A big thank you to the lovely people who have sent presents and cards to us this year! It’s very much appreciated, especially those who send the goodies to me and not to my business address (although I guess it’s fair my business partner gets half the loot… even if it’s addressed to me!).

So a thanks for pressies to…

Paid on Results (right address)
OMG (right address)
Buy.at (wrong address)
Mecca Games (wrong address)

Next year please make sure Santa knows the right place to send things. And don’t be like Kieron (or is Keiron, nope it’s Kevin) who used whois and sent a card to a different place altogether (ok it was my old address, but it sounded better this way!).

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With ever changing algos on Google many affiliates have discussed the way forward to sustain their business and not reply on SEO for their traffic. Ideas discussed have included branding, community, good content, and a decent website. By creating a site along those lines it should be feasible to promote affiliate programs to users and generate income.

It should be… unless of course you’re not allowed to promote certain affiliate programs to your users because a brand wishes to protect their “integrity” or “brand awareness”. Or in other words, “we only want to work with a few people now so sod off the rest of you”!

Yes, we’re no longer allowed to promote a broadband program. Our policy with this as with other programs – few sales over many programs rather than many sales over few! We know we’re never going to generate huge volumes – but should that matter as we’re working legitimately and not doing anything wrong?

Now ok – I can see why they’d want to work closely with their big hitters – probably the bog standard enclosed groups of PPCers – but why chuck out the affiliates who are running sites along the lines of – yes you’ve guessed it – not trying to rely on SEO, get branding, community etc! If this format is the way forward for many affiliates, why is that merchants and networks are then happy to boot off these affiliates because they don’t do bulk order sales?

Unfortunately I don’t have the benefit of being able to see the bigger picture from a network or merchant point of view … I just have the benefit of seeing things in black and white and from an affiliate who works his butt off playing by the rules point of view. As I see it we’ve been hoyed off an affiliate program because we don’t reach a certain level – a level we know we’ll never reach. Fair enough.. can’t do a figgy pudding about that now!

But what really concerns me is what happens when the next merchant implements this idea? And the next? And the next? It’s all well and good rolling over and accepting this as “one of those things” – the one’s who say this probably aren’t the one’s whos income is being medddled with – but it’s a worrying development, especially as it does feel the networks have been happy to cast affiliates out to dry.

If you’re not a bulk affiliate but are developing a community/brand/content to avoid SEO and aiming to promote many offers to users – where do these rulings leave you? As I see it, quite possibly with a site that whilst not relying on SEO algo changes, unable to promote many affiliate programs via some of the networks and potentially working with independents where you’re much highly valued.

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Working on a site day in day out does mean you soon get bored of the look and feel – so once again Loquax has started to undergo a bit of a makeover. Out goes the cramped top section and in come some funky looking tabs and some nice curve tables. The tabs are pretty cool and thanks to Nifty Corners are made purely from CSS wizardy pokery – no images involved whatsoever.

The code offers a lot more than simple tabs though and if you’re thinking of redesigning your site in the future then it might be worth a look. The one drawback though we’ve found is that you can’t repeat the ‘DIV’ classes again and again. Each section requires a unique id and until we figure out how to overcome this only the top tables will get some nice curves.

At present only the homepage has been transformed. Rolling out the rest of the site won’t take too long, however we decided to gauge user reaction before spending time changing everything. So far so good… all thanks to some rather nifty corners!

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2005 has been the year of affiliate network interfaces and following the balls up that now masquerades as DGMPro, affiliates could be forgiven for being a tad bit nervous when Paid on Results finally officially released their new interface system!

But hold on… what is this? It works! It looks good! Links stay working! You can find things! Hang on… it’s easy to use! Banners work! The feeds work! Content units are easy to do too! Wow! Happy days are here again and the curse of the affiliate network launches new interface is lifted.

When you see the shambles of DGMPro versus the professionalism of POR’s interface it does demonstrate very very clearly just how badly DGM went wrong! Clarke, Graeme and the guys at POR must have spent fortunes on information architects after all DGM used one to develop their system.

Ah, but they didn’t! The POR system was developed by people who know affiliate marketing, know what affiliates want and above all listened to what affiliates want… and then they went away and built it, beta tested it (that means it was tested before launch not just chucked out “live”), and checked it again just to make 100% it was quality. Other networks take note next time you launch a new interface!!

I hope that merchants seriously consider using Paid on Results as a network. The guys there have created a quality system and know the industry – even better they’re going in the right direction and they care about the affiliates too. 2006 could be a good year at POR!

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Ordered a theatre break at lastminute.com yesterday. Jude wanted to see Darius in Chicago (the musical rather than the place – well at least that’s what I guess she meant – anyway the less said about this the better, let’s just pretend i said a theatre break) so we booked a trip to London via lastminute.com (little ‘l’ not big ‘L’ for branding apparently).

As usual the booking was pretty easy – until the confirmation arrived by email. Having previously screwed up on email confirmations before I now read every one and found this time round that my debit card is paying 3 times the amount i’m meant to be paying (in fact actually it would now be cheaper to fly to Chicago).

Customer support at lastminute.com is via email and in all fairness they’ve been pretty good. However, whilst they’ve acknowledged the error they say it’s going to take them 7 to 10 working days to organise a refund! This is nonsense (and so i told them so) and even better I can’t cancel and re-order as it’s a non-returnable thing! To top it all – yes you’ve guessed it lastminute.com did not track this sale via my affiliate link.

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