve these I will probably push myself a little harder next month.

A Note On Comments

As I have mentioned in the past, I allow link following on my comments. I am happy to do this and feel I am doing it for the right reasons. However that does make me a little more protective of my comments than some others might be. So I reserve the right to not approve any comments that I feel are spammy.

If you have something you want to say, whether it is good or bad (I’m big enough to handle both) then please all comments are welcome. However if your comment is of no value and is clearly self promotion, especially if your linking to some pharmaceutical product or posting seven different comments that basically say the same thing. Then you can be sure your comments will be deleted.

Thanks for listening and understanding, I am sure you all realise I am referring to the very tiny minority.

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Goals For October

I’m afraid I’ve rather neglected this blog this week. I’ve been so busy with other projects one of which was tweaking the design here, that I’ve only made one post since my last roundup. However since I really want to make this a regular Friday feature I will continue even though it may look a little odd having two so close. But hey I am a little odd so maybe it works well.

Blogging

Superbloggingtips.com ran a post that I found very interesting, regarding how often one should post on your blog. I see many people saying that you should post something every day. However this post argues that posting less can actually increase your membership and traffic. I have to say I find some sense in this article, I personally would much rather see a thoughtful and useful post every few days or even once a week than see a blogger struggle to upload something every day. In fact I see some blogs that update several times a day and I find them almost impossible to keep up with.

I saw this post over at Copyblogger, a kind of how to guide on building a good blog post. The 7 step guide contains some very solid advice if you are struggling with writing your blog posts and I think writing for websites in general.

For windows developers I wanted to mention a post over at blogfodder.co.uk about BlogEngine.Net. This software is a windows based alternative to wordpress for those like me who develop in ASP.Net. I’ve just started to use this software on one of my sites and so far I am very pleased with it. Lee has put together a community site to discuss this software so if your interested in using this platform I recommend you visit blogengineforum.net.

SEO

There was an article over at SEOBook titled Black Hole SEO discussing my favourite SEO rant subject the nofollow mess and link hording. The article discusses some of the major sites that are switching more and more to setting all outgoing links to use “nofollow” so that they are not passing any link love onto anyone outside their own walls, however they are still happy to accept links in. I think this quote sums up perfectly why this practice has to stop eventually:

If this problem becomes too widespread, Google will move to counter it. If Google’s results aren’t sufficiently diversified, then their index will look stale. If you search for a site, and get third party information about that site, rather than the site itself, then this will annoy users. Once confidence is lost in the search results, then users will start to migrate to Google’s competitors.

Incidentally I signed up with SEOBook myself about two months ago and I cannot recommend this site enough. It is a private members site and forum, that contains a wealth of information on making your site(s) as successful as possible as well as a forum full or real SEO gurus. It’s not cheap at $100 a month membership, but for me it has been worth every penny so far. Take a look at the free parts of SEOBook and see what you think.

Affiliate Marketing

This is a little bit related to the SEO subject above but there was a post at Lammo.net about using outbound links to increase your affiliate conversions. This is a well balanced article and definitely worth a read.

And Finally

I like to finish a little off topic, so first I saw this post over at Quality Nonsense about the ultimate travelling office. It’s a highly customized RV, a great accessory for the home worker on the move (yes a contradiction I know).

Lastly I saw this over at themovieblog.com, this video supposedly shows the car KITT from the new version of Knight Rider being stolen while in a publicity event in Toronto, Canada. The whole thing looked iffy to me and I read later that it was indeed a publicity stunt. It’s amusing though and a very good example of effective viral video.

As always all comments welcome.

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Interesting Blogger Posts For 19th September 2008