Lammo in Mourning – Well, it finally happened.. Plymouth Argyle were relegated from the Championship last week, and we’re going to be plying our trade against such giants as Rochdale, Yeovil and Bournemouth next season. Heck, we might even be playing Aldershot Town in a league fixture next season – This from a club that claimed to have ambitions of “Premier League football within 5 years” – You have to wonder if they meant the Blue Square Premier?

It’s been a long time coming to be honest, and if we’d stayed up this year, we’d only have struggled again next year, so it may be better to re-group, get some positivity back in the stadium (where we’ve only seen 11 wins in the last TWO YEARS), and mount a promotion/play-off campaign where we might actually have half a chance, and get the momentum going the right way for a change (and then crucially, build on that momentum rather than wait until we’re in decline again, and chuck money at bad/awful/indifferent players as we have done over the last 2 and a half years). I’ll be there cheering the team whatever happens next year – hopefully it won’t take us another 12 years to “bounce back”!

Note: Yes, I know the pic is of Exeter getting relegated in 2003, but it looks a much better picture than any Argyle one I could find, and a scene that I’m sure will be repeated at the end of the 2010/11 season (assuming they stay up this season of course!)

Spare some change guvnor? – So the Sunday Times Rich List 2010 was released yesterday, and shock horror! I wasn’t even listed – still I wasn’t listed in the obituraries column either, so it wasn’t all bad! Someone who was listed though was fellow Plymouth entreprenuer Chris Dawson, who I profiled on this blog last year. Chris has had a fantastic 12 months, increasing his net worth from £160m last year to £250m this year, meaning he’s got more cash to splash than TV Dragon Peter Jones, Elton John, Mick Jagger or Michael Douglas.

How did he achieve this? By making sensible decisions during a recession, buying bankrupt stock at rock bottom prices from the likes of MFI and Empire Direct, and selling it via the Internet where overheads are low. He has further plans to expand his “The Range” chain of stores across the UK during the next year, and you wouln’t bet against him breaking through the £300m barrier in the 2011 poll – well done Chris!

It’s not big and it’s not cleverat – As well as Plymouth Argyle, last week also saw the inevitable decline of my least-favourite network, as Cleverat finally brought in the liquidators and closed their doors for the final time.

One of the very first blog posts I made on Lammo was concerning the launch of this network, asking what was the point? During their brief time on the Affiliate Planet, they managed to win not just one, but TWO Muppet of the Week awards for their general incompetence and awful attitude.

I doubt many affiliates will be shedding a tear over the demise of this “network” – I know I won’t!

Now that’s what I call an affiliate event 74 – I must say a big thank you to Linkshare for putting on their Symposium UK affiliate event in London last week, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was very well organised and an excellent chance to network (I even got to chat with a former Apprentice winner – fanboy heaven!) and pick up tips from some great industry bods. Why was it great? Everything ran smoothly, the day weas really well paced, with never a dull moment, but without feeling rushed.

The venue was stunning, with views of the Houses of Parliament and the London Eye basked in sunshine, the food was amazing – really top quality. The speakers, whilst covering familiar ground managed to captivate their audience with interesting tales and info. There were goodies galore in the trade-show style session, and even the evening event managed to avoid the all-too-familiar problems: the free bar wasn’t abused and so getting a single drink didn’t take 40 minutes, there was plentiful (very tasty!) nibbles on an almost constant supply, and on the few occasions that the DJ tried to pump up the volume, a quick word in his shell-like soon sorted that out!

So a huge thanks to everyone at Linkshare for a fasntastic day – I’m looking forward to the next one, although you’ve set the bar quite high now!

This week I have been mostly hating: Queen’s “We are the Champions” (here’s why)
This week I have been mostly loving: Spending some time as a tourist in London, rather than just rushing from meeting to meeting.

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

Down, Down. Deeper and Down.

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Next making friends again – Oh dear, Next just can’t seem to get on with their affiliates can they? Not content with dropping commissions for Christmas, bidding on their competitiors brand names and kicking bloggers off the program for posting anything remotely negative, they’ve now kicked half their affiliates off as they’ve “run out of budget” – now I’ll never understand the marketing genius that decided their affiliate program (which after all only pays out on sales, so as long as you get the maths right at the start should make more profit the more it costs you..) should have a fixed budget as with newspaper/radio advertising.

But then with geniuses like that, and a prime minister who sold off the countries gold assets for a 1/4 of their value, raided old folks’ pension funds, and hiked up the national debt to record levels under the guise of a “prudent” chancellor, this country’s got not hope, and it’s no wonder we’re suffering through the longest recession in most of our lifetimes (we hope.. Gordon might actually be elected to do the job come June..)

Apologies for the political rant.. I had a pop at Nick Clegg last week too, so I guess in the interests of fairness I should have a go at Tory Dave next week

Affiliates 4 New – Yes, I know the new-look a4u launched earlier this month and I’m about 3 and a half weeks behind the times, but I was sunning myself on a beach in Tenerife at the time, and have only just caught up with the deluge of emails that taking a fortnight off entails – I could do with another holiday now! So having finally had a decent chance to look at the new improved a4u, I have to say it does look a vast improvement on the previous version – There are some teething issues that I’m sure the team will iron out (excluded forums, vanishing mark as read buttons and having to log in every time to name a few), but I no longer have to look at entire screen full of Murray Newlands blog posts all over the homepage, so that has to be a bonus.

I’m also loving the “Off the record” posts every Friday, and hope they will continue in the same vein they have so far!

Sorry! No discounts! – So Red Letter Days are launching a new system that will hide the voucher code box for non-voucher/discount code traffic. Well done them, and it’s always nice to see a merchant taking ideas put forward via this very blog and implementing them.. What next… Clash Media to start paying their affiliates?

Onwards and.. erm.. Downwards? – Many people have commented that I don’t talk too much about Plymouth Argyle on here these days. Well, a quick peek at the league table will tell you why that might be! We’re currently second-bottom, five points from safety with eight games to go. To be brutally honest, we deserve to go down, the football we’ve played over the last two seasons has been awful, and we’ve seen a skillful side of young, promising players sold off one-by-one and replaced with overpaid, hoofball-playing journeymen. Crowds have gone from 14/15,0000 to 8/9,000, and we looked to be down by about October, having taken just two points from our first 30.

Ironically, the man behind all this failure was Paul Sturrock, the very man who dragged us up kicking and screaming from the bottom league to the Championship. He wasn’t the man for the job this time, and since he was replaced just before Christmas by another living Home Park legend Paul Mariner, performances and results have improved. Unfortunately the board left it too late to make the change, and I don’t think there are enough games left to pick up the points required to survive. This weekend sees the return of the dishonest one to Home Park for the first time since his exit, and it’s sure to be an emotional day for all concerned. There could be some unpleasant scenes methinks if the result goes against us..

This week I have been mostly hating: Affiliates who think they’re celebrities
This week I have been mostly loving: The new Courteeners album, Falcon

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

Next making friends again, and a (mini) political rant

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Good to see Argyle finally getting the national recognition they deserve… Geddon you Janner!

The ad, for insurance company Avivia (formally known as Norwich Union) features Paul Whitehouse as a “typical” Plymouth Argyle fan driving up to Newcastle for an away game (of course he would have checked out Away Grounds first to find the best route, where to park, decent pubs etc), picking up his mates Big Dave, Boy (pronouced “bey”), Bird, and Janner along the way.

It’s a fantastic advert, and the “jannerisms” are pretty good too! I hear there’s meant to be a follow-up advert in the next week, so I’ll look forward to that one (as long as it’s not about the glum drive back from yet another Carling Cup first round exit…)

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

Plymouth Argyle Aviva Advert

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I was invited to the Argyle v Norwich game as a guest of match-ball sponsors Existem Affiliate Management and DGMaffiliates, and so abandoned my usual seat in the Lyndhurst for the comfort of the “Pyramid Suite”, the new name for the hospitality marquee – It’s a vast improvement, with the addition of decking, stud walls and a constant source of electricity meant it no longer feels like you’re sat in a tent.

Last season’s fry-up and frozen quiche has been replaced with a fantastic three course meal by one of the best chefs in Plymouth (apart from the Tanner brothers), David Morgan. Whether that’s a regular feature or just laid on because Delia Smith was on the next table to us, I’m not sure! There certainly was the obligatory photo opportunity after the meal as the two chefs chatted for the press.

We entered the game with a little bit of hope – Last season we’d beaten Norwich 3-0 in this game, we’d just signed three exciting new players (Gallagher, Mpenza and Marin), and there’s no way Argyle could be as bad as they were against Swansea two weeks previous – could they?

After a bright start from both teams, Argyle were hit by a double-whammy: First, a slip by Marcel Seip let in Arturo Lupoli to put Norwich one-up, then the beast was sent off – Krisztian Timar seeing red for two stupid yellow card challenges; something he really needs to eradicate from his game. It was all uphill from there, but amazingly it remained 1-0 at half time: Amazing after Norwich had a goal ruled out for offside, hit the bar, hit the post, and were denied a stonewall penalty after Seip (who was somehow voted MOTM??) hacked down Sibierski in the Argyle penalty area.

We were a little late returning to our seats for the second half, climbing the steps to the grandstand just as Norwich hit the crossbar for the second time – A sure sign of things to come.. A dismal second half in which Argyle created nothing followed before Norwich got the second goal they more than deserved midway through the half. Mpenza was brought on with twenty minutes to go and the greens two down – A big ask for a player who is nowhere near match fit. Argyle finally put a little respectability on the scoreline with a superb volley from Paul Gallagher (who we agreed was a more deserved motm) following some good work from Rory Fallon. Too little, too late though, and the final whistle blew not long after. 1-2 the final score, but it could easily have been 1-6 and we couldn’t have argued too much.

Worrying times ahead indeed for Argyle fans, as we currently sit bottom of the table with 2 points from a possible 15, and tough matches away at Watford and Crystal Palace this week. Paul Sturrock has promised to take the axe to his squad, and get rid of the deadwood primadonnas who think their place is a given, and reward those who have the desire and work ethic to play for Argyle. We’ll find out tonight who no longer has a future at the club, and hopefully rebuild a squad that is capable of staying up – either that or hope that three clubs enter administration in the Championship this year.

In summary, the company was fantastic, the hospitality brilliant, the food was excellent, the football was dire. Huge thanks though to Existem AM and DGMaffiliates for a great day out. This “Paper Performance” Industry we work in is brilliant isn’t it?

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

Where are you Argyle? Let’s be having you!

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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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Running on auto-pilot – You’ve got to love WordPress haven’t you? If I hadn’t told everyone I spoke to for a few weeks beforehand, you wouldn’t know that I’ve actually been on a fortnight’s holiday – Thanks to the mighty WP (as well as a couple of colleagues, a load of outsourced work and some custom CMS systems), all of our sites ran exactly as normal during the fortnight I was away, and the ten days I’ve been back that it’s taken me to catch up.

I love the fact that I can schedule stuff to go live at any time in the future (Shame you can’t do it in the past, would help solve any Google sandbox issues), as it means I can sit here and write loads of content in the middle of the night, or whenever I’ve got a spare ten minutes, and it can go live at the optimum time for the respective audience – We’ve started doing it with email newsletters now too, and it’s a fantastic way of working – Gone are the days when I had to be physically sat at my desk if I wanted something going live at 7am, or a week on Wednesday. Now I can do it all on the rainy days and schedule it to go live on the Sunny days whilst I’m at the beach – or that’s the plan anyway!

Giving up on email – The first thing I did on getting back from my holidays was download my emails from the previous 14 days – A grand total of 6,439 emails. Of those 6,439, approx 2,900 were instantly trashed by my junk filter, and of tyhe remaining 3,500 ish emails I had to sift through to try and weed out a) the junk that was missed by my crap junk filter and b) the crap (which is different from junk – it’s still useless, but at least it’s not unsolicited) to be left with 61 emails that I actually needed to read or take some action on – 61 out of nearly 6,500!

That’s less than 1% – Basically 4 useful emails per day out of an average 460. It took me more than three hours just to sort through the emails, and I’m not even the main contact for the networks! So I reckon it’s about time I took a leaf out of John Cauldwell’s book, and ban email. Anyone who’s actually got something useful to say can catch me on MSN Messenger, or PM me via Affiliates4u or Facebook. I’ll still download the emails once a day so I don’t miss anything urgent, but it’s been fired as my main communication tool in the ten days since I’ve been back, and I’ve got so much more done now I’m not spending 20 minutes per hour sorting emails!

Muppets on a Grand scale – Sorting through the emails I discovered a promotional email from the Affiliate Team at Ladbrokes, encouraging me to give them a push for the Grand National which was “only days away”… Well it was around 359 days away as it was sent six days AFTER the Grand National, a feat that is surely worthy of a rare Muppet-of-the-Week award.

Especially as the email contained the phrase “what better time to promote betting on the Grand National with Ladbrokes?” Should I tell them?

Loving The Apprentice – I reckon this is the best series so far.. Thanks to sky+ I didn’t miss any episodes during my hols either, so I’m fully up to date. The best bit has to be the way they’ve all been asked to big themselves up to camera before failing miserably. I think they’ve also got some great characters in there – After thinking Raef was an arse the first week, he’s really grown on me, and of course there’s still a couple left who you just love to hate (Jenny and Jennifer).

It was great to see Lucinda turn it around last week – Without a doubt, she’s been the dippy, clueless one who’s let the side down every week so far, so when she was made team-leader they seemed doomed. But she proved to be a great manager, and did everything correctly (Market Research, Supply, Booked sales appointments, put the right people in the right jobs, etc). Of course it wasn’t enough as the other team (who did no market research, booked 0 appointments and spent the whole sales day arguing) somehow wandered into a huge sale off the streets and won! I think “SrAlan” made the right choice in firing Lindi, but should have let “The best salesperson in Europe” go with her..

Game Over – So, Plymouth Argyle’s season is over, having failed to make the end of season Play Offs, after hitting the self-destruct button in recent weeks giving away goals left right and centre to fall out of contention. We’re still on course for our best finish in 20 years (and our eighth consecutive year of finishing higher in the league – carry this on, and by by the year 2038 we’ll be Premiership champions!).

And of course there’s still something to cheer for – Every member of the Green Army will be a member of the (former Argyle manager) Tony Pulis fan club on Saturday as he faces Ian HolloWords’ Liecester City knowing a win will propel his Stoke side into the Premier League. It’s not that we want to see Pulis there, it’s just that he will relegate the Lying Little Media Whore if they beat them (And Southampton don’t lose to Sheffield United), and nothing would be better karma than that!

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

I’m not here right now – Please carry on as usual

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POR resurrect deadlinks More – We must all remember the true meaning of Easter – No, it’s not all about Eggs and Chocolate (whose idea was it to discover a hidden love of KitKat Chunkies and Mini-Eggs two weeks before going on a beach holiday?), but of course Easter was when the Easter Bunny came back from the dead or something…

Which (in a strange tenuous way) leads us to the news today that Paid on Results have announced their latest brilliant idea based on what affiliates actually want. Following a rare (cough!) rant on Lammo last month about the way networks deal with deadlinks, I was greeted with the familiar sound of silence (and/or inaction) from most parties.

That was until Clarke from POR caught me on MSN earlier today to unveil POR’s latest work – The Paid (on results) Expired Merchants System (or PEMS for short – You really should work on the acronyms Clarke, though it’s better than “Free UK Stuff”

To sum it up in a nutshell, it puts you in control of your traffic, even for merchants that left the network many moons ago – Some would rather their links went to the merchant still, others want the network to show related merchants, other still would like their visitors to be sent to a custom page on their own site. Well, with PEMS, you can choose whichever one you prefer!

And best of all, you’ll get an email whenever some leakage occurs on your POR account – Every time a deadlink is clicked by a user, you’ll be notified (in a daily summary) where that link is, and hence you can set about replacing it with one that will earn you money – which in turn earns POR more money… which leads me back to the question I asked 6 weeks ago – Why doesn’t every network do this? So far, it’s only CJ, Webgains and POR that are leakage-free.

An Interview with a Lammo – A quick plug for Frostie’s Blog, where I was recently interviewed as part of his “Meet the real…” series of interviews, which has also featured some of the brightest stars in Affiliate Marketing. And Zak Edwards.

Why haven’t you voted? – Whilst I won’t be attending the a4uawards this year, I was surprised to read today that there have been just 30 votes cast, falling way short of the 1,000 target that was set. I know I was one of the 30 that had voted, and really am surprised that more people have not exercised their right to vote.

Whoever wins the awards will be crowing about it for the NEXT year (see.. I can do subtle), so make sure that this year’s winners are deserved – It’s no good moaning “Why weren’t My Favourite Merchant nominated?” if you didn’t nominate them yourselves.

I know it’s tough for some people to be given a blank form – People prefer to be led by a tickbox vote, but by having to actually think about who to vote for, we should end up with a much better nominee list. It only takes a minute or two to place your vote, so why not do it now (well, wait until you’ve finished reading my blog first.. oh, you’ve gone…) . The first round of voting closes in 30 days… and counting..

Playoff Push still on.. just – With just six games to go before the end of the season, Argyle are still in a play-off position.. just. A win against then-league-leaders Bristol City two weeks ago followed by a draw against then-third placed Watford (who are the ugliest footballing team I’ve seen at Home Park since Luton Town under Joe Kinnear) has left us in sixth place, but with Ipswich, Crystal Palace, Wolves and Charlton all breathing down our neck for that one remaining place. Even Cardiff in 13th place could move to within one point of us if they win their two games in hand.

It’s going to be an exciting run-in with games against Coventry, Charlton, Sheffield Wednesday, Preston, Blackpool, and Wolves to come, we’re going to have a massive say in who goes up, but also in who goes down. Either way, I’m keeping May Bank Holiday weekend free for the Play-off finals..

Don’t forget Sir Alan is back – Finally a quick note that The Apprentice is back on the Telly this week (Wednesday at 9pm) – Hopefully they’ll be a better crew than we had last year, although a quick look at the trailer reveals a few of the usual stereotypes – Over made-up “power dressers”, posh boy and barrow boy. Still, we only watch it for the back-stabbing and bitching.. we know that Sir Alan wouldn’t really employ any of them if he wasn’t being paid to..

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

The Links are Dead – Long live the Links!

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Buy.at/Holiday Watchdog sales More and More – It’s the time of the big money sales again. I have to say no-one deserves it more than the two Chris’s from Holiday Watchdog (Who will have to become known as the two Chris’s from Sunshine now) – They show that you can start with nothing but an idea and see it through to a mega-money deal.

I’m a bit more reserved about the AOL/Buy.at sale – It’s not necessary that it’s a bad thing but I remember how good Advertising.com used to be before AOL bought them and started running things – The UK arm is neglected with queries ignored by the various account managers who have taken over our account. I think I’ve had so many ad.com account managers they’ve fitted a revolving door to the staff room!

Campaigns are very thin on the ground, and are even expiring before affiliates are approved, even when applying within 10 minutes of the obligatory forum post, any questions that are raised within that post suitably ignored too. Long gone are the days when our ONE account manager (Where are you Kirsten?) used to know our business inside out and ring us up as soon as campaigns went live ensuring we pushed them.

As a result, our earnings from ad.com have plummetted since the AOL sale, and it’d be a shame to see buy.at go down the same road. I’m not suggesting for a second that is what will happen, but history can be a wonderful guide to the future sometimes (even if not for Investments!) – If you look at ad.com and CJ, there’s two network business models that I believe demonstrates that you can’t run a major UK network as simply a small branch of a US operation. I’d like to think that the buy.at team is large enough, and well established enough in the UK to ensure that doesn’t happen.

Show me the errors of my ways – I’ve been going through our old shopping directory this past week, checking all the links to merchants are working etc. As the site is now 3 years old, many, many of the links no longer work. It amazes me that many of these links are for merchants that have switched networks, and closed down their old network’s program.

All those old links have still been generating traffic for years, going to deadlinks. Which shows exactly why you shouldn’t close your old program down when changing networks – How many sales have those merchants lost as a result of those deadlinks? And I’m just one affiliate – multiply that by a couple of hundred rarely-updated shopping directories (I couldn’t possibly keep tabs on all the network-swapping that currently goes on for all merchants), and merchants are missing out on a fair few sales by causing affiliates links to stop working.

All of which reminds me – Commission Junction have always had this wonderful report – “Invalid links generating traffic”, meaning I can see at a glance where those deadlinks are on my sites. It’s such a useful tool for those with huge shopping directories as it lets you see instantly where there is leakage on your site. Why doesn’t EVERY network provide this report? It’s in their interests for you to maximise your earnings by replacing dead merchants etc. And it makes affiliates lives so much easier. Please, I would implore any network employee reading this to look into providing this simple report for your affiliates.

Woah, we’re going to Barbados… again – Following on from my post last week about how networks don’t incentivise their affiliates, Affiliate Future have just reminded me that I’m wrong, as they plot to take affiliates to Barbados for the thrid year in a row, as well as hiring out Casinos and Theme Parks in this country to give them a knees-up. So, my humble apologies to AF, who whilst not quite on the scale of The Utility Warehouse’s free cruise, certainly put the other UK networks to shame.

Argyle win at Leicester- It was great to get one over on the lying little scrote, and hopefully push him closer to the sack, which is no less than he deserves. Still the lies don’t stop coming either – In his pre-match interview he stated that “They (Argyle) were in fourth place when I left” – erm no Ian, we went up to fourth by winning the game after you walked out on the team four days earlier, and we were actually in tenth place going into your final game, but don’t let the truth get in the way of your ego.

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

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Do networks really incentivise their affiliates? More - The simple answer to this is no. During my 18 months out of Affiliate Marketing in 2005/2006 I did some work with The Utility Warehouse, notching up a couple of hundred sales, for which I still get paid a few hundred quid a month. As a thank-you for this (and obviously an incentive to push more sales), they paid for both myself and Er Indoors to fly to Nice last year, where we boarded the Six-Star cruise ship The Silver Whisper for a three night cruise around the Med, during which everything was included (Gourmet meals, Champagne, Room Service, Drinks, Tours of Monte Carlo, Genoa and Rome, and even spending money!).

And it wasn’t just the two of us – They booked out the whole ship, and gave free holidays to over 200 of their “affiliates”. The cost to the company must have been in excess of £500,000, but you can bet the incentive has worked with those who attended being inspired to do more, and those who didn’t make it this time will be spurred on to make sure they get invited to the next one.

Compare that with a certain network whom I have earned in excess of £100,000 for in over-ride commissions over the last 7 years who couldn’t even be bothered to send a Christmas card. The first network to do something like the free cruise for the top 200 performers (over the course of a whole year) will see the benefits without a doubt. And the rest can keep chucking a few quid behind the bar and think affiliates will count themselves lucky.

Not so Cleverat

Muppets of the Week: Cleverat – Following on from my post two weeks ago about CJ being dead and buried due to their lack of communication and pro-activity, Cleverat have taken things too far the other way, and been a little too proactive for my liking, earning them the second (at the moment tri-weekly) Muppet of the Week award.

Last week they approved me on two programs I did not apply to, and have since been sending me daily emails and have now left me 4 voicemail messages asking when I’m going to start pushing these merchants. Erm, to answer that for you guys – I’m not. If I want to push a merchant, i’ll apply for the program, and once you’ve approved me, I’ll pop my links up. Trust me, it works much better that way.

A4uawards to be seperate event More – I won’t be attending this event for three reasons.

1. It’s Black Tie, and I doubt I could still squeeze into my tux!
2. It’s in London, and that means it’ll cost me £500+ to attend (taking into account train fares, hotel, £95 entry fee, plus at least 2 days off work to get there/back)
3. As the Affiliate Blog of the Year award has been done away with for some reason, there goes any hope of muggins here picking up anything (Not that I would have anyway you understand, but it’d be nice for Kieron to have a chance to retain his title.)

I can understand the desire to make it more formal, but is it worthy of its own event? Why not just have a sit-down dinner at a4uexpo for the awards?

Transfer window closed – £4m profit More - Well, it’s a good job the window has closed, or we might note have had any players left by the time we face Ian Hollowords’ Leicester on Saturday (Remember, foxes fans – you can’t spell Ollie without LIE). Still, we’ve made around £4m profit on the players sold so far, and as long as that money is plowed back into buying proven players at sensible (i.e. not January transfer window) prices with a few punts on lower league players, we should continue the progression we have made over the last seven years.

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

The Tri-weekly Muppet of the Week award

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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

Affiliate Marketing is going full circle

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