Trying To Catch Up With The Affiliate World
Posted under: By some cruel fate (and to be fair I’m still waiting for a recount) I turned 40 last week. Fortunately nothing bad happened – I didn’t age over night or wake up sown in the kind of slacks you can only buy from the pages of the News of the World Sunday supplements. In fact it was pretty much business as usual (well other than a few pressies, a lovely birthday cake and a trip to Anfield – Jude’s birthday present from last year).
I say business as usual, more try and get back into the groove of “business as usual”. Trying to get back into interested affiliate mode has proven to be quite a challenge. Moving house has provided many a distraction, Loquax ticks along nicely, and affiliates have scattered to the four corners of the internet.
Aside from brief visits to A4U the main thing affiliate wise I’ve been aware of was that some guys went to Vegas and sprinkled everywhere. Sounds like fun!
In amongst the Vegas tweets and Facebook posts were mentions of the newest trendy site for 2011 Quora. Apparently it’s “a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it”. After signing up I only had two questions “what the hell do I do?” and “why the hell am I here?”. Mind you I didn’t think Twitter was much good to start with and that Facebook thing will never take off.
Something that is taking off though are the A4UAwards 2011. The “Community Choice of Network” award is now open for the affiliate community (is there anybody there?) to vote on. To be honest time could probably be saved by just calling it the “Affiliate Window Have This in The Bag” award.
It’d be a massive surprise, given their position, to see any other network win. The good news for other networks is that there will be more awards for the community to vote on soon. These will be for Best Publisher Support Team, Best Affiliate Network Technical Team and Most Improved Affiliate Network.
The awards take place in May 2011, but there are other dates for the affiliate diary. October may seem a long way off but that’s when A4UExpo (London) is on again. This time they’re moving to The West End and The Hilton Metropole. A bold move by the Expo guys and it’ll be interesting to see how affiliates react to the new location.
That’s something new to look forward too affiliate wise, but as ever the same old same old is still there. Lammo has blogged on those annoying “how are you sending us traffic” emails merchants like to send affiliates, Frostie commented on affiliate culling and there’s an endless stream of merchant/network emails that will be telling me that “xyz is flying out the window”, “this sale closes today” and “commissions are dropping”.
Talking of old, there’s also a good interview with Joe Connor of Cantbarsed.com fame over at Azam Marketing Blog. Although after that link he’ll probably want to change the kind name check offered in the inspired section (thanks Joe). The good news is that there are people like Joe still around in affiliate marketing. Partly because he’s (hopefully) older than me and also because he himself is an inspiration for affiliates young and old.
And just to wrap up this blog – a quick Happy Birthday to Easy Content Units who are two today. Time most certainly does fly by when you’re having fun!
and, if you’re really, really keen on catching up with ‘proper’ affiliates why not plan a trip to the Jewel of The North aka Leeds for Think Vis – some cracking folk attending this year – plus me and Dave