Affiliate Marketing Blog by James Little

When I first started using facebook a number of months ago it was mainly used for work - adding another way of €œnetworking€ with friends and colleagues in the affiliate/marketing industry.

Then it went onto finding a number of people I used to work with years ago who I had lost touch with.

Then it went onto having a number of my €œreal€ friends signed up and using it to organise my (somewhat small) social calendar.

Now I have a new problem - within the past few days some people I went to secondary school (that’s High school for any Americans that may be reading) with have started sending friend requests.

This normally wouldn’t be an issue, but the problem is that a few of these people I pretty much despise - School for me was hell and I was jumping for joy on my last day.

I think I’ll decline them, but it would be nice if facebook gave the option of €œDecline and give a reason€, letting them know that the request is denied and that I’d rather poke my eye out with a burning metal rod than get back in touch with them.  Not that I am bitter.

Another great feature that Facebook should add is the thing I like the most about Linkedin - showing how many €œhops€ you are away from another user / potential friend.   I’m sure that they say that you are 6 people away from knowing everyone in the world and it would be good to test this out on such a large social networking site.

I am going to start this post sensibly - with a disclaimer warning any potential reader that they may well suffer poor productivity if they read on. There is your warning - you can no longer blame me if you end up getting fired, can no longer pay the bills and end up on the streets - not my fault, sorry, you’ve been warned.

Sometimes in life you find something that is so addictive you know that you will be hooked straight away. For some the addition is drugs or alcoholic, but for others it can be something like WeeWar.com.

After seeing a post on Sam’s site, CostPerNews, I decided to give it a go and make a few challenges - hours later I’m sitting on the computer in my underwear (TMI?) working out what will be my next move in the battle. I’m still not entirely sure what I am doing, but the site is basically an online version of risk.

If anyone does ignore my advice and signs up my username is (surprise, surprise) 3wdl.

The first version of Affiliatebounty.com was launched today. The site, designed and developed by Funware2000, has a nice AJAX search function to help search for merchants and find out not only what network they are on, but what the commissions are, the EPC, Conversion rate and datafeed status.

The soft launch has gone out with merchants from Webgains, AffiliateWindow, DGM & Buy.at.

I was shown the beta of this a number of months ago and it’s great to see it live - hopefully all the networks will come on board soon and we’ll see this as well used tool across the industry. We might even see less people starting a post on the a4u asking which network the o2 affiliate program is on!

Well done Jon and the team & good luck - it’s a tool that the industry has needed for a long time so hopefully it will be well received

I often wonder why the marketing and technology teams behind UK TV stations seem to be so bad.  Channel 4 become the first UK TV station to launch a system that lets you watch the latest TV episodes online (although the BBC have been testing a similar service for the past 4 years).  The site uses DRM and charges you for each program that you download and watch (DRM means that it only works for about a week of course).

No wonder TV Torrents are so popular.

Then look at NBC on the other side of the pond.  I’m a bit fan of Heroes (have been for a number of months).  Their website and marketing over there is amazing.  There are forums (and good ones at that), there are character blogs, you can watch the whole show online (for free of course).  Sounds good eh?  Not finished yet;  there is an online novel (a new comic book is put online after every episode) and there is even is a Wiki for gods sake!

I am utterly flabbergasted with the features that NBC have pilled into the site.

It’s not a one off either.   Ugly Betty is another show that’s come over from the US.  Channel 4’s site for it is basic and has little to offer.  Then there is ABC in the US.  Features galore. A Shop, Podcasts, Dedicated Websites for characters, Spin off online only TV shows; they even have a competition for people to design a dress to be features in the show!

So why on earth is the UK so behind the times?  It’s 2007 and we can’t even watch our TV shows online!

Answers on a postcard please (or comment).

I liked linkedin - I’ve “connected” with some people I used to work with but the fact that you need someones operational email address can be a bit of a pain.

Today I found the fantastic Linkedin Fast Generator widget which you can see in it’s full glory in the left hand navigation of this page.  Once you click on it it will send an invite directly to me so you don’t need to worry about which email address I happen to be using.

Kudos goes to Andy Beard.

Scott Jangro is a man on a mission.  Bumpzee was born just a few months ago and already it is becoming a regular haunt for loads of people involved in the Affiliate Marketing community (192 members signed up so far).

What I love the most about it is how the features just keep expanding.   The first Widget was released last week giving the ability to Bump posts from the referring site (ala Digg) and yesterday Scott released a New Posts and Recent Visitors widget that is similar to MyBlogLog which was recently purchased by Yahoo.  Tags now feed in automatically too if you are using Ultimate Tag Warrior with your Wordpress install.

It doesn’t stop there.  Another release yesterday gives an Active Discussions page, showing comments made on Bumpzee about the latest posts which I am sure will develop the community aspect even more.  Hopefully it won’t be long before this functions automatically with comments on the actual blog posts and will display vice-versa (a plugin for Wordpress maybe Scott?).

If you are in Affiliate Marketing and have not seen Bumpzee yet then I really would suggest that you drop by and sign up.

The fabulous super affiliate & blogger Keith Bond has released his first version of Internet Marketing Blogs UK, an RSS aggregator inspired by Scott’s Bumpzee.

I’m a massive RSS/Feed reader fan so it’s great to see sites like this coming out and Keith’s latest release is sure to be a must read for a lot of us.

He’s also taking the feeds from AffiliateManagement so if you are in the Affiliate arena and have yet to sign up to this free service you should definitely get started.

MyBlogLog, which can be seen in the right column of this site, has been purchased by Yahoo. It really is a wonderful widget which I like a lot and it’s integration with Yahoo (meaning that you will be able to login via your yahoo id) will hopefully make it a lot more widespread.

A big congratulations to the owners of MyBlogLog who are expected to have sold it for around $10m.

2007 really is shaping up to be the year of the widget.

As a side point whilst we are speaking of widgets in the right column, I’ve now had the Buy me a Drink link up since before Christmas, yet no-one has obliged!

It’s official - there are definitely some pervy bloke on MySpace.

After the launch of my new site about Unfair Bank Charges, I decided to have a look at the marketing opportunities of MySpace and see how much traffic it could drive though to the site. I installed a MySpace bot and had a little play.

Resulting MySpace Profile

I needed a profile to start the bot with, so I found a thread on sports related forum that I visit and added him & started off the process adding around 40 people.

Within 12 hours I have 24 friends and a couple of hits from using the demo version of the software, so I may well register for it.

The crux of this post is that I have received a few messages from MySpace members since I added their profile, and thought I’d share a few of them.

Firstly we have Chris, who sends the following:

So you are a single 27 year old, on here, for a persuit of more customers and a rich sugur daddy, to help him spend his hard earned cash? So what else mystery woman? What are your interests, what music do you like, and do you where thongs, or knickers?

A bit forward for our first exchange of messages I thought, until the next one I got, this one from Brett

hey there my sexy
how u been?
i miss u soo much?
reply soon
i will always love u x

How random - maybe it’s someone who thinks they know me. Then another from Brett comes though:

Hey I hope you dont mind me messaging you? I just saw your profile and wondered if you would like to get to know one another? Brettxx

Sorry about that last message my friend thought it would be funn xx not happy xx sorry xx

Who says romance is dead. I now need to decide if I start to wind them up or not - any suggestions?

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.