Last year I was able to report on the first sale of a personalised Christmas decoration through my site as early as Mid May. I'm pleased to be able to say that 2009 has seen an even earlier start to the Chrimbo bauble buying with a sale today - April 25th.

I'm not quite sure what motivates anyone to be thinking of baubles at the moment. Actually one of my neighbours made the horrifying suggestion to me the other day that the 7 or 8 neighbours in our row all go for a Christmas lunch this year so I know some people do start thinking such things way before normal folk.

Anyway, come back next year for the third in my annual series, which I will now call The First Christmas Sale Update.

Since I've come across this a couple of times now, I just have to write this open note to freelancers...

If you're in the UK, and I'm in the UK, then don't quote me a price for work in USD. I'm not going to pay more (or even less possibly) to someone else in the same country as me because of a GBP/USD Exchange rate fluctuation. So pick a price in£ and stick to it else I just won't use you.

Sorry, just had to get that off my chest. Happy new year, blah blah blah.

Woolworths has started its closing down sale today, and according to the shoppers that spoke to the BBC, the bargains to be had were nowhere near as good as the posters in the window might have led you to believe. I took a trip to Woolworths at the weekend for, perhaps, a last walk around and to be honest, I really didn't see anything I'd be interested in.

I can't help but be amused that it was only a few months ago that wily old business legend, Sir Alan Sugar, bought nearly 4% of Woolworths. Obviously he sensed a bargain, but then it went into Administration.

You will also have seen Sir Alan appearing in those premium bond adverts telling you what a great deal they are, although, not as good a deal as they were because the chances of winning have reduced and the prize payout cut by a third. Sir Alan seems to have developed quite an inverted midas touch but I hope none of that puts off his potential apprentices!

So what will happen to Woolworths? You'd have to conclude it's not looking good and they could all soon be closed down. I think that will be a shame but I guess that's life. One of the things which has been interesting though is that there seems to be a lot of affection for Woolies, so maybe the brand could be resurrected as an internet only retailer, concentrating on the DVD/Music/Games market in the same vein as Play.com?

No doubt more big names will also be disappearing from the High Street in 2009. One of the things that is said about Woolworths is that it's not really defined by a particular product set that you'd want to go there for, other than Pic N Mix. I think that's something often said about WH Smith as well. They sell books, but not as many Waterstones. They sell stationery, but not as much as Rymans. They sell newspapers, but you'll probably have to wait 5 minutes in a queue to make a 40p purchase and then they'll try flogging you a big bar of Dairy Milk or a bag of Starmix which all seems a bit desparate. I'm fond of WH Smiths, but Parker pens are a bit naff these days so what's the point?

Who do you think could be going next??

As everyone will be aware, the Government has recently lowered the standard rate of VAT to 15% in an attempt to get us all spending. Is this really going to make any difference? Well, who knows, but when Government debt is heading towards one trillion, what's another couple of billion on top? Gordon may think he has saved the world, but the Germans seem less than impressed.

So anyway, if you're doing a VAT return anytime soon, you might be interested in the new numbers for what is commonly known as the "VAT fraction", used for determining the VAT element when you only know the gross amount.

When VAT was 17.5%, you might remember that the VAT fraction was 7/47.

Now that VAT is 15%, the new VAT fraction is 3/23

Related link: VAT Calculator

Labels: tax

My brother goes down to the South West for his holidays and usually brings something like Chilli Chocolate back. Next time, I'm going to ask him to bring me back some creative juice, straight from the farm where it's pressed... I think it could help with my websites!

Labels: video

Nice to see a couple of new features on Amazon Associates. Firstly, there's a slightly new look. Nothing too major but a slightly more polished feel. Then, when you go to make a product link, it kindly tells you the top 10 products in a given category, which you can easily switch to another. This makes it nice and quick to pick up links for their bestselling products.

Ok, so far so good, but nothing too radical. But then go ahead and visit Amazon's website itself and you'll see you have a new "site stripe" at the top of the page which gives you two very cool function - "link to this page" and "add to aStore". Both of which will make creating links very much quicker.

It would be really nice if they could sort out the reporting as a priority though. I think I have read before that at the moment, they run some end of day batch job which calculates the affiliate reporting, but to me this gives a sense of detachment as it's so much cooler to be able to see on other programs and networks the money you are making in near real time.

Did I miss anything else that's new in the Amazon Associates makeover?

Labels: amazon

Do you ever find yourself launching a new website, and anxiously checking your affiliate stats to see what sales have come through. And yes, you see can see a new pending commission showing in your network control panel. And your hopes raise as you think your new site's first sale has occured, thus validating your hopes and expectations behind the site and proving to yourself that it *really* was a good idea after all.

But you click through to see where the sale came from, and it wasn't from your new site at all but from some crummy, unsexy old site that you don't care about any more. And there's that slightly perverse feeling of disappointment that the money you just made was the wrong type of commission.

These are gloomy days for the banking industry, and probably for the rest of us in the very near future too with a deep and long recession likely to be imminent. But whilst at the moment banks are in troubled times and increasingly reluctant to lend, once upon a time there was a bank on the high street that liked to say "Yes!". That bank was TSB, and I stumbled upon some of their old adverts on Youtube, and they are hilariously cheesy.




Well, as the banking system faces apocalypse, it's nice to look back on those old adverts and smile. What next for the banks, and our trust in them? Who knows, but I just registered a domain for cash safes which I think is going to be a growth market!