Banners also don’t seem to cut the mustard when it comes to sales. Most certainly we’ve found that search boxes and the like do a better job. Some merchants already kindly provide clever creative such as gift finders, hotel finders and offer of the day. For example there’s this cool little idea from Sky TV (which won’t centralise on this blog).

Outsourcing widgets seems to be the vogue for affiliate marketing. There are third party content providers such as Easy Content Units and various feeds from Fusepump (as the one above is). There are also Coull videos and perhaps a whole bundle of other stuff I don’t know about.

However, there’s now a new site – just launched – which could be worth a look, especially if you’re a travel affiliate.

Affiliate Widgets “offers a wide range of contextual widgets and banner advertising for travel affiliates looking to get the best performance out of their websites”. It’s provided by Adnet Media, a travel advertising platform.

At the moment there are just two merchants – Gap Adventures and easyJet Holidays. This I expect will expand rapidly! The site also says they’ll be looking into other sectors. In some ways I hope that they focus on travel and provide tools just for that sector. Trying to do too much for too many across multiple areas doesn’t always work.

Anyway, despite just the two merchants, I was quite impressed with the quality of the widgets and the options.

For example, easyJet Holidays you can create a Product Carousel, a Trip Widget and a Mini Directory. You can either have the ads as contextual or fix the location yourself. For example here’s a Product Carousel widget

It’s nice, clear and (hopefully) once installed on a site requires no changes. The best part for me, at least in this ad’s case, was that I could resize it! It usually comes as a 300×250 – which in a 500px space looks horrible. The resizing doesn’t effect the content or the look. Furthermore, it was easy to pick up and paste on site. Perfect!

At the moment the widgets are totally free. In other words all clicks and commissions are yours. After August 2011 some widgets may have a 1/5 click option on them. Others will be free depending on the working relationship between advertiser and network. It’ll be interesting to see how Affiliate Widgets develop and what else they offer in the coming months, especially given their travel connections.

With all these extra tools on offer, it’s perhaps no wonder affiliate networks aren’t overly worried about hosted banners and their own widgets. Instead they can concentrate on the other things that they do. If a third party can do content units and widgets better than the network then it makes sense to outsource them!

Good quality third party tools can save affiliates a lot of time – and lets them to concentrate on other things. If they’re easy to pick up, flexible and look good then they’re definitely something of interest.

By the way, if you offer tools for affiliates and want to be featured on OLD then just let me know.

The widget not only contains the video (including an introduction by Prince Charles) it also includes a twitter feed, option to sign up and a tell a friend feature. A very clever bit of creative that perhaps may inspire merchants, networks or even affiliates to think about what they can do with their own creative!

Imagine for example Play.com using something like the above! They could include a clip of the latest DVD releases, a newsfeed of top offers, and perhaps even a competition element. Tag it up affiliate wise and you suddenly have something quite neat. A network could do something similar, perhaps with a range of merchants? In the affiliate arena – would this kind of thing be cool for voucher codes?

Of course the big issue with creative is always cost versus interaction versus do they earn any money! Clever creative is only really clever if people interact with it and/or it appears on enough blogs and social networking areas.

Still, the above deserves to reach a wider audience and whilst you’re here show your support too!

There are daily prizes too – and as it’s being promoted by The Sun, Yahoo and of course Orange – plus it’s something a little different, then it should attract a lot of interest!

Why Not Get Your Site Involved?

Orange are also inviting siteowners to register their site to host the race (or sponsor it as they tactfully describe it). See the ‘Take Part’ option at the bottom left of Play Balloonacy.

You can register as many sites as you like. Once accepted you post a widget on your site. During the promotion balloons will fly across “a range of sites, picking up speed & distance bonuses as they fly”. There will also be tokens players can pick up for entry in to free prize draws.

According to the Orange FAQ “If you want to get your site in front of an audience of 16-24 year olds for a week then you’ll have the chance as they fly through”.

It’s a little unclear at the moment how this will work (or how you get any benefit) so it’s probably something worth keeping an eye on. From a promotion point of view, don’t ever be afraid to try different ways to attract traffic to your site or use promotions like this to create a buzz from within your own online community!

You can sign up as many sites as you like! So why not give it a go on a smaller site – to gauge interest and usefulness to you – before unleashing it on one of your main ones?

I have been wondering of late how to get more readers and the blog has been overhauled a little bit with the various widgets and indicators plus a general tidy up. I had considered paying for a blog design, but it’ll only end up along the current lines and will make no difference to the content anyway.

So how to get more blog readers?

I’ve been looking at some of the other UK affiliate blogs and was surprised by the varying volumes of readership each has. Fraser of course has a unique approach with his podcasts, whilst no one can deny that Paul’s Moose on the Loose blog offers comment different to most (well everyone in fact)!

Helping affiliates or perhaps demonstrating the affiliate dream puts KirstyM on the map, and for me should be one of the favourites for the A4UAward for best blog. In fact I’d now say her blog is as good as last year’s winner Kieron, who’s message is currently lost amongst far too many pictures of white cars ;o)

So what to do? Well the answer is simple – I’m just going to write as I always have done as whilst it’d be nice to have more readers the blog is for me to exercise my views about affiliate marketing in my own way.

Mind you, if I don’t start seeing another MyBlogLog picture or two after this blog, I’m taking down that widget! LOL!