I was feeling a little flush a while back and decided I was in the mood for an acquisition. I didn't really give it too much thought and then one day I saw a site for sale, advertised in the Digital Poin forums.

It's called Peg Play and its a cute little site where you can create pictures and drawings by selecting dots on a grid. This immediatey appealed to me because I like making pictures and I love the randomness of it all. It seemed like a fun little 5 minute diversion that anyone can have a go at with no artistic ability needed.

So, as the title says, I liked it so much that I bought the site. Can't even remember how much, I think it was a few hundred pounds. That was earlier in the year and to be honest, I haven't touched it since then. It took me months to even get round to uploading it because I guess my initial enthusiasm was lost a bit. And since the site is made in technologies I don't use, there's much I can do with it.

So I thought I would be fun to throw it open and ask for suggestions on what you would do with this site, either just as a site improvement or a monetising tip. I guess my initial thoughts are add in the ability to rate and comment on pics, get some linking going on to raise the PR and then maybe sell text links or just sell the site and hope for a profit.

But what would you do? Check it out and put any cool ideas in the comments section. I'll try and make the best ones happen and report back on its progress.

Labels: ideas, new site, pegplay

I wrote a post about link building ideas recently and mentioned that I was going to try and get some links by writing actual letters to webmasters. To be honest this was born out of the sites I wanted links from not publishing contact information for the webmaster rather than a desire to do my link building in any new way.

So I wrote a letter, telling them about my website including a screen-shot, and described where on their site I wanted a link to prove I had actually seen their site and it wasn't a generic mail-shot. I also made sure the envelopes were handwritten. Personally if I think I know what a letter might be, there's a good chance I won't bother opening it so writing the address by hand is a little more intriguing I'd say.

It took a while to get a response, which I'll put down to those pesky Royal Mail people going on strike, but pleased to say from the 2 letters I sent, I got a 100% hit rate and both replied positively.

Ok, so two attempts is a small sample but I was still happy with the results and may do it again in the future as a technique rather than just a necessity where email addresses aren't published.

Labels: link building

Loads of affiliates love Dragons' Den, so I'm sure many will have watched with interest as two gaming affiliates appeared in the Den and walked away with £200,000 worth of investment from Theo.

Their business, Gaming Alerts, delivers updates and offers from Poker, Bingo and Betting sites to users' computers through an application that sits on the desktop. They likened their service to comparison sites like Confused.com, and if they genuinely are able to deliver comparisons on odds for certain bets to their users that would be a very useful service, although I rather got the feeling that it might be more to send out puff pieces and press release type information. But that may be unfair so could be worth downloading to check it out.

I think it would have to offer something genuinely compelling for any great number of people to download and install it, and then continue to use it. And making me consume information through a desktop application seems a slightly backward looking step. But with that kind of capital, maybe they can invest in it enough to deliver really useful content - although I'm not sure they actually said what they wanted the money for (well I'm sure they said it, but I don't think it made the final edit).

What was more interesting was the reaction of some of the Dragons to the ideas behind the pitch. Duncan was incredulous at the idea of people playing Bingo online. James Caan wasn't persuaded that kind of returns mention were possible. It's kind of amusing to see how ignorant even these successful entrepreneurs are about the possibilities of this industry.

Labels: dragons' den

How many times have you searched for something on Google, and found an Amazon aStore with the tag "chemistry-books" or "Scientific" or "webelements01" in the page one results?

I'm seeing them on an increasing number of search results, so I thought I'd take a closer look. The stores (http://astore.amazon.co.uk/chemistry-books-21/ - I don't think they need any more incoming links) start with the subject matter in hand and then other categories and sub categories, like Toys, DVDs and Music, have been assiduously added.

These are Amazon Associate links that are linked to from webelements.com - a chemistry reference site. They have aStores for UK, USA, Canada, Germany etc.

Webelements is owned by WebElements Ltd which in turn seems to be owned by Sheffield University. Webelements.com has achieved Google Pagerank 8. The "chemistry books" aStore is Google PR 7, and has 73,000 pages indexed in Google.

I can only think that the prevalence of this aStore in the search results must bring in a huge number of sales.

What do you think of this? Is it a good example of an organisation using its ingenuity to bring in much needed revenue? Does it show what we can all achieve by creating a genuinely useful resource and monetising it after that? Or is it a University using its online authority to build up a commercial enterprise that squeezes out rivals in the genuine private sector?

Labels: sheffield univ

When I logged into my stats this morning I was pleased to see that I had a sub affiliate signup to HypnosisDownloads.com affiliate program through my link. These occurances are few and far between for me so I'm happy to highlight it.

Someone actually signed up through it a while back but never became active on the program. So this time I want to try and help and have emailed the guy offering to help them in anyway I can to promote the program, whether it be through linking to them, any technical help I can offer or any SEO advice I can come up with.

And of course I'm happy to extend that offer to anyone that wants to sign up. For anyone unaware, Hypnosis Downloads are speech based MP3s that can be downloaded on all kinds of subjects. Because there's no physical product to wait for, you can create a compelling argument that web visitor can buy and now and be listening to it in minutes. The downloads come with a money back guarantee so there's no risk - if your user doesn't like it, they lose nothing.

What kind of site can I promote Hypnosis Mp3s on!?!

The hypnosis downloads are on all kinds of subjects and can be elbowed into more sites than you might think. Got a dating site? Promote the confidence and dating MP3s. Got a sports site? There's plenty to choose from to give listeners a winning mindset . Got a holiday site? How about adding in a "fear of flying" hypnosis download.

Find out more about the program from when I interviewed the affiliate manager, Roger Elliot.

Visit HypnosisDownloads.com and sign up, and then email me and I'll be happy to help anyway I can.

Labels: affiliate marketing, hypnosis downloads

Toys are of course a big priority at Christmas and I'm spending quite a bit of time on my UK toys site at the moment. It's basically built around the Toys 'R' Us product feed, which is generally quite good although one of my visitors wasn't very impressed to see "For Mum Washable Breast Pads" categorised under 'Gifts, Gadgets & Toys". The downside to using Toys 'R' Us is their very restrictive PPC policy and quite a miserly standard commission of 3% though, so I've tried to build in an Amazon price comparison alongside the Toys 'R' Us, as another merchant option. Amazon of course pays up to 10% if you can generate enough volume.

I noticed earlier on that The Entertainer, formerly on Webgains, has relaunched its online presence under the domain "www.thetoyshop.com" and the affiliate program is available on Affiliate Window, with an excellent introductory commission rate of 10%. This really means that Awin pwn the Toy sector in affiliate marketing when you consider their other merchants such as:

• Toys 'R' Us
• Hamleys
• Early Leaning Centre
• Woolworths
• John Lewis

And then they have plenty of boy's toys/gadget type sites like Firebox, DrinkStuff, IWoot etc. With the Christmas gift season approaching, that's a very impressive portfolio of merchants.

Talking of toys, I happened to come across Toys 'n' Playthings - "The UK toy trade's no.1 magazine". I must admit, the idea of looking at trade publications is something I had completely overlooked but this is really useful for getting insights into what products will be hot for many months to come and right into next year. Do you read trade magazines for the sectors you operate in? Do you find them useful and can you recommend any?

Labels: affiliate marketing, affiliate window, toys

For those that don't know, Dabs.com is merchant on TD selling computer type stuff, and they have an offering for home users on Dabs.com, and a site for business customers called Dabs4Work. Business customers reach Dabs4Work by visiting Dabs.com and then following a link called "buying for a business".

I've mentioned previously that my two purchases through Dabs4Work didn't track. I've since placed orders through Dabs.com homepage (without transferring across to Dabs4work) and they did track OK.

At the weekend, I placed an order and went through Dabs4Work, and suprise suprise, for the third time running, the sale didn't track.

So what we can say in summary: My orders through the Dabs4Work have a 100% failure rate when it comes to tracking. My orders through the Dabs.com homepage for "home users" have all tracked OK. My superior powers of detection lead me to believe that something isn't quite right here.

Last time it happened, I reported it to TD and got the commission manually added to my account, but no info as to why it didn't track. So, is it just me, or have you ever successfully placed an order through Dabs4Work that has been tracked?

Labels: dabs4work, tradedoubler

There's a few tools and links I thought worth flaggingup for webmasters who may be preparing their websites for Christmas.

1. How Many Days Until Christmas?

A reminder to your visitors informing them of how many days there until Christmas is a nice seasonal touch and also, as the number of days lessen, a motivator to them to go and and actually buy before time runs out. Here's a nice little Javascript code snippet that easily customisable to any date.

2. Add Snow Flakes To Your Images

The Snowflakes plugin for Photoshop from VanDerLee is a cool way to add falling snow over any logo or image you have. You can customise it as much as you like, varying the thickness or snow, number of flakes, transparency etc

3. Add Fallen Snow To Your Logos

Also from VanDerLee is the Snowscape plugin for Photoshop which lets you add a layer of fallen snow upon your text and shapes - the perfect seasonal adjustment for your website logo.


Example image using the Snowflakes and Snowscape addin from VanDerLee

4. List of Christmas Wordpress Themes

Bloggerholic has put together a list of Christmas Wordpress themes so you can give your Wordpress site a completely new look for Xmas. I'm using the Vermillion Christmas theme on my Personalised Gifts website, which actually comes with its own "christmas countdown" script too.



Feel free to add any other tips or recommendations for Xmas optimisation to the comments...

Labels: christmas

I wanted to promote a website so thought I've give ReviewMe a little go. I signed up, set up a campaign with a request that my website get reviewed by in-context blogs. I couldn't find much in the way of a guide or Help on the site, but managed to navigate my way through. It was mostly just an experiment so I just created a budget for 2 reviews at $50 each.

A few minutes later, I received an email from the system to say my first review was complete. Someone was keen, I thought and made my way along to the blog to proudly see the review I had paid for. Unfortunately it was fairly rubbish. The blogger decided not to review the site at all, but did write a post on the general subject of the site and included a link. Ok, fair enough, but it's not what I requested.

As a newbie to the system, it seems to me there's a step missing in the process. I put the campaign up and some blogger of dubious quality can just roll up and do the review and get the money. I'd have thought it would be preferable if he had to somehow apply to do the review and upon checking his site, I could then approve him. If I had seen the guy's site beforehand, no way would I have let him go ahead with it.

The second review I received was much better. It was actually already indexed on Google before I got an email from the system telling me the review had been done. It's provided a reasonable amount of traffic and should hopefully prove useful from an SEO perspective.

So, 2 reviews done - 1 good, 1 poor. I don't think I'd bother using it again because, as I mentioned earlier, I think there's a quality control stage missing where the person who's getting his wallet out should final individual approval.

Although maybe that option is there - if it is let me know! - but I didn't see it.

Link Swap Anyone?

At the moment I'm looking for link swaps for a London travel guide site and a toy site from sites on related subjects, so feel free to contact me about either of those.

Labels: link building, review, reviewme

Something that I have noticed since using Amazon's Web Services is that quite often Google will index Amazon links with my associate ID in them, and rank them highly. It seems that when Google's crawling my site, somehow it takes one or two affiliate URLs and places them in the SERPs, usually as the top result, because they are actually pages on the Amazon domain, which obviously is a big authority domain.

Although Google crawls my site which has hundreds, or even thousands of AWS-generated links, only one or two will show up at any one time in the SERPs. I'm not entirely sure why it's happening, but it seems to last a day or two before disappearing, and then another one will spring up in its place. It's almost as if Google adds it to the SERPs, takes a day or two to realise it made a mistake and replace it with the plain Amazon link, but then makes the same mistake again and adds a new one to the SERPs.

I've never seen this happen with any of my plain text Associate links that I've created in the Associate control panel, only with links generated from the Web Services API. If you use the API and want to see if any of your links have been indexed and ranked (though a spike in sales for a specific product is usually a giveaway), you can use the allinurl operator on Google.

e.g. search for allinurl:associateid-20

(replace associateid and 20 with the right values for you!)

Put that down as another great reason to use Amazon's Web Services.

Labels: amazon, aws, web services

Usability guru Jakon Nielsen wrote a report in mid-August about banner blindness. You might I've seen it at the time, but I missed it until now so thought it was worth flagging up.

The findings aren't new - the fact that the phrase "banner blindness" is well known already demonstrates the awareness that the phenomenon occurs - but they are worth reading to re-familarise yourself with the conclusions.

The conclusions include:

• Users rarely look at display advertisements on websites.
• Plain text, faces and other body shot photos attract eyeballs
• Unethical advertising works - ads disguised as content and ads made to look like dialogue boxes.

Personally I don't use banners with the expectation they'll get me many clicks, but I it does sometimes add to a pages visual appeal to have brands and attractive artwork represented in banners etc.

Jakob Nielsen: Banner Blindness

Labels: advertising

So I was checking a few SERPs earlier on MSN Search and noticed they seem to have made big changes, to the appearance of the site and also to the results.

Firstly, it looks different. The search results page seems to have been streamlined with more white and less fuss - I think (it's hard to recall the previous layout from memory).

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly for me, I seem to have been wiped out. Almost total carnage for my sites in the MSN search results. Apart from a few exceptions, many of my sites have lost their page one positions.

But I suppose the funny thing is, I'm not entirely sure when this change happened to MSN, although I check it fairly often so I think it must have been in the last day or two, but despite the whacking I've taken, the impact on my traffic and income has been negligible. That serves to remind me how irrelevant MSN Search is, and how unimportant the changes they make to their pathetic little search engine are (let me know if I'm sounding bitter here).

But seriously, I did test a few keywords to see how good MSN's results are. I searched for toys and was shocked to see a sex toys site at #3, above Toys R Us at #4. I guess there'll always be quirks and anomalies, but any search engine which allows itself to display a sex toys site so highly on a child centric search term like "toys" deserves not to be taken seriously.

Anyway - how the MSN shakeup effect your rankings, and did you notice anyway?

Labels: msn, search engines

Around the middle of August, I wrote a post which gave an example of a video review I had carried out, so I thought I would do a little update on how it worked out.

Since the review was published, I have sold 8 of the Digital Photo Frames through Amazon links. The commission for each one works out at £7 - hitting the Amazon commission cap on Electronics - which means the review has made a direct total of £56 so far.

Not an tonne of money by any stretch of the imagination, but 4 of the 8 sales came in the last 3 days, and I noticed the page now has a number of above-the-fold search engine positions for related search terms so is generating more traffic, making me confident that the content I created will carry on making money for a while yet.

Did I learn anything in doing this? Well, I guess it re-affirmed to me that making video content is fun and can make money. That video wasn't all that great and I really want to make top quality vids when I buy a new HD camera - almost certainly going to choose the Canon HV20. I decided to opt for a High Definition camera after seeing the remarkable quality even when compressed and uploaded to YouTube. If I can make a product look amazing, I think it's a fair bet that conversions will be even higher.

One thing I am still thinking about is should I go for a dedicated video review site, like Shawn Collins' WeViews.tv, or just drop video reviews into sites I have which are related to the subject matter, or some combination of both.

Labels: update, video