Affiliate Marketing Blog by James Little

This is neat.  It’s been announced today that BT (British Telecom for those who were unaware) have partnered up with FON - a Spanish Wifi company.

Ultimately the partnership with see “hundreds of thousands” of Wifi hotspots created across the UK with the vision to give the whole nation free Wifi internet, well, BT customers at least.

A friend of mine, who ended up moving to Wales and living on a farm, once started a small Wireless network across an area of Blackpool a few years ago and even back then when less people had wireless it seemed to do well - this is certainly the kind of news that could convince people to switch back to the troubled phone operator.

It’s also worth noting that not only will BT customers get access to the UK hotspots, but also in countries all over the world.

If you’re a broadband affiliate in the UK it may well be worth updating your sites as this is a major new selling point.

Well done BT & Fon!

If you are an affiliate, affiliate manager, network employee or agency worker then the chances are that you are registered for the a4uexpo at the end of October.  The event is hosted on the 25th/26th October in the London Excel centre and looks by all accounts to be a right corker!

I’ll be standing around for most of the day on the altogether stall but aside from that here are some of the sessions I’m looking forward to attending..

Day 1:

11.30-12.30: Let’s Get Social

The Affiliate 2.0 Session. Uncovering how affiliates are uniquely placed to profit from Blogging, Viral and Social Marketing. Real life practical examples on facebook applications, bebo and second life. With an update on what’s hot this Autumn.

NB.  This one is with our SEO/Social Director, Ciaran Norris & the famous Lee McCoy.  A must.

13.00-13.45: Ad Exchanges & Ad Marketplaces Uncovered

This session will introduce you to the emerging world of Ad Exchanges & Marketplaces. Starting with an explanation on how ad exchanges & marketplaces work, the session will take you through how advertisers and to publishers can benefit from using an ad exchange.

14.00-15.00: Meet the Super Affiliates

Driving sales of over £500 Million for their merchants last year, these super affiliates answer your questions on strategy and hot issues within the industry.  Ask the questions you’ve always wanted to!

15.30-16.30: The Interactive Insiders’ Guide to Selling Your Web Business

Join Duncan Jennings & Sean Lafleur as they share their complementary experiences in selling & buying web businesses (with more or less success).

17.00-18.00: Extreme SEO Q & A

Extreme SEO Q&A session on Search Engine Optimisation, with both black, grey and white hat experts from SEO.

Then of course there is the a4uawards in the evening

Day 2

09.30-10.30: £2bn & Growing. Where Next for Affiliate Marketing?

Leading industry figures predict how affiliate marketing will evolve with this keynote session. Speakers inc. the President of Linkshare, COO of TradeDoubler, Chief Exec of Buy.at, and the CEO of Affiliate Future.

11.00-12.00 The Changing Nature of Search

The Internet is maturing at lightening speed and the very definition of “Search” is changing with it.

From “Google Universal” to “personalized search”, not only are the search engines changing the way they see search, but so are the users changing their search methods and in particular they are changing their perceptions of who they trust on the internet to point them in the right direction.

This talk looks at some of the roots behind these potentially seismic shifts in user search behavior and the search providers themselves to see the dangers and the opportunities that face both merchants and affiliates alike.

12.30-13.30:  Widgets, Blidgets and the Implications for Affiliate Marketing in the long term

How widgets and blidgets will affect affiliate marketing in the long term. Widgets, Blidgets this session won’t make you Fidget!.

14.00-14.45 -  Case Study - The Online and Offline PR Campaigns for the MillionDollarHomePage.com

Imal will be speaking on the topic of The Online and Offline PR Campaigns for the MillionDollarHomePage.com & The Mount Madonna School Raffle ( 2.9 million dollars raised).

Discussed will be: Public Relations and marketing strategy before launching a campaign, Global vs. Regional campaigns - how to make each a success, Positioning key messages in the media, How to be effective in interviews, Outreaching to the media both online and offline.

15.00-16.00 - Will you need a network in 2008

This session examines the recent trend of full service agencies establishing micro networks.
Some say designed to cream the top performing Paid Search affiliates. Here we compare and contrast these with traditional affiliate networks, and what this means for the sector and the traditional relationship triangle. I’m on this one - so please do come and ask some questions!

16.30-17.30 Paid on Performance Search - The Future?

Are traditional agency models such as charging a percentage of search spend viable in the increasingly competitive paid search space?  This session compares and contrasts them against benifits of paid performance search as popularised by Affiliate Marketing.

Phew.  I think that’s it - along with actually being on the stand it’s going to be a busy few days - look forward to seeing many of you there!

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.

I’ve tried (and failed) to get some sites into google news in the past but finally seem to have cracked it with the eyfall blog that I setup.

Hi James,

Thank you for your note. We reviewed http://www.eyefall.co.uk/blog/ and we
will be adding it to our index for Google News. You should be able to find
your articles in Google News within a few weeks. While we’ll strive to
include as many of your news articles as possible, please be aware that we
can’t guarantee the inclusion of your content in Google News.

Thank you for providing your articles to Google News.

Regards,
The Google Team

They turned my down the first time so I added a contact and profile pages for the authors and it seems to have done the trick.

A number of months ago I saw a message from Neil Durrant (MD of Submission Technology) on the UK-Netmarketing email list asking for any €œexperts€ of white labelling to get in touch.

Knowing that they owned GreasyPalm I become intrigued and managed to pull of a few details to confirm my suspicions that they were aiming to launch a white label cashback service.

It’s finally been made official now:  Press Release  | White Label Cashback

It could see some interesting times for the affiliate industry; while cashback sites have had a hand in generating a huge amount of leads or sales I’ve always felt that the €œnormal person on the street€ doesn’t know anything about them.  This could soon change.

So it seems that the Affiliate Summit is coming to London - they have posted a message on their site to confirm the date, September 28, the day after AD:Tech London and a month before the a4uexpo.

Would be interested to hear other peoples opinions on this.. Two large affiliate events can surely only be good for the affiliate industry, but are there enough advertisers for both in such a short period?

Will affiliates attend both events, especially when it requires two trips to London in two months?

I guess costs will be a factor too - Affiliate Summit usually charges around $2,000 for a pass whereas the a4uevents are usually split dependant on if you are an affiliate, agency or network.

Interesting times ahead - lets hope that both events bring good PR for the affiliate marketing as a whole.

Interesting news - Will is a good guy and will do well I feel.  Congrats on the promotion if you read this.

From NMA

William Cooper has been appointed as CEO and president of Tradedoubler, the affiliate network.

Cooper has been acting-CEO since January, but now permanently moves up from his role as COO.

The move comes a week after the Swedish-owned network rejected a $900m (£459.6m) takeover offer from AOL.

“We are pleased to announce this appointment. William has a deep knowledge of the company having joined it soon after its launch,” said Kjell Duveblad, Tradedoubler chairman of the board.

“We have a number of challenges and opportunities in front of us and his experience will be invaluable as we continue to expand the business over the coming years,” added Duveblad.

“We have an unrivalled pan-European footprint and a market leading position in many of our products and services throughout the 18 European countries in which we operate,” said Cooper. “I hope that over time we can expand both our geographic footprint and our products and services in order to meet the requirements of our advertisers and publishers”.

In January the company said that profits for 2006 were up by 53% to SEK 480.3 (£34.9m), with a 61% increase in revenues.

The first UK Affiliate Dinner event was held on 16th March and after some good feedback from the attendees we are arranging another London event for Friday 27th April.

The event will be hosted at The Bunker Bar in Covent Garden - there is no need for upfront payment but a registration form will be up and running the gauge the number of attendees.

There is seating space reserved for up to 30 people and a full food menu is available for the night. As with the previous event I’ll be there from about 6pm. There are no sponsors and no speakers - just turn up, have a bite to eat and enjoy the company of others in the industry.

Bunker Bar
41 Earlham Street
London
WC2H 9LX
tel. 0207 240 0606

Full details on the Affiliate Dinner website.

From the TradeDoubler website.

Our shareholders have decided not to accept AOL’s offer to buy their shares at 215 SEK per share.

 

As a Board we considered the offer to be attractive and hence we decided to recommend it to our shareholders and let them decide. However, this offer is now behind us and we must now look forward.

 

TradeDoubler has a very exciting and attractive future ahead as an independent company. We believe that given our unique pan European footprint, our growing range of products, robust technology but most importantly the knowledge and expertise we have within the company, we are perfectly placed to take advantage of the opportunities this rapidly growing industry will give us over the coming years.

 

Looking at the business plan for 2007 we will intensify our recruitment activities in all countries and we will intensify our product development efforts.

 

We continue to assess opportunities to grow our business both geographically and from a product perspective in order to increase our revenues, profitability and to deliver shareholder value.

Interesting stuff - I wonder if any other offers are on the horizon.

From VNUNet:

The government of Cuba has announced plans to take the whole country open source as soon as possible.

Communications Minister Ramiro Valdés announced the plan at a conference in Havana, and said that Microsoft had cooperated with government agencies and intelligence services in the past.

Valdes insisted that the information technology industry is a “battlefield” on which Cuba must fight.

He also highlighted a quote from Bill Gates, who described open source enthusiasts as “some new modern-day sort of communists”, pointing out that this would be a badge of honour for Cubans.

The article goes on to say that Cubans are developing their own linux distribution called Nova, based on Gentoo and that estimates are that there are around 3,000 Open Source developers based in Cuba.

It’s an interesting article on a number of fronts - linux is known to be more secure than windows and I’m sure it’s not the first national that has decided to move towards this technology (although I suspect that most would chose Sun).

With the advancements being made with GUI’s like KDE4 it will be interesting to see if some of Microsofts dominance starts to buckle - especially in the corporate environment.