Affiliate Marketing blog by James Little

To get something out of the way quickly, I wanted to write a quick note on the comments policy here - it’s been mentioned in a comment on another post but I though it would be a good idea to reiterate it quickly.

Anyone can post a comment here - I’ll approve it as long as it meets the following criteria:

a)    it’s not spam
b)    it has the users real details - anonymous comments won’t be posted

That’s it - if you want to flame me, you are more than welcome to do so, and all I ask is that you don’t hide behind a computer screen and that you reveal your true identity (that means you, Devils advocate!)

Anyhow - that’s just a side point.   One of the real reasons of this post was to talk a little about the Affiliate Challenge that has been started recently.  I’m a little late to cotton on to it, but I’ve decided that I will be entering and in time (when the site is ready) I will reveal what my chosen entry will be.   The site will have no PPC budget (I have no money for that kind of thing) and will be organic growth only.

The aim is not to win the challenge - the industry that I will be creating the site for has a long lead time and works on a revenue share (it’s not gaming before anyone asks), but I will be using the site as a case study for this site and detailing it’s progress (or lack of!) and stats on this blog.

For more information on the challenge, visit: http://www.affiliatechallenge.co.uk/

Happy New Year everyone.

A big thank you to everyone I’ve met or worked with for a great 2006.   And a bit thank you to Jess for the gift voucher and Fraser for the wine.

I can exclusively reveal that Paypal, the ebay owned payment provider, is in early talks with the Post Office about creating a Paypal card in the UK.

The card is expected to be an optional extra with an admin charge of around £5 per year. It will allow Paypal users to withdraw small amounts of money or pay for postage directly from their Paypal accounts.

The Post Office would charge a small admin fee for every transaction/withdrawal from this card.

The card is not expected to launch until Q2/3 2007. It will please many ebay users who have become frustrated with the long withdrawal wait when using the payment provider.

I received an email today about Chinwag Live - a new events arm of the Chinwag brand.

Their first event is entitled Wobble 2.0 and I’m sure i’ll be heading across for it.

Here is the email in full.

I though I’d let you know that one of the new things we’ve been busying ourselves with at Chinwag Towers is the development of a regular event series for 2007.

And lo, the Chinwag Live sessions are kicking off on Tues 6th February at a large and very comfy (just refurbed last month) hostelry in Soho. And for the first helping we’ve settled on exploring the dynamics of what we’ve termed €˜Wobble 2.0′

Confused? Well, the event will explore what results when Web 2.0 meets Bubble 2.0 - real, sustainable business or short-lived pipe dreams..?

There are speakers from Zopa, Skinkers, Carson Systems (creators of the Future Of Web Apps conference, among other things) and the redoubtable Mr Mike Butcher (who after the TechCrunchUK lock-out has just yesterday resurfaced on http://www.vecosys.com/).

It’s all about short, Powerpoint-free talks and then an extended chat with the peeps formerly known as the audience. We just announced it yesterday and the tix are 40% gone!

So if you fancy chewing the fat on current web developments and the interesting stuff beneath the hype - over a few drinks and snacks - I’d advise you nip over to the Chinwag Live page pronto for more details and to book your places.

http://lm.chinwag.com/t/1144658/3572724/24690/0/

(BTW, there’s an early-bird rate of £15+VAT but it now looks like it’ll be sold out before the EB rate expires).

If you’re partial to such things, we’ve also set up a page on Upcoming: http://upcoming.org/event/134489/

I’ve been a member of Chinwag for the past few years, more specifically on their viral and UK-Netmarketing lists and it’s an excellent source of knowledge that I’d advise anyone in UK Marketing Scene to sign up to.

So it seems that Fishboy, aka Paul Wright, has Blog Tagged me. Apparently this is where you have to write 5 things about yourself on your blog and tag another 5 people, kind of like those bloody annoying emails that I seem to get. Anyhow, here’s my attempt.

5 Things you didn’t know about me.

1) I have a warped career path; after quitting college my first real job was as a temp for office angels, where I would be somewhere different every few days. Tempting could be fun, or very very shit. Two examples:
a. One temp job I was asked (with one other person) to spend a week clearing our a basement at an office, there was not much to do and most of the day was spend playing about on the internet.
b. Another job entailed travelling all the way to East Ham (about 2 hrs on the train) to work for a lift engineering company, filing documents. Four days of filing documents can really mess up your brain.

2) I once went though a €œblagging€ stage, where I pretended to own a popular reviews website. I managed to get myself an interview with my favourite band at the time (3 Doors Down), a number of pre-release books/music/films/cinema screenings, and a few gig passes.

3) I once won a competition titled €œMr Muscle Man€. People that have met me will wonder how this happened, so a little bit of background. The competition was at a resort in Estartit. It was a kids competition, I was about 5. Everyone else that entered was between 9-14. I walked the wrong way around the stage and almost fell over. I got the €œcute€ or €œsympathy€ vote. The prize was a frisby and sweets and it’s one of my proudest achievements

4) I always seem to injure myself when I go on holiday. Here’s a few examples:
a. When I was around 8 years old I fell of a Death Slide outside a grocery store on the South Coast. To date it is the only time I have managed to knock myself out.
b. When I was around 14, on holiday with family in Portugal, I attempted to go fishing on a little jetty by the sea. I managed to slip over on the jetty and land flat on my back - it hurt a lot and I had to go to a local hospital for checkups - I ended up lying in a corridor with dead bodies while my parents were filling out some forms - I wondered how long the others had been waiting there.
c. A year later at another resort I was pushed into the swimming pool by another holiday maker trying to have a laugh. I tripped and broke my leg on the way in and had to come home early.

5) I learnt all about how the female mind works by talking to girls via Compuserve chat rooms when I was around 13 years old. I once even recorded a video of me and another geeky friend chatting away and sent it in the post to a girl I’d been talking to - I received one back too, which was fun.

6) (I know there isn’t meant to be a point six, but I’ve done it anyway). I once appeared on Nickelodeon TV and was gunged live on air. A male schoolmate of mine did a Karaoke track entitled: Girls just wanna have fun. I don’t know who came off worse when we got back to school on the Monday.

I’m tagging the following: Dan Morley, Alan (Happy), Chris Heilmann, Lee McCoy, Bobbie Johnson

I had some good news today.   A few months ago I read a thisismoney article which stated that banks have been breaking the law for a number of years by charging penalty fees to their customers.    You know the ones; going overdrawn, having a bounced cheque or a problem with a failed direct debit.   Anyhow, the crux of the matter is that banks can only charge back to the customer the amount that it actually costs them to process these payment problems - around £3 for a bounced cheque, for example - not £50.So I went though all of my First Direct statements over the past few years and found around £700 worth of charges on my current account - I wrote a letter (you can find templates of these online) asking for the charges to be refunded and giving them 14 days in which to respond.

Today I heard back - they said that they had refunded £140 back in August 2005 (I still need to check this) but they were willing to pay back £530 to us.   It’s not the full amount, but if the £140 is correct then it’s near enough and all that is left is for a form to be signed and sent back accepting this refund and it will be credit before the new year (and will be going on paying off some of our debts, I suspect).

I’ve since told someone at work about this who has asked if I can do the same process for him and if successful he will give me 25% of the amount reclaimed.    This seems like quite a good business opportunity so if anyone else is interested in the same offer let me know!

From Technocrunch:

Google quietly added a small feature to Gmail this week called Mail Fetcher. When that feature launched, Gmail became perfect.

Mail Fetcher allows users to access non-Gmail email accounts from within the Gmail interface. If you have a Yahoo email account, and a work email account, etc., you can simply access that email from within Gmail, using POP settings. Gmail will now work in a very similar way as Outlook does on the PC desktop.

I’ve been using Roundcube for all my personal email accounts (I have a fair few) up until recently, but this new google feature has made me think twice. Will play with it today and see if there is enough motivation to switch it all over.

I was pointed towards a system that Tramolinesystems have developed called SONAR today, and to test out the system they have devloped an interface into over 200,000 emails from Enron that were made public in the run up to the court case.
Visit Enron @ Trampolinesystems 

Although it’s bordering on peeping tom territory there are some fantastic finds.  Check out some of the emails between Alexandra Villarreal & John Griffith
Have a check out of their comments system for other recommendations!  Hours of entertainment guaranteed!

So i’ve just randomly arrived at russelldavies’ blog and learnt about Coffee Morning in London. It’s just round the corner from me at The Breakfast Club so I think i’ll go on Friday. It might help the hangover.
Anyone else fancy popping along to Soho for a coffee so that I at least know someone there?

Another new startup that i’ve found recently is getmooh.  It allows you to receive an pre-recorded anonomous call - be it to a mobile or landline and is billed as a way to get out of an awkward meeting or date.

It seems to work really well - I’ve just had my first pre-recorded call;  not sure how they will stop hoaxers using it to wind people up though!

Now all we need is one that helps me get a nightpass from the wife - maybe a pre-recorded message of the boss making me work late.