By doing them now, you might save yourself a bit of time when things get busier!

1. Check Your Links

Aside from the odd network closing it’s doors a number of merchants have either sadly gone into administration or closed their programs. What is notable is that those that are closing aren’t reopening elsewhere, at least not yet! Then there are also merchants like Prezzybox who have gone “exclusive”!

This may mean you have a lot of out of date links and they’re not going to be earning you anything. A few hours tidying up links, even on sites you’ve not given much attention too over recent weeks/months/years may be worth doing.

2. Check Your Scripts & Scripting!

When you use automation it’s sometimes very easy just to sit back and let things plod along. However, feeds change and that might be causing a few issues with your sites. Make sure that everything is running as it should be, there’s nowt worse than discovering things aren’t right on the afternoon of the “end of the busy Christmas period”.

For example today we found a site pointing to a domain holding page – oops!

3. Check Your Feeds!

This ties in with the two above, but make sure your feeds are up to date and are being picked up from the right network. Make sure any old feeds from defunct merchants aren’t hanging around and appearing in your price comparison results. They’re not good for conversions.

Automation should mean your feeds are usually ok, but sometimes old merchants/links get in when they shouldn’t.

4. Keep Focused!

Earlier this year we cut back on the number of sites we were trying to run – and guess what? We’re doing less work and our income hasn’t been effected. It’s tempting, especially as things usually pick up after the summer to start doing more and more. Don’t let it happen!

5. Find Your Affiliate Mojo

All jobs can become a bit tedious or frustrating and the grass may appear greener elsewhere, but then that may involve working for someone else – not good. If your enthusiasm for AM is waning then try and go back to doing what you enjoyed.

Look at working on the things you enjoy rather than slaving away on stuff that perhaps isn’t interesting or struggling to gain traction.

6. Have a Holiday!

You need one!

Now you might be wondering why I’ve blogged this list!?

Well they all apply to me and after quite a nice month or two doing slightly less work (hooray), there are a few jobs that now need doing. Ideally most will be done asap (the affiliate mojo may take longer) so come those Christmas promotion emails I’ll be ready and enthused to take them on.

Maybe ;o)

As ever it was great to catch up with some very familiar faces as well as one or two new ones, not always for the right reasons mind. The guy from Wow Media who walked into a door, fell over, slumped all over the show with his jeans at half mast and proclaiming “I’m off to my expensive hotel” will most certainly be remembered. Class!

It’s important to learn new things at affiliate events, so what did I learn from heading down to Plymouth for the second time?

1. Disappointingly there wasn’t that much dancing from Clarke. However, there does seem to an obsession amongst Plymouth folk for The Wurzels. It’s almost like an anthem – first rule of Plymouth Club, learn lyrics by The Wurzels. At least in Wales we have Tom Jones’ Delilah!

2. Flip Flops were everywhere! Apparently these were donated by Webgains. I guess it’s wrong to complain about freebies, but to be fair you could understand why they wanted shut of them. For them to fit properly you needed unfeasibly long toes. However, they did have a better use as “gloves” for the new found sport of Flip Flop Boxing. 2012 Olympics stand by!

3. The Hodge is insane! He’s also quite infectious – not in a diseased sense – but his enthusiasm and sense of humour definitely lifts spirits. He was also graciously beaten in the first ever Flip Flop Boxing match, although to be fair he probably didn’t know he was in it. A trip to Think Visibility is definitely on the cards.

4. Two Unlimited are being reformed. Apparently there’s video footage of myself, Elaine, Dave and Dom singing along to “There’s No Limits”. Techno! Techno! Techno!

5. Never trust your missus with a camera!

6. Cake/Gateau/Dessert/Pudding are words not known in Plymouth. Well at Existem AM! BBQ food is nice, but a man can’t live on steak, sausages, chicken and salad (”you don’t make friends with salad”). Cake related items are needed. Next year I’ll bring my own.

7. If I do bring my own cake, Hannah from Existem AM won’t be getting any. I’m still traumatised by her demands for more Duck Cake. At least I think it was cake she wanted.

8. Auctions are good fun, but don’t take part if you’re on the opposite side of the room from your wife. She may be bidding and you may be bidding against her. She may also be bidding on things because she’s had one or two extra ciders.

9. Never trust your missus at an auction.

10. Loquax can run without someone holding it’s hand! This was probably the first time myself and Kirsty (co-director) have been away from home over a weekend at the same time (which in about 10 years is quite an achievement). I kept “in touch” with a few emails and admin things via the iPad – and it all worked well.

11. Unfortunately the 11th thing I learnt is not for publication… not just yet anyway!

So there you have it, a brief overview of what was a nice relaxing and enjoyable weekend in Plymouth. I learnt nothing new about affiliate marketing, but did learn I can leave the office and let the site do it’s own thing once in a while. More importantly it made me realise that I’m heading down the same lifestyle pathway as a number of my peers.

I don’t want/need to be heading to affiliate meetings to “cut a deal” but need guidance and inspiration on how to make sure I’m running things web wise and that they’re not running me. More importantly, when I’m away on these things, I simply just want to enjoy a beer and a chat with some good affiliate mates.

Because of that, next year’s event on 12th August is already in the diary.

And for that a big thanks goes out to Existem AM for organising! Cheers.

In fact it made me stop and rewind Sky+ as I was sure I heard the words “discount vouchers”!

And indeed you do!

Now I’m not 100% certain, but is this the first TV advert for online voucher codes? I know there have been cashback site adverts (whatever happened to those guys?) but never anything for vouchers.

It’s not the best of adverts in my opinion as it’s not funny and it doesn’t really convey the message very well, but I guess you could argue it made me stop for a moment that it did it’s job? What it did make me wonder is, given that we’re now just weeks away from the Christmas shopping frenzy and with the economy as it is will we see other affiliate code sites on the small screen?

Is the small screen a viable option for voucher code sites or indeed other affiliate sites?

Will we be seeing adverts featuring voucher code site owners such as Doug, Duncan and Mark dressed up as Santa Claus and pulling out voucher codes to offer to the masses?

Stranger things have happened!

Mind, if it does happen let’s hope that it’s a lot better than seeing someone choking, being hit with a trolley and breaking a fish tank.

Reasons for the belief that “it’s our fault” stems from the issue of referrals from a competition listing site and concern that entries are deleted because they may be deemed from a “professional comper” (*).

In our experience only a handful of sites have ever really got the hump with people who like competitions, or enter them as a hobby, visiting their site. Usually this is because answers have been given out and occasionally it’s because the person running the competition is a bit naive. A handful over the years doesn’t suggest a major issue though.

By the way the term “professional comper” is total nonsense. I like taking photos, but I’m not a professional photographer. By the same token, aome people like entering lots of competitions, but that doesn’t make them professional. I really wish media people would get their head around this!

Anyway the purpose of this blog!

What I’m hoping for is some blog comments or private feedback about compers and how you, if you run or have ran competitions, perceive them. Do you embrace them as “well it’s traffic” or do you actively monitor them perhaps via referrals in your logs or check popular sites and forums to see if people are trying to circumvent appearing on your radar (using non-referral tags).

Another question that crops up is what is cheating? Do you mind that answers to your questions are posted freely, essentially turning what you’re offering into a quick and easy send in your data prize draw format.

Finally do you remove entries? Automated entries (where a bot will deliver a lot of competition entries without those people ever visiting your site because they’ve paid a service to do it for them) have already been mentioned here on OLD and I’m all for those kind of entries being disqualified. But do you (or have you) ever disqualified people because they’ve clicked from a comping site?

Hopefully they’ll be some replies. I was going to do a survey for siteowners who submit competitions via Loquax, but that’d probably be targeting those people who don’t mind competition people.

If you do want to make anonymous comments (or at least not reveal your site’s identity) then fair enough, but please use a valid email address.

Please post via comments or send via the contact form. Thanks!

But the affiliate world doesn’t stand still and the fortunes of three UK affiliate networks are in focus at the moment.

At the end of July DGM went into administration, but it’s taken a further fortnight for the plugged to be pulled. As of the end of last week affiliates who had not removed links were given a pretty lousy 12 hours notice that dgmPro for the UK was being switched off by ADH Holdings who had acquired the system.

There’s an announcement on A4U and some quite direct comments in response to things.

Going public with views, at least in The UK AM industry, is often not the “done thing” so it’s quite refreshing to see some open commentary, especially from those involved. Quite often (and I’ve said this before) there’s an assumption that those involved in AM know what’s happening “behind closed doors” when they don’t.

Actually in fairness, I’m a nosey so and so and just want more gossip.

However open commentary isn’t being confined to just the end of DGM in The UK. Sunshine’s Chris Clarkson has posted an emotive post on his blog about Affiliate Future. His open letter is an interesting read and hopefully those who can react to his suggestions take them on board. In fact it’s Sunshine’s and their affiliates’ frustration with AF’s development (or lack of it) that has led to them opening with Paid On Results.

This move could be a key one for POR and early indications suggest that they realise this with the launch of their Sunshine Report. This is a bespoke reporting suite for affiliates of Sunshine.co.uk on POR and first impressions are pretty impressive. I’d be surprised if other travel merchants and affiliates aren’t raising one or two eyebrows in POR’s direction after seeing what they can potentially offer them versus what they may be getting elsewhere.

In fairness POR aren’t the only network innovating. Tradedoubler quietly announced Product Level Tracking (PLT) with RouteOne. From the email “PLT enables commissions to be offered to you on individual products”. So if RouteOne want their affiliates to focus on DC branded gear they can raise the commission for it. An interesting development to keep an eye on in the future.

For now though, the sun is most certainly shining on POR up in Scotland.

It’s not surprising that MSE are running this trial. Forums aren’t the easiest thing to monetise! Users tend to dislike intrusive adverts and subscriptions cause additional work and headaches. If you’re thinking of adding a forum to your site then stop and think carefully about it. On one hand they can be brilliant, usually when all is running well and the users are lovely. However, they can be very time consuming and a huge drain on resources.

If you’re not earning money from managing the forum, spending hours dealing with admin issues can be very frustrating on a lot of levels.

According to an announcement on MSE they’re hoping Skimlinks will “allow the forum to cover some of its costs – if so we may be able to use it to expand resources”. They also say “It has no adverts (no one can pay to be on the site) and does not generate any income.” These comments do make you wonder whether the MSE forum is becoming a bit of a drain on their resources?

So, it’ll be interesting to see how this trial progresses!

Firstly will forum users embrace the presence of Skimlinks? Forum users tend to be quite vocal on new technology or interference in their activity. Will they ignore the links? Will they see them as an intrusion? Or will they take to them like a duck to water and start earning MSE commission? If the latter then expect a few more forum users trialling Skimlinks in the coming months.

From an affiliate point of view there are also things to consider. In one addition of a bit of code there’s suddenly a new affiliate in town. OK, not quite a new affiliate as MSE has always been one, but they’ve just expanded their reach quite a bit. A whole bunch of affiliate links dropped on to a top 10 UK social network can only mean some extra added competition for that last click!

Slightly deeper than that though is will it open up user eyes into the world of affiliates? Will it make them more wary of links – “don’t click on that it’s an affiliate link”? Or perhaps it might make them more aware that sites and forums can’t run on fresh air forever and that they need to support them by shopping via affiliate links?

Then of course there’s the “what if it doesn’t work” element of the equation. I’d be surprised if MSE was poor in terms of income, but can it sustain a continually evolving forum that “does not generate any income”? Skimlinks seems to be a good idea to try and address that issue, especially if MSE maintain their “no paid advertising” stance.

As a siteowner who also has a number of “does not generate any income” elements on site (adsense, affiliates, banners = doesn’t work) I’m particularly interested in seeing how this trial pans out. I’m sceptical simply because whilst I think the technology is lovely, I’m not sure if it’ll be lovingly embraced by the most important element of a site – the user.

But, if Skimlinks works for MSE then it’ll be kudos to them for turning a moneysaving forum into a moneymaker.

Administration has a horrible ripple effect.

There are obviously those caught at the eye of the storm such as ex-employees and there are merchants who need to move to other networks asap. Plus of course, possibly a little too glossed over in many respects, there are the affiliates who could be losing out on significant and much needed income. Some may have PPC bills to cover, whilst others may be having a few sleepless nights until their merchants move or they figure out what to do next.

Cashback sites and their users are also caught up in this ripple effect. The reaction from affiliates to DGM’s administration has been one of a quiet acceptance, in my opinion, but hell most certainly has no fury than a cashbacker scorned.

In the firing line over on Money Saving Expert are Quidco who whilst quick to explain the administration then got both barrels and a lot more besides from unhappy punters. Their problems were compounded further when a rival site announced they would be paying up any monies owed from DGM affiliates.

What’s quite fascinating from the discussion though is the varying degrees of knowledge regarding cashback, affiliates and tracking. In some cases cashback customers didn’t know a tracking company, such as DGM or Awin, were the middle man.

The issues Quidco are having on the money saving forums also highlights one of the problems of doing “customer services” away from home and the relative safety of your own forums. Having tried to do it, albeit thankfully no where near on the cashback site’s scale, it’s not something I’d rank as a highlight of the working week.

Because of that, and many might be shocked by this, I feel a tad bit sorry for Quidco. They reacted to the situation as they saw right but then got battered and bruised by all and sundry for being perhaps too quick off the mark. Maybe they misjudged “what to do” but perhaps the blame really has to fall on the poor way the administration has been announced and the uncertainty of what’s happening (or not).

In contrast to DGM, Clash Media also went into the admin corner last week and immediately switched off their UK network links. That’s a pretty good indicator of “we’re not in right now”. Just as an aside to this it’s interesting to note that there’s been less comment and little cashback or affiliate furore over this particular network’s end, despite their ukprizedraw program being run via a number of other networks.

Anyway, at least today’s “unofficial DGM announcement” should bury any hopes of a reprieve or uncertainty about keeping links in place “just in case”! The start of August for some affiliates is going to mainly revolve around switching links. But here’s the thing – if you’re unhappy about that, stop and think “at least I’m not running a cashback site” (unless you are, then go and get the beers in).

Here are a few examples of what I mean!

“Continue Shopping” isn’t a great call to action. This page could show some special offers, a one off deal or perhaps even a discount code with an option saying “email this code to me”. There’s nothing here to make me want to stay on site.

Play.com don’t fair much better!

Now some sites direct link to their pop up competition pages, so if they do this what will the visitor see in terms of deals, promotions, and latest offers? Nothing! Now many people will say “ah, but competition people won’t buy anything” and that’s fair comment but the odds of them doing so must increase slightly if they see something other than a blank page?

Nothing means they could just go for a Burton!

“Start Shopping Here” is fine, but would you click? These page needs related film goodies or something to capture the visitor’s interest. Marketing people need to get the person who codes the site to automatically put the same details on the thanks page that they put on the rest of the site.

Don’t let them say “it can’t be done” – it can be done! If you can pass out offers to affiliates you can put details on these pages.

Hallelujah! Well done Firebox – this is good!

Although to be a tad critical it doesn’t quite go far enough (I know I’m harsh). I’d like to see something like “as a thanks for entering the competition we can offer you XYZ discount or Putty Monsters, the winner of our Invention competition, at a special price”.

Now I don’t know if it’ll improve our conversion rates with merchants. It can’t hurt it anyway as for many we have Yazz Stats (the only way is up). However, all merchants and siteowners running competitions should be thinking about the journey of their users through competitions.

They do the nice landing page, they might even remember the “thanks for entering email” (none of the above do), but very few people bother with the “thanks for entering page”.

In fact by putting nothing on it, you might as well automatically close the site down once someone’s filled in their details to enter your carefully crafted prize draw. With nothing offered to encourage them to stay (or revisit without that thanks for entering email) you’re essentially shutting the door on them.

Theo thinks that together “we can do a lot better” and “make more money” and that the new website will help to take the Ryman affiliate programme to the next level. In typical Dragon’s Den style, he even manages to get in a mention about his kid’s inheritance. Theo’s main message though is about commission and in order to motivate affiliates to start to work with Ryman there’s a fixed 10% commission rate for the next four weeks.

OLD wonders though if this could this have gone one step further?

Commission increases are lovely, but sometimes it’s what can’t be bought that’s often more desirable or more valuable. Imagine if the above message concluded with “at the end of September, we will be selecting one lucky affiliate to come to London for an all expenses paid lunch with Theo, where you can chat about your business and affiliate marketing before taking a trip to Dragon’s Den”.

Would that be more motivational?

For me personally I’d say yes. I’m not a Ryman affiliate and I’m afraid the video doesn’t really get me wanting to head over to Tradedoubler and get promoting. I was almost won over by the mention of the great zoom feature though, but for now “I’m out”!

Staying with Dragon’s Den this poses an interesting thought!

Now that we know Theo is fully behind affiliate marketing it’ll be interesting to see how he reacts if any affiliate companies appear on the programme in the future and what he says about them. He’s invested in an affiliate company before, having offered to spend £200,000 on Gaming Alerts. Perhaps not the best use of his kid’s inheritance!

Anyway, it’s great to see a household business name giving a boost to affiliate marketing and maybe Theo’s message will spark a trend of similar videos! Perhaps Theo will be manning the Ryman stand at A4UExpo or better still appearing in a regular “Ryman’s Affiliate Video” bulletin?

All I’ll say is “thanks Theo” for choosing to talk about Ryman and not La Senza. Trying to fit in the Duran Duran “Rio” inspired title would have been much tougher.

Given the economic climate it’s perhaps not a surprise that a network has hit this point. Even so, it’s a sad day for affiliate marketing and for those who have been involved with DGM and it’s previous incarnations of UKAffiliates. For many affiliates, including ourselves, it used to be their number one earner and despite a few issues around the “Pro” era there’s always been affiliate affection towards the network.

In fairness the road has always been uphill for DGM since they moved from DGM2 to the ill fated DGMPro. In essence this has been the albatross attached to the millstone that’s been round their neck, whilst a (Cheeky)monkey played on their back. The affiliate system wasn’t the most user friendly and whilst DGM tried to sort things out, Awin and Buy.at emerged like Seb Coe used to do having sat behind Steve Ovett for 700m and leg it to the finishing line to grab the gold.

After a management buyout – at least on the surface it looked like New DGM were moving forward. They introduced new innovative ideas, like the mobile and broadband comparison units as well as travel maps. New clients, including The National Trust, were appearing too and with the merger of Buy.at/Awin there was opportunity for them to continue that climb and establish themselves as a network of choice for affiliates.

Sadly, for whatever reasons, that climb has now been halted by the grim reaper of administration. The knock on effect to affiliates is as yet unknown. But, it’s a stark reminder to us all how the fall of one business to which we are somehow linked can have an impact on our own. Affiliates do need to make sure they have several eggs and several baskets!

DGM’s administration though has, as you’d expect, resulted in some lively and interesting discussions on Twitter about networks and their future.

Are the days of the affiliate network numbered? Will there be other casualties? Do networks need to adapt their business models? Will agencies take to the space and remove the need for networks?

Perhaps there are more questions to be asked – like were the clients won really ideal for affiliate marketing or more intriguingly are there the affiliates in situ willing or able to promote new wins, not just for DGM, but other networks who as yet haven’t been absorbed by Affiliate Window? Has affiliate marketing hit a critical point, where as a discussion ensuing on affiliates4u suggests, that it’s now simply voucher code marketing?

Who knows the answers to these questions and how these events will effect AM in the months to come?

In the meantime, let’s hope there’s minimal impact for those effected by this administration.