One Little Duck Rebooted!
Posted under: It’s time for an all new singing and dancing One Little Duck blog.
Well perhaps not so much singing and very little dancing but it has had a bit of a makeover. If it was a TV programme or movie (Batman, Superman, Spiderman etc) then it would be termed a reboot, so that’s what I’m going to call it… One Little Duck Rebooted.
Blogging about affiliate marketing and online stuff had gotten a bit of struggle. Perhaps it was the curse of the A4UAward? The heavy burden of being the last winner of “Best Affiliate Blog” dragging me down under water like the concrete slippers on a recently acquired international terrorist (allegedly).
Or it could be that I’ve been distracted by many other things. Moving home is now done and to be fair walking by the sea (see below) is far better therapy to the trials and tribulations brought about by doing this online thing than any amount of blogging.
You might have noticed a fair few photos that are new to the blog as well. There’s good reason for that. OLD remains primarily an affiliate marketing/siteowner/grumpy old man blog, but it needed something extra. Something more personable! And so the photos (which won’t be just of ducks) are here to accompany things. It also saves me trying to run another site to put them on.
Boiling things down has actually been a big feature of the last few months. At Loquax we’ve been getting rid of stuff that doesn’t make money and working on things that do. Out went our shopping feed channel. As clever a bit of coding that it was, it just wasn’t good enough to do anything in SEO terms, it wasn’t really competitive enough in user terms and ultimately it failed in finance terms. In fact it was quite “expensive” to have as it played havoc with the server.
In truth, I think we got to it before Kung Fu Google Panda did!
I’ll not miss the shopping feed channel though. Trying to “price compare” everything and anything was an insane task to undertake. Feed quality varies from merchant to merchant and network to network – and at times it’s not great. We still use product feeds, but in a much more basic way and/or limited product niche way.
Top tip – don’t a shopping portal site with millions of products… and don’t run it as part of a competition portal… and don’t run a competition site either. Do something else and you’ll have more chance to earn a living as an affiliate!
In fact, the biggest change over the last few months has been my mindset. The amount of “free work” we do at Loquax is horrendous – that needs to be rebalanced a little (well a bit more than a little).
So what’s been happening affiliate wise?
Not a great deal, everything ticks along as usual as Pandas and recessions come and go. Stuff’s up, stuff’s down, life goes on! Thankfully I’ve finally recovered from judging this year’s A4UAwards.
This is the second year I’ve been a judge and this year was a lot tougher. There were more entries and some of such exceptional standard that it’s painfully evident how the industry has changed. An analogy – we are in affiliate marketing terms simply a scruffy moggy playing with a toy mouse for larks up against Prides of Lions devouring a bunch of dancing Gazelles.
A big congratulations to all those who are shortlisted.
I’ll probably not be at the awards night and I missed Think Visibility in March – so the aim will be to get to an affiliate event later this year. Not attending events doesn’t seemed to have much impact on what we do, but I’ll try and make an effort this year even if it’s just to prove I’ve not moved to a £1million compound away from prying eyes. The Swansea/South Wales affiliates did meet up last month for a bit of bowling, a lot of drinking and even a bit of magic and that was great fun.
WKD Cherry Pop is an alcoholic revelation by the way.
And on that note, it’s time to get on and do something that has a chance of generating revenue.
Brill post Jason, especially the part about our Swansea meet up and the ‘cherry pop’ ha ha !
love the scruffy moggy analogy – thank heavens I don’t aspire to be a lion though
Re affy doos – shall we see you up here in September then? You and the missus – that would be nice
We’ll try and get North.. it’s a fair old hike from Llanelli mind. Will check flights/trains in advance this time though
Boiling it down is the way forward for me the last 6 months – coming year. Concentrate on the sites and themes that make the money, and stop the stuff that’s fun to experiment with but ultimately goes nowhere. I should drop in to A4U more often, I missed the Swansea meet up, would have been good to try and make it.