Mark is no stranger to “big ideas” so I caught up with him to find out more – here’s what he has to say!

1. Tell Me A Little About Yourself?

Some would say I am a dreamer, no, literally, the would. I am an entrepreneur who loves coming up with the most crazy random ideas in order to see whether they can be turned into reality. Most people sit at the pub and discuss, ‘what if ideas’. I am the type of guy who discusses them and then risk everything in order to see if I can turn them into reality.

My first ‘big idea’ was a business called Tribewanted.com. I leased a 200 acre island in Fiji which had nothing on it. I built a website that enabled people to sign up and become a ‘virtual tribe members’, online these ‘tribe members’ voted on what they wanted to see happen on the island, what they wanted to build and how they wanted to work with the Fijians, members could then go and visit the island and get involved in building and developing the eco-village. Tribewanted was featured in the media around the world including ‘Good Morning America’, the ‘Today Show’ and ‘The New York Times’, it was even featured on ITV’s ‘This Morning!’ Tribewanted was filmed for 18 months and became a 5 part prime time BBC2 show.

2. What’s The Big British Giveaway All About?

Big British Giveaway is a daily giveaway site. Every single day, in 10 cities, in 2012, businesses will offer a product as a giveaway. In order to enter the giveaway the public have to like the brand on Facebook, Follow the brand on Twitter and engage with the brand all over the web. This means that, for your chosen 24 hour period, an online social army of brand champions will be raising your profile to all their friends, family and followers which will leave a lasting legacy of a positive digital footprint about your brand, online.

3. How Can Retailers/Affiliates Get Involved With ‘Giveaway?

Quite easily, all you have to do is head over to www.bigbritishgiveaway.com, select your city and your chosen day and reserve your giveaway day. Simple. Once you have done this we will send you an email asking you to answer a small number of questions and we will use the answers to create your giveaway day text which you will approve before you go live.

4. What’s In It For Them?

Most businesses are on Facebook or Twitter but they either don’t know what to do with these social media profiles or they find it hard to know how to attract a significant audience. Once a brand reserves their giveaway day we will create a specific campaign designed to the needs of your business – you may want to increase the number of Twitter followers you have, or the number of likes that you have on Facebook, you may even want 100′s of people to send out a tweet with your twitter profile link in it – we can do any of these and more!

On your giveaway day your campaign will go live and your brand will be seen by 1000′s of people across the internet, enabling you to reach potential new clients, attracting new followers to your Twitter and new fans to your Facebook, we can even ask people to enter their email it your email database. The members of the public who like, follow or enter their email address want to because they like your brand and therefore you will have gained a targeted audience who you can promote your products to and turn into customers.

5. What’s The Cost/Catch?

Big British Giveaway is a seriously affordable marketing platform. Day 1 is £1 and prices increase by only £1 per day. So, the 1st January is £1, 2nd January is £2 and the 31st December is £366 which is the most that any business will be able to pay next year.

Furthermore, on your giveaway day, alongside a description of your company and information of the product that you are going to giveaway you will also have the opportunity to offer a discount code. With all the exposure that you are getting on your giveaway day you will be able to maximise this opportunity and turn these eyeballs into customers by offering an incentive of a small discount.

6. What Happens If You Don’t Fill The Calendar On A Given Day?

Big British Giveaway launched in the UK only a matter of weeks ago, the American version launched 2 months ago and already we have sold over 1000 giveaway days. I am confident that with the PR exposure that is about to ramp up, we will sell all giveaway days. Furthermore, the cost of the days are so cost effective that it simply makes sense for business owners to make the most of this opportunity.

7. You’re Launching In USA/Australia/UK at the same time – Isn’t That A Bit Mad?

Yes, it is slightly! We launched in the USA (Big American Giveaway) which went down really well, selling over 1000 days within 2 months. As this success has grown and developed we have had enough interest from business owners and the public in both the UK and Australia (Big Aussie Giveaway) requesting that we launch in each of these countries and so we did. The reality is that I have a great team around me and it is not that much more effort launching in three countries as it is launching in one! Furthermore, whilst we have launched in all 50 states in the USA, we are initially launching in 10 cities in the UK and 4 locations in Australia so we are going to build these two countries slowly but surely. I am confident that we can build a strong, successful platform that we can roll out in a number of countries, well, that is the dream anyway!

8. What’s Your Top Tip For Start Ups?

Never fear failure. I have this belief that, in houses across the UK, there are latent future business leaders who will could make world changing products if only they were not afraid of failure. If a business is launched that does not work out, learn from the experience and come up with a new idea, use your experience to improve the next idea and keep going until you create the business that breaks through, if you keep going long enough, you will succeed.

A big thanks to Mark for taking part in the interview! 2012 promises to be a busy year for Mark and I’ll be watching with interest, from a competition point of view and business point of view, how the Big Giveaway sites develop.

To find out more head on over to Big British Giveaway.

Planning For Affiliate Christmas

If you are running something Christmassy (and we are doing some stuff over on Loquax) then a few hints and tips never go amiss. Over on A4U they’re publishing hints and tips for affiliates from networks (Part 1, Part 2). That’s all well and good and very useful, but from an affiliate point of view should you be dropping everything in favour of the festive promotions and umpteen incentives that will be falling into your inbox.

Well I don’t think so… and rather than rewrite a whole new blog I’ve located my Planning For Affiliate Christmas blog from 2009. Hopefully it gives you a few useful bits of advice about jumping aboard Santa’s Sleighful of Incentives and Promotions for Affiliates (or Performance Marketeers).

Some Top Tips

The most important tips I can offer are be wary of the distraction Christmas can bring, be organised, and don’t be tempted to deviate too much from what you know. The endless emails of incentives, promos and commission chops and changes can be incredibly distracting – try and view them rationally and sensibly. A trip to Dubai might be a nice incentive, but is trying to win it at the expense of the last 11 months work? Just think about it!

By the same token, if you promote Widgets and Merchant X has been doing bumper Widget sales for you all year – now’s not the best time to test out Merchant Y and thrown Merchant X to the side. You might well find that Merchant X may offer you 5% commission and you get sales but Merchant Y may tempt you with 10% but sucks at conversion. Of course Y may just be a surprise – but if so why have they waited until now to get your business?

Organisation is also key to this time of year. To be honest Christmas Tips in mid-November is a little bit late in the day. Most affiliates looking to cash in will already be up and running (e.g. Quidco have had a Christmas countdown since the start of November – and that doesn’t organise itself overnight). You can still jump on board but try and fit Christmas in to what you do day to day.

Merchants, We Still Want Your Christmas Promos!

For us it’s not all bah humbug and Scrooge! Plenty of merchants run competitions around this time of year and if they get in touch with us with a little bit more detail then we’ll happily feature them on our blog – as we’ve done with John Lewis. It fits in with our site, has something that will interest our users and is great content. A perfect combo for us as an affiliate… and to be honest has more chance of generating a sale than if we spent the next few weeks updating Xmastime!

Any merchants/networks/AMs who want to know how they can get on to our blog then just get in touch… as long as there’s a competition angle we can use it!

Now I’ve not played Football Manager for some years now. To be honest Sensible Soccer on Sega Megadrive was the pinnacle of my football gaming ability so any games more complex tended to be quickly forgotten. That, and the fact that Southampton on these games were always crap (how things have now changed).

Anyway, Kelvin’s talk didn’t inspire me to get back in the Football Manager hotseat… it inspired Jude! Shortly after ThinkVis she was at the helm of Newport Country and frequently offering updates about overpaid footballers not doing what they should. She also kept asking me for advice on formations, who she should buy and whether these stats were good or bad. Like I would know! Anyway for a time I was “Director of Football” of Newport County … but that wasn’t exciting enough.

So before you know it I’m manager of Gateshead of the Blue Square Premier League and on course for becoming an SEO master (maybe). Season after season and hour after hour passed and before you know it Gateshead have made it to the Premier League care of a Johnstone Paint Trophy victory, a few Play-off near misses and just one relegation.

The FA Cup followed as did European Football, but the Premiership remained an elusive goal. In fact, it wasn’t until the 29th season when things started to unravel. Selling the England Captain for an astronomical fee to Arsenal unsettled the squad, they all got grumpy and just 8 months before Football Manager would retire me for being “too old”, the ungrateful Gateshead board fired me.

I’m still bitter about that!

Unfortunately all the above took up such a lot of time that blogging was shunted aside. I’m not even sure I know anything more about SEO. In fact I think my brain cells have been destroyed by the lack of sleep, the worry about players who were unsettled and trying to devise a plan to win the Premiership.

One thing that did resonate though was the strategy I adopted during the game. That strategy was to spend as little as possible and see how far things would go. Initially that was easy because the Gateshead Board didn’t have any cash. No players were loaned in for the entire game, and it was only until the final season when I blew £15million on a grumpy Scottish midfielder who’s tantrums contributed to me being sacked.

Now with Loquax the strategy has been quite similar, ok barring spending £15million on a midfielder – no idea what we’d do with him unless he knows SEO. But, you could say that doing silly things that may be outside your comfort zone is something to watch out for when doing stuff online.

Despite being slightly more affluent than we were in 1998, we’re still cash conscious and spending out a load of cash in search of glory may not result in taking honours. Perhaps there was a lesson in Football Manager after all?

Actually there’s another one – a more obvious one – and that’s be your own boss, because after sweating your nuts off for 29 years and delivering success above and beyond expectation there’s no grumpy board waiting to sack you without any warning.

Now! About this SEO stuff????

So, before you run a Facebook competition – just have a quick read through – as we explain just some of the things that can crop up.

1. The Guidelines

Facebook does have guidelines for promoters who want to run competitions. It’s worth noting them “just in case”. For example the guidelines say that “the act of liking a Page or checking in to a Place cannot automatically register or enter a promotion participant”.

It also says that “you must not notify winners through Facebook, such as through Facebook messages, chat, or posts on profiles or pages” but again many brands do because they’re using likes and/or not using a third party application such as Easypromos.

The “just in case” part is for if/when Facebook ever decide to turn the screw and actually apply their guidelines. A lot of pages still offer prizes at X number of likes and winners are contacted by Walls and messages etc. To be honest it’s a surprise that Facebook haven’t created their own forced contest app for pages – imagine the data collection they could be doing with such an idea.

Top Tip: Just be aware that there are guidelines… you never know when Facebook will enforce them!

2. Voting Competitions

We’ve been involved with online competitions for 14 years now. We’ve watched Facebook evolve, we’ve seen good and bad things when it comes to competitions. So, when we (Loquax) say “voting competitions are a really stupid idea” – that means they’re a stupid idea! A voting competition will not result in the best entry winning – it will result in the person who can “cheat” the most winning.

Voting competitions attract groups of people who swap votes, pay for votes, have multiple Facebook accounts for votes – in fact pretty much do anything whatsoever for votes. Grand Marnier for example recently ran a competition for a “Sunset Photo”. The winner was to be determined by most votes. It took them until 3 days before the closing date to realise that what they were told at the start was true…. it wasn’t a “best sunset” competition but a “most clicks” competition.

In the end they got a judge in to decide the winner.

Similarly, a charity were offering 4 iPads in their Facebook competition. Towards the end of the promotion they realised that the winning “stories” were pretty poor – in fact so poor they would have gained no PR by using them (one of the aims of the competition). The top entries were simply using vote sites not “asking friends and family” as so many promoters ask. In the end they also changed their rules and went to the judge it yourself option.

If you do go down the public votes route, try and mix the prizes up. For example offer a token prize to the most voted entry, and the biggest prize to a judged entry.

Top Tip: Avoid voting competitions! Get an independent judging panel and pick a winner that way.

3. Photo Competitions

I like photo competitions as they give an added challenge to using your camera (mind, I really wish I’d not drowned my camera in the sea yesterday – that’s another story). A lot of Facebook promoters like photo competitions too. But if people cheat on voting, guess what… they’ll cheat with photo competitions too! It’s not unknown for images to be lifted off Google and entered into a Facebook competition.

Thankfully there are eagle eyed entrants who like to spot cheats. Photobox for example almost awarded a prize to a photo of a “Royal Toilet” lifted from The Daily Mail. They were alerted to the problem by another participant and acted swiftly to disqualify the “winner”.

On The Beach Holidays have encountered a similar problem. However, despite being told that a couple of their winning photos are plagarised they’ve awarded prizes. They’re now saying they’ll investigate any issues, but the damage has been done.

Top Tip: Use reverse image search sites like Tineye.com to check validity

4. Sob Stories

“Tell us why you should win” is a very bad competition question. If you choose this route you will get a rollercoaster of emotional answers that will pull on your heartstrings. But are they genuine or just sob stories. This is a real tough one for competition promoters. Therefore try and avoid questions that generate answers that range from “i have man-flu” to “i’m suffering from the recent loss of a family member”…. and much more beyond that.

Top Tip: Keep your competitions fun and light – it will make picking a winner a lot easier!

5. Listen To Your Wall

Not listening is a massive problem for many a promoter. If you announce your great prize promo on Facebook and it results in negative feedback (e.g. voting competitions attract cheating or that photo is borrowed) then act upon it. Don’t decide you know better.. because you probably don’t.

The great thing about Facebook is that it opens up transparency in a lot of competitions. It shows up cheating by entrants and it shows up errors by brands. You need to be on top of things and you need to act swiftly. As above, Photobox were very good at dealing with a problem – which left could have damaged their very successful (and enjoyable) 24 Hour Live Photo Challenge.

Top Tip: If you’ve encountered a problem head to Loquax and ask us for help!

6. Stop And Think

This is the biggest error of them all when it comes to brands running a Facebook competition. No one stops and thinks it through. It’s not just the voting and photo competitions mentioned above, it’s the smaller ones too. A “share this post and like it” competition can result in 100s of posts appearing on your wall… great for your competition, but what about your customers?

If you go to a brand’s page and see “Liked This” or “Enter Me” right the way down the page that doesn’t look great. If you see long arguments about cheating or vote rigging then that doesn’t look great either. You can run a promotion sensibly, fairly and also gain the social advantages you’re after. You just need to stop and think a little bit.

Top Tip: Look at other brands on Facebook and see how their competitions run.

Should You Be Running A Facebook Competition?

If you want to pick up numbers on your Facebook pages then “yes” running a competition is a great idea. Done properly it can be a good way to pick up followers and interact with them. The Photobox 24 Hour Live competition was in my view one that was done properly and a lot of brands could learn from that.

The trouble is many won’t learn… they’ll still be vote cheating, walls plastered with unnecessary comments, photo cheating and what have you. It’s easy to point the finger at the people cheating and/or complaining about compers – but actually the responsibility of your promotion comes down to you. If you do things right, create proper rules, adhere to them and listen to your users – then cheats can’t prosper.

Next time you’re in a social media seminar and someone says “use competitions on Facebook” ask them what the pitfalls are… if they don’t know the above, then they’ve probably never looked much beyond their own wall.

On the Friday night, after a decent Japanese meal at Wasabi Teppan-Yaki, we headed to the pre-conference party – complete with a 9 hole crazy golf course. Perfect for a few drinks, a few catch-ups and a few laughs. Despite wanting an earlyish night, even having a room right above the Wedding Party disco didn’t dampen the spirits. Police Academy on the box was a decent distraction!

So onto the main event! The conference!

First up was “What I Learnt about Search From Playing Championship Manager” by Kelvin Newman. This was a good talk to get the day underway – I learnt that we probably don’t consider stats enough with regards to search, but more importantly not enough when playing Championship Manager. To be fair (and slightly showing my age) Sensible Soccer on Sega Megadrive was the pinnacle of my football game skills.

Next was “Win At SEO With Duplicate Content” with Malcolm Coles. Going to this segment was in no way influenced by the mention of Karen Gillan’s underwear (!). This was another interesting talk where Malcolm demonstrated the tricks used to basically game Google. It was clever, but I got the feeling that for this to work you need to be a bit of a “Johnny On The Spot” with news stories.

After lunch it was time for Neil Walker and “Three Types of Marketing Lies”. Again more stats to look at and initially I did wonder whether sleeping off the chips and cookies might have been a better option. However, Neil put up some data which resonated with our own (yes we do a little bit, but not enough to be good at Championship Manager) and that got the old brain firing.

And there was more brain activity in Nichola Stott’s “How To Find The Angle”. Nichola offered tips on what makes newsworthy stories and explained that humanising the angle can really help. It was an enjoyable talk with plenty to consider!

“Monetising Through Community” with Jane Copeland was the next destination. Jane explained how she thought thriving communities could monetise their audiences better and gave some good examples of what they could be doing. It was interesting and the ideas sound. What would have been useful is to know of recommended tools that could be used in these cases (e.g. Skimlinks, Retargeting Ads)!

Last but not least there was “Ask The Experts”, a panel session featuring Nichola, Kelvin and a Ninja (Peter Wailes). Some of the stuff (e.g. Facebook Edgebook Algorithms) went way over my head, but it was a fairly comfortable way to end the day’s conference proceedings.

And then came the entertainment!

Actually first came indigestion as Jude wanted to watch Doctor Who (last week’s and this week’s) which was kindly being shown from 6pm. A rushed Pizza Express lasagne later and we were chilling out with a big screen whilst lots of people round the UK searched for Karen Gillan’s underwear (apparently it spikes on a Saturday night – see I was listening).

Then came beers, Robot Wars (which was seriously cool), a domain auction, some games, some more beers, Guitar Hero, a magician guy (who was incredibly good) and more laughs and chat.

So, did I enjoy ThinkVis?

An unequivocal yes. It was nicely paced, not too demanding on the brain but had enough to spark ideas and questions about what we’re doing. Content in a couple of the talks affirmed a couple of things we’ve seen ourselves but have perhaps not taken on board. Online does seem to be more and more about “now, now, now” and from a SME affiliate angle that can be hard work.

However, it’s not impossible. You can get Farnborough Town out of the lower leagues, you can play with Google, you can search for celebrity underwear under the umbrella of “research”, you can use stats to your advantage and you can make stuff up.

And with that new found knowledge, ThinkVis made me want to go back and try new things with Loquax – and in a year that has seen us consider it’s next direction – that’s quite a massive plus to take away from Leeds.

Oh… and take photos of small lego men with sweets!

For the rest of the affiliate world it’s business as usual though and that means fantastic merchant emails – like the one from Toys R Us who have announced “changes to their voucher code strategy”. From now on they will be working with a selected voucher code partner. That partner has already been selected!

This decision aims to strengthen their programme in the long run and aim to “reduce the amount of discount messaging on the Toys R Us brand”. It will also enable them to better manage the discount sector.

The email goes on to say that “voucher code sites will be removed from the programme on the 1st September 2011″ And that Toys R Us are happy for you to remove yourself before this date. Nice!

The suspension will apply to websites with the words “voucher”, “Coupon” or “Code” within their url and websites who’s primary function is to publicise and communicate discount codes.

What a load of utter nonsense!

This is what will happen! The SERPS for “Toys R Us + Vouchers” and similar connotations will remain pretty much the same. The affiliate, lets call him Billy Top Dog Voucher Code Dude, with the discount code will be laughing their heads off, whilst all other affiliates will be redirecting their traffic to other toy retailers, perhaps using Skimlinks (or similar) or adding adsense (or similar).

Content site affiliates will still lose out because when you go to checkout on Toys R Us you are invited to enter a coupon code. The savvy shopper – especially as we get into that Christmas Toy Shopping period – will possibly go off and look for a coupon code and perhaps get the one from Billy Top Dog Voucher Code Dude. Lucky them, eh!

One way for other affiliates to combat voucher codes is to actually include them on their sites. But if you’re for example a toy blogger you no longer have that luxury in your arsenal. I guess that could mean less focus for Toys R Us from those affiliates? Good news for other toy retailers perhaps?

On the plus side Toys R Us do say that they “will be sending a separate communication to all those sites currently on the programme that we deem to fall into this category and will be willing to review this with individuals”. I guess if you’re generating a lot of sales then Toys R Us aren’t going to pull the plug?

And with that in mind it’ll also be interesting to see whether the cashback sites get culled! After all they’re offering a discount in the form of cashback. One even ranks in the top 10 for “Toys R Us Vouchers” which probably means they’ll be Toys R Us Vouchers Happy unless they get Geoffrey’s hoof up their backside alongside other code, coupon and voucher sites!

A simpler solution?

Give Billy Top Dog Voucher Code Dude his extra special voucher code to promote – as many merchants do – and give all others a basic code to use (if available). Or ask voucher sites to take a dropped commission, no, actually a better idea offer non-voucher sites (e.g. bloggers) a higher commission.

Or perhaps merchants could drop the coupon boxes altogether and just indicate the current offers that are available to shoppers so that they can take advantage of them. Or perhaps something even more radical – offer the products at the discounted prices to start off with! That’d be novel!

Whatever is done though is doesn’t change one frustrating issue…

The focus on affiliate marketing these days seems to be one of “you can’t do this” and “you can’t do that” alongside restricting current affiliates and making it impossible for new ones. There’s often very little to encourage people to make any effort with merchants and these kind of culls just make affiliate marketing a less exciting proposition.

Put simply, the door can’t keep shutting on opportunities for all affiliates – large and small – within this industry!

Some operators are so fixated by landing pages that they completely ignore their affiliates (or in this case affiliate). It seems like they’re blinkered or that the only agenda for the affiliate manager is “must have landing pages”. Perhaps I’m blinkered in the other direction – i.e. “must be able to get to website” but there is reason for this….

Here’s just a few of the things that landing page designers forget…

1. Not Everyone Will Be a Newbie!

Some merchants seem to just want new business. They don’t want repeat visits or old players returning. This is true because their landing page won’t have an escape route for anyone other than a new player. The only way is “register now” and that’s it.

2. Not Everyone Will Be a Player!

From a content writing point of view it’s also a pain. Checking affiliate links is a useful exercise in itself and something that is done on a regular basis, but trying to get from Affiliate Site to seeing what’s on offer at a merchant’s site can be a battle and a half. If an affiliate struggles to get to the merchant site, so must a lot of users? Surely?

3. Not Everyone Uses Internet Explorer

A couple of times this month I’ve had a “look at out great new landing page” email sent to me with issues mentioned above taken into account. “Our players can now go straight to the site”! Well, they can if they have IE – if they have any other browser they can’t. You do wonder if people check these things out?

4. Content Goes Out Of Date

One of the big problems I have with landing pages is that quite often the content is time limited. Does the content change? No! Do my links redirect to the most up to date page? No! Which leads on to…

5. New Landing Pages = New Links!

Every time there’s a new landing page foisted upon me, there’s also a link change. Then there’s different links for different campaigns and different this, that and the other. So I have to make changes – when in reality I’d much prefer one universal, one size fits all link.

6. Tracking!!

Landing pages with tracking issues? Oh yes! Pages need to be checked, checked and checked again before being made live. This month one merchant we promote made link changes and our registrations dived. A switch back to old links and they normalised. The reason? The landing pages are wrong.

So What Would I Like?

I often get asked by gaming affiliate managers “what would you like”. Well, one link that never changes, that tracks properly, that tracks across multiple channels (poker, casino, bingo, sportsbook) and that lands on that channel’s home location.

If a landing page is a must, then yes I can compromise…. but I want one link to a page that’s future proof (e.g. showing the latest casino jackpots or current poker games), that will get newbies registering but also that allows returning players to return (the clue is in the title). Oh, and it needs to track properly too!

Not too much to ask now is it?

However, there was also an element of curiosity! What has Bannatyne got to say and just how many mistakes have I (and Loquax) made over the years.

The book is pretty easy to read and the advice offered is mixed up with anecdotes from Duncan’s own business experiences , contestants on Dragon’s Den and recent business events.

Apparently Duncan started his entreprenuerial career in ice cream and now has a few fitness clubs. You’d never know this reading the book as he hardly mentions them (i’m kidding btw). This isn’t totally a bad thing as the information is relevant and mostly interesting.

For online entreprenuers the good news is that Bannatyne does occasionally mention things like SEO, Facebook and Twitter. One thing that frustrates me a little about The Apprentice is that “online” doesn’t seem to play a part in things. I’d just love a team to get themselves on Facebook or Twitter and try and flog stuff for Lord Sugar!

So what are the mistakes?

Many of the mistakes are basically just common sense things, or things many people overlook until it’s a bit too late. For example, is it a good business idea, profit vs turnover, staff, customers, location, thinking the market will never change etc.

Each mistake is described in a few pages – as I say many are common sense, but it’d be a surprise if one or two didn’t resonate with the entreprenurial focused reader.

The one mistake mentioned in the book that resonates most for me is hiding behind the desk – something we’ve pretty much done for the lifetime of Loquax. Relationships are very important now in affiliate marketing – probably more so than ever – but somehow we’ve got away without having to do too much “out the office” work.

The Extrapolation Trap is another one of the errors that stood out. I remember clearly chatting with affiliates back in 2004/5 about how we’d all set up 100s of sites, each site would earn ££s and we’d be able to sit back and watch them top the SERPS. If only we’d known just how much harder work running a site is now compared to then!

Another mistake we’re probably guilty of is “build it and they will come” – in many ways we got lucky with Loquax as we did build and they did turn up. And thankfully people still keep on coming. However, other sites have never ever had that – and we’ve rarely got out of first gear to attract them. Ooops!

Mind you, in the book it’s also a mistake to grow your business too big – and subsconciously we’ve always been wary of the overall Loquax business getting bigger than we can actually manage.

On the plus side, therefore, there’s a few of Bannatyne’s mistakes we’ve avoided – often without knowing we’ve avoided them. That kind of underlines the fact that many of the mistakes are purely down to not applying common sense.

All in all I’d say that the book is useful as a reminder of how things can go wrong and where they can go wrong. It’s not going to turn you into a top entreprenuer or propel your business into higher echelons, but there’s some good pointers to ponder upon.

If you do decide to buy it then the first mistake you’ll make is paying full price for it – an astonishing £13.99 RRP. Get it on Amazon for just £7.03.

So, which cashback TV advert is the best? There’s only one way to find out… erm, by taking a look at them (“fightttttt” is so last year lol).

In the Quidco corner, we have the “perfect family” (both parents, one boy and one girl) in a BolegBro Apprentice-esque style advert . The Quidco brand is emphasised numerous times (Quidco Happy, Qudico Good and Quidco Smart) but the advert goes more for “money back savings” as opposed to daring to mention cashback.

Actually the advert would have been so much better if all four family members had been “fired” by a Lego Lord Sugar at the end.

At first glance Top Cashback’s ad reminded me of one of those “buy electricals now but pay 50p for the next 600 years” type adverts. It features the “perfect family” living in a nice tidy house. It’s like The Stepford Wives meets 2.4 Children with hilarious consequences.

The advert’s main message though is clear that earning cashback is free and everyone in the family can do it. Hooray!

What is intriguing is the final strapline of “well, you’d have bought it anyway”. For the consumer that might be great – I was going to buy it anyway, but hey now I can save a few quid.

But, I do wonder if Mr Merchant watching this advert ends up thinking “hey, if these guys would have bought my products anyway, why the heck am I spending this money with this affiliate milarky”. If you take away the option for folks to get cashback do you really think they’ll stop shopping?

Going back to David Fiske, he’s wondering where have affiliate marketers gone then? Well, I think what’s left of them are probably all on the way to London! In recent A4U news, yes someone does read that section, it’s reported that TopCashback and Netvouchercodes have set up bases there.

I guess having front line access to networks and merchants is key and having a presence in The Capital is now vital for affiliate businesses? Whether having a small screen advert presence is at vital remains to be seen – but could there come a time when every advert in the Coronation Street break features a cashback or voucher code site?

And would they all feature the “perfect family”? Still, it’s probably better than using Frank Gallagher from Shameless on his laptop proclaiming “I can’t get my ******* cashback, the ******* sale hasn’t tracked you ********”. A missed opportunity. Scatter!

Competitor Reviews Loquax – Oh Dear!

Kicking things off was a review of Loquax by a competitor. Just quickly, we list competitions on various sites around the web – from blogs to brands – and it’s free to use. The competitor (MyComps from Oxfordshire Press) does something similar but on a smaller scale and they charge for their service.

Naturally they’d prefer to get people to pay them for their service and so they “reviewed” Loquax in what I can only describe as an attempt to undermine our brand. In my opinion they’re trying to discredit us without actually knowing how we work. The “review” is badly structured and contains unsubstantiated claims! On one hand it’s quite funny and flattering that a competitor is that desperate, on the other it’s pretty annoying.

Obviously a competitor standing on your toes, especially your trademark’s toes, isn’t something to be taken lightly, and so legal advice has been sought. The problem with legal stuff is that it can cost a lot of money just to make people act reasonably – and there’s no guarantee of success anyway.

A full explanation can be found on the Loquax Blog – MyComps Reviews Loquax – What They Do & Don’t Tell You!.

Can You Remove That Backlink Please?

Whilst we’ve been trying to get a competitor to remove underhand content about Loquax, another site has been asking us to make some changes. It’s not our content that’s the problem though!

On our bingo news area of Loquax we had an article that quoted another bingo portal. We linked to the site with the site name as anchor text. Now I don’t understand SEO, but it was a surprise to get an email from an SEO consultancy saying that as their client had received a Google penalty they needed all backlinks to be removed.

This has got me totally perplexed!

It was a free link, not asked for, relevant, in context – in fact everything I’d have thought Google would have liked. Good for us and good for the site we’re linking to?

The SEO company doing the asking couldn’t explain their request – they just said it was a serious situation and needed it done. Sometimes it’s easier to be co-operative, so the links been removed. It’d have been nice to have an idea of why it was so important though.

I’d have thought having a relevant link on an on-topic site would be worth keeping. I’d also have thought that the SEO company would have been better off sorting out the penalty (and why the penalty happened)?

Perhaps someone who’s clever in SEO can shed some light?