What does a short fat squirrel, a spare 5 minutes and a vanishing missus equate to? Yes it’s my affiliate highlight of 2009! On the surface spending a few minutes with the Conversion Rate Experts at A4UExpo may not seem that exciting to most people. But, it literally opened my eyes to a whole new way of thinking about how things work for our users.

Those of you who were at A4UExpo couldn’t have missed the squirrel who was handing out leaflets. Jude had gone AWOL and so I thought what the heck let’s go and have a go. It’s not something I’d usually do (too shy usually) but in all honesty the 10 minutes spent doing it have probably been the most useful conference minutes from all three expos.

Just watching the eye tracking analysis, which was free, made me realise how important it is to see the site through our user’s eyes rather than our own. When you work, as we do, on a site day in day out it becomes easy to assume everyone knows where they are going.

The analysis was just basic although it did reveal quite a obvious coding error which could result in user confusion. But beyond that, just watching someone do this basic process was enough to spark lots of new ideas and improvements we could make to Loquax. Sometimes you just need a push to get the “epiphany” moment… and it happened there and then.

I always felt that terms like “customer journey” were just pretentious marketing mumbo jumbo, like “facilitating the conversation”, but yes I was wrong and understanding the journey is important. And so, since the above took place at Expo we have made a variety of changes across the site. We’ve looked at our welcome emails, automated response emails, error messaging and plenty more.

I don’t want to reveal too much as competitors do read this, but for example one rule on our forums is that you must “say hello”. This notion was sign posted if a user went in the expected direction. But, if they deviated a message would appear saying “there have been no posts in the last 60 days”. That’s not a conducive way to get people to join in a forum now is it? So that has been fixed and all roads lead to where the user needs to be plus they get the right information.

Of course all is not perfect and there’s still plenty of improvements to do.

Can we gauge success?

Without giving too much away, let’s just say we’ve improved things socially and also in site to site relations. New users seem to also know what they’re doing (well mostly) so that in itself is a major plus. More importantly those few minutes helped spark energy and motivation to do mundane, yet critical, things which perhaps would have been left.

The driving day with Cashcade was a close second, but as I didn’t win a trophy and Jude did and has made sure I know about it every day since, it just missed out to the short fat squirrel at A4UExpo!

So what was your affiliate marketing highlight of 2009?

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There are a few goals for 2010 blog posts from affiliates already in the blogosphere, but none have a Blackadder quote in them.. until now. To best describe my goals or resolutions for 2010 it’s over to Lord Percy Percy and these immortal words from the Blackadder II episode called Head.

As you know, we are scheduled to execute Drake and Ethingham on Monday. Lord Farrow on Wednesday and Buckingham and Ponsonby on Friday. But in order to give us the middle of the week off Lord Blackadder has decided to move Farrow to Monday. Let’s just say he’s got time off for good behaviour!

The point of the above is that why spend time doing stuff on Monday, Wednesday and Friday when, with a bit of organisation, we can do it all in a simplified way and have some time off.

And that’s exactly the plan for 2010.

Now usually the idea of blogging about resolutions is that you think of them, write about them and never do them. Not so in this case. Over the last few days a couple of sites (which are custom CMS and not Wordpress) that fit very well into the Blackadder quote above have been coded accordingly so now rather than requiring attention every other day…. they now require attention once a week or less.

In fact, whilst working on the sites today, they now don’t require my attention for most of the month. This means they’ll run happily for the next few weeks! Unfortunately Loquax, itself, doesn’t afford us that luxury, but it does mean the time gained can be used to look after the things that end up encroaching into weekends and evenings.

And that should mean weekends and evenings become free to do other stuff… like Blog, Twitter and Facebook take Jude out!

So, my affiliate resolutions for 2010 are simply be focused, be organised and try and take a bit more time off – it might help make me enjoy the industry a bit more than I currently do (in the words of Morrissey, AM “I still love you, only slightly less than I used to”) too.

That last line may raise a few eyebrows (it may not) but some things during 2009 changed my perception of the industry a great deal. Yes it’s still fantastic to work in, but the rose tinted glasses of a few years back have been replaced by contact lenses and reality truly helps focus the mind.

And there we are back to focus. There’s no point losing your head over things you can’t control, so the best thing to do is move Farrow to Monday and give yourself some time off for good behaviour.

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The start of 2010 marks a decade of self employment. Way back in September 1999 I took the decision to quit geochemistry research and take Loquax on full time. Three months notice later saw the beginning of 2000 and the start of a new era. In all honesty going full time was going to happen sooner or later – I just jumped before I was pushed as it was plain to everyone my interest in academia was way ahead of Elvis leaving the building.

Although the business was generating enough revenue at the time to pay a reasonable wage (it had been running two years part time), I fully expected to be looking for a new job within 3 months. I even worked part time for wcities.com writing reviews “just in case”. Fortunately affiliate marketing kicked off in The UK and the rest as they say is history.

So as of 1st January 2010 I’m 9 years and 9 months ahead of where I expected to be! In that time the site has developed and grown as well as keeping a handful of us out of mischief work wise. In our eyes it’s been a successful decade but even so there are plenty of “what ifs” and “missed opportunities”.

I don’t think we’ve implemented, for want of a word, affiliate marketing as successfully as we could have done. However there’s always room for improvement, no matter how well you think you’re doing now! The industry changes all the time so it’s vital to keep an eye on what’s happening.

Talking to new guys in the business is always good, and even at the first Swansea affiliate meet we picked up some useful ideas. Most certainly since A4UExpo 09 there’s been some important developments for us, and it’ll be interesting to see what 2010 brings. Focus and organisation will be key!

Adaptation and motivation however have been the cornerstones of surviving the last ten years. It may seem odd to many new affiliates that someone would stick with the same site for longer than 10 weeks these days. However the desire to implement new ideas and try and make the service we run the best we can do is good motivation.

Another important ingredient has been knowing our own limits. That means recognising where we want to be and also how far we realistically can go. There’s occasionally a tinge of envy aimed in the direction at affiliates who have taken entrepreneurial risks or who have been super affiliate successful but then doing that kind of thing might make “our work” actually feel like “real work”.

It also does help that it earns us a living, mind!

Well that and the fact it’s highly unlikely we’ll ever have another site like Loquax. The lesson there is grab the opportunity whilst you have it.

And with that in mind, it’s interesting to read that Ray is umming and ahhing about going full time. He’s in a better financial position than I was 10 years ago so my advice to him is jump in and give it a try.

I never contemplated working for myself, let alone doing it for 10 years, but then if I can do it… so can Ray.. and so can you.

Happy New Year to you All!

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This is just a short blog to wish everyone who reads this blog (and even those who don’t) a Merry Christmas and a prosperous 2010. A big thank you too to everyone who sent Loquax cards and presents this year. It’s a very kind gesture and truly appreciated. Our apologies though as we’ve been fairly poor in sending out Christmas Greetings – so to compensate here’s a global ecard blog type picture to wish you all a truly Merry Christmas…

The picture above was taken earlier this year by the way!

Myself and Jude are now off to for a festive coffee and mince pie at Verdis in Mumbles! It’s something that doesn’t involve computers or the internet (and thankfully not shopping either)… at least for a few hours anyway! Hooray!

Foot Note: Verdis is closed on Christmas Eve – someone Jude like got the opening times wrong. Fortunately coffee and toast was located elsewhere.

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Once upon time things worked in a logical way. Christmas didn’t start in August, a comedy festive record got to Number One and the January Sales or Christmas Sales started in January or after Christmas. Now it’s tinsel before the end of the summer, X-Factor topping the charts (well usually – RATM great record but needs more festiveness) and Christmas Sales starting before Santa has lifted his ample backside onto the sleigh.

Now usually this wouldn’t bother me, but now I’m an affiliate and after a deluge of “Christmas Sales” are starting today, tomorrow, Christmas Eve etc messages, I’m now thinking that retailers should all be a tad more respectful to the past.

In fact there should be some kind of retail law that forces them all to wait until we’re all stuffed with Turkey before telling us the gifts we’ve bought are in fact only worth half of what we paid (despite using voucher codes).

That would mean as an affiliate I don’t have to worry about changing all those festive banners for sale banners, updating content or telling my users about Merchant X’s sale that’s 25% today, 40% tomorrow and 60% on New Year’s Eve.

Of course I have the choice not to do it and go and settle down in front of the TV with the various bundles of goodies that have been received (thank you all, official blog to come). But, this period of the affiliate calendar can often be better than the “busy Christmas period” so even a small effort can generate rewards.

Unlike Christmas, the sales don’t give an affiliate too much time to get prepared. As soon as an online retailer finishes being able to send orders before the 25th December, a sale is up and running. “I’ll do it next week” doesn’t work so well at this time of year! Either you don’t do it at all or the sales have ended by the time you’re down to the nutty chocs at the bottom of the Quality Street tin.

However, if you do have a few moments in the next few days do try and add a few sales links and content. It’s better than none at all and you never know it may give your commissions an end of Year boost.

It’ll also make you lament for real January sales and people camping outside large department stores for several weeks in the snow just to save a few quid on a horrible looking sofa at Harrods (yes people used to do that – just in case you’re too young to remember).

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