Dartmoor by day

I was going to do a Half Marathon, but that seemed a little easy. So instead I chose the “Midnight Madness: on the 17th July I shall be trekking 14 miles across Dartmoor in the middle of the night, armed only with a pair of walking boots and a torch!

I’m doing this to raise money for the Fishermen’s Mission, a charity that provides emergency welfare and support to Deep sea fishermen and their families.

Dartmoor by night

Please give whatever you can afford to spare to help this charity, and I’ll try not to fall down a gorge!

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

Lammo on the scrounge (for charity)

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Today, we’re blessed with a Day in the Life of an a4uaward winner – Mark Russell from Existem Affiliate Management, winners of “Agency of the Year 2008″. I’ve known Mark for years and years and years (yes, he really is that old), and he had his Affiliate Marketing apprenticeship at Big Idea Media where I taught him everything he needed to know about Affiliate Marketing – Which networks were bandits, never trust agencies, Friday afternoons are for the Pub, etc, etc. All of which is completely useless to him as MD of Existem AM, but I’m sure he also picked up one or two things that were useful..

Mark’s also a fellow Plymouth Argyle fan, and therefore knows what he’s talking about. We even managed to squeeze in a quick away win at Charlton last season the night before a4uexpo, a feat we’ll hope to repeat with an away trip to Chelsea around the 2009 event. Without further ado, it’s over to the big man himself..

John asked me to write this 2 months ago and hey just had a chance to do it…sorry!!

Well here is a normal day in my life running Existem Affiliate Management:-

7am Wake up and put the kettle on and make a massive cup of coffee, while feeding the dogs and letting them out for a run in the garden, get showered dressed and head off to the office, maybe having checked a few stats while drinking coffee.

8am Being a nice boss pick staff up on way to work (must start charging for petrol…lol) get into the office for about 8:30.

8:30am make sure the coffee has been put on and the aroma of fresh coffee is filling the office. Work through list of tasks for staff to do that day.

9am Start sifting through the spam, and some good emails from affiliates and clients, look at what news we have to promote to affiliates about codes, offers, and top selling products.

9:30am Go for a cigarette and have first call with Bruce to see what the plans are for the day from his side, and what he needs me to get staff to do.

10am Check through the forum, and check emails and reply to anything that has come through overnight.

10:30am Start checking stats for clients while filling in internal reports of trends from day to day and week to week, and then compare each client to see if there is any similar trends.

11:00am start sending out newsletters that we have been working on yesterday and this morning, get staff to send to me to check and add some details then get blogged, forum posted and emailed through network. Speak to affiliates about some promotions as we all know speaking to affiliates before 11 is never a good idea, (especially John who never arrives at desk before 1pm if you are lucky…lol).

12pm Look through affiliates websites and help affiliates by writing content for their sites (if you would like any unique content please email me, mark@existem-am.com).

1pm Speak to clients and recommend offers that they can run and start discussing promotions for the months ahead.

2pm Speak to Bruce again on the phone and discuss upcoming meetings events and any new strategies, plan diary for the next few weeks planning where and when we both have meetings and organise a time for Bruce to visit Plymouth office.

2:30pm check forum and add any more news that we need to let affiliates know about.

3pm Start filling in reports and filing paperwork, although you never believe it if you saw my desk!

3:30pm Work on new business look at any leads we have been sent or any clients that have contacted us and check we have sent everything that we should have and follow up any leads and calls.

4pm Speak to more affiliates about any promotions that we have and update our merchant discount code section

4:30pm Check on the latest football news, anyone who knows me will know I really enjoy my football and love the Greens, watch out premier league we are on our way!

5pm Check forum and emails again.

5:15pm Debrief with staff and plan the next days work.

5:30 Speak to my wife Lorraine and find out what time I need to be home for dinner (if I am lucky she will have something in the oven for dinner, maybe not at the moment as I am supposed to be fitting a new kitchen not sure where time comes from to do that..Eeek.

5:45 Check and update worksheets for the day and check emails, forum and update database, start thinking about what we are doing tomorrow.

6pm Go home taking staff on way home, (good boss aren’t I?),

6:30 Get home and have some tea and spend some time with Lorraine and the dogs (2 border collies Lucy and Pippa).

8pm One last check for the day on the forum, emails and statistics for clients.

10pm Settle down to catch up on daily news with Sir Trevor.

11pm Bed…must be getting old!

Throughout this day there are cigarette breaks, in the office premises I work from we have to go to bottom of the car park to the smoking shelter and this normally accompanied with my mobile where I make most of my calls, (I get comments from other residents about me always being on the phone) quite often these calls have the sound of a helicopter in the background (not mine but the airport is close and also the hospital).

Coffee machine is on constant flow in the office all day, if I was to add in each coffee the post would twice as long…I do like my coffee during the day although I really should consider decaf.

Many thanks for (finally, lol) sharing a Day in your Life Mark – If anyone else would like to be featured in this series (or has been promising to for months but not got round to it yet.. not looking at anyone in particular.. you know who you are!), then please get in touch – Lammo Readers are loving these snippets of your working days, and are hungry for more!

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

A Day in the Life of… Mark Russell

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The latest subject in our Day in the Life series is Jason Baker, Publisher Account Director at Commission Junction UK. I’m grateful to Jason for taking the time to share a typical day at CJ Towers with us. Remember, if you would like to take part in “A Day in the Life..”, then please get in touch with me. Without further ado, it’s over to Jason..

So I have been asked to write this blog – I have to admit it’s a little daunting as I have as only been at Commission Junction for six months!

Here’s a little about me. As I said I have only been here at Commission Junction for a relatively short while. I came to Commission Junction after eight years in traditional press and B2B publishing, dipping my toe in the digital waters over the years, as anyone would while working for a national newspaper group or magazine publisher. So here I am in the digital space. When I was looking to move into digital ‘proper’, my brief was I wanted to work in the most fast moving, comprehensive and diverse area of online marketing, and boy do I realise now that I got what I wanted – I love it!

So here it is, a typical day in the life…

7am -It’s Monday morning and like pretty much everyone I know the reality has kicked in that the weekend is over and it’s time to get into the groove and get off to work. The usual routine and extra five minutes in bed is obligatory! J My wife Helen is just as chirpy (not!) as she has to get up earlier than me so I get out of bed and EMBRACE it!

8.50am – I forgot to mention what I just arrived back from a week away on holiday, so need to catch up the Everest size, mountain of emails I’ve received, deal with what’s urgent and park the ones that can wait. We have a new starter joining the publisher team today, Zhanna as an Account Executive – It’s great that we have another to person join the six of us resource-wise of course, but also we can now pen the title – ‘the magnificent seven’.

10am – the usual trawl through my email this morning is not as bad as I had predicted as lots of stuff was picked up by the team while I was away (thank you, thank you); I just need to make a few calls to clarify some details with my publishers this afternoon. Zhanna (the new starter) has arrived – I’m going to give her a little time to settle in, then take her round to meet the rest of the Commission Junction team, and also pop upstairs to introduce her to Mediaplex, Search 123, PriceRunner & ValueClick Media. There are around 120 of us in the UK office now across every business, so lots of names and faces for her to remember!

11.30am – Eventually… the morning is over! I have managed to catch up with a few of our publishers for a chat to see how their businesses have been doing whilst I’ve been away, talk through any spikes or dips in activity, and see if we can fix the dips. One publisher in particular had a great week as we managed to negotiate an increase in CPA from one of his merchants for a week to drive additional sales. Negotiating from £25 to £41 in CPA on a credit card for a cashback site will always go down well…. The publisher gives the advertiser extra exposure in the email bulletins and on their site, and sales go through the roof, everyone is happy J – so it’s clearly time to get the Advertiser Manager to go back to the merchant for an extension.

It’s always the way, but so much happens when you are off. Our second version of the Commission Junction Order Inquiry Manager has launched (otherwise known as the ‘cashback’ tool!) for our UK incentive and loyalty affiliates. What does this mean? In a nutshell this enables us to manage the transaction process more effectively and track any transactions that may have been blocked by anti-virus programmes or users cookies being blocked for whatever reason. Really useful bit of kit to take to market and, admittedly, to clear the backlog we had. So far it’s been received really well but as always it would be good to hear of any improvements you think we could make.

12pm – We have our publisher and advertiser team meeting at 12pm every Monday so we run through the strategy as usual, catch up on anything I have missed and what needs to happen in the week ahead. There is quite a lot to go through this week because in the next few weeks we are reviewing our progress on Q1-2 strategy and starting to work on the planning for Q3-4. A key part of the strategy this time of year will be to ensure we have the most appropriate publishers in place for the retail push later in the year, and Jan/Feb 09 next year for travel. We also need to ensure the merchants have appropriate commissions in place. Lots to do and I get the coffee and biscuits in to keep everyone raring to go.

Last but not least we are organising a publisher night out – what shall we do this time? Casino, comedy, a day out of team building and outdoor pursuits (yeah right) or straight down to Soho for a night on the tiles J … we decide on a comedy night for early June (some of you may know that we often do Soho beers so it will be good to do something a little different).

Now it’s time for a couple of calls to our finance publishers who specialise in PPC and content about a few new programmes that are launching, and to set up a few catch up lunches for later this week and the next.

1.30pm – Quick lunch which today means a Chinese takeaway (it is healthy!), then back to my desk to get everything together for a 2pm meeting. I am joining Florian, our Senior Sales Manager who is meeting a major PC and Laptop merchant who has just signed to join the Commission Junction network. They are coming in to also discuss becoming a Commission Junction publisher and meet some more members of the team. They want to place links to merchants (ideally software and technology) products and services on their site to drive incremental revenue. A pretty simple process, with set up taking around five minutes then they will have access to our full range of merchants and even be able to search by product if they want links to something specific.

It was a great meeting as it turns out that we also will be able to load Commission Junction tracked merchant icons on the desktops of all of their PC and laptops as well.

3.30pm – I’ve got some time now before a late afternoon meeting to go back to my ‘parked’ emails and do final prep for trip up north tomorrow to see a few of my affiliates. This will be a good one as Alison Guise (our European General Manager) and Cheryl Ingram (UK Client Development Director) are going as well, which will give our publishers a chance to give face-to-face feedback on their turf.

5.15pm – OUT of the office!!

I’m just off to meet a few of the regulars for some networking and beers. They’re a really good bunch and it gives me a chance as the new boy to bounce my ideas around as most of these guys have been around the block a few times and are really experienced affiliates.

1.15am (I think?) We ended up finishing the evening with some decent food before parting company having talked through some good ideas but latterly, enough rubbish to pack a small landfill site! Taxi home!

So there you go, that about sums it up before it all starts again tomorrow. Hope it sheds a little light.

Signing off, Jason Baker!!

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

A Day in the Life of… Jason Baker

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It’s been a few weeks since our last Day in the Life – A few people who promised to do one haven’t delivered yet, so I’ll be out chasing them over the coming weeks.. you know who you are, and you have been warned guys!

I’m really glad that Elaine agreed to share a Day in her life with us, as she’s one of the friendliest people I’ve met in Affiliate Marketing, and a great character with fantastic northern humour (She supports Leeds United) and a love of tiaras! Here she fills us in on a typical day with the Childrens Rooms empire (The Childrens Rooms affiliate program is on Paid on Results, and pays 7.5% commission), which revolves nicely around the Television schedules (You’ve got to love Sky+)…

7.30 – arise and shine – either me or Dave gets Ollie up, fed and off to school. Dave usually makes me a cup of detox tea, quickly followed by a cup of coffee while I’m checking the previous days stats whilst watching another snoring feature on GMTV, paying particular attention to Amazon as it’s quite easy to spot trends and hidden gems, which go down well with my visitors.

8.30 – wave Dave on his way to Children’s Rooms – he works there a couple of days a week – then don my wireless head phones for 30 minutes on the treadmill accompanied by the Sopranos (I also watch this when ironing – unfortunately the cleaner interrupted me during quite a raunchy episode – I’m sure she thinks I was watching something else entirely :0), we’ve also recently invested in a Power Trainer, so 10 minutes extreme vibrating before heading for the shower.
NB – with all this exercising you would think I’d be a shadow of my former self – unfortunately not so – but I reckon I’ve got a good chance with the Ladies Shot Putting team for the 2012 Olympics.

10.00 – check emails and make sure visitor levels are stable. If pages have fallen I need to ascertain why (it’s usually something I’ve done or not done!) or if a page is proving extremely popular check that I’ve got the latest offers and nothing is out of stock. Then it’s a quick tidy round and breakfast with Phil and Fern.

11.00 – In the car and a 20 minute drive to Children’s Rooms, where I meet up with my other half and Andrew. Much to discuss today and Andrew has thankfully typed up an agenda to keep us focussed. We’re in the final throes of completing on our new premises and all the bureaurcracy that that entails, deciding on who is going to be doing what as the company grows and the ranges and products we hope to introduce over the coming year. How we’re going to juggle PPC, the Affiliate arena and other sales channels and whether to go down the Order Fulfilment Route now that we have the extra space, The meeting goes well and we’re all very keyed up and excited about the future of Children’s Rooms.

2.30 – back home and a sandwich before settling down on the computer to do some general house keeping on the website – update some pages, tweak others for SEO purposes, send some link requests, check stats, catch up with the forum, Have a natter with one of my sisters or friends – working from home doesn’t count as work!

3.40 – wonder where Ollie is, he should have been home from school by now – he saunters in ten minutes later and tries to sneak onto WOW (World of Warcraft) before changing out of his uniform. Back to the computer until either Dave comes home or it’s 4.40 and time to catch the end of Deal Or No Deal.

5.00 – discuss what we’re having for tea, check to see if we’ve got anything in and decide who’s going to cook it – me, Dave or the local gastro-pub whilst trying to ignore Ollie’s cries of MaccyDees, MaccyDees.

6.30 – shoo Ollie out of the house to go play with his mates – in 5 minutes he can be on the beach, at the park or swinging from the ‘tarzie’ in the woods yet he’d be WOWing all night if we let him – another hour on the ‘puter for me before Coronation Street commences the evenings television viewing.

7.30 – skyplus Coronation Street as eldest son and wife – ourkev and Ditzy to you – pop round to discuss the latest developments with Nursery Rooms and Kids Shopping – our drop shipping sites that are coming along nicely – which will soon showcase some lovely children’s bedroom and nursery furniture from Germany – yep we’re going international – thank heavens they speak English so well.

9.00 settle down for the Apprentice and Desperate Housewives and then head for bed.

Tomorrow’s another day and I think I’ll be wearing my Grandma hat for most of it, and keeping company with Phil, Fern, the Loose Woman and David Dickinson – oh and Baby TV – although I might get a little bit of shopping-time in

Thanks for that Elaine, and Good Luck to Leeds on Sunday!

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

A Day in the Life of… Elaine Forth

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Isn’t Karma a wonderful thing? – Who says there’s no justice in the world? Just five short months after “leaving the cast of Eastenders (Plymouth Argyle) to play King Lear (Leicester City)”, perennial liar Ian Holloway managed to add yet another relegation to his CV, this time dragging Leicester down to the third tier of English football for the first time in their history. Well, he did say he’d get them out of the championship!
It was a surreal final weekend to the football season for Argyle fans, with a rather subdued defeat at Wolves taking a backseat to events up at the Britannia Stadium, where another former Argyle manager Tony Pulis took his Stoke side into the Premiership at the expense of Hollowords’ side with a 0-0 draw (Christ, we saw enough 0-0 draws when Pulis was here!). Every Argyle fan was more than happy to trade a defeat to Wolves in exchange for wins for Stoke and Southampton, which would see justice done, and the Leicester Liar down yet again.

You have to feel sorry for the Leicester fans who’ve had to put up with the clown ruining their club over the last five months, culminating in their bitter rivals Nottingham Forest playing their football one tier higher than the foxes next season. Holloway refused to drop back on his media appearances all the while his team were struggling, and managed to waste millions of pounds on rubbish players in the transfer window – He even paid us 50% more than we paid for 96 year old Barry Hayles!

Ian Holloway would have been wise to check out the ending of King Lear before making his “wacky” quote about leaving Argyle – We’re just awaiting Milan Maderic to bring down the final curtain on this clown’s career, and send him back to his garden.

A co-reg is for life, not just for Christmas – We’ve just started marketing to those users who have signed up via an easycoreg.com content unit, and as part of the easycoreg.com setup, we pay all affiliates 50% profit share on ALL ongoing commissions for life. Not many people know this (as Michael Caine might say), and indeed as one affiliate said last week when we explained why we’d chucked him some extra dosh this month: “That’s absolutely brilliant… you have to shout this from the roof tops”

Well, I’ve not got a head for heights, so I thought I’d shout it from the blog instead – Many affiliates earned nearly as much from our marketing to existing users as they did from introducing new users, and if they keep adding to their user lists, then their commissions from easycoreg.com will keep on rising – Check your balance to see what we’ve added to your account, and remember – we’ll be paying you 50% profit every month, for life.

And if you don’t already work with easycoreg.com, why not? It takes less than five minutes to register your site and grab a content unit. You give us five minutes, and we’ll pay you every month for life. It’s as easy as that!

Days in their Lives - I just want to thank Laura, Nadeem, Red, and Helen for taking part in the Day in the Life of.. series – I hope you enjoyed reading them. I hope to continue the series with some more quite interesting people (When one or two of them get back to me.. hint, hint!) – If I’ve not already pestered you, and you’d like to take part (Whether you’re an affiliate, merchant, agency, or former Leicester manager), then please drop me a line via my contact page.

Typical British Bank Holiday (Well, not quite) – We had some decent weather for a change (although it’s just got even better now everyone’s back at work!), but it was nice to have a long weekend away from t’Interweb taking in some of my favourite pastimes – Footie (see above!), Music (Kooks, who were good, but not as good as at V last year) and Wii Fit, which is quite simply the most fun game available right now – You can keep your GTA4, I’m quite happy snowboarding and Rhythm boxing!

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

Chuffed as a Badger at the start of Mating Season

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If you thought that Nadeem Azam managed to burn the candle at both ends, then you might be surprised to learn that he’s got a rival for the hours put in by the subject of this week’s Day in the Life… I mean, getting paid to party.. how hard can it be? Over to Laura Przybek, Events Manager at buy.at to explain just how hard:

“So everybody thinks I have one of the best jobs going, I definitely love my job, but its not for the faint – hearted, drinking despite what you all think really is hard work and there is a lot of preparation involved to ensure that everybody is happy at our events. I hope this gives you a little insight into my job.

This day in the life is based on our Finance vertical which took place on Wednesday 16th April, so without further ado here goes…

7am – wake up & get ready, with the event this evening I have to think smart, there is no time to get changed during the day so I spend about 10minutes looking for an outfit that is practical for the day and will still look good in the evening. Every girl out there should empathise with how difficult this is especially first thing in the morning!

8-10 arrive at office, eat breakfast while laptop wakes up, which consists of some cereal pot thing from boots that really doesn’t taste good, but apparently is healthy – chat with colleagues, the hot topic at buy.at towers at this time of the morning is Steve Browns new found claim to fame – he went to school with Daniel Craig yet can’t remember it (who wouldn’t remember James Bond!), so after a little teasing its down to work.

8-20 – Check emails – generally on the morning of an event there are plenty of people checking where the event is, what time it starts etc, so I resend all the details to those that need them

8-40 – Finance vertical preparation

Run through the list of clients attending and double check name badges, despite the amount of times that do this I will freely admit that I am useless at it and it is guaranteed that I will always miss people, so I pack a whole load of spares for safety!

8-50 – Binding Emergency

For some reason nobody else in the office has the capability to use the binding machine, 8 copies of a presentation need binding and the panic on the guys faces are showing so I sort them out and send them on the way to their pitch

9.10 – Off upstairs to test the finance CD – I force sales to listen to it all the way through to get them in the money mood, all in agreement that money for nothing – dire straits is the best song on there. Have a run through checklist with Lizzie, Lizzie helps me with organising the buy.at events and definitely keeps me sane J

The morning passes by amending Kevin’s presentation for the evening and organising the Speakeasy event for launch. Which as of now, is officially open!

Shameless plug! For all those that have been to a buy.at Speakeasy before you will know that this is our event of the year and be really excited about signing up, which you can do so here: http://www.buy.at/events/speakeasy2008/

For anybody reading this that has never attended a buy.at Speakeasy, drop me an email to events@buy.at and I’ll tell you just why it’s worth coming to London for this Speakeasy, May 14th 2008! (for all the guys out there, I have been told that the waitresses at Electric Birdcage wear pan am air hostess uniforms, which in itself is a reason to attend).

Lunch – which is occasionally can be canapé tasting however today I opt to eat at my desk, bad habit but I break this up by teasing Chris on his plan for world domination, if you haven’t yet voted for your account manager of the year in the a4u awards, then vote Chris Mockford.

2pm – start putting everything together for the information pack for the finance vertical, pack up the pens, jellybeans, usbs, print off last minute name badges.

3pm – preparation meeting with team, this is split into 2 sections the first half hour for sales and the second for account management. This is our staff’s opportunity to get themselves familiar with the clients attending and for me to tell them the final format of the evening.

5-15pm – Leave to set up the seminar

5-30pm – speakers arrive for the panel “financing your future”. For anybody that didn’t attend we have full notes that are available by emailing events@buy.at.

6-15 – Leave seminar for set up of evening networking venue – sprinkle tables with glittery stuff and spread out our free stuff.

7.20 attendees arrive, I spend an hour making sure all attendees are in and have a glass of champagne. The free bar opens and the networking really starts, I spend my time catching up with clients and making sure that everyone is enjoying themselves and have found who they need to speak to.

12pm bar closes and we take the few affiliates that are remaining to the Kingly Club.

2-30am – all head back to our staff hotel with everyone that is still standing and drink the contents of a mini bar

4am head to bed for the three hours sleep before it all starts again.

It’s a tough job but somebody has to do it

Thanks for John for the opportunity to star in his day in the life series and we look forward to seeing all of his readers at our Speakeasy, May 14th 2008!”

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

A day in the life of… Laura Przybek

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It’s a bumper “Day in the life of” this week, as we take a peek at the typical working day of the hardest working man in Affiliate Marketing, Nadeem Azam. Nadeem is CEO of Azam Marketing, and one of the friendliest people I’ve ever met. So without further ado, it’s over to Nadeem:

9:15am – The alarm goes on my bedside clock and I am shocked to see it is 9:15am. I was working again until my usual 4am last night and so getting up at 9:15am is a struggle nevermind 8:15am. If I had gotten up an hour earlier, I would have had time to shower, shave and have breakfast and go to my first meeting of the day without rushing, but now it’s a case of getting the first two done with haste and skipping breakfast.

9:50am – Some of the treasured sights you’ll enjoy in central London on a crisp spring morning are the City-slickers striding to their high-flying jobs, clusters of German students on their way to Camden market, American families on their first vacation abroad waddling to McDonalds, and a loony online marketer hurtling down the street to go a critical meeting he should have left home for half an hour earlier.

10:00am – Thankfully I reside smack bang in the middle of the West End of London and many of the media and marketing agencies are but a 400 metre sprint away, so I arrive at the office a mere 10 minutes later. Entering the offices of these fancy agencies is like being transported into another world. There are 300 inch flat-screen televisions bowing down at you from every wall and zipping along the marble tiles glistening with precious stones are Beautiful Young Things dressed in ripped jeans and sandals.

10:00am – 11:00am – I have a meeting with an Account Director and Business Development Director at the agency. Many of the mega-agencies have dozens of people with expertise in offline marketing but relatively small teams devoted to online marketing as it’s hard to find experienced people in what is a nascent field, so they employ Azam Marketing to carry out work on their behalf. I present a progress update on SEO and PPC we are doing for two clients and then we discuss the division of labour for a joint pitch we will be conducting in three weeks time to try to win the marketing contract for a French retailer expanding into the UK.

11:30am-12:45pm – Meet up in a hotel in Paddington with two representatives from a company based near Reading looking up to set-up a cashback website. They are keen on eDealsUK’s white-label cashback site service, but require significant customisation and are asking for some unique features to be integrated into their cashback site. The work will take considerable programmer time, but I am willing to satisfy their requirements as they are a fairly well-known brand.

1:30pm – 3:00pm – the meeting with the potential white-label cashback partner overran, so it’s a mad dash across London on the tube to the offices of a client in the City who would like us to completely revamp the website we did for them a couple of years earlier. I meet our Director of Design and Development, Ather, 20 minutes before the meeting and we go through the pitch documents we have prepared the day before. When we enter the stockbrokers’ offices on Gracechurch Street, for once I feel in my element as everybody is wearing a suit unlike the t-shirts and jeans that seem to be de rigueur in online marketing! They are asking for all the bells-and-whistles for their website this time, including showing real-time share prices and a live online trading platform for customers. It will be a mammoth project, but is exciting. We promise to send them detailed documentation about how we will handle the project, costings and a time-line.

4pm – the day’s meetings are over and I head back to base. I tell myself I’ll quickly look through my emails for 15 minutes before I grab a bite to eat as I’m starving.

5:30pm – I’m still sitting there tackling the email mountain and frantically trying to get matters resolved before everybody else finishes work for the day. There’s all kinds of pressing concerns to deal with, from a rogue affiliate of our Affiliate Management client Purple Parking using spyware to try to generate leads which has lead to abusive phone calls to Purple Parking’s office, to our webmaster asking who he should replace the dozens of links selling DVDs via Benson’s World with as they’ve closed down their affiliate program on Tradedoubler, to having to contact one of our domain name registrars for the sixth time to fix the bug which will not allow us to renew one of our most valuable domain names which is expiring in five days.

6:00 – 6:30pm – Lunchtime! Today it’s hummus and salad in pitta bread which I grabbed on the way back from the meeting in the City. It’s a bad habit of mine, but I always read a magazine such as Marketing or Precision Marketing while I’m eating.

6:30pm – 8:00pm – Everybody in the UK may have gone home, but it’s the middle of the working day in the Americas, so I have a conference call with one of our clients in the United States. I follow it up with a Windows Live Messenger conversation with one of our designers in Argentina. Although most of our staff are in the UK, we have a designer and programmer in South America. I follow that up with composing a six page spec. sheet for a new website and fire it off to the guys in Argentina.

8:00 – 11pm – After a tea break I ring Dave, our Search Marketing Director, and fill him in on the meeting with the agency this morning. He agrees to send them some metrics and other information they are asking for. Then I have a conference call with eDealsUK to fill them in on the meeting with the white-label client earlier in the day. I write-up and send eDealsUK the potential partner’s requirements. I then have a long phone call with Ather to discuss progress with several design projects we have on the go.

11pm – 12 midnight – I spend an hour reading and posting on various affiliate and online marketing forums and blogs. I’ve heard from many people that online marketing forums and blogs are a waste of time and they are “too busy” for them, but I am determined to have more knowledge about my industry than anybody in the world: that is what will allow my agency to continue prospering, not watching Pop Idol or reading about the antics of Pete Doherty in Grazia magazine which “too busy” bods often have more than enough time for.

12:00 – 2:30am – The post-midnight zone is my favourite time to work. The whole world is sleeping, and the only people online are three of our UK team who are also workaholics and my night owl affiliate buddies. Apart from an occasional phone call from the Americas or one of my graveyard shift colleagues, there’s little in the way of distractions and me and Marilyn can really focus on our work. It’s a mixed bag tonight: I have about eleven windows open and am studying CVs from prospective new staff, writing an article for our blog, posting on the Affiliates4U forums, searching for ex-flames on Facebook to see if they’re with someone (they are), reading what’s happening in the world on the BBC News and FT websites, and dealing with outstanding emails. I also chat on Messenger with some affiliates. It’s not like seven years ago as many of the old timers have gotten married and had kids, and no longer work ACT (Affiliate Central Time), but there’s still a few of us who’ll be there every night at 2am swapping tips, working on joint projects and gossiping about what’s happening in the industry.

2:30am – 4:00am – Just as I’m about to have an ‘early night’ by hitting the sack at 2:30am, I remember I haven’t added some charts I have received from Sinead Hernen, who heads the Affiliate Management division of our agency, to a Powerpoint presentation. It’s for a pitch I am giving at 11am tomorrow morning in Canary Wharf to a prospective Affiliate Management client. I start integrating the charts and then realise there’s another slide I could improve… and then another and another… I am known for being a perfectionist and, an hour and a half later, I am still making small tweaks to the presentation; I am determined to win the client and want the presentation to be pucker. I eventually finish it at 4am.

4:00am – 4:15am – I used to check our affiliate statistics three times a day, but now it’s just once. I login to the interfaces of the advertisers we are promoting – most of them are on independent platforms or those of the agencies we work closely with – and look to see how much money we have made.

4:30am – zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Wow, what a day! I don’t know how you manage to cram it all in without burning out Nadeem! Huge thanks for sharing your day with us.

Don’t forget, if you would like to share your typical day with Lammo readers, then just drop me a line (johnATbigideamediaDOTCOM) with the details.

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

A day in the life of… Nadeem Azam

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Our next installment of our Day in the life… series is spent in the company of Red Barrington. Red has been around in Affiliate Marketing as long as I can remember and is the Business Development Manager over at Yardstick Media.

Here’s a typical day in Red’s life:

5.45am “miaow”, “miaow”…My cat Thomas jumps on my head in his own endearing way to let me know he’s hungry and wants his breakfast. It’s usually met with a swear word or two.

6.00am – alarm goes off and I listen to the headlines on 5 Live while trying to wake up (with the cat miaowing throughout), before heading down stairs to sit in front of Sky Sports News and eat my Weetabix (after feeding the cat of course).

7.00am After getting dressed, doing my hair, applying half a ton of makeup and giving Thomas a quick cuddle, I’m finally ready to leave for work.

8.00am – arrive in Bletchley Park where Yardstick’s offices are. After about 20 minutes, I finally manage to login into my laptop and I start going through my emails and replying or flagging them – although about 80% of them are spam (no, I really don’t want t bigger ‘love stick’ thanks). I deal with all the consumer enquiries that get sent from all the data collection sites we have as well, so there is plenty of emails to keep me busy. I usually start making a list too of what I need to do for that day (gotta love the lists!).

9.00am Diet Coke break – I can’t stand coffee and need a caffeine fix! I usually take a few minutes as well to check the BBC football site as well as my favourite Arsenal sites to see what the gossip of the day is.

9.05am- 10.00am - this is pretty much stats O’clock, where I spend about an hour or so going through registrations that we have collected on our sites over night and how our partners are performing. I usually have to email reports to these partners as well as speaking to any ad agencies to tweak campaigns to ensure they are optimised.

10.00am – 11.30am I spend half my morning catching up with partners and agencies that we might be working with at the moment – chasing them on getting things live, where we are with certain promotions or how we can improve campaigns. I do a lot of this by email and MSN as it seems to work much better than phone calls these days! I’ll also try and grab 5 minutes with the MD to discuss budgets (groan!), strategy and any other issues we might be having at the moment. It’s important to keep everyone informed as to where the department is at the moment and whether we’re achieving are objectives.

11.30 Diet Coke break II. Usually in between hassling some poor soul about putting our links up!

11.35am -1.00pm Start writing newsletter content for our varying publications. This usually involves scanning the forum for any good discounts/offers that might interest our users as well as writing a few articles and thinking up some new polls for our users to participate in.

1.00pm – 1.30pm Lunch. I usually sit at my desk and eat my lunch, I know it’s a bad habit but it gives me time to check my personal emails. I teach part time as well, so my email is usually brimming with the latest student excuses for not submitting their work on time. Teaching does keep me busy, but I do enjoy doing it (most of the time!).

1.30pm – 2.30pm- meeting with my techie. With the recent launch of Red and Sticky, I’m still getting used to CMS systems and what they can and can’t do, so I usually have to sit with my techie quite a lot to go through a list of odds and ends that need sorting out.

2.30pm – 4.00pm – sourcing new business. I try and spend at least an hour, if not two, a day sourcing new traffic partners to work with and contacting them. You can have the best sites in the world but if you don’t’ have any traffic, then you’re buggered!

4.00pm Diet Coke break III. Usually accompanied by some kind of biscuit.

4.05pm- 5.45pm – more content writing. I also spend a lot of time emailing our content partners to source articles for Red and Sticky. This is in between answering yet more emails and chatting to our partners about traffic and campaigns.

5.40pm Leave Bletchley and drive home.

6.45pm Arrive home to Thomas, who every day tries to convince me that I’m mean for not coming home earlier and feeding him. While the cat is busy scoffing his dinner, I start to cook mine, while opening the days post and keeping an eye on one of the trashy soaps I like watching – what a genius invention ‘+1’ channels are!

8pm After eating a light dinner, I head off to my street jazz dance class, where I’m learning to dance like Britney Spears apparently, although I doubt I’ll ever get there (well I won’t be shaving my head that’s for sure!). That or I head off for a game of netball – I play Wing Defence, in a team that is like ‘the Bolton’ of the league; play ugly and don’t win very often either!! (sorry Bolton fans)

I’d like to thank Red for giving us insight into her day, if you would like to share you life with us just email me: johnATbigideamediaDOTcom

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

A Day in the life of… Red Barrington

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Part Two of “A Day in the Life of…” shows us a typical day for Helen Southgate, Affiliate Director at DGM. I’m grateful to Helen for agreeing to give us this insight into her daily workings, and indeed to everyone who has agreed to let us spend a virtual day with them.

We have some really interesting people lined up, who all play their part in the Affiliate Marketing Industry – If you would like to take part, then please email me johnATbigideamediaDOTcom. Over to you Helen…

8am – 8.30am – Arrive at work, cup of tea, bowl of cereal and stuck in to my to do list for the day which normally never gets realised as adhoc issues arise throughout the day.

8.30am – 10.00 am – Sift through emails from the previous evening and any any emails that I still need to deal with. I get masses of emails everyday so either have to deal with them myself or pass on to members of account management, affiliate management, sales & marketing and often to tech! We have an internal SLA to respond to all emails with 24 hours so nothing gets left. I also check whether any of the account managers have added an affiliate to the grey list, I often have to investigate affiliate activity and take action if we believe they are in breach of dgm and / or our clients terms, a painstaking job sometimes but we want to make sure everyone is towing the line.

10.00am – 11.00am – Catch up with the affiliate management team to get an update on current activities, any issues and opportunities to be working on for the rest of the week. This is the time when I get a real overview of what everyone is doing and what is happening across the network so I like to do it every Monday.

11.00 – 11.30 – Meeting with Chris Russell-Smith our Marketing Dierctor to discuss upcoming events for affiliates, the A4U Expo and other marketing activity we are doing for dgm to the affiliates market.

11.30 – 12.30 – Working on new ideas for business development of affiliates. The market has changed massively in the last few years and it’s important to look at new partnership and new models that we can work with to help affiliates drive more volumes and attract them to the campaigns we work on. This includes a spec for a new referral system that we are putting together for affiliates.

12.30 – 1.30pm – I take a break for lunch and try to get a quick work out in. I’ve been roped into doing a 10k run with Chris Frost so starting to panick that my training schedule is non-existent 6 weeks before the big race. I come back red faced and get taunted by the team and called Violet Beauregarde. There is continuous banter in the dgm office but not enjoying being on the end of this one!

1.30pm – 2.30pm – I am working on a pitch for some new business with the sales team so I work on my part of this. I’m not sales person material but when I really believe in something that I think will work well for a client I love this part of the job. I’ve been doing this for over 5 years now but I still get excited about the prospects of a new campaign especially as the industry is always changing and there are so many factors to consider.

2.30pm – 3.35 – An affiliate of ours is in the area so drops by unexpectedly to dgm Towers. We have a catch up across the road at the infamous dgm haunt The Vine. We chat about some campaigns they are working on, some new business that they are looking at and opportiunities that we can work on. It’s a great meeting and I’m excited about getting stuck into some new ideas with this affiliate.

3.30 – 5.30 – dgmAffiliates team meeting. This involves everyone from account management, affiliate management and the technical solutions team. It’s one of my favourite parts of the week as we discuss new ideas, things that have gone well, opportunities etc and as everyone is so passionate about what they are doing it can be great fun and sometimes get heated as we all have our own opinions and like to share them! Normally, we have to tell Kevin Sutton to shut up at some point.

5.30 – 6.30 – I work a bit later to get the wheels in motion from some new ideas in the team meeting. At 6.30 I dread the hour journey back home so break it up by meeting a friend for dinner, the training plan is failing at the first hurdle …..

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

A Day in the Life of… Helen Southgate

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During an interview with Chris Frost last month, I mentioned that it would be a fab idea for everyone in Affiliate Marketing to spend a month doing a job-swap with someone from “the other side” – i.e Networks become affiliates for a month, and affiliates spend a month working for a network. Whilst that’s just not feasible, I thought it would be great to virtually spend a day in the shoes of people from all corners of Affiliate Marketing.

So, as there’s no 24 this year, I’m nicking the idea of a ticking clock, though you’ll have to make your own beeping sound… The following takes place between 9am and 2am…

09:00am: zzzzzzzz

09:10am: Alarm goes off. Hit snooze button.

09:25am: Alarm goes off. Hit snooze button.

09:40am: Alarm goes off. Hit snooze button.

09:55am: Alarm goes off. Hit snooze button.

10:10am: Alarm goes off. Listen for five minutes, then get up.

10:15am: Make coffee, and commute to office.

10:17am: Arrive at office. Check emails, and delete spam, which accounts for 99% of the emails downloaded.

10:35am: Approve any pending websites and answer any support tickets from easycoreg.com users.

11:00am: Make second cup of coffee and answer pending emails.

11:30am: Head for the shower

12:15pm: Back at my desk, it’s time for the first piece of content writing of the day – A nice easy 500 word product review to get us started.

13:00pm: Now it’s time to update our competition site with a few competitions and schedule an email to go out to all our members tomorrow morning whilst I’m still snoozing.

13:30pm: Check for any more easycoreg.com pendings/support requests.

13:45pm: Download emails and delete spam, which now accounts for 98% of the emails downloaded. Respond to any issues immediately.

14:00pm: Time for lunch, which is normally a sandwich, cereal or soup.

14:15pm: Back for the main task of the day – two 1,000 word articles for an upcoming event.

15:30pm: Write briefs for our outsourced content – we outsource around 30,000 words per month, and it isn’t cheap, so a lot of thought goes into these briefs.

16:15pm: My head’s hurting by now, so time to wind down. Have a cup of tea and a kit-kat whilst reading the forum.

16:40pm: Check for easycoreg.com pendings/support requests and check emails. Deal with any issues.

17:00pm: Take the dog out for a walk.

18:00pm: Er Indoors arrives home from work. I cook tea for us.

18:00pm to 22:00pm: Me time. Spend time with Er Indoors, maybe watch some TV or a film. Or something else!

22:00pm: Er Indoors heads to bed (Every night’s a school night when you’re a teacher!), and I’ll head back to the office for a few more hours. There’s much less structure to this part of my day, but in the 2 or 3 hours I’ll put in here, I will check stats (This is the ONLY time in the day I dedicate to checking stats), and do a final check of emails. I’ll also chat with fellow affiliates on msn, and maybe post some rubbish on the forum to wind down. Finally, I’ll make a “to-do” list for the following day, and maybe catch some TV or a film before heading to bed.

01:00am: Head to bed, where I’ll read a book for 30 mins or so, before lights out.

01:30am: Lights out, start to drift off to sleep..

01:51am: Have a brilliant idea for website, lights on, write it down on the pad I keep next to the bed.. lights out again.

01:59am: zzzzzzzz

02:00am beep, beep, beep… Roll end credits.

I’m hoping to make this a regular feature on Lammo.net, and have a few more people lined up for the coming weeks. If you would like to take part, then please send your “Day in the Life” together with a brief bio of yourself to me using the following form.

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

A Day in the life of… John Lamerton

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