Affiliate Marketing blog by James Little

It’s 9.30pm and the aim is to get to bed as soon as I’ve finished this blog post as I am absolutely shattered – I think ‘Expo Lag’ is worse than jetlag and I’m only 20 minutes away in a cab from the conference centre!

So – first things first, a few messages of thanks..

Thanks to Claire, Matt, Chris, Pete and everyone else from Existem for what was, in my mind, the best conference that I’ve ever attended – it’s a glorious thing that our industry has this event and the news of the European version to be hosted in April is very exciting indeed (though even with so much work getting done at these events, the trips away are going to get me divorced!).

Thanks secondly to everyone who turned up to the two panels that I was part of –I was just filling in for our sick MD on the first one (State of the Affiliate Nation) and hope that I did a good job of it, especially with such a huge turnout.   As for my second panel on voucher codes, Duncan made a comment earlier to say that he’d never seen it so busy that people were sitting on the floor and it’s just a shame we ran out of time so quickly and could not take any more questions.

Lastly a big thank you to everyone that sponsored the event, especially the evening parties, giving us all a chance to network – I’ve pretty much lost my voice now but it was absolutely worth it!

So onto the Roundup..

• I don’t want to discourage any other merchants from being innovative, but I think Sunshine.co.uk may already have a just cause to think that they will have another couple of A4UAwards in the bag next year!
   
• I wrote a whole post about the sessions I wanted to attend but only managed to two sessions outside of the ones I was participating in; I guess it’s always going to be the case, especially when I was described by a colleague as a “power-networker who doesn’t stop talking”.   Hopefully I’ll make a few more next year!
• I may have moaned about the lack of preparation time I had to think about the panel where I was filling in for Tom, but I secretly cherished being on another panel, especially one of that calibre;  not sure how it will come out on camera though!
• It was amazing to meet so many people that I’ve not had the chance to before, especially the likes of Doug and Kirsty whose blogs I read every day! 
• Affiliate Marketing is definitely changing – there were some big “traditional” publishers in attendance that last year may have dismissed Affiliate Marketing as a way of increasing revenue but are now actively engaging it.
• If blogging from an iPhone in the pub can get me linked to from e-consultancy and Search Engine Land then I have to do it more often!
• The cruise was good but needed more music earlier to get people in the mood, rather than sitting at the tables all night – a big thanks to DFDS and I’m looking forward to the free cruise already!
• The last night was the best of them all – I have one word to say to Tom Quinn from iPoints though – well, two words mate, Team Extreme!
• I said I’d blog it and I will – the only downer was the Sky VIP bar – I’m really against segregation and I was a little frustrated about it, even if I did manage to blag a way in!
• Can whoever has the photo of my kissing Aldo please burn it so that it doesn’t tarnish his street cred! 

That’s it for now – A successful year that I really enjoyed that was even better than my expectations, now I just need a new liver and a bit of sleep to get ready for the next one.  I’ll add links in to people’s names later etc later when I can function correctly!

At the A4U Expo (more on that when recovered tommorow!) and just heard reports that google will be allowing paid search on gambling terms in the UK from this Friday.

Massive news that I am sure will be confirmed very soon! Heard it here first..

Do you know the thing I hate the most about the A4UExpo – the fact that there are too many good sessions!  How am I meant to choose which ones to attend and which ones to skip?  Not only that, but I obviously have a few meetings and some general stand duty to attend to!

With that being said, here’s a few of my picks for this year’s fantastic A4UExpo, which is just a few days away.

Day 0 

Opening Party:  This is where it all starts; last year I only made it there about 10pm after a late night on the office but as we’re sponsoring it this year and I have a meeting before, I’ll be in the hotel bar from about 5pm.

Day 1

9am - Opening Remarks by Matt Wood

9.15am – Keynote by Michael from NMA

11am – Wordpress SEO by Joost (some other excellent sessions on at the same time though!)

12.30pm – 10 Ways to Get the most out of your Search Affiliates by Duncan

(I can’t do 2pm – but So you Don’t do Travel would be my choice here with Chris and Alan from Sunshine)

3pm – Extreme SEO all the way!

4.30pm – God knows here! Affiliate State of the Nation will be excellent, but I really want to see what Kevin Edwards comes out with in “Understanding Incentivised Traffic” after Quidco dumped them for, err, not understanding it?

The buy.at cruise that night should be good fun too – must find out how much a cab home will cost me!

Day 2

11am – Effective Voucher Code implementation (with yours truely)

12.30pm – Again a difficult choice – either the one with Rob Kerry or the one with Graham and Zak

3pm – either Affiliate Doctors Live or Do Incentive Sites add incremental valie

4.30pm – Mobile, Video, API’s and Social Media session

Finished off by the Ice Party in the evening.

I’m sure like last year I won’t make everything that I would like to but well done to Matt and the team for another fantastic line up.

Recently I went through my Google Reader account and noted down all the affiliate blogs that I read for a forum post.

I thought I’d share this and ask if there are any that I’ve missed off that should be added?  Please comment and let me know if so.

In no particular order…

http://www.3wdl.co.uk - James Little should write more posts.
http://www.pfft.co.uk - Chris Clarkson aka. Mr Sunshine is one of the newest bloggers but also one of the best
http://zacjohnson.com/ - US ‘Super’ Affiliate Zac Johnson
http://www.zarrblog.com/ - SEO, affiliate marketing and running your own business
http://www.revenews.com/ - US blog collaboration of the Excellent Revenue Mag
http://www.morleymouse.com/ - Alpharooms Affiliate Manager Dan Morley
http://www.monetisethis.net/ - Rob Powell, UK Affiliate
http://www.jonathanvolk.com/ - ‘Super Affiliate’ Jonathan Volk
http://www.affiliatestuff.co.uk/ - Kirsty’s excellent Affiliate blog
http://www.lammo.net/ - John Lamberton came out of retirement just so he could start this blog
http://www.onelittleduck.co.uk - I often find myself agreeing with Jason and his blog is excellent
http://www.nickycakes.com/ - Another decent US Affiliate - does lots of Facebook / MySpace advertising
http://davidfiske.com/ - UK Affiliate David Fiske offers some excellent advice and tutorials
http://uberaffiliate.com/ - Sometimes a little ‘out’ there, but Uber Affiliate is a good read
http://www.befuddled.me.uk/ - Ray should post more!
http://affiliate-blogs.5staraffiliateprograms.com/ - 5 Star Affiliate Programs
http://blog.affiliatetip.com/ - Affiliate Summit organiser Shawn Collins
http://www.fishandclicks.co.uk/ - Paul Wright, who also blogs a lot
http://www.affiliateprogramadvice.com/blog/ - Jess & Co
http://www.affiliatemarketingblog.co.uk/ - POR Owner and all round affiliate expert Clarke Duncan
http://www.here.org.uk - UKOffers’ Kieron bas won best affiliate blog of the year for the past two years at the A4UAwards
http://www.affiliateblog.co.uk/ - Fraser Edwards blog featuring his excellent podcasts
http://www.leemccoy.co.uk/ - Prettyboy’s Affiliate Blog
http://www.mooseontheloose.co.uk/ - Paul is never one to beat around the bush!
http://www.shoemoney.com/ - Showmoney should need no introduction

EDIT:  Second time I’ve missed Doug off this list - Sorry!

http://www.asapventures.co.uk/blog/ - Doug’s blog is one of the first you should add to your Google reader (or bloglines, etc, etc) account!  Sorry for missing you in the first place Doug!

http://pistol101.co.uk/ - About time Pistol got around to blogging!

Just over a year ago I had decided that I wanted to grow my hair long; i’d never really grown it before so it was a new experience to me and it turned out that as my hair grows, it curls and gets a little out of control.  Eventually I started to get to the point where I was happy with it (after a year!) but I was taking part in a wedding just over a month ago and got it all cut off.

Now it’s starting to grow again and I’m unsure what to do - my wife is pleaing with me to get it cut but on the other fence many felt it added a bit of “character”.

With that in mind, I’ve decided to start a poll to help me decide which option to go with.

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Here are a couple of photos to help you decide..

Me with Long hair in Barbados (also in the photo are Frosty, Tom and Lee).

At the wedding just after the haircut.

As mentioned about a week ago, I finally got around to updating my wordpress installation and rather than go for version 2.6.1 (stable) I decided to go “bleeding edge” and install it straight from Subversion.

I thought it would be a nice idea to write a quick post about some of the new features and include a few screenshots.  I have to say, I’m quite excited about the full released so let’s go straight into what’s new.

As you will see above, the Dashboard has undergone a few changes and is, in my opinion, much improved.  Highlighted in red is “Quickpress”, which allows you to write a post straight from the Dashboard homepage.  There is also an Inbox and whilst this feature is not working yet, it seems to be a mix of trackbacks, comments, announcements and potentially even a way of contacting other wordpress site owners.

Above you will see the new “Install plugin” feature - I know that this can be done via a few plugins already, but it’s awsome to have it straight out of the box and linking in to the Wordpress Extend site - every install I’ve tried so far has worked but I think they need to improve the search tool slightly as I had a few problems finding what I was after.. so much easier than booting up an FTP client!

I was a little disappointed with the speed of the admin interface until I saw this beauty.. Makes the speed in uploading tons faster than in version 2.6.

The media library is a fairly new feature and this is now under “content” - it seems to allow commenting on actual images/videos/files but i’ve not played with this feature too much yet.

A few things have changed in writing a post itself - there is a new settings field that allows you to change some of the display options in the post and you can also make posts “sticky” to appear at the top of your blog, useful for people who use Wordpress as a CMS or for large updates / intro text.  You can now also move the “widgets” around in the write post page, though I’m not sure why you’d really want to do this.

Comment threading (and reply to comments) will be installed as default and you can read about all the other planned changes on the wordpress site.

It’s looking good - whilst I wouldn’t recommend installing it on a live site I’ll probably keep it going on here and update it every week or so to look out for new changes.

Let’s face it, It was only a matter of time before it happened and boy has it happened…

Google announced just yesterday that they were launching their own browser and just a day later the beta is avaliable. 

I’ve been playing with it all night and I have to say, I’m quite impressed.  There is still along way to go (time for some plugins, I think), but here are a few of the features:

• Clean UI - Tabular navigation from above the address bar makes sense and the drag and drop functionality is neat
• Homepage - The homepage is neat, it allows you to see your most visited sites, latest bookmarks, recently closed tabs and other things that should help with your browsing experience
• Single Address bar - No seperate search box and fast searching on sites other than google too.
• Ability to create “apps” on your desktop, letting you open stuff like Gmail in it’s own window quickly and effecantly without having to open the browser itself
• Fast browsing - seems much quicker than Firefox and IE (perhaps due to the lack of plugins)
• New Java tools - making javascript and applets pretty quick
• Tab processes - each tab has it’s own process so if one of the sites your visiting is causing problems it doesn’t crash your whole browsing session

I’m sure there are plenty of others too - it runs using Webkit (Safari) so it would be a good idea to download it and make sure your sites render OK, which it should if it works in Firefox and IE!

I’m after some help.

Can anyone explain to me the whole DGM and Linkedin thing?  It’s being advertised on the Affiliates4u site at the moment but I just don’t understand the benefits of it.  I get (and use) linkedin - it’s a great site for connecting with business contacts, getting some good introductions & finding who some of the key employees are at a company, great.

But what’s the point of having a link to it in DGM?   I’ve not managed to spend the time digging out my login details (as I’ve not used DGM since the launch of DGMP..) but their website doesn’t really seem to explain what it does and the benefits of the mashup (if you can call it that).  Is it just for getting in contact with whoever manages the campaign at the merchant?  If so what’s the benefit of linkedin over an email address (or a comms centre)?

Answers on a the back of a postcard (or in the comments..).

Wordpress is a powerful tool and I use it for quite a few sites that I have built but it’s plugins can be limited and at times I’ve had to look at other solutions.

One of the big things that I wanted to be able to do when building a site is create a review site – none of the plugins that I previously looked at handled this very well so I ended up installing Drupal as it was more powerful for this.

However, a new (paid) plugin has recently been released called WPReviewSite.

It’s currently just under $100 (so about £55) and includes both the plugin and theme to get a review site running pretty quickly out of the box.

Here are some of the features listed on their website:

• Adds Star Ratings To Your Comment Forms
• Sorts Your Posts by Weighted Average
• Integrates With WordPress Administration
• Powers a Whole Website or Just What Parts You Want
• Doesn’t Modify WordPress Database Tables

I’ve given it a quick go and it seems very powerful, although the proof is in the pudding and I’m aiming to get a full site using this within the next week or two and will publish the URL when it’s all up and running so you can give it a test drive

More information about the plugin and theme on their site

September is a big month for a few reasons.

1. The AffiliateFuture retail event on the 16th
2. Talk like a Pirate day on the 19th (Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrr)
3. My Eldest sons 6th (yes, 6th!) Birthday

And starting tomorrow… Tacheback.  This is a charity style challenge throughout the month - trying to raise £1m for the Everyman charity.   It’s really simple to get involved - sign up via their website, get some sponsors and grow your tache all month long;  you can also do it in teams, so if anyone would like to join me in this then let me know and we can pop along to the Finale night on the 30th September.

If I can get 5 people to join in then i’ll keep it on the for Expo in October - much to my wifes dismay!  I’ve set up a team on the Tacheback site so drop me a message below with your name / email and i’ll invite you in!

Sign up & Join in now - if your a lady then you could always sponsor me instead.