I know, I know.. two posts in as many weeks – I’m turning into a prolific blogger again (don’t worry, it won’t last!). Anyway, I had a question in the Ask Lammo postbag last time that I started to answer but realised that my answer was getting rather on the large side and so perhaps was worthy of being a standalone post.

The question asked was:

Who is your business hero/role model?

Now normally I don’t go in for the whole “hero/role model worship” thing – I try to be my own person, and think you’ll never get far trying to emulate someone else. That being said there are people out that it’s easy to admire their personality traits and business practices. As I mentioned in the last post, I’ve found Sir Richard Branson’s autobiography to be very motivational and inspiring, and I can also say the same about Lord Sugar’s book which I read at the start of this year, although (especially with Lord Sugar’s book) it also served to remind me that I actually don’t want to build a huge business like Amstrad or Virgin, that is answerable to institutional investors, responsible for hundreds of people being able to meet their mortgage payments, and taking me away from watching my kids growing up.

It’s also easy to admire people within the Affiliate Industry as it’s choc full of self-starters and “let’s do it and see what happens” people. Just take a close look at what some of the great folks in AM have done over the years, and you’ll find something in common with most of them – They started with next to no money, had some great ideas and worked bloody hard. Don’t think you can just copy what they did and make it yourself – you need your own “great idea” and your own passion and determination to see it through with a shedload of hard work. My own “Affiliate Heroes” are the likes of Mark Boyd, Dom Hodgson, Clarke Duncan, Frank Paul, and Chris Clarkson (as well as many, many others..that covers those I’ve forgotten lol), who I would class as “Serial Entrepreneurs” – the awesome ideas just keep coming, but unlike most people these guys actually act on those ideas, rather than wait for someone else to do it and then say “I thought of that once”

If I had to choose one person as my ultimate business hero however, without a shadow of a doubt it would be Warren Buffett. Not because he’s the third richest person in the world, but because despite being the third richest person in the world, he’s never forgotten who he truly is, or what makes him happy. He doesn’t work from a 70-story gleaming skyscraper on Wall Street, preferring a small functional unit in Omaha to run his investment business that generates $1.4m in dividends a day.

Just because he’s a billionaire a couple of times over (47 at last count!) doesn’t mean he feels the need to live in the Playboy Mansion either – preferring to live in the home that he bought for $31,500 in 1958. He doesn’t feel the need for the status symbol of a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce, driving himself around in a fairly modest Cadillac DTS, and you won’t find him quaffing champagne and canapes with the other “rock star businessmen” – he’s strictly a cheeseburger and coke guy.

What does a guy DO with $47 billion dollars anyway? Well, if you’re Warren Buffet, the answer is.. give it away! He’s pledged to give away 99% of his fortune to good causes, primarily with his good friend and fellow uber-rich-dude Bill Gates. The only problem that faces Warren now is can he give it away quickly enough before he’s earned even more.. if you’ve ever seend the movie “Brewster’s Millions” with the late great Richard Pryor, then you’ll know how hard that can be!

Put simply, Warren Buffett is the most normal, down to earth, rich guy I know – And that’s why he’s my business hero.

Who’s your business hero?

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

Ask Lammo: Who is your business hero?

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Jobs are being cut left, right and centre in even some of the biggest companies across the UK, and in fact the whole world. This global recession has got people feeling more than a bit jittery about their long-term aims and where they see themselves in 10 years time, or even 10 months. Every cloud, though, does have a silver lining.

With interest rates at a staggeringly low level, returns on traditional forms of investment are also staggeringly low. Although those with expertise in the stock markets may decide to have a punt (and lets face it IS a punt!) on some kind of market growth product, anyone without deep expertise in the markets or a fantastic IFA and deep pockets is almost certainly better off investing elsewhere. With falling interest rates and anticipated increases in inflation, let’s say that you invest with a 3% annual return but that inflation is running at 4.5%. Stick it in a bank and you are effectively LOSING 1.5% at a minimum (ignoring all the fancy compound interest rate and net present value calculations which would probably serve to make the figures worse). You would of course be taxed on the full 3% you receive, so on the basis that you invested £1,000 for a year, you’d receive £30 Interest (taxed at up to 40%) so your £1,000 would actually grow to £1,018 after a year. By then, you would need £1,045 just to maintain the same spending power as you had at the start with your £1,000. So now you have paid the government £12 to reduce your spending power by 2.6%.

You should of course put some money away for emergencies etc, but if you’re looking to make any medium to long term investments, then you should seriously consider investing in your own business, where you can achieve much greater long term returns.

In practice, there are a lot of people out there who have been looking for a reason to leave the jobs they’ve been in for decades, or spend more time with their families and in many cases, redundancy has actually been a blessing in disguise. Many people actually see it as an opportunity: an opportunity to set up their own business. That’s not to say that only those who have been made redundant can seize the opportunity however. If you’ve simply got an idea or a whole business plan waiting to be put into practice this is still a good time to invest in your own business and invest in yourself.

Now bear with me, it might seem a bit reckless to seemingly throw money around, which quite frankly is a little tight in most households at the moment, investing in a brand new unproven business. Starting a business when the economy is booming can seem daunting let alone at a time like this but a recession can sometimes be the perfect time. From the business owner, or entrepreneur’s, point of view there are a number of benefits in setting up a business in this climate. Firstly, there are a wealth of people out there looking for work and a lot of them are skilled or experienced people who have been made redundant so you can find and recruit staff of a calibre that may ordinarily be out of range in happier times.

New businesses are now also more aware of what their customers want. More established businesses can be stuck in their ways or find it hard to adapt to changes in the economy and in the distribution of revenues across online and traditional offline channels. The very nature of the learning curve a new business goes through makes it a lot more flexible and responsive to changes in market conditions than the management teams of more established businesses, many of whom are absorbed in dealing with the effects of the recession with vast infrastructure and headcounts to handle.

In what is something of an irony, many larger businesses, because of the burning need to make cutbacks, will also outsource work to smaller companies or freelancers to save money in the long run. So, companies that may have lost out in business to their larger rivals during better economic times are now benefiting from the financial pressures under which their ungainly rivals must now operate.

In some ways, certain small businesses are less affected by the credit crunch by the fact they are looking for relatively modest amounts to get started. Because of the accessibility of credit in recent years, before the economic climate took a turn for the worse, the traditional methods of applying for small-business loans from banks were in many cases replaced by people using credit cards or home equity. This means that when these forms of lending largely dry up during a recession it doesn’t always hit the smaller businesses quite so hard. Most importantly, many are using money from redundancy payouts, friends, family and money withdrawn from poorly performing savings products to invest in new businesses and thus so haven’t noticed the increased difficulty in getting their hands on start-up finance through the traditional routes.

Another key benefit is the money you can save in taxes. Once the money has been initially invested in your business and you start trading, year-on-year you can then re-invest a percentage of the profits to help your business grow so although you’re still not seeing the money in your hand, these profits are directly benefiting your business and longer term goals. You are also potentially building something which has a capital value. Whilst you may have lost one (or more) zeros from your annual income in the short term, the equity value of the business in the longer term must also be factored into your view of earnings. A decent accountant is worth their weight in gold: whilst no-one should be avoiding taxation, there are numerous means by which you can minimise your tax liability on a perfectly legitimate basis. Many of these will be determined by the type of business entity you decide to use and where you decide to locate it and consultation with a professional from the very outset is advised.

In fact, small businesses have many benefits for the wider economy. Small business create jobs both directly and indeed in the businesses that provide services to them. Even if you only employ one or two people, that’s one or two people who aren’t claiming money from the state, are paying taxes and have the money to spend, thus fuelling the economic cycle. If everyone did that . . . .

Some business analysts argue that new businesses suffer more at a time of economic stability because it’s at times like that that larger businesses thrive and pose more of a threat to the start-ups. So, by all means, put some of any spare cash you have away for a rainy day but if you’ve got the money to invest (or access to it) and an idea which you truly believe will be your ticket to bigger and better things then don’t let the economic crisis, the recession, the credit crunch, weepings of mass depression — or whatever the media decide to call it this week — put a dampener on it.

There are many benefits to running your own business, and there are potentially even more benefits to running it at a time of economic downturn. Now just imagine if you could start a business with almost no capital …

Image Credit: www.thinkjayant.com

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

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You can’t fail to have noticed in the last week that several affiliates have invested in House Price Spy, a House price website, and so far Clarke, Shane, Fraser and the Two Chris’s have one by one shown their hands and declared their interest in the affiliate joint venture. Well, I’m not about to join them, as I’m instead going to be the first affiliate to declare that they haven’t invested!

What Clarke and the rest of the consortium are doing is going to be fantastic for House Price Spy, and bodes well for the future – Affiliates can build bloody successful sites on their own, so when they all club together and pool their resources, the sky really is the limit, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see this website become a major brand that is very much in the public eye.

I’ve been working on a Joint Venture with a couple of affiliates for a little while now (I’ll leave it up to them whether they want to declare their interest or not), and so far it’s working really well. Between the three of us, we’ve had some fantastic brainstorming sessions, bouncing ideas off each other with great effect. We also have very different skills, which compliment each other nicely. We are able to use my in-house techie and designer to build the site and banners etc, and my new-found link building/SEO skills to get the site ranking better in the search engines.

The other affiliates include an expert in the site’s field who will be writing most of the content, and someone who knows their way around the social networking websites. Also between the three of us, we already have a fair bit of relevant traffic that we can guide towards our JV site. We may not have the clout or the investment levels of House Price Spy, but we have taken a site that was stagnating earning a couple of hundred pounds a month, and given it a chance to really flourish and become a very successful affiliate site.

Working as part of an Affiliate Joint Venture has been really refreshing – Aside from the brainstorming and complimenting skills benefits, it’s also incredibly motivating as no-one wants to let the other partners down, or appear to be shirking their part of the workload. I’d certainly recommend working on a Joint Venture with other affiliates to anyone who fancies something a little different, but with a greater chance of success.

As is the case with most affiliates, I’ve got too many sites, and not enough time, so there are a number of properties that have been neglected for one reason or another. IA number of these sites could be suitable for a joint venture, so if anyone does fancy working with me on any of these projects, just let me know:

Valentines Day – Quite obviously, this is a fairly seasonal website that does very well in February for some reason lol… The site has very little content, and very few links pointing to it. It currently gets around 8,500 UVs a year, with 3,000 of these coming in February. There is huge scope to take this site forward with a partner who can add some good content and monetise it with product content units, whilst we focus on the off-page SEO factors. The site is Number 1 in MSN for “Valentines Day”, and clearly if we could replicate that with Google, we’d have a mammoth on our hands!

Our Survey Said – This one has a trickle of traffic (100-150 UVs a month) from very longtail terms and earns £20-50 a month. It has good scope for growth if kept up to date with new offers and sending some traffic its way. Would suit a JV partner with an existing complimentary site that can be used to channel traffic its way. There is also a small mailing list attached to this site which converted very well on a test mailshot we did last year, so there’s potential to grow revenues there.

Save Pounds – Another site with a trickle of traffic, and earning a few quid here and there. Might be a good domain to convert into a discount/voucher site? Again, would suit a partner with the time to keep a site like that up to date. We can handle the development of the site into the finished article, and get the SEO/Link Building sorted.

Cashback Club – A White Label cashback site, that is starting to see the results of our SEO work, but could do with some regular TLC – In particular there is a mailing list that we are building a newsletter facility for. The main infrastructure is all there, it is just screaming out for some traffic, so would suit a partner(s) who can push traffic/signups from a complimentary site and/or send weekly newsletters to the existing member-base and ensure that regular content is added to the site’s blog.

All that remains to be said is…

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

Three Heads are better than One: Affiliate Joint Ventures

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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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Can you hear me now? – First of all, my apologies for the silence over the last two weeks. Things have been so manically busy as we approached the end of some major projects that it’s been very difficult to find even 5 minutes to post to the blog. Normal service will be resumed from here on.

Proud to be Fat More and More - No, I’m not talking about my ever-expanding “affiliate belly”, although I do believe there’s a link between the size of your stomach and the size of your commission cheques – All that time sat at your computer writing content and blog posts means both get a little bigger each day.

I’m not going to pretend that I’m a 100% fat affiliate, as over the years I’ve had around 50 “thin” affiliate websites that offer nothing whatsoever of value to the end user, all of which made varying amounts of money. I’ve still got a couple of “thin” sites now, and I do partake in Brand Bidding where allowed (I know, boo! hiss!), but I also know that those are not sustainable revenue streams that I will be able to live off in 5 or 10 years time. And for that reason, I’m also slowly building a couple of “brand” sites and publishing somewhere in the region of 100,000 words of unique content every single month.

The “thin” stuff pays the bills today, and enables me to concentrate my time on the “fat” stuff that will pay the bills for the rest of my life. It’s naive to assume that people will ignore the easy low-hanging fruit that brings in shedloads of short-term money, but it’s also foolish to ignore the benefits of building long-term, sustainable revenue streams. Maintaining a sensible weight is the key to a healthy affiliate lifestyle.

Call me Mr. Chairman More – Two weeks ago, I was a humble affiliate. Now, however I am co-owner of a football club, having invested quite heavily (£35) into Ebbsfleet United Football Club. I’m so pleased to have been asked to form part of the small consortium, and I’m sure I speak for the other 28,249 co-owners in saying that we’re sure this is the start of a very bright era for the football club, and we have complete faith in Head Coach Liam Daish (until we lose a few games, and then we’ll be ready and waiting with the dreaded “poll of confidence”)

Does AM need its own UK Magazine? More – It’s a tough one this – I subscribed to Revenue magazine, but soon found I wasn’t actually reading each issue as it was too US-centric. I’d certainly support anyone who took the risk and published a UK Affiliate Marketing magazine. I’ve known so many publications go bust due to lack of advertising/low circulation/high publishing costs that it’s a hell of a risk. But there hasn’t been a decent read for the UK Affiliate since Internet Works went pop, and the Industry is much bigger now, so perhaps the time is right? I certainly won’t be risking my own money to bring out a publication, but will happily support anyone who does.

Dragons Den looking for Entrepreneurs - If you’re unable to handle constructive criticism and think that your business that earned you £20.79 last year must be worth “about a million”, then why not apply for Series 7 of Dragons Den? The BBC are currently looking for entrepreneurs, and have specifically targeted Internet entrepreneurs this year as some of the biggest investments from last series went to online companies such as Hungry House and Gaming Alerts.

If you’d like to take part, then please email dragonsden@bbc.co.uk call 0870 200 3003 or visit their website for an application form. Will I be taking part? No chance – I’d be far too nervous!

Buy.at coming to Plymouth More – After mucho campaigning, the buy.at team are coming to Plymouth this Friday afternoon for a day of networking and fun. So if you fancy a day on the Sunny south coast, taking in some Clay Pigeon Shooting and an evening of fun with the guys and girls from buy.at (as well as the chance to talk turkey with them of course!), then make sure you email events@buy.at to register (it’s free) before Wednesday to grab your place at this top event.

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

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Content is King again More – It looks like Affiliate Marketing is going full circle, and as a content affiliate that publishes in excess of 100,000 words of highly-researched unique content every month, I certainly hope it is! As more and more affiliates are being squeezed out of PPC by Search agencies and merchant’s in-house campaigns, affiliates are realising that good unique content is the way forward.

At a4uexpo last year, I spent the entire week talking to merchants, agencies and networks and asking for regular unique content that we could publish, or shared content that we could re-write. The initial responses were very positive, with pretty much everyone promising the earth. Just one merchant/agency didn’t deliver anything at all despite their promises (Shame on you Stream:20/Sky), so I had quite a lot of great content that I could use over the first few weeks. Three months later though, and the only people I’m still getting unique content from are… DGM…. Yup, *that* DGM – They of the broken promises and false dawns. Perhaps they really have turned the corner?

I also still get non-unique content that I can re-write from Oxygen and Jackpot Joy. As with so many things, the gambling sector tends to adapt a little quicker than other sectors, which is why the likes of Oxygen and JPJ, as well as Betfred Gaming and Bingo.com have provided me with one-off unique content articles, as well as a huge amount of shared content in their login areas that I can re-write to my hearts content.

Webgains pay CD WOW’s bills More – This shows that there are still some good guys in Affiliate Marketing. I had missed this news until Jason pointed it out, and you really have to applaud Webgains for doing this. Many networks would have said “tough luck” and wiped out the commissions, but by doing this (and you would imagine at some considerable cost), I will be sure to remember their actions when given the choice of working with Webgains or A.N.Other network.

That’s compliments for two networks now – I’m turning into a network-lover! Better slag some off next week so normal service is resumed!

Rogue Trader loses bank £7bn More - You have to question why the Bank’s system allows any trader, rogue or not, to rack up losses anywhere near this sort of scale – Surely alarms bells should be ringing as soon as they’re approaching £100m of losses, and systems should automatically suspend trading authority once they’re above £500m. To allow one man to lose £7billion is just crazy, especially when you consider that Nick Leeson only managed to lose £860m.

Argyle sunk by Portsmouth More – Yet another heartbreaking cup exit from Argyle, where we threw everything we had at a Premiership team, only to be foiled by a top keeper. Last year it was Watford and Ben Foster, this year it was Portsmouth and David James. It could have been so different however had blind referee Andre Mariner awarded Argyle a penalty in the latter stages for the most blatent handball you’re ever likely to see. Even Les Ferdinand on MOTD called it a “nailed-on pen”.

So heartbreak for Argyle, but a great day out. Everyone we met from Pompey, from Police Officers, Stewards and fans were incredibly friendly, and whilst the old stand at Fratton Park is a bit antiquated and creaking, I think the ground looks fantastic when full – A proper football ground, not one of the plastic bowls you see being build these days. Not a prawn sandwich in sight, and all the better for it!

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

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New Look Blog – Yup, I’ve jumped on that bandwagon and decided that the New Year is the perfect time for a new look theme. We’re still tweaking things behind the scenes, so please do shout if you spot anything that isn’t as it should be! I do like the web 2.0 feel of it, and it’s a free theme too (I make no money from this blog so no “custom” designs for me) – Let me know what you think!

Not-so-lazy Link Building – I’ve actually cracked on and got quite a bit of link building done over the last couple of weeks, so I’m not as lazy as I first thought – Only time (and Google) will tell if I can keep it going all year round though. For now though, I’m still on the look-out for any link swaps, so if anyone’s is able to link from a relevant page to either a betting, bingo, cashback, competition, or shopping site, then get in touch by msn or email john AT bigideamedia dot com and let me know what sites you’d like me to link to.

Affmeter no longer free from March 15th More – I’ve been using Affmeter for almost two years now, and it’s a truly brilliant tool. I’ve got no problem whatsoever therefore with them making the decision to charge for it, and the upgrade fee works out at less than £20 with the current exchange rates, so it’s a real no-brainer.

I see from their website that new users will have to fork out $130 (about £65) for it from March 15th onwards, which may seem a little steep for new users who won’t have seen it in action and know how invaluable it is. I’d say it’s worth every penny, but it’ll be interesting to see how this pans out – Whilst there is a money-back guarantee, I’d have thought a free 14 day trial would be more appropriate to hook those new users?

FTSE falls 5.5% More – It’s a steep correction, that’s for sure, but that’s all it is – a correction. Sure, it’ll have hit the day-traders and spread-betters hard (apart from those who shorted the FTSE yesterday!), but for the long-term investor, it’s just another fluctuation. As long as the fundamentals are still right with your investments, you’ve got nothing to worry about. The headlines will scream about the market wiping out a year’s growth in one day, but look at the market over 10 or 20 years, and you’ll see that it’s just a blip. I prefer a sleep-at-night portfolio, and I won’t be throwing myself off Beachy Head just yet.

Are Commission Junction the weakest link? More - CJ are a strange bunch. Go back 5 years, and they were major players in the UK Affiliate Marketing scene. Nowadays, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who does major business with them. And all because the US Head Office appeared to hit the self-destruct button, restricting the UK office to little more than a sub-branch, with no authority whatsoever.

Almost overnight, emails went unanswered, problems went unsolved, no-one responded to any queries at all on the affiliates4u forum, and although there was no funeral, be in no doubt – Commission Junction died a slow and painful death many years ago. The last time I logged into CJ was probably around 5 months ago when they last paid me and I had to search around for an invoice. It’ll be months before I log in again.

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

Commission Junction died a slow and painful death many years ago

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Cashback Sites to kill Affiliate Marketing? More - I don’t believe that cashback sites will spell the end of Affiliate Marketing, after all Spyware, crap merchants, dodgy affiliates, brand bidders and general apathy have collectively failed to do so. But they certainly will have a major impact on affiliate’s margins for the foreseeable future, as consumers get more aware of the cashback and rewards sites out there.

Of course, one way around this is to get a cashback site yourself, and get a slice of the pie for yourself, but isn’t that just going to add more fuel to the fire? It all boils down to what I think will be the buzz word for 2008, which is “adding value” to the end user. Certain affiliates do this very well, and whilst their margins will be squeezed by users making the most of their tools and advice etc, then buggering off to get their cashback, they will also retain their loyal base who will actually buy from them no matter what.

You could even help maintain and increase that loyalty by pointing out to your customer base/members/visitors the effect that cashback sites can have, and that if they really want to use a cashback site, then recommend a few (with your affy links of course, and go for those that pay for the lifetime of the customer, such as GreasyPalm, Free Fivers or eDealsUK.) – This is something that Jason at Loquax has done very well.

Stock tips for 2008 – This time of year, all the “experts” (who are actually just journalists that cover

Off ski-ing Tamsin?

• Brian O’Connor: 2% gain
• Alex Brummer: 2% gain
• Geoff Foster: 12% loss
• Lucy Farndon: 33% loss
• Ian Lyall: 41% loss
• Tamsin Brown: 60% loss

So if you thought that Tamsin Brown looked like she knew what she was talking about this time last year and blindly followed her tip with £1,000 of your hard-earned cash, you would now have lost £600 of it, in a year the market as a whole made a small gain, and you could have earned 8% just by leaving it in a bank account. Way to go Tamsin – at least it wasn’t your own money you lost!

Link Building – I’m probably the laziest link-builder in the world – the last time I really did a decent bout of link-building was around 5 years ago!. It’s one of those things that I just hate doing, because it’s bloomin’ hard work and takes ages. But we all know it’s vital, and being January it seems the right time to be laying the foundations for the rest of the year, so I’ve been spending this week pestering people I know for links – So apologies to everyone that I’ve bugged, but I’ve got to do these things whilst I’m in the mood!

It’s hard enough asking people I know for links, but it’s nigh-on impossible to get links from strangers (It’s a form of cold calling, which I’ve never been any good at), which is why thankfully I outsource that part of the job.

Friday Night Emails More – I’ve never understood why anyone would send anything remotely important out on a

Alan's got better things to do on a Friday night

Pompey in the fourth round More – I think it’s a good draw. Portsmouth are a Premiership side, and the atmosphere at Fratton Park should be amazing. I would expect Argyle to sell out whatever allocation Pompey give us (which should be at least 3,000), and with their poor home record and our excellent away record, it could be a close game. Either way, it’s one to look forward to as a fan, as it’s been a few years since the Dockyard Derby was played – I think we both actually had a dockyard back then!

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

The laziest link-builder in the world

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A real change from the usual format this week, starting with my usual few minutes of the lovely Nigella Lawson cooking a nice bit of fish in.. urgh! it’s Rick bloomin Stein! Where’s Nigella gone? A large chunk of the Den today was dedicated to some “Where are they now” stories from this series, which in theory is a great idea, as all the investments are still fresh in your mind.

It doesn’t really work that well for “stories” such as Gaming Alerts. Their “where are they now story” was: They’ve met Theo and picked up the cheque. Erm, and that’s it so far… Why not just cut them, and show someone who’s actually done something since the den?

Anyway, we did have a couple of pitches first, kicking off with Tim Lloyd, who was looking for £150,000 for a 40% stake in his “Tidy Tree Sack” piece of cloth to dispose of your real christmas tree without so much mess. Not a bad idea in itself, but the retail price was as much as a tree itself, and that made it a no-go for the dragons.

James Brown and Amanda Jones

Amanda and James gave a very strong pitch, and dealt with all the questions posed by the dragons very well indeed. Their only potential banana-skin was they didn’t have a working prototype at the time. That didn’t deter James Caan, who had worked in disaster areas like the Kashmir earthquake of 2005, and could instantly see the benefit of quickly sourced clean water. He offered them half the investment, in return for a 10% stake. James’ new buddy Duncan quickly offered to match the offer, so they could have the full £50,000 for a 20% stake. but the three other dragons were still in..

Deborah offered the full £50,000 for a 20% stake, Theo offered the full £50k, but didn’t know what percentage he might like, and finally Peter was also interested, offering them the exact terms they had pitched for – £50,000 for 10%. Theo then engineered a deal whereby all five dragons would invest at that rate, each taking just a 2% stake for £10,000. The deal was done, and Amanda and James walked away with the best deal ever seen in the den – All five dragons, and at the terms initially pitched!

That was the final investment of the series, so let’s have a look at the final investment league table:

1. Theo Paphitis: 6 investments, £457,500
2. James Caan: 6 investments, £345,000
3. Peter Jones: 5 investments, £310,000
4. Deborah Meaden: 6 investments, £242,500
5. Duncan Bannatyne: 4 investments, £185,000

Obviously with all dragons investing at the same level, there’s no positional change in the final week, but we do see that a total of £1.54m was “promised” over the series – I won’t say invested, as we all know that a lot of these deals fall through at the due diligence stage. It’s clear to see who the big guns are though – Theo invested well over twice as much as Duncan who wins the wooden chequebook for this series.

So, the where are they nows.. No real surprises – No-one’s going to appear on National TV and say they’ve failed miserably, so all success stories:

Youdoo Dolls (Deborah invested in episode 2) – Sarah Lu has moved the enterprise out of her back-bedroom into a warehouse, and the dolls are now being made in China rather than by her aunties. Sales have trebled, and Sarah puts it all down to having Deborah on baord.

Gaming Alerts (Theo invested, also in episode 2) – They picked up the cheque. That’s about it.

Cream Cutie (No-one invested in episode 5) – Now selling 12,000 bottles per month. Sales have doubled since getting the investment from a private investor.

Midas Touch (James invested in episode 1) – Now renamed”Gold Genie”, James has persuaded Laben Roomes not to go down the franchise route, and instead to focus on retail, which they’re doing with some success – The products are now being sold in Harrods, and they’re on course to make around £60,000 by the end of the year.

Tangle Teezer (No-one invested in episode 3) – Took Theo’s advice to get a distribution deal, and is now selling 1,000 a week. Seems to have turned into Alan Carr since appearing on the den.

Concentrate (Peter Jones invested in episode 3) – They are working on some new ranges. Not much else given away.

Cuddle Dry (No-one invested, also in episode 3) – They are glad they didn’t accept the offers, and managed to secure the investment privately at a much better rate. They are looking at expanding the range and are on target to meet First Year targets.

Fit Fur Life (James invested in episode 7) – Ordered 200 new treadmills, and fulfilled all existing orders. Currently being trialled by Guide Dogs for the Blind.

Ben the Bin (Theo and Deborah invested in episode 4) – Moved into larger premises and taken on staff. Feels the dragon’s contacts were worth more than the £50,000 cash.

Chocbox (James and Duncan invested in episode 8) – The real success story of the series. Sales have trebled to 3,000,000 per year. They’ve secured their first major retail order of 400,000 units, and there are International deals in the pipeline.

That’s almost it for another year – Don’t forget the Dragons Den Christmas special is on Christmas Day at 8:30pm on BBC2 – there’ll be no update from me on that one though!

Just in case anyone from the BBC is watching this whilst having planning meetings for Series 6, can I make a few suggestions?

• Nigella before the Den works a treat – Rick Stein doesn’t.
• Can we please have a new script for Evan? He uses the same one every week, it’s looking a bit worn by now – “Remember den rules dictate… It is the dragons own money… all think their product will make them millions…”
• Can we please have a swearbox that the dragons have to put money into every time Theo mentions his children’s inheritance?
• And everytime Duncan uses the word ridiculous.
• In fact can we just drop Duncan please?
• And bring back Richard Farleigh?

Merry Christmas Everyone!

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

Dragons Den: Series 5, episode 9

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Well, I’m still recovering from the dreaded Man-Flu, hence why I’ve not yet commented on the big news from last week, that DGM have taken the advice I offered in my podcast with Fraser last month (I’m sure the consultancy fee is in the post, along with my xmas present) and de-listed from AIM through a Management buy-out to become a private company again. This was followed swiftly by the news that IBG have agreed a Nil-premium sale to TMN Media, owners of TheMutual.net. I’m keen to look atboth of these deals from the perspective of Investors, Affiliates, and the companies themselves.

In my opinion, neither of these changes are good news for Investors: Any serious investor should have been out of DGM a long time ago. The big money was lost 2 or 3 years ago now, and the stock has been dead as a dodo for a long time now. The potential for Investors to make any money disappeared a long time ago.

The IBG merger is another story altogether – They were my tip in the podcast as a long-term position for strong capital growth. Unfortunately that’s no longer possible, as thanks to the TMN deal, you now own shares in a completely different company, with a brand new management team, and different ideas. For those shareholders who bought into the IBG team, despite the nosedive the stock took last year due to a profit warning, the blood must be boiling, and I bet they wished they’d cashed out at 35 pence now, rather than been forced into accepting a 12.75 pence offer.

In fairness, the “nil-premium” merger does reflect some gains for IBG shareholders – They will receive 1 new ordinary share in TMN for every 3.765 ordinary shares held in IBG – That relates to the two shares relative closing prices before the merger, and of course in theory TMN is now worth considerably more, so the shares should go up? That is a distinct possibility, although mergers almost always lead to share drops as the teething problems of actually merging the two companies come to the fore – A quick look at the share prices of a few companies after mergers is always worth looking at: Take GWR and Capital Radio (price at merger in September 2004 was 400-410, closing price on Friday was 126.25), Morrisons and Safeway (Price at merger in March 2004 was 250-260, price six months later was 170-175, took 3 years to return to pre-merger levels)

So what do these deals mean for affiliates? Well, hopefully very little – There shouldn’t be any sweeping changes simply because of a change of ownership, and DGM and Affiliate Future should continue to be run as before (whether that’s a good or bad thing is an argument for another day!) – Of course new owners sometimes like to stamp their mark on things, but I don’t honestly expect too much to change “front-of-house”.

And what does this mean for the companies involved? Who’s got the better deal? Well, as I’ve said earlier, the MBO at DGM was the only way forward for them – Their share price was becoming a dead weight around their necks, and now they haven’t got to worry about the share price, or wooing institutional Investors or Investment Houses, they can concentrate on making money again – From the publicly available accounts, you can see that DGM haven’t made a profit since 2004, when they made just £220,000 – Less than most of their top affiliates make sat in their bedrooms – I really believe it’s a great move for DGM, and think they will go from strength to strength following this move.

I’m not so sure about the IBG/TMN merger, and that’s the main problem. With the DGM MBO, it was pretty much the only option, and the only way is up. For IBG, they were thriving, making a profit of £1.12m in 2006. I really liked the management team, and I liked the way the company was headed. I’ve only met the management of TMN once, and I certainly wasn’t impressed. You certainly can’t argue with the financials though – they’d made a profit pretty much every year that I’ve gone back over, including a £3.28m profit from a mighty £16.10 turnover in 2006/07. I’d like to do a lot more research about TMN before deciding whether to keep my converted IBG shares in TMN stock or not. As my main concerns are with the management team, I’d normally like to attend an AGM (or at least speak to someone I trust who attended) to ascertain the direction they’re headed. That’s gonna be tough to do with TMN though, as they’ve only just held their AGM in October, so it’s a long wait, by which time the shares could have moved considerably.

So, it’s gonna be a lot more research from me to try and find out the ethos behind the company and their intentions for the newly acquired IBG assets.. and that’s not something you find out easily, so I may just sell a few and keep a minimal holding to see how things play out for now.

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

All Change! DGM go private, and IBG merge with TMN

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