One of my sites is a kind of bespoke forum that I have developed, and it has gained a small but dedicated following of regular users. As the moderator on the site, I can see everything that goes on. Who's signing up, what email address they use, what IP address they have and so on.

Recently I've found myself in a bit of a pickle after noticing an individual sign up with multiple user IDs and attempt to use the multiple IDs to create conversations that might lead to the individual meeting up with another user on the site, and also push conversations in kind of lewd direction. Basically the individual in the first instance tried to arrange a meeting with a longstanding user, and then when that didn't work, used the second ID to contact the same user and say how great the other ID was. And now seems to have a third ID and is leading conversations in the direction of a group meeting, which would probably involve only two people if it ever happened.

As the site administrator, this leaves me in a quandary. Do I just manage the technical side, and leave the ecosystem to develop naturally and accept that people do use websites in ways which are not always honest, but as consenting adults who should be aware of the risks, it's none of my business. Do I intervene and alert the user who is the target of the machinations that all is not as it seems with the people they are chatting with on the site? Do I have a duty of care to my users, or should I stand back and see each user as equal as the other to whom I owe no special favours and shouldn't be divulging information gleaned by my access to IP and registration information.

What would you do? Let them get on with it and hope nobody gets hurt, or get involved and use the knowledge I have as site admin to stop this before it goes too far?

Labels: dilemma

This is the first in an occasional series where I mention merchants that I really like. Not a sponsored post or incentivised in anyway - just me using my blog to praise merchants I'm happy with.

I started a Personalised Gifts website a little while ago. It's early days and still a low volume site but it's been ticking over, getting traffic through organic search. The primary merchant I have been linking to is GettingPersonal.co.uk

Getting Personal has a really cool selection of personalised gifts like christmas baubles, door mats with messages as well as exclusive licenced stuff such as Apprentice Mugs and X Factor Calendars.

The commission levels are very healthy too, starting at 8% as default commission, rising to 17.5% at the upper tier (over £500 of sales) on selected high commission products. Where as some merchants seem to take an age to validate sales, Getting Personal are ultra quick. In fact, more often than not, sales have been validated before I've even logged which is particularly impressive bearing in mind how often I log on. So far this month, I have seen a conversion rate of just under 9% and an epc of 33p.

All in all, very impressed with them which makes me want to put the effort in and try and get more traffic over their way.

Getting Personal are available on Affiliate Window.

Labels: affiliate marketing, merchants i like, personalised gifts

My hard drive started clicking quite violently the other day, so I thought I would take the opportunity to get myself a new PC rather than fix up my old one, which has served me well for four years. I picked up this rather tasty quad core HP desktop for under £700 which goes like the clappers compared to my last one.

One of the things that worried me was whether my hard drive was going to last long enough for me to get the huge data files (.PST) which were used by Microsoft Outlook. Luckily it did, but I decided I didn't want to be in that position again. I also decided that I wanted easy access to my entire mailbox - including all sent and received messages - wherever I am, and from any PC or device.

So at the time of moving to a new PC, I also took the opportunity to sign up for Google Apps. I had been aware of Google Apps since it became available as an Adsense Referral, but it never really sunk in as to how it could benefit me.

In case you don't know, it's the entire suite of Google collaboration tools - gmail, calendar, docs and google talk but working under your own domain name. It's available free, or for the ridiculously cheap £25 a year, you can get access with message backup/recovery options, anti virus and anti spam etc and without adverts. It's taking a bit of time to get used to not having my folder structure in Outlook, but I'm beginning to really like the GMail interface, which I had only used a little bit for a personal test account previously. The good news is that it renders great on my mobile phone's web browser (and has options for accessing from an email client if preferred) and I can now get into my email from anywhere. Of course, loads of people already have that so I've been a bit slow to get it set up for myself, but I'm loving it.

Definitely recommend Google Apps if you're looking for a good hosted solution for your company email.

Labels: google apps

One of the things that has become apparent to me from my portfolio of sites is that the amount of effort put into a site often bears little or no relation to the results it might produce. There isn't any parity between input and output.

For instance, I have sites which I have spent a pain staking amount of time on, developing original content, making graphics, writing copy etc and they might produce a regular trickle of sales but low basket sizes and tight commission means that the money earned can be small change, although welcome.

Contrast that with a niche holiday site I created last month. It literally took no more than two hours to make. In fact I used that little application called EssEeeO which I developed and mentioned before to create a number of SEO friendly pages. I uploaded it, let it get indexed and literally haven't touched it since. £66 worth of sales in the first month. £184 so far this month. That's the kind of income, which will hopefully be regular income, from two hours work which makes me smile.

It's stating the obvious I know, but whilst working hard is good... working smarter always wins.

Labels: affiliate marketing

Facebook is of course kind of cool for catching up with old friends and keeping in touch. But I heard from a friend the other day that mutual friend was a bit upset that she had messaged me through Facebook and I hadn't replied. Thing is, I never got the message. And actually, I had sent her a message to which she never replied, although I hadn't found that upsetting but actually quite relieving.

But then it occured to me that there's been other occasions when I've sent messages and a reply hasn't come back. It could be possible - probable even - that my message wasn't worth a reply, but it gets me thinking as to whether I really trust the Facebook messaging system.

Yes, Facebook is great for maintaining, and even creating, friendships - but could its duff messaging help ruin a few too?

Have you ever experienced Facebook messages going missing?

Labels: facebook

Been a bit quiet on the posts front recently - had a few days out last week and have been engrossed in the completely brilliant Super Mario Galaxy for past few days, which is really causing my RSI to flare up but dammit, that crazy little plumber is worth it.

The game came out on the 16th, and I went to my usual retailers of choice online to find the best price. £32.99 seemed about the most common price which was fine, but I wanted it for the weekend though so looked at the next day delivery options. With Amazon, next day delivery was going to take the price over £40 and HMV was another £5 or £6 on top.

Sod it I thought, I'll go down to Woolworths and buy it. Their website price was £32.97. Now, I always try to buy online but I had kind of gotten the idea that a lot of shops have a web price, and an instore price, so I went down to the shops fully expecting to pay a few quid extra. When Tiger Woods came out on Wii, it was £39.99 in Woolworths - considerably more than I got it for online. So I was chuffed to bits to go into the shop and find that they were indeed selling it for £32.97 and I wasn't getting it next day, I was getting it on the same day.

There's really something to be said for this shopping on the high street lark - I wonder if it will catch on!

BTW, the fact I've written a post about how I effectively saved a fiver is not lost on me and if I'm sounding stingey, it's because I am.

Labels: super mario galaxy, woolworths

Do you think an affiliate network's job is strictly as a facilitator, connecting merchants with products to promote, with affiliates that have sites or mechanisms that allow them to promote said products?

Or do you think that affiliate networks should actually be helping affiliates to earn more. Of course it could be said they do already help affiliates. All of their innovations and widgets etc are there to help the affiliate earn more I guess, but I like to think how they could go even further and what maybe I would do if I woke up tomorrow and found myself in charge of an affiliate network.

One of the things that an affiliate network could do is to link to its affiliates sites. Affiliate Network homepages often have a decent Google Pagerank and could be considered authority domains. Affiliates often have new sites which need the helping hand of incoming links. So how about affiliate networks giving their affiliates a little boost with a plain text link.

Now, how would this work. There's loads of affiliates, and many of them, like me, have loads of websites. They surely wouldn't all deserve a link but how about if you could nominate one quality site which you wanted to receive some link love, after being approved by a moderator from the network. Even then, there might be hundreds of links and a page with that many outbound links might not be helpful anyway, so a page on the network site could perhaps just show a randomised selection of 50 sites from their database of affiliate nominated sites. Another option would be to break them down into categories and create a directory.

Most affiliate networks, I think, tell you which merchants they work with. Why not be open and proud about the good quality affiliate content based sites they have on their books.

One consideration from the network's point of view would be, why should it link to your affiliate site when you might be promoting merchants on other networks at the same time or instead of the original links and I think that would be a fair point to make. I'm not even sure if there's an answer to that, except maybe you would qualify for the incoming link (and possibly other perks, such as better commissions) by committing that site to work exclusively with the merchants of that network?

Or is this idea fatally flawed? Let me know if you think this could never work in practice.

Another idea I had, which I can't remember if I mentioned before, would be for affiliate networks to operate private noticeboards within their control panels where affiliates could post up messages finding in context links from other affiliates. Affiliates understand what other affiliates need in terms of links and if you help them in their linking strategies, that could be good for all.

What do you think - is there anything you've thought of that an affiliate network could do, beyond what it already does, to actually help you make a success of your affiliate business?

Labels: affiliate marketing, affiliate network, ideas

When things are going particularly well with my sites, as they seem to be right now, my mind starts to wonder about "what next". How can I progress. Yes, I could keep making and working on websites which I do intend to do, but I also like to think about how I might diversify into other offline, bricks and mortar style ventures.

One of my interests for a while has been office space, and I was particularly keen on the idea of small businesses pooling office space and rather than it being a strictly financial arrangement, they would add value to each others businesses through synergies that took advantage of their respective skills. That was my motivation behind a website called Office Share.

But lately I've been thinking how cool it would be to set up a big open plan office where affiliates and other freelance new media types and creatives such as designers, coders, SEO and SEM people, could come along and have a professional place to work from and enjoy the buzz of kicking ideas around with similarly minded folk and find possible shared business opportunities too.

There'd be 24/7 access to the facility for people working on projects into the wee hours. There'd be a training and seminar room where people could give demonstrations to their peers, or affiliate networks or merchants could come to explain new technologies or sites. There'd be a resource library with great books and training materials on web technologies. There'd be a chill out area to take a break and chat ideas over a coffee. There'd be an intranet promoting a skills exchange between members.

Rather than rent a desk or space, it would be more like a gym where you paid a subscription and turned up on the days it suited you. Personal possessions could be left in a locker, and then you just grab a spare desk when you come in. I enjoy working from home but would I like to go work along side people doing similar stuff for a couple of days a week? Most definitely.

And from this affiliate incubator, excellence would be promoted and fantastic websites would flow.

What do you think?

I'm no where near the point of actually doing this and of course the likelihood is that it will stay as just an idea, but I do think it could be awesome, so feel free to leave any comments if you think it's a good idea, or bad idea or have any suggestions as to what facilities you think it should have. Is there already projects like this in existence that you know about?

Labels: ideas

The BBC today reported that supermodel Giselle Bundchen is now refusing to work for US Dollars and prefers to be paid in Euros because of the weakness of the US currency.

It's not just supermodels that will be concerned about accepting money in USD. UK superaffiliates, and some normal ones like me, who work with US programs and networks may also be worried about the USD/GBP exchange rates at the moment. I decided a while ago that since I save most of my income and therefore don't need to spend all of it each month, I may be better off leaving my US income in USD currency until a more advantageous time for converting to Sterling, so set up a USD business account with HSBC.

My biggest US based activity is Google Adsense, but actually that is too important a part of my earnings to not take each month, but other things like dollar cheques from Linkshare and OneNetwork now get paid into my USD account. The paying in book for the dollar account is absurdly large, and you can't help but feel it gives you improved status when going into the branch.

Actually dealing with branch staff was one of the other motivators in getting a USD account, because the problems I had with badly trained branch staff taking USD cheques for a UK account were seriously annoying.

I had imagined that paying USD cheques into my USD account would mean not having to pay the bank charges incurred with foreign currency cheques but unfortunately HSBC still take help themselves to a few quid for each cheque, although I think it may be possible to get around that with electronic transfer.

So now I have my USD account, I can just leave my US earnings in there until such a time that it makes more sense to change it over - unless of course the situation doesn't improve and my money becomes worth even less, so there's a slight gamble involved in doing this.

Another option would be to raise the payment thresholds on your US earnings to delay payment and hope the situation improves, but that is also a bit of a gamble and means you won't be earning interest on your money.

Has the sliding US dollar effected you, and have you taken any steps to protect your US based income?

Labels: GBP, USD

Well, the thing is, I don't think there is a typical day in online marketing and maybe that's why it's so much fun?

The other day I was playing on billiards on my Wii for hours in order to capture something YouTube worthy. Eventually got a monster opening shot, so I file this one under content creation.



Yesterday I was in Greenwich for most of the day, catching up with a friend. Greenwich park is amazing in the autumn, and I was also pleased that the landlord has not yet removed my company name from the shared sign for my old office - 10 months after I left. It feels like a small part of Greenwich will be forever Uretopia Limited.

And today I've been coding up a mailing list function to send toy discounts out to visitors to my toy website. Should have done this a few weeks ago but hopefully I'll get some signups over the coming weeks.

So I guess the cool thing about doing all this for a living is that there is no typical day at all really and the working week is filled with random events and unexpected tangents that make it a tad more interesting than a normal 9-5 job.

There's been a definite leap in sales in the last four days across my toy and gift sites, so I think it looks like Christmas is here. No real difference in overall traffic, but clickthroughs and conversion rates are both higher - probably between two and three times higher than the previous week.

I really got the sense that Christmas was here when I went to Bentalls last weekend. There was only a token nod to Halloween with a few scary displays, but there was no mistaking that their focus was all about Christmas.

Last year my Toy site lost its decent SERPs just before the Christmas rush, but this year I have a better site, a better domain and I'm hoping to have a very good festive period. I kind of tied my flag to the Toys R Us mast in terms of datafeed and don't want to make any drastic changes now, but it's a shame because their commission is kind of low compared to others - although it has to be said the conversion rate seems good, for me at least.

October generally was a bit flat compared to last couple of months. The changes to MSN's rankings gave me a bigger hit than I first thought and Adsense was down about $600. I also had a mini-disappointment when I saw my Amazon stats today. The overall number was ok, but I had exactly one order short of moving up am additional tier for the month, which is annoying. Actually the order numbers were in excess of the tier, but because not all of them had been despatched I lost out on an extra 0.5% for the month.

That said, October was decent enough and I'm now looking forward to an excellent Christmas period.

Labels: adsense, christmas, earnings, msn, toys, update