Affiliate Marketing blog by James Little

Only a few days ago I wrote on the Altogether site about how new technology in affiliate marketing is begining to take affiliate marketing offline.

As if by magic Greasy Palm have now launched their offline transaction service.

Depending on how well this is promoted it could be the start of some changes in the industry as sites like Necor and Airmiles have struggled to get much of an online presence – will the user base that they have and the cardless technology have much of an impact offline?

Only time will tell – would be interesting to hear what others think..

I feel like posting a Thursday funny to mark that it is almost the end of the week.  A few minutes ago I received a piece of blog spam on the Altogether Ads blog.

The spam was from someone who I will call “The Considerate Spammer” and was about, believe it or not, a penis enlargement (apparently her boyfriend had tried it out & it was amazing).

Anyhow, here’s the piece of spam:

 <a href=”http://urlremoved” rel=”nofollow”>penis enlargement</a> had my boyfriend try them out. All I can say is WOW…
Vanessa Stevens

I’ve made the important part of this bold. The reason on this occasion that I am calling this person “The Considerate Spammer” is of course because they have been kind enough in their blog comment to add a nofollow tag.

Someone obviously needs to send Vanessa on the Spamming for Dummies course.

Late last night after doing all my Christmas shopping online I found myself wondering how I was going to pay for it all (god bless having children) and started looking at wordpress themes for a product based domain that seemed to be available to buy.

It was then that I came across what is potentially one of the best themes I have yet seem for Wordpress.

See Demo Sites 

Revolution Themes have released a few different styles that really push Wordpress to the next level and provide an entry level solution to getting an online magazine up and running in the space of a few hours.

Ultimately if I was to buy a theme I’d probably want to get the full pack that is priced at $500 and slightly out of my price range (if anyone wants to buy me a Christmas gift you’re more than welcome) but I imagine there is a lot that can be done with these – would love to see a site like Lee’s Pleo Toy in this kind of template.

While we are talking of themes I’ve found a few more themes and plugins recently that are really neat & will be adding them to the Wordpress Theme and Plugin back in the next few days.

Seriously – I don’t understand why retailers STILL insist on having stupidly long or complicated forms that get in the way of people trying to buy something.

Here’s a good example.

This evening I was attempting to purchase something on  for my son for Christmas.  I found the item I wanted, went to the checkout, selected to pay via paypal (nice to have the option) and then ebuyer presented me with a long signup form.  I had to firstly spend a few minutes to fill in everything and wonder why on earth they need a memorable date for gods sake – it’s more secure than my bank!  Next I tried to submit and it told my my username was already taken (it took about 5 attemps to find a memorable one that wasn’t) and I didn’t read the password stuff correctly – not only did it ask for a combination of letters AND numbers but also asked for a combination of CAPS and non caps.

For the love of god guys – it does NOT need to be that secure and all you are doing is putting people off the checkout process and sending them to a competitor!

Obviously the 3-2 loss to Croatia a few nights ago may still be a sore point for a few of us and whilst I’ve never really enjoyed being the bearer of bad news it’s fair to say that the loss wont be going away anytime soon.

It is expected that the own goal by England will cost the country over £2bn and affiliates will be one of the ones to foot the bill after the British Retail Consortium predicted that they would have seen an extra £1.2bn in sales if England had qualified.

So what does this mean for affiliate sites I hear you ask?

Here are some of the things that customers may no longer be rushing to the shops for next year:

• HD Widescreen TV’s/DVD Recorders (multiple programs)
• Pizzas (Pizza hut launched/launching soon?)
• Replica shirts (multiple programs)
• Collectables / Patriotic items (multiple programs)

Let’s hope that the next manager has more luck in getting us qualified for the next world cup.

I’ve mentioned it on the affiliates4u forum and on the Altogether Ads blog so through I might as well go all out and put it on here as well!

There is just 22 days left to be part of the first prize draw of the Altogether Ads golden ticket campaign.

(Above is the Mazda RX8 – not the best photo of it but shown in white especially for Kieron)

To recap, Altogether Ads are giving away 15 golden tickets over the next few months.  The ticket contains a £200 cheque and a VIP ticket to an event being organised later next year where each of the 15 winners will battle it out on stage and one of them will walk away will walk away with a brand new Mazda RX8 to keep for life.

Altogether Ads believe it’s the largest value prize ever to have been given away as an affiliate incentive in the UK.

The first ticket will be given away in a prize draw to any affiliate that signs up by the end of November 07.

You can find out more about Altogether Ads at www.altogetherads.com

Some of the reasons of this blog (or any blog, infact) may well remember the website that displayed how much your blog was worth based upon your technorati rankings.   Whilst this site seems to no longer work (unless my blog really is undervalued there is a great alternative.

The Facebook Profile Valuation is a great little tool that looks at items such as the amount of friends, amount of wall posts, how many groups you own, how many people are in these groups and a few other bits and bobs.

So apparently mine is worth just over $1,000 – does that mean I’m over inflated? Potentially, I’d probably sell my soul for a few quid to be fair!

Anyhow – the application doesn’t seem to be working 100% at the moment but if you manage to install it do let me know in the comments of this post how much your profile is worth!

A while ago I released a wordpress pack, containing a number of plugins and themes along with the standard wordpress install.

Seeing as I hadn’t updated it for a while I’ve created a new page on the 3wdl site with the latest version that you can download and get going a bit quicker than usual.

Wordpress Pack – containing over 40 themes and plugins 

Enjoy