Affiliate Marketing Blog by James Little

As regular readers will already know (after the Christmas Post) I have been experimenting with online videos recently and have now setup my first vlog (video blog) - a personal project called Diet Blog TV.

The site is a bit of an experiment as I want to know a few answers to the following:

1. How easy is it to setup a vlog in Wordpress
2. How easy is it to distribute video via channels like YouTube, MySpace Video, Facebook, etc
3. How easy it is to get listed as a video podcast in iTunes
4. What the best ways of driving traffic to a vlog are

I’ve only put up one (non-video) post at the moment but aim to get the first video diary up at the end of the week.

The site is not setup as a commercial site so doesn’t have any ads (for the moment at least there are no plans to do so either) and is just a bit of fun so please feel free to have a gander and let me know what you think as I get more videos online - maybe you even want to link to it for me!

I’m sad tonight.  My (work) Macbook died.  I’ve had it for all of about 2 months, decided that as my iTunes database was getting pretty big (8gb) I would back it up.

Went through the backup process and about half way through writing to the first DVD it all froze up.  Did a hard reboot and now it won’t boot up & the disk is making some funny noises.

A bit of googling leads me to believe that it’s a HDD crash and that I have not got much chance of seeing my data again, and that I could be without my laptop for a few weeks, which would suck.

It’s a sad day - ever since getting the macbook I’ve been configuring it, buying some great software and generally enjoying being on a mac again.

I’m off to cry myself to sleep

A nice personal post, so I apologies if you came here thinking that I was releasing a merchant program for a Martial arts school, or something similar.

Last night I signed up to GKR Karate (after a door to door sales woman came visiting).  So on Saturday 13th October I will start my quest to become a martial arts expert, otherwise known as a Ninja.  It’s going to be a long journey and tough journey involving traveling around the world to find my inner ninja self.  Or maybe i’ll do it for a few weeks and get bored, either way, i’ll have fun trying.

Hopefully by the time that Buy.at organise another football tournament I really WILL be on my way to becoming a REAL Affiliate Ninja!!

Hiiii-ya

It’s been a hectic few weeks and as such I have not updated the blog for a while - the idea was that I had a load of content in my head that I wanted to jot down on the way to the Bristol Affiliate event last Friday; a good idea that ended up being spoiled by flooding and a distinct lack of trains.

So what have the past few weeks entailed?

A lot of work€¦

Firstly I’ve taken on a new member of staff (this officially happened just before I went to Barbados) who has been doing a fantastic job so far.

I’ve started working on a few more affiliate programs (we now have seven programs either running or soon to be running)

I’ve managed to bag myself a shiny new black macbook and seeing as I’m running Linux (Ubuntu) at home this means I’m now living a windows free life. It also means I can work better on the go as I have MySQL, Apache and PHP all up and running locally.

More Affiliate Work…

Whilst I may have been finding it hard to find time to think, I have managed to find a little time not only to get the building blocks in place for a few new sites, but also to start to teach Lindsey (my wife) a little more about how affiliate marketing works and get her to start doing some content for a freebie site, motivating her to allowing her to spend all the profits at Lush.

I’m also happy to say that I’ve been invited by Matt to speak at the A4UEXPO in October - it’s building up to be a great event so it will be nice to see a few of you there.

And Lastly€¦

It seems that more and more Affiliate Events are now being organised on Facebook - if you’ve not signed up yet I really would say it’s a good idea.  The next one is on Thursday in Covent Garden so if you’re in town do pop along and say hello.   Hopefully I’ll find some more time over the next few days to actually put up the posts that I’ve been meaning to do for the past month or two.

What a fun day!

A big thank you to buy.at for organising this tournament - it’s something that has been mentioned on the forum a number of times and from the chats I had everyone seemed to enjoy it.

For those that didn’t go, I’ll give you a quick overview of the day….

Over 100 of us all met down at Wembley Goals around 12pm, had a briefing tell us the rules at around 12.50 and then the games commenced.  Our team (the Affiliate Ninjas) consisted of:

James & Dan from Flightmapping
Lee McCoy & Steven Hall
Pete Dickenson & Neil Mitchell

It’s fair to say that the majority of the team had not played football in a fair bit and we were not really in it to win it but a lot of pre-match banter put the pressure on slightly!  We ended up in the same qualifiers as buy.at & UKWebMedia - both of which had their own kits made up especially!  Our first two games consisted of losing 9-1 and then 10-1!   Our last match, against Steak Media saw the team gel more and go on to win 5-4 (after drawing 4-4 and going on to play golden goal).

In the end the final was between Buy.at (who had been doing pre-match trials!) and Venturian Media,  who went on to win 6-0!

The day was finished with an awards ceremony and a free bar, giving everyone a chance to have a good natter.  I am proud to say that I won a trophy, even if it was for the play who €œMust try harder€!

The grudge match between the Affiliate Ninjas and the Affiliate Rovers didn’t happen in the end as half my team had to leave early but plans are afoot for a game in August for braggers rights.

I just got an email saying that the new Tom Mcrae album, King of cards, will be streamed on his website in advanced of the launch at 12pm on Friday.

The album doesn’t come out for another month or so and Tom is by far my favourite artist so if anyone has any ideas how I can go about recording the Stream please let me know

I read a fantastic article in yesterdays G2 Magazine that I’ve managed to find replicate online.

I hate Macs by Charlie Brooker

Two of the best quotes from the piece:

PCs are the ramshackle computers of the people. You can build your own from scratch, then customise it into oblivion. Sometimes you have to slap it to make it work properly, just like the Tardis (Doctor Who, incidentally, would definitely use a PC).

Myst, the most pompous and boring videogame of all time, a plodding, dismal “adventure” in which you wandered around solving tedious puzzles in a rubbish magic kingdom apparently modelled on pretentious album covers, originated on the Mac in 1993. That same year, the first shoot-’em-up game, Doom, was released on the PC. This tells you all you will ever need to know about the Mac’s relationship with “fun”.

As pretty as Macs may be it still irks me that everyone throws themselves at them these days.   The iPod is inferior compared to other makes on the market but people buy them because they are the rage.  Someone who I work with has a Creative and still calls it an iPod and that tells you everything you need to know about them.

Sure - the iBooks are nice and if I was after a laptop (and had money to throw away) I’d certainly look at them before buying an Alienware laptop for the same price.

I’ve ranted about this topic enough for now - the article above says it all for me.

I’ve spent the past year at St. Minver Ltd; a white label gaming operator based in London & Gibraltar working with companies like Yahoo, Virgin and lastminute.com.

I’ve really enjoyed my time here - launched a very successful affiliate product and contributed to a huge increase in the Affiliate recruitment and deposit levels, but have decided that it’s time to move out of the gaming industry and try something a little different.

Ignoring the obvious joy that the increase in volume has given, some of the other highlights of the year definitely include being featured on Fraser’s Affiliate Marketing Podcast, going to Barbados with Affiliate Future and the journey across to Amsterdam for the CAC 2006.   I’ve worked with and met loads of new people and have hopefully formed some great long term relationships.

I’ll be at St. Minver until the end of February and still have quite a few bits to close off and work on before venturing to pastures new.   When I do leave I’ll still be in the Affiliate Management arena, still enjoying a few too many drinks at the affiliate events and still spending far too much time working and far too little time keeping the house tidy (according to my wife).

A big thank you to anyone I’ve worked with over the past year and if there is anything you are waiting for from me you should probably remind me before the month is up!

I’ve been off sick the past two days with the flu and am reluctantly back in the office today as I’m popping over to CAP Euro later on.

One of the things that has stuck me most over the past few days is how much I miss my kids.   Sometimes being a working dad (with an hours commute into the office) can really be quite depressing.   I’m out of the house for about 7.30am and the kids are up around 7.45am.  I’m back at home about 7.30pm and the kids are already in bed, so I only see them at weekends.

Kieran was born when I was 20, so I was quite a young dad;  people in this industry seem quite astonished that I’m a father of two at 24 and often ask if I would have done anything different and the answer is always a resounding no - my kids mean the world to me.

Anyhow - not sure on the point of this post; just sad to be away from them again.

Last night I attended the second game of the ANPL (Amateur National Poker League) in my local bar and won for the second time in a row.

It was an excellent game - certainly the most exciting live tournament that I’ve played, even if there were only 14 people taking part.

The game started off at quite a slow pace - you are given 3,000 chips and the blinds are 50/25 - it all kicks off about 8pm and there is one break at around 9-9.30pm.  At the break everyone is given another 3,000 chips, even if you have already gone out.

So back to the game - I ended up one of the two people who were out by the break - I don’t think I had more than one pair for the entire first half and I suffered with the blinds increasing.

I came back into the game in the second half and was obviously in last place, I was a man possessed and within a relatively short period of time had started to increase my stack dramatically - it may have been a change in my style of play or maybe lady luck had started shining, but either way I was on fire.  Within 30 minutes two people were gone and I was the chip leader.   Play continued and after a few more exists the two tables were merged and into a final table.   I was the chip leader and was trying to play quite aggressively whilst everyone else was playing pretty safe.

Then I lost it bad - I had a pretty good hand - an A K suited.  The flop showed another A K so I had two good pairs.   I went ahead and forced someone all-in who seemed quite reluctant.  Cards were turned and they had a pair of 7’s so the odds were on my side.   A 7 was the last card to come out and I lost a stack of chips and was no longer leading.  At that stage of the game if I had won the hand I could have finished the others off pretty quickly.

Anyhow, play continued and then the opposite happened - again I went all in with a pretty crap hand - trying to bluff and pick up what was on the table.  Calling my bluff another person at the table went all in - turned out they had a pair of A’s (one from the deal, one from the flop) and I had bugger all.   I ended up getting a flush and pushing them out of the game.   I went on from there and all was quite quiet until there was just two of us left.   I was the chip leader and the blinds were now 8,000 and 4,000.   The other guy was the big blind and it was now 11.30pm.   I went all in without even looking at my cards.   He looked at his and did the same, fancying his luck with a pair of 8’s.

I ended up winning with a pair of 10’s (one from the deal and one from the flop) and I am now on 272 points from two games, ranking me about 3rd in the country in the ANPL league.

Was a really good night out - it’s the only time I really go out in the evening in the week and a few beers and game of poker go down well.

NB.  I also dragged Ste along, who also ended up on the final table in his first live game.  You should not however let this fact make it sound like all the players were crap and this is certainly not the reason I won!