If you are in the Edinburgh area or if you want to make the trip then I’m organising an informal Christmas drinks event this Thursday - more details and free registration on the eventbrite page.

More details in this thread on a4u or the same on acorndomains.

The competition kicked off at 9am in Edinburgh yesterday and so during the morning I thought I would follow events and see how quickly he was found but in the end no-one apart from the social media whirlwind that is Mike Coulter managed to catch up with him.

With that in mind I thought it was time to hit the road so accompanied by my wife and one year old daughter we drove into town, abandoned the car and took off up the High Street in search of his last known position. I think we managed to get ahead of liveguy and ended up on the castle esplanade where all the staff & stewards were wearing liveguy style bright read coats just to confuse the issue.

By this point I was getting help from Kieron by SMS along with Twitter support from davelaw00 , weblivz, ewarwoowar and michellepen so thanks to you all for the advice!

We started to wander back down the High Street and suddenly spotted him standing on the corner so I ended up sprinting down the road to greet him with “You’re liveguy and I’m a Vodafone winner”. After a bit of hesitation liveguy confirmed I was a winner but only because the morning netbook had not been claimed by Mike so it was carried over.

The afternoon netbook had been claimed five mins earlier by Jay from Freak Marketing author of a really interesting facebook app called Get Them In so that’s worth a look too.

We had to hang around for another ten minutes or so to sign a model release form! We filled in the paper work and then headed home. The only slight down side was that we now have to wait for up to a month to actually get the netbook sent out It would have been more exciting to go home with it there and then but that’s just a minor issue.

All in all it was great to meet liveguy and leave a winner and it’s a great promotion and demonstration of the capabilities of the Vodafone Netbook. It was also good to meet Stylist Brighton from Shiny Media who was also on the trail of liveguy and here is her video from the day. I arrive near the end!

Check out the liveguy website and see if liveguy is visiting your home city as it could be well worth getting out there to look for him!

I then had some time to take in the exhibition and hang around at the Existem-AM stand which seemed to be where you could find the affiliates throughout the conference!

Next session was about PR by 10yetis and once again it was an excellent presentation with some great tips. I was surprised to hear that free newspaper The Metro is consider the most influential newspaper.

From there I moved on to the presentation by Nora from Sedo which was interesting as I’ve been getting more into domaining recently. The number of cases studies of businesses which have rebranded just to match a generic domain was pretty amazing.

Finally I made it along to the Super Affiliates session which was both entertaining and inspiring. In some ways it wasn’t so much about learning new information (apart from Shak’s story which was new to me!) but about being inspired about what is actually possible.

The second night party was really enjoyable although the private Sky party did mean things were a bit disjointed which was a shame. Maybe that’s just because I didn’t get in but it did mean I couldn’t catch up with those who were behind the closed doors!

All in all it was a fantastic couple of days and a job well done by all at Existem.

I had an early start but got down to London in time for the intro by Matthew Wood from Existem and the keynote by Michael Nutley from NMA then the full programme started at 11am.

I went to the Wordpress SEO session by Joost de Valk which was excellent and packed full of useful tips. I think I probably need to set aside a couple of days to install about 20 plugins now though! The most useful tip that I took away was to look at hardcoding certain parts of the wordpress theme like the blog title instead of causing another database query for something that never changes. Load time has always been the one area of Wordpress I’ve been disappointed with so I’m hoping that making these changes will help.

I went to the bonus lunchtime session held by sunshine.co.uk where they released their sunpress plugin which looks pretty impressive and will be a great starting point for a Wordpress travel site.

Next session I went to was the Extreme SEO session which was fairly lively and in between the chaos there were some great tips. Lots of chat about taking out your competitors with negative SEO rather than improving your own site though which was slightly disturbing! The dominate subject was link building and it does seem to show that as long as you take care of some basic on page SEO issues the main thing you should be worrying about is links.

The final session of the day was the Affiliate State of the Nation panel which I moderated. It seemed to go pretty well and there was some good discussion about issues facing the industry. Most interesting for me was the issues about affiliates either wanting to grow large businesses or keep it as a lifestyle business. Thanks to Kieron for speaking up on that point of view. I was also amused to be sitting on the stage watching Shane Robinson fall asleep in the second row.

It was great at the end of that session to bump in to Pete Sipple from Frequencycast which is a podcast I have been listening to for some time and which I would highly recommend.

Finally the night finished with a cruise on the Silver Sturgeon which made for a great end to the day.

It’s a great looking site too and now that I have bought a Wii to go with the Wii Fit I’ll be staying signed up to keep an eye on the best prices for games.

The summary is that you should read here about what you can win and then read here about the tools provided to help you win.

I’ve recently been speaking to Chris Bishop (biography), Online Acquisition Manager at House of Fraser. We discussed a variety of topics including his early days as an affiliate, Hotel Chocolat & House of Fraser. We also discussed advice for affiliate managers, affiliates and issues around cashback for merchants.

I’m looking forward to my first expo after missing the last one due to the arrival of my daughter It’s her first birthday the weekend before the expo so I’ll be free this time to head to London.

I’ll be moderating the Affiliate State of the Nation Panel at 16:30 on the first day so I’m looking forward to that Check out the agenda for full details of all seminars. I looks like it’s going to be a difficult job to plan your way through the seminars with 4 excellent choices at each stage.

Hope to see you there!

It was an interesting read and while it does focus on selling tickets to American sports events and working with teams of sales people I’m sure some of the elements can be applied to affiliate marketing as well.

Here are some of the main points I took away

• What’s it going to take to be the best - In the book there is an encouragement to ask this question and I think it ties in with what people like Doug Scott & Chris Clarkson have been saying recently. Don’t limite yourself by thinking all you can do is the same as everyone else. Or that you need to think small and niche at all times. Set yourself a big target and work out the steps you need to get you there.
• Focus on Domination not Reach & Frequency - sounds a bit wordy but is basically making the point that advertising that focusses on reach and frequency is for big brands with money to burn. Instead you should work out where your target market are most often and dominate all the advertising there. It’s mostly written to apply to TV & Radio ads but I’m sure it would apply to web advertising too.
• What have you done today? - at the end of each day ask yourself what you did to make your business a success. Reading blogs & forums or chatting on MSN isn’t work that’s going to have a return but it can suck up so much time. I’ve spent many hours in the last couple of weeks moving websites from one host to another and updating domain registrations etc but I don’t earn anything from that. Make sure you know what actually gives a return and spend most of your time working on that.

So that’s just some of my notes from the book. As I said it’s pretty focussed on US sports but overall it’s worth a read.

If you would like my copy to read and you live in the UK then just leave a comment below and I’ll pick a winner at the end of the month.

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]]> http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/affiliate-marketing-outrageously.html/feed http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/mobile-ecommerce-affiliate-opportunity-or-threat.html http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/mobile-ecommerce-affiliate-opportunity-or-threat.html#comments Thu, 18 Sep 2008 10:00:19 +0000 fraser@affiliateblog.co.uk (Fraser Edwards) http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/?p=428 It’s been said every year for as long as I can remember but I think perhaps mobile is actually now genuienly on the verge of being “the next big thing”. Now that I’ve picked up an iPhone and started to experience browsing the web in an equivalent way to the desktop combined with unmetered 3G usage then buying online seems much more likely.

So is this one big opportunity? In one way I’m tempted to go with it and build mobile versions of my sites or a shopping directory of mobile enable sites etc but I’m concerned about potential tracking issues.

Most mobile browsers will handle cookies so that’s ok but what about when incognito mode makes it’s way on to the mobile browser as standard?

Well various networks have different backups in place but are these mobile proof? IP based tracking would look to be a lost cause as I assume my 3G connection could end up with a different IP address everytime I connect. Flash cookies could well be hindered by the lack of a proper Flash implementation on mobiles. Is Veracitag mobile proof?

I’m probably slightly lacking the technical knowledge to know for sure but I’d love to hear from networks about how their tracking will stand up to mobile use.

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]]> http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/mobile-ecommerce-affiliate-opportunity-or-threat.html/feed http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/do-you-bother-with-yahoo-and-msn.html http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/do-you-bother-with-yahoo-and-msn.html#comments Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:12:19 +0000 fraser@affiliateblog.co.uk (Fraser Edwards) http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/?p=427 I’ve had a copy of NMA sitting on my desk for a while because I wanted to write something after reading this article (subscription required). It’s a comment on some stats from Hitwise which show that the UK Search share in May 2008 was as follows

Google - 87.3%
Yahoo - 4.9%
Microsoft - 3.7%

Andrew Girdwood from Bigmouthmedia comments in the article that at times optimising & reporting for Yahoo is “wasting clients money” which I think is a fair point.

So what does this mean for affiliates? Do you still try and optimise for natural search in Yahoo & Microsoft? What about paid search? The market share applies the same way so is it worth actually running and monitoring your paid campaigns on anything but Adwords?

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]]> http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/do-you-bother-with-yahoo-and-msn.html/feed http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/nooked-widgets-take-a-look.html http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/nooked-widgets-take-a-look.html#comments Thu, 11 Sep 2008 11:05:58 +0000 fraser@affiliateblog.co.uk (Fraser Edwards) http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/?p=426 It’s interesting that from time to time I read about the lack of innovation in affiliate marketing and then I think on one hand that people forget how far we have come. It’s also perhaps because in the UK we are guilty of looking too much within our own community when some of the really interesting stuff is being developed by those who aren’t long time affiliates.

I’ve been watching Nooked for a while now and they have been releasing some really interesting widgets.

Firstly you can create a widget containing different products of your choice

Loading widget…

online stores

I’ve gone for Skiing Holidays in this one. Then you can publish that widget to your blog/facebook/myspace page and start earning from it. It’s the type of thing that is definitely going to appeal to a blog owner who doesn’t want to get into the nuts and bolts of signing up with an affiliate network.

Once you publish the widget there is then an option to “Grab This” which would allow anyone to pick up your widget code and add it to their site but still earn you the cash.

Finally you can also earn for a year by referring people to Nooked. None of the links in this post are referral links as I want to make the point that I’m writing about them because it’s interesting and not because I’m being paid or trying to earn a bit of cash.

Overall I’m pretty impressed with what Nooked are doing. It’s a bit of a limited product set that they are working from at the moment but I understand that is to improve soon.

So what do you think? Is it the sort of thing that might work well on Keith Bond’s Fashion Style You or would it appeal more to the mainstream that doesn’t actually need to have heard of “affiliate marketing” to make some extra money?

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]]> http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/nooked-widgets-take-a-look.html/feed http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/making-money-from-big-brother.html http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/making-money-from-big-brother.html#comments Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:14:14 +0000 fraser@affiliateblog.co.uk (Fraser Edwards) http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/?p=424 Guest Post: I don’t normally have guest posts but after reading Six Ways to Make More Money by Wasting Less Time by David Walker and nodding my head throughout I was happy to take David up on his suggestion of writing something for this blog.



Making Money From Big Brother

Rachel Rice became the unlikely winner of the ninth series of Big Brother on Friday night after surviving 93 days cooped up in the house and seeing off 20 other contestants.

Mindless drivel? Absolutely. Not interested in the slightest? Well, as an affiliate marketer you should be because it is very easy to cash in on Big Brother and indeed other reality television shows.

By creating simple blogs about the contestants on these shows you can pull in thousands of unique visitors every day for free and make money from affiliate marketing, all for relatively little work.

There, I thought that would grab your attention.

Which Contestants to Blog About

Big Brother contestants have an extremely short shelf-life and often fall off the radar as soon as they leave the house. This is especially true of the male contestants and is it any wonder they form “relationships” with the female’s on the show to prolong their time in the spotlight upon their exit?

With this in mind and to maximise your earnings from the effort you put into maintaining the blogs, it is recommended you create blogs for just the younger “sexy” female contestants. They tend to do photoshoots for the lads mags and go on to release DVDs, calendars, or even attempt a pop career; products which can all be promoted as an affiliate later down the line.

However, first of all you need to create your blog and establish it at the top of the search engines. Here is a step-by-step guide on how you can make easy affiliate profits from Big Brother.

1. Register an Appropriate Domain Name

Since you will be creating a blog for a single contestant, it is imperative you register a domain name which includes both their first name and surname.

This is because you should view their name as a “new” keyword and there will be very little competition in Google. The night Aisleyne Horgan-Wallace was introduced to the show two years ago, there were only three competing web pages for the keyword “Aisleyne” - today there are almost half a million!

Including both names in the domain will help a lot in terms of search engine optimisation but you should also include something like “fan” or “unofficial” after their name so you do not run into any legal problems in the future.

2. Set Up the Blog

From a SEO and time perspective, Wordpress is the easiest method to set up a professional looking blog which can be optimised for the search engines easily. Plus, Google loves blogs which are created with Wordpress.

Find an appropriate theme from one of the many free Wordpress theme directories online, upload it and you are ready to start blogging!

3. Adding Content

While you want to keep the website updated regularly, to attract new visitors and links from forums, other blogs etc, you don’t want to spend too much time maintaining your blog, especially if you have more than one.

Therefore, the easiest way to update the blog with new content is to trawl Youtube for new video clips featuring the contestant in question. There are several hardcore Big Brother fans who systematically upload video clips within hours of the highlights and eviction shows ending so you will not be short of blog material!

You should also accompany each video clip with a short editorial or opinion piece to add in keywords and optimise each blog post further for the search engines.

4. Making Money

Your new blog will rank within a matter of days for the contestant’s name and while it is easy to draw thousands of unique visitors to your blog every day, making money from that traffic is a little more tricky.

By far the easiest way to make money from the traffic is Google Adsense and at the height of my own success with Big Brother, I was making around £1,000 per month across about five blogs.

Last year I experimented with several affiliate programmes and made a few hundred dollars per month from Adult Friend Finder. However, I didn’t make a single affiliate sale for the adult videos featuring either Imogen Thomas or Lea Walker when I blogged about them both two years ago. Needless to say, Adsense was swiftly reintroduced on both counts.

Two areas which are worthwhile pursuing are official DVDs and calendars featuring the contestants. Four years on DVDs featuring Sam Heuston and a joint-effort from Shell and Vanessa are still selling well on Amazon while Chanelle Hayes from last year’s show is releasing a second calendar for 2009, proving some Big Brother contestants are capable of providing a long-term income for affiliate marketers.

Conclusion

Creating simple, search engine optimises blogs about Big Brother contestants are an easy way to make some money during the show’s run and also for the longer term if the contestant’s are successful enough.

In my opinion, it is an ideal way for a budding affiliate marketer to cut their teeth in the industry because these blogs are guaranteed to attract a lot of traffic and make some money. You are unlikely to get rich by blogging about Big Brother, but there is the potential to make a decent passive income. Who knows, if a contestant becomes successful enough after the show ends, you my be able to sell your content-filled, Google ranking website for a sizeable amount!

David Walker is the director of Affiliate Dragon, a company which provides marketing services and a place where you can find a web business for sale.

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]]> http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/making-money-from-big-brother.html/feed http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/sumo-omni-affiliate-chair.html http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/sumo-omni-affiliate-chair.html#comments Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:01:49 +0000 fraser@affiliateblog.co.uk (Fraser Edwards) http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/?p=421 There’s an interesting thread on the affiliates4u forum at the moment about office chairs and it seems that there are quite a range of chairs out there.

I however have been the luck recipient of the ideal chair for an affiliate courtesy of Sumo.

The Sumo Omni is the perfect chair for spending many hours on while thinking about new affiliate website ideas



and then when Google kicks out your website, slaps your Adwords and it all gets too much this chair provides the perfect refuge…





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]]> http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/sumo-omni-affiliate-chair.html/feed http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/affiliate-launch-has-launched.html http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/affiliate-launch-has-launched.html#comments Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:08:20 +0000 fraser@affiliateblog.co.uk (Fraser Edwards) http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/?p=420 I’ve been meaning to write a quick post about this for a while as it’s going to be a handy site to be subscribe to. Affiliate Launch reports on new program launches across the networks so you can spot any potential new merchants you would like to work with.

With so many new programmes out there it’s good to have one central source of information for new launches. I think extending the site to monitor closures has already been mentioned on the a4u forum but that would certainly be a useful feature too.

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]]> http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/affiliate-launch-has-launched.html/feed http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/gradwell-birthday-lunch.html http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/gradwell-birthday-lunch.html#comments Fri, 29 Aug 2008 09:53:29 +0000 fraser@affiliateblog.co.uk (Fraser Edwards) http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/?p=419 I enjoyed a delicious lunch at La Garrigue yesterday courtesy of Gradwell. I’ve been using Gradwell to provide my VOIP phone line for a while now and they also have a range of services including web hosting.

The VOIP phone line means I can keep the same local number if I move office or just travel as basically the number follows me where ever I connect my phone handest or laptop to the internet. Another nice feature is that voicemails are recorded and emailed to me which means I can process all incoming messages in my Outlook inbox.

I have to admit that I found it a pleasant surprise that Gradwell travelled from Bath to arrange a lunch for their customers in Edinburgh as I’ve never met any of my other suppliers in this way and I’ve dealt with a good number of web hosting companies over the years. It’s definitely a great way for Gradwell to get to understand their clients and also to encourage their clients (me included) to look at working with them more in the future.

Thanks Gradwell!

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]]> http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/gradwell-birthday-lunch.html/feed http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/affiliates-their-house-prices.html http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/affiliates-their-house-prices.html#comments Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:43:10 +0000 fraser@affiliateblog.co.uk (Fraser Edwards) http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/?p=417 You may have spotted a couple of other affiliate blogs mentioning a site called House Price Spy and I’ll be the latest to say it’s a company I invested in early this year and a project I look forward to working on.



For years I’ve been reading posts on the affiliates4u forum talking about the potential of a group of affiliates working together but it’s never happened before on a large scale and that’s been the real attraction to me on this project. There will be a great team of affiliates working together to apply their different skills to a website with widespread appeal.

We aim to make House Price Spy the most popular site around for checking house prices in Scotland, England & Wales and with some great features completed and big plans for the future it will definitely be one to watch.

The rest of the shareholders will continue to speak up over the next week or so

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]]> http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/affiliates-their-house-prices.html/feed http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/james-little-affiliate-future-podcast.html http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/james-little-affiliate-future-podcast.html#comments Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:22:16 +0000 fraser@affiliateblog.co.uk (Fraser Edwards) http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/?p=415 Podcast interview with James Little - Head of Affiliate Development at Affiliate Future. More >]]> Podcast 32
I caught up with James Little who is now Head of Affiliate Development at the affiliate network Affiliate Future.

We discussed a range of developments at Affiliate Future including their recent recruitment drive and plans for the year ahead. We also talk about technical projects including the affiliate interface and the voucher code manager.

Just to keep things topical we also managed to fit in a chat about the credit crunch, brand bidding, cashback and few more bits and pieces.

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]]> http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/james-little-affiliate-future-podcast.html/feed 33:40 Podcast 32 I caught up with James Little who is now Head of Affiliate Development at the affiliate network Affiliate Future. We discussed a range of developments ... Podcast 32 I caught up with James Little who is now Head of Affiliate Development at the affiliate network Affiliate Future. We discussed a range of developments at Affiliate Future including their recent recruitment drive and plans for the year ahead. We also talk about technical projects including the affiliate interface and the voucher code manager. Just to keep things topical we also managed to fit in a chat about the credit crunch, brand bidding, cashback and few more bits and pieces. Podcasts fraser@woohoo.co.uk no No http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/an-alternative-to-brand-bidding-groups.html http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/an-alternative-to-brand-bidding-groups.html#comments Mon, 04 Aug 2008 12:13:16 +0000 fraser@affiliateblog.co.uk (Fraser Edwards) http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/?p=414 A while back Books Direct approached my good friend Paul Wheatley & I to ask if we would consider running their brand based paid search activity through Affiliate Window.

We were happy to help but wanted to consider the alternatives to a straight brand bidding group which we didn’t really feel would add any value to the program. Paul had been formulating this idea for a while even before we had found a forward thinking merchant to give it a try so we pitched the idea to Sarah at Books Direct and took it from there.

Basically the idea is that we setup and run the brand campaign at no profit. Merchant, network & affiliate all have access to the various paid search accounts to ensure transparency throughout. Books Direct pay for leads at the normal commission rate and then the profit combined with Affiliate Window adding back their override is shared amongst other affiliates on the program in a grand prize draw at the end of the year.

I think it’s a great example of affiliate, merchant and network working together and the end result is that after two months there is £3,864.35 of revenue in a prize pool to be distributed in a prize draw at the end of the year. This adds obvious value for the merchant and hopefully the end result will be growth on the program as people want to generate sales and get themselves a share of a prize pool which could well be over £10k by the end of the year.

There’s a more detailed explanation on the forum but it’s good to be able to announce what’s been going on for the last couple of months.

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]]> http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/an-alternative-to-brand-bidding-groups.html/feed http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/top-uk-affiliate-marketing-blogs.html http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/top-uk-affiliate-marketing-blogs.html#comments Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:23:30 +0000 fraser@affiliateblog.co.uk (Fraser Edwards) http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/?p=412 Today I uploaded a nice little ranking script and added some blogs to affiliateblog.co.uk/topblogs

Give me a shout if I haven’t added your blog yet or go ahead and add it yourself.

I’ll only accept UK based quality affiliate marketing related blogs but I’m sure there are loads out there that I still need to include

Update - Location changed to http://affiliateblog.co.uk/topblogs/

After messing around for ages I couldn’t get Technorati rankings to work so I had to move this back to affiliatemarketingblogs.co.uk

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]]> http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/top-uk-affiliate-marketing-blogs.html/feed http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/a4uexpo-discount-code.html http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/a4uexpo-discount-code.html#comments Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:38:24 +0000 fraser@affiliateblog.co.uk (Fraser Edwards) http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/?p=411 Matthew Wood sent me over a discount code for the a4uexpo so you can save 10% by using the link below and the code AFFILIATEBLOG10 when you register. If you’ve already missed out on the early bird discount and then the extended early bird discount then this is probably your last chance to save.



I decided to use this promotion to experiment with a great Free Page Peel Plugin which Paul over at Fish and Clicks made me aware of. Thanks for the tip

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]]> http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/a4uexpo-discount-code.html/feed http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/cashback-clashes.html http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/cashback-clashes.html#comments Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:14:50 +0000 fraser@affiliateblog.co.uk (Fraser Edwards) http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/?p=410 Two interesting items of news occured today in the cashback realm. Firstly Quidco chose to stop working with Affiliate Window in what seems to be a bit of a power struggle. The issue is over Quidco trying to impose new terms under their “SureShop” agreement. I have to admit to not being an expert on the cashback industry but it does seem like Affiliate Window should be congratulated for taking a stand for what they believe is in the best interests of both the merchants and the affiliates they work with. It’s going to be interesting to see how this works out and I wonder how Quidco is going to give cashback on exclusive AW merchants?

The Quidco Email - AW’s response - Affiliates4u discussion

Secondly I received this press release

Submission Technology secure Cashback.co.uk domain

Submission Technology has extended its impressive portfolio of money saving websites with the acquisition of the Cashback.co.uk domain name.

The UKs first ever online cashback company, founded in 2003, goes from strength to strength, boasting a multitude of customer acquisition sites, including wepromiseto.co.uk, and the hugely successful GreasyPalm.co.uk.

Submission Technology first coined the phrase cashback in the market over 5 years ago so it is only fitting that they have acquired the cashback.co.uk domain name.

Cashback.co.uk will join rapidly growing reputation garnered by Submission Technology, and shows confidence that the cashback market is gaining momentum in wake of the highly publicised Credit Crunch.

Company Director, Neil Durrant, was looking forwarding to developing the brand and has earmarked Cashback.co.uk as a future market leader in the cashback market.

He said: We are delighted to have secured the Cashback.co.uk domain name. There are exciting new opportunities in the ‘cash back space’ and the acquisition of this premium domain will be used as a platform for exciting new projects.

Another one to watch since cashback.com has recently found itself under new ownership too

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]]> http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/cashback-clashes.html/feed http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/the-bbc-hasnt-a-clue.html http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/the-bbc-hasnt-a-clue.html#comments Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:20:20 +0000 fraser@affiliateblog.co.uk (Fraser Edwards) http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/?p=409 I was amazed today to see this story on the BBC website complaining about the issue of spam. Now I hate spam as much as anyone but there is a huge difference between unsolicited commercial email and email you have requested.

The well respected Free UK Stuff affiliate site operates on a best practice policy for email. Basically if the user signs up and requests offers and can prove that it really is their email account then they will be sent the offers they have requested.

However in what appears to be a thinly veiled advert for McAfee the BBC have run such a poorly researched piece that in the video they even include the user completing the double opt-in process on Free UK Stuff and then they call the messages which they requested spam! Then they continue to allege that email addresses are sold to less reputable companies down the line.

I strongly suggest that someone even slightly technically competent gets involved in their technology stories in the future before they make any more blunders like this one.

More on the story from site owner Clarke Duncan.

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]]> http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/the-bbc-hasnt-a-clue.html/feed http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/some-recommended-reading.html http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/some-recommended-reading.html#comments Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:25:36 +0000 fraser@affiliateblog.co.uk (Fraser Edwards) http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/?p=408
• This week has seen the launch of Affiliate Bitch which looks like it could be very interesting. My only thought it that on the about page it says
  

  You chose the job you do, so do it, and deal with the crap, moaning about it won’t make it better. The deed has already been done.

  Which I totally agree with but then a few of the posts so far just seem to be a good old moan Certainly one to watch though.

• Moose on the Loose has written about the various departures from buy.at as only a poetic Moose can and again it’s going to be an interesting situation to watch and see how AOL take buy.at forward.
• I started to write a piece like this and then realised Nadeem did it much better than I ever could a few months ago. Out With the Old and In With the New – The Fifth Age of Affiliate and Online Marketing Has Just Begun. I’ve been thinking recently that I don’t seem to enjoy the affiliate marketing industry as much as I used to and I can’t quite put my finger on which age I stopped having fun
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]]> http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/some-recommended-reading.html/feed http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/doug-scott-asap-ventures-interview.html http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/doug-scott-asap-ventures-interview.html#comments Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:55:31 +0000 fraser@affiliateblog.co.uk (Fraser Edwards) http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/doug-scott-asap-ventures-interview.html In this podcast I've been speaking to Doug Scott of ASAP Ventures. I recorded this podcast a couple of weeks ago but it's taken me till now to find time to catch up and get it edited and properly produced. More...]]> Podcast 31
In this podcast I’ve been speaking to Doug Scott of ASAP Ventures. I recorded this podcast a couple of weeks ago but it’s taken me till now to find time to catch up and get it edited and properly produced. I’ve really just been waiting for Doug to post that photo so you have more idea what he looks like before you listen to him

We talked about a variety of topics including some of ASAP Ventures current projects like Fly.co.uk(this one cost £87.5k), Recycle(this one was £152,000!), Car Rentals & Self Catering Breaks. We also discussed automating and scaling an affiliate business, PPC closed groups, transparency and building relationships with merchants. All in all there is some great advice for affiliates looking to move forwards with their business.

Have a listen and leave any feedback or questions below.

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]]> http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/doug-scott-asap-ventures-interview.html/feed 41:37 Podcast 31 In this podcast I've been speaking to Doug Scott of ASAP Ventures. I recorded this podcast a couple of weeks ago but ... Podcast 31 In this podcast I've been speaking to Doug Scott of ASAP Ventures. I recorded this podcast a couple of weeks ago but it's taken me till now to find time to catch up and get it edited and properly produced. I've really just been waiting for Doug to post that photo so you have more idea what he looks like before you listen to him :-) We talked about a variety of topics including some of ASAP Ventures current projects like Fly.co.uk(this one cost pound;87.5k), Recycle(this one was pound;152,000!), Car Rentals Self Catering Breaks. We also discussed automating and scaling an affiliate business, PPC closed groups, transparency and building relationships with merchants. All in all there is some great advice for affiliates looking to move forwards with their business. Have a listen and leave any feedback or questions below. Must-read,,Podcasts fraser@woohoo.co.uk no No http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/time-to-expand-the-business.html http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/time-to-expand-the-business.html#comments Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:24:42 +0000 fraser@affiliateblog.co.uk (Fraser Edwards) http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/time-to-expand-the-business.html I’ve been far too busy recently so it was great to take on a new assistant who recently entered into discussions with an unmentioned affiliate network which led to this follow up email..

Hello,

It was good to speak to you earlier regarding Merchant X, I’m glad to hear you’re keen to give them a bit of a push over the coming months!

I was amused to get this email as my new assistant is an answering machine. No idea how good it is at SEO but I’ll be impressed if it can register a domain name

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]]> http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/time-to-expand-the-business.html/feed http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/a4uawards-twitter.html http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/a4uawards-twitter.html#comments Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:02:16 +0000 fraser@affiliateblog.co.uk (Fraser Edwards) http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/a4uawards-twitter.html I’m off to the a4uawards. Keep in touch with the news on twitter.

http://twitter.com/fraseredwards

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]]> http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/a4uawards-twitter.html/feed http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/a4uexpo-earlybird-rate-finishes-this-week.html http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/a4uexpo-earlybird-rate-finishes-this-week.html#comments Wed, 28 May 2008 14:00:34 +0000 fraser@affiliateblog.co.uk (Fraser Edwards) http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/a4uexpo-earlybird-rate-finished-this-week.html No sooner had I posted about the a4uawards deadline than Chris at Existem started hassling me to let you know that the a4uexpo early bird rate closes on Saturday and then it will cost you £100 more after that. The expo is a definite in my affiliate calendar and so it makes sense to save a bit of cash and register now.



And yes that’s an affiliate link Considering signing up for the expo through that link if you’ve ever listened to one of the podcasts and enjoyed it!

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]]> http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/a4uexpo-earlybird-rate-finishes-this-week.html/feed Fraser EdwardsnonadultNews and Interviews with UK based Affiliate Marketing expertshttp://api.feedburner.com/awareness/1.0/GetFeedData?uri=affiliatebloguk