The biggest problem with A4UExpo Day 2 is not that it follows Day 1, but that Day 1 and Day 2 sandwich the Breakout Party, which this year will be at Inc Club in The O2. Hangovers, lack of sleep and seminars are not a good combo, so a top tip for the early talks on Day 2 is arm yourself with a bottle of water, Aspirins and sit near the exit!

Thankfully Day 2 starts a little bit later than Day 1 and for affiliates “Killer Link Building Strategies” sounds the best of the “should I stay in bed with my hangover and watch Jeremy Kyle or go to a talk instead” time slot sessions. Link building is something we’ve never gotten into so learning “how to build high-value link targets and how to acquire them” may be useful as could be the Link Swap Shop proposed by Joe!

The next set of sessions is a mixed bag. If I was a paid search affiliate then Sri Sharma’s talk on “Strategies To Earn More From Your Affiliate Paid Search Campaign” would definitely be worth a look. “A View From Across Silicon Valley” with the co-founder of Commission Junction, Per Pettersen and a panel session on “Barriers to Conversion” make up the rest of the talks. A cup of coffee and a leisurely look round the Expo Exhibition may just win in the what to do at this time stakes though.

Deciding what to attend after lunch is going to be a tough decision.

The Extreme SEO Moderated Debate was a good one last year and should be a fun and informative session again this year. However, the panel are up against “Start-up And Launch Strategy” with Seatwave and some music sites called Spotify and Sharemyplaylists – never heard much about either of them – explaining how they did what they did.

“Beat Your Merchants At Their Own Game” is the other talk in this group which judging by the blurb will be full of merchants making sure their affiliates aren’t getting the edge on them via Adwords – one for the PPC people!

Apart from roads, hospitals, sanitation, voucher code management and Matt Bailey what has The IAB done for us? would be a much better title for a talk than “Regulation, Promotion and Education – What Can The IAB Affiliate Council Do For You?”. However, do make sure you catch Matt explaining what The IAB is all about and how you can also get involved in the 13.30 to 14.15 slot.

If you like the sound of Matt’s voice then good news as he’s on again at 14.30 with “Adding Value Within The Purchase Chain” but sadly he’s up against the “Affiliate Apocalypse Panel”, which sounds the better option. This should be a fascinating session as it will cover issues like transparency and the last click rules. Helen Southgate, Duncan Popham and Seth Richardson are the doom-mongers panel.

One of the most popular talks at previous Expos has been “Meet the Super Affiliates” and you can expect a packed room again this year when the 4pm talks kick off. Expect to hear something about a music sharing site once or twice as DJ Mix Tape himself, Kieron, is on hand as the panel moderator. This year he’s joined by Tina Judic, Sri Sharma and Philip Wilkinson (who I vaguely remember emailing a few times back in the early days of Loquax?).

Day 2 ends with a choice of two sessions, one about domain names and the other about writing killer proposals and selling yourself to merchants. Usually by 5pm though a power nap awaits as there’s the Ice Party to come and close what hopefully will be another successful A4U Event.

I wonder if Matt Le Tissier will be there this year?

The agenda for this year’s A4UExpo is all but complete and now that it’s only about a month away now is a good time to start having a look through what’s on offer and decide which sessions you’d like to attend. The more organised you are the better – especially if you’re planning meetings with affiliates or merchants – as you don’t want to be missing your “must see” seminar.

As ever Matt and the Existem team have put together an intriguing mix of talks aimed at merchants and affiliates.

The first highlight is the lack of keynote speaker at the start of the event. Praise be to the affiliate marketing gods! I can’t even remember who did it last year, but it really didn’t electrify the audience. The only downside is there’s no “welcome intro” by Matt, but I’m sure he’ll say a few words at some point during proceedings.

So this year it’s straight into the nitty gritty with talks about Red Letter Days (sounds a great idea, but I’m afraid I’m out), affiliate marketing and media (sounds merchanty) and SEO strategies with Dave Naylor (recommended as Dave is an interesting speaker).

Following Dave is one of the stand out talk titles of the whole two days is “Are Networks Dying?”! It’s a panel session and includes a network, an agency, a publisher and an advertiser. It promises to be an intriguing session and hopefully discussion. From our experience, network earnings have been getting worse whilst independents improve.

One network has gone from best earner to worst performer in less than 12 months. It does make you wonder if it’s just us or a reflection of other affiliates across the board, so this session will be of interest.

Sessions for affiliates and with affiliates on the panel are always busy, and “The Affiliate Doctors Live!” involving Duncan Jennings, Kieron Donoghue and Chris Garrett shouldn’t be an exception. They will be offering “frank advice on issues within affiliate marketing, start-up strategy, conversion, blogging and SEO”. Sounds good, but have to say I’d like to see other affiliates involved (Lee, Kirsty, Joe, Matt, A Struggling or Successful Newbie?) as well as the usual suspects.

The next “sounds good” session involves Kevin Edwards and Michelle Boxall (Affiliate Window) – “The Truth Will Out: Disproving Common Misconceptions In Affiliate Marketing”. Although the blurb says that this session is aimed “at affiliate managers and merchants” I’d have thought that affiliates would also be interested in knowing the truth about the the myths and legends of voucher code sites, cashbacks and brand bidders.

For newbies Nadeem’s “12 Biggest Affiliate Marketing Mistakes” could be worth checking out in the 4pm slot, but for those who have probably made them already then “Advanced Site Architecture And Product Feed SEO” with Judith Lewis looks a good alternative option. Judith got rave reviews via Twitter about her Thinkvisibility session so hopefully this will be more of the same (plus even more hopefully free chocolate).

The final session of the day will probably be “You want to Tweet What!?”! This could be the weirdest session of the whole expo as by this time most of the delegates would have been on Twitter at least once to say they’re at A4UExpo. If Thinkvisibility was anything to go by, no one was listening to the talks as they were too busy Twittering to each other

Still, it sounds a fun session and so hopefully we’ll all learn how to tweet better in time for Day 2 (coming later).

If there’s a good session on Day 1 I’ve not mentioned why not leave a comment and say why it’s worth attending?

The battle for voucher code territory continues with the news that search engine Ask Jeeves has introduced voucher code results on it’s SERPS. If a user, for example, searches for the likes of Argos, Jessops and Pizza Hut, they get shown on the right hand side voucher code results from a partnership wih Bview, “an online community whose mission is to help others find good businesses and save money”.

It’s an interesting move from Ask, but the initial implementation is fairly basic.

For example a search for Argos, Argos Vouchers, and Argos Discount Codes will generate a code result, but a search for a Sony TV voucher code (as that’s the offer currently being promoted from Argos) and you don’t get a result.

According to Hitwise apparently food vouchers are quite popular! So what happens with a search for just a “Pizza”?

Well, you can find a Pizza Hut voucher code under a search for “Pizza Hut” on ‘Jeeves but if you just want a “Cheap Pizza” then they don’t tell you they have a code on offer. Most surprising though is if you search for “Voucher Codes” you’d never actually know that Ask Jeeves have their own code system implemented.

Perhaps that will change in time?

From an affiliate perspective any movements in the voucher code arena are not always good news. It’s going to be tough as it is with the PR campaigns of the big voucher codes sites gearing up for Christmas activity. Already MVC are planning an offline promotion whilst Vouchercodes.co.uk seem to be becoming the Jordan/Katie Price of the VC world as they’re in every newspaper we pick up these days (e.g. The Sun).

The one good thing we’ve noticed about the Ask Jeeves codes is that you don’t need to click to reveal any of them, so a user searching for a code whilst at checkout may not feel the need to click around and reset their cookies? It’s a small crumb of hope if nothing else.

Obviously the natural question is can we expect the same from the likes of other search engines?

Given their desire to earn revenue and the fact that voucher codes are a huge online business, both here and abroad, it wouldn’t be a massive surprise to see a similar feature roll out. Something similar from Google or Bing before Christmas and that certainly could put a cat amongst the presents this year!

Let’s have a quick show of hands… how many people stopped calling Buy.at “Buy.at” when it changed to Platform A? The good news for everyone other than the one or two of you at the back who are probably lying is that Platform A which was formerly Buy.at is now Buy.at again – complete with the famous red and white symbol. Let’s be thankful they didn’t do a Prince and become squiggle!

To conicide with their return to their original name, and the one everyone used even though they had a new one, they’ve revamped their homepage into something that looks pretty good actually. Now, hopefully, if whoever did the front page could have a go at the internal workings of the CMS and make it a bit more lively then that’d be quite cool too.

One of the things that really frustrates me about Buy.at is the internal navigation.

For example, for some reason I’m only allowed to read 5 pieces of news that are linked on the first page after logging in. None of the news articles link to their relevant programs and after you’ve read the news – guess what you can’t read any more or go to the next article! It’s not really user friendly.

So come on Buy.at – now that Platform A has gone (let’s never speak of it again) have a look around the CMS as a user. A few tweaks should make it more navigable (is that a word) and easier to use.

What’s That Coming Over The Hill?

Staying with “prodigal son” week in affiliate land it’s just been announced that Prezzies Plus have returned their affiliate program to a network footing.

Hmmm – Christmas is Coming!

Prezzies took their ball and other gifts away from Affiliate Window earlier in the year due to various issues with voucher code sites and tried to go it alone (January 2009).

With so many programs it’s hard for an independent program to attract affiliates and I think Prezzies Plus have done the right thing in returning to a network. They have said that “voucher code catalogue sites will be excluded from the program” so hopefully that will mean things run smoothly for them.

In their email and post on A4U Prezzies do admit to being wrong about taking the independent option, and fair do to them for admitting that publically!

Will it be enough though to get back the affiliates they lost earlier in the year?

So what can we learn from Prezzies Plus and Buy.at today?

Well, sometimes you have to go back to go forwards and if it’s not broke don’t tamper with it ;o)

Apparently Benjamin Franklin said that there were two certainties in life – death and taxes. However, Benjamin Franklin was writing that in 1789 and wasn’t doing affiliate marketing some 220 years later. If Ben was around today and pursuing a career in creating websites to get to the top of Google so that people will visit then leave to go and buy something somewhere else so as to earn him a few pence, he’d be adding quite a number of additions to his very meagre list of certainties.

1. No Matter What Size Banner You Need The Merchant Won’t Have It!
This is a given for all merchants. If you have a space that’s 120×60 and you wish to feature Merchant X, Merchant X will not have that size banner or button. Go back in a few month’s time looking for a 300×250 and they won’t have that either, but will have a 120×60.

2. If They Do Have Buttons They’ll Have The Wrong Message
If by some miracle (and indeed it should be labeled as such) your merchant does happen to have the right size button, then it’s a guarantee that the button you want for say your Christmas site will only say “Happy Father’s Day”. Come Father’s Day it will say “Christmas Sale”. It’s also a certainty it’ll be deleted within a week of you using it as part of a “banner amnesty” meaning you back to square 1!

3. The Merchant Who Earns You The Least Causes The Most Problems
It is statistically made up that the amount of commission you earn from a merchant is inversely proportional to the amount of grief and hassle they will inflict upon you. “That button shouldn’t be resized” (see 1), “that button is out of date” (see 2), could you spell our name with a small ‘l’ not a capital one even though it breaks with conventional grammar, there’s a comma in the wrong place, could you update the content you wrote 10 years ago as it’s out of date etc.

4. The Merchant Who’s About To Get Canned Starts To Earn
As affiliates we like to give merchants a chance, but eventually there reaches a point where you have to cut and run (see 1, 2, 3). It is an absolute certainty that the day you go to delete links to a merchant that they’ll generate a commission for you. You therefore decide it’s best to give them another chance.

5. Your Website Will Crash One Minute Before You’re About To Leave The House
Websites, like cats and dogs, become aware when you’re about to leave them! This means that it’s a nailed on certainty that just before you’re about to leave the house, go to sleep, go on holiday etc. it will crash.

With the mobile internet site’s have also gotten more canny at when to crash. For example if you’re at an airport and checking your site, it will wait until the minute you’re on the plane to shut down… leaving you sweating for 12 hours on a cross atlantic flight wondering if all’s ok.

6. No Matter How Hard You Try To Be More Efficient You End Up Working More
This is one of the most perplexing mysteries of life in affiliate marketing. No matter how much time and effort you spend in streamlining what you’re doing, you always end up having more to do. Any attempts to do less work will result in catastrophe (see 5).

So, if Benjamin Franklin was an affiliate he’d have at least 6 more items on his certainties list… and there’s probably a heck of a lot more to add too!