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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Next try to start building bridges – It’s been interesting to see that i-level, the agency “managing” Next on Buy.at and Affilinet have this week announced a couple of events to try and address the uproar that they caused a few weeks ago arrogantly branding affiliates as “polluters” and kicking established affiliates off their program and even dropping their network – see comment from Kevin Edwards) because they dared to voice concerns about the program.

Normally, I would have linked to a thread on affiliates4u which gives full details of these events, however that thread attracted some critiscm of the Next Affiliate program, so has today been deleted by i-level. What I can tell you is that there are two conference calls next week, and an invitation to i-levels office in London on 25th April. Anyone interested in taking part in either of these events should email nextaffiliates@i-level.com to book their place.

I’m out of the country for the Conference Calls, and I certainly won’t be spending hundreds of pounds and taking time off work to go see i-level in their fancy London offices, but I hope that those who do take part (and I really hope that those who are willing to work with Next or i-level in the future do take part in these sessions) get some answers to the tough questions – I asked a simple question three weeks ago, but appear to have been ignored by i-level, despite me asking it twice more.

TD introduce contextual content unit More - I spotted the other day that Tradedoubler had launched AdMatch, a contextual content unit that will scan the content of your page, and display relevant products or ads based on the content of your page. I’ve seen a few of these before, but the issue has always been relevancy – I still think that the only decent contextual tool I’ve seen that is actually relevant to the content is Adsense.

But I thought I’d have a quick play with AdMatch anyway, and see what products it threw up.. I tried on three different pages (using the same code) – the first came up with an error “Request entity too large”, the second didn’t display at all, and the third showed ads for Bollywood DVDs… on a page about Golf Clubs. Erm, think you’ve got a way to go with this tool guys…

I pity the fool – Of course the news yesterday about a new network paying 0% commission to affiliates was just an april Fool. I certainly don’t think it was subtle enough to really fool anyone, but it also demonstrates that there really is no place in Affiliate Marketing for 0% commissions. If you’re losing money on a product, then don’t stock it! If you intend to sell items at a loss for loss-leader tactics, then you should factor your normal commissions into this when calculating your prices.

My point about LoofLirpa.com was that even charging 70% over-ride, the networks earn nothing from 0% commission too (Yes, Phil, it was part of the joke!), so it’s in their interests to forbid this practice from merchants

The Funniest program on Telly is back - Yup, of course I’m talking about The Apprentice! It’s really not fair to call it a business program anymore, only the Trump version from across the pond lived up to that title. Of course they’re not going to attract “real” entrepreneurs to the show – A true entrepreneur wouldn’t work for someone else – These guys are just Carphone-Warehouse quality salespeople looking for a better paid job, and to get their massive egos on TV.

And that’s what makes it truly unmissable telly – Get them to big themselves up on camera “I’m the best Salesperson in Europe”, “I’ve never failed at anything in my life”, “Everything I do, I succeed at”, etc. then keep the camera on them whilst they fail to make £10 profit each despite being handed stock and a roaring trade on a plate. Finally, get Sir Alan to give them a great one-liner before “firing” them.

It’s a brilliant format, and the only thing funnier than The Apprentice is “The Apprentice – You’re Fired!” on BBC2 immediately following the BBC1 show, as Adrian Chiles spends 30 minutes ripping the **** out of the contestants, to their faces. Karen Brady was one of the guests last week, and summed up the show when Adrian Chiles asked her if she thought Sir Alan was right to fire Nicholas – “Oh God yes. You were awful” she said to a crest-fallen “Never failed at anything” Nicholas. I can’t wait for tonight’s episode!

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

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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

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