Recent Posts
Recent Comments
Popular Articles
Who is Lammo?
Posted by Lammo in
Next making friends again – Oh dear, Next just can’t seem to get on with their affiliates can they? Not content with dropping commissions for Christmas, bidding on their competitiors brand names and kicking bloggers off the program for posting anything remotely negative, they’ve now kicked half their affiliates off as they’ve “run out of budget” – now I’ll never understand the marketing genius that decided their affiliate program (which after all only pays out on sales, so as long as you get the maths right at the start should make more profit the more it costs you..) should have a fixed budget as with newspaper/radio advertising.
But then with geniuses like that, and a prime minister who sold off the countries gold assets for a 1/4 of their value, raided old folks’ pension funds, and hiked up the national debt to record levels under the guise of a “prudent” chancellor, this country’s got not hope, and it’s no wonder we’re suffering through the longest recession in most of our lifetimes (we hope.. Gordon might actually be elected to do the job come June..)
Apologies for the political rant.. I had a pop at Nick Clegg last week too, so I guess in the interests of fairness I should have a go at Tory Dave next week 
Affiliates 4 New – Yes, I know the new-look a4u launched earlier this month and I’m about 3 and a half weeks behind the times, but I was sunning myself on a beach in Tenerife at the time, and have only just caught up with the deluge of emails that taking a fortnight off entails – I could do with another holiday now! So having finally had a decent chance to look at the new improved a4u, I have to say it does look a vast improvement on the previous version – There are some teething issues that I’m sure the team will iron out (excluded forums, vanishing mark as read buttons and having to log in every time to name a few), but I no longer have to look at entire screen full of Murray Newlands blog posts all over the homepage, so that has to be a bonus.
I’m also loving the “Off the record” posts every Friday, and hope they will continue in the same vein they have so far!
Sorry! No discounts! – So Red Letter Days are launching a new system that will hide the voucher code box for non-voucher/discount code traffic. Well done them, and it’s always nice to see a merchant taking ideas put forward via this very blog and implementing them.. What next… Clash Media to start paying their affiliates?
Onwards and.. erm.. Downwards? – Many people have commented that I don’t talk too much about Plymouth Argyle on here these days. Well, a quick peek at the league table will tell you why that might be! We’re currently second-bottom, five points from safety with eight games to go. To be brutally honest, we deserve to go down, the football we’ve played over the last two seasons has been awful, and we’ve seen a skillful side of young, promising players sold off one-by-one and replaced with overpaid, hoofball-playing journeymen. Crowds have gone from 14/15,0000 to 8/9,000, and we looked to be down by about October, having taken just two points from our first 30.
Ironically, the man behind all this failure was Paul Sturrock, the very man who dragged us up kicking and screaming from the bottom league to the Championship. He wasn’t the man for the job this time, and since he was replaced just before Christmas by another living Home Park legend Paul Mariner, performances and results have improved. Unfortunately the board left it too late to make the change, and I don’t think there are enough games left to pick up the points required to survive. This weekend sees the return of the dishonest one to Home Park for the first time since his exit, and it’s sure to be an emotional day for all concerned. There could be some unpleasant scenes methinks if the result goes against us..
This week I have been mostly hating: Affiliates who think they’re celebrities
This week I have been mostly loving: The new Courteeners album, Falcon
You might also like to read...
Making money just got easier
Easycoreg.com – Coreg, made easy. I’m proud to announce the launch of the latest addition to the Big Idea Media portfolio – easycoreg.com. It’s something that’s been “in development” for a couple of years now – we initially designed …...
If you enjoyed this article, please consider submitting it to the readers of Affiliates4u so that they can enjoy it too! Just click the following button:
Hi Lammo,
Interesting post as ever but I just wanted to comment on the stuff about Next. Whilst I can’t comment about what happened previously as it was before my time, I do know what has gone on this time and wish to respond.
We have not kicked affiliates off because “we have run out of budget”. We work to a fixed budget and therefore have taken this tricky decision to ensure that we’re working with the right partners who are going to drive the greatest results for Next, not just in terms of volume but in terms of profitability and new customer ratios. I appreciate that this is a small difference in the argument but feel I should clarify nevertheless.
In terms of why we work to a fixed budget I have a few thoughts on this that I would like to share, as is my wont! This widespread belief that affiliate marketing is a no-risk channel only holds true if there is no unethical or unprofitable activity on the account. If there are “dodgy” affiliates or there are affiliates who are merely intercepting sales that were already on the way to the merchant whilst adding no value, then it is not a no risk channel. In fact there is a very real risk that the merchant is paying more than once for each sale. This is the case no matter how much thought goes in at the start of the campaign in setting up commission levels.
Whilst I firmly believe that the vast majority of affiliate activity does not pose a risk to a merchant, unfortunately Next have been stung a few times in the past and are therefore cautious about the channel. Therefore they take the decision to impose a cap on the budget and this is something that we have to work towards. Unfortunately this has meant that we have had to stop working with some affiliate partners who drive great business for Next.
We have put a great deal of thought into which affiliates we should work with going forward and a lot of data has been taken into consideration when making these decisions.
Our aim moving forward is to get the campaign into a state where we can demonstrate that all of the sales driven are beneficial to Next then we can begin to ramp up the levels of budget. At that point we can then begin to work with more affiliates again, although I appreciate that like in any situation it is up to an affiliate which merchants they work with and there will be certain affiliates who do not wish to work with us.
As ever, at i-level we are more than happy to discuss any of this on a one to one basis and so please contact us on nextaffiliates@i-level.com
Celebrity affiliates?! There’s an idea for a blog. A bit like perez hilton ;-P
@Matt Cheers for the explanation mate.. I’m not sure whether ECU has been kicked off the program or not – we’ve had one mail telling us we were, one telling us we weren’t, and another telling us to ignore the other two, and you’d let us know “immediately”.
I actually held a small shares position in Next which I closed out yesterday following the publication of a good set of results.. just as well, because statements like “this has meant that we have had to stop working with some affiliate partners who drive great business for Next” sets alarm bells ringing for me with my investor hat on!
@David lol, rather you than me – they crave attention as it is!