Happy Flu Year – What’s To Come In 2009?

Jan 1, 2009 by Jason Dale    2 Comments    Posted under: Announcements

For the first time in a long time I missed the New Year celebrations – no drink, no nibbles, no hootenanny and no hangovers! By 10.30pm I’d changed temperature enough times to realise that the only place for me was bed and despite a brief intrusion of fireworks going off for some reason around midnight I remained under the duvet feeling as close to ill as I can ever remember – and yes it was bad as I didn’t even want to go near a computer!

New Year always means resolutions and decisions about what to do over the coming 12 months so what’s to come in 2009?

I had actually considered giving up writing on this blog as one resolution – not during a cold and delirious moment during last night, but just as a general reflection of affiliate things in 2008 over recent weeks. Good news for some (and bad news for others) is that’s not going to happen as (1) writing a blog is cheaper than paying for therapy and (2) OLD is still the best affiliate blog featuring a duck in it’s title and my reader would be disappointed!

However I do intend to be more selective with my online and offline affiliate activities. At least that’s the initial plan – and there’s good reason for this!

Firstly it’s a time issue – over the last week when forums and other social systems have been quieter than usual I’ve managed to get so much more done. There’s no distractions, no discussions to follow, no arguments to have and it means I get stuff sorted out. It’s brilliant!

So resolution one is to not spend all day checking forums and/or getting involved with arguments (the two should go hand in hand) – in other words “focus”. Part of this is also based on the fact that having an opinion (or indeed daring to speak out) isn’t always a welcome attribute for forums, so resolution two will be that this blog will be only place I’ll vent my thoughts!

Time is also an issue with events – and we’ve been assessing cost vs time vs value! Last year alone we ended up in London 3 times during September – all good fun – but not always cost and business effective, especially when travelling from Swansea. With affiliate events we also have found ourselves biased to A4U organised shindigs and often we opt for them (mainly because we know they’re good) over others.

Whilst you could say “go to them all” – there’s still our own work to do – and whilst I’d recommend affiliates make as much effort to get to events, what is right and good for one isn’t always right and good for another. For example, networks aren’t our major revenue streams so attending events aimed at meeting them and their merchants is always that useful. Resolution three therefore is “be sensibly selective”!

So that’s the plan, but knowing how most resolutions go it won’t be long before all three are broken!

Anyway Happy New Year to everyone – hopefully 2009 will be a good one!

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