I was recently contacted by 3 Mobile Buzz, which has been setup to help the mobile company 3 engage with bloggers, and get them talking about 3's products. They kindly loaned me two Skypephones.

In case you haven't heard of them, 3's Skypephones are cool mobile handsets which have Skype fully integrated. Just press the Skype button (you really can't miss it) and up pops the Skype application, just as you know it from the desktop. You can make unmetered Skype calls across 3's data network for no cost, as long as you're on a contract or have recently topped up if you're on PAYG.

I thought the best place for the actual 3 Skyphone review was over at myHotpots.co.uk, so check that out for more info.

I think getting in touch with bloggers is a great way to get the word out about new products. It's especially cool that they send two so I could lend one to a friend to test the functionality. I think I read elsewhere that Toshiba were doing something similar with their laptops recently.

I want to do some more video reviews this year, and that gets a lot easier when companies are willing to provide kit for review purposes.I'll be sending the handsets back soon but thanks to 3 Mobile Buzz for sending them out.

Labels: 3 mobile, blogs

Well, the answer to the question in the title is that I don't really know and "thought leadership" isn't really my bag so I won't try to answer it. But I read this interesting blog post recently and I haven't seen this blog on any of the usual blog aggregators, so thought it was worth flagging it up.

It looks at some of the challenges facing networks and wonders how they can stop themselves being sidelined by direct deals between the merchants and the 20% of affiliates who provide 80% of the traffic. As far as I can tell, the blogger isn't directly involved in affiliate marketing, but is a venture capitalist interested in opportunities within the sector so his perspective is worth a read...

The affiliate network is dead: long live performance marketing

Labels: affiliate marketing, blogs

It's at this time of the money that I like to check blog traffic from the previous month and see what interesting search terms brought people to the site.

Unique visitor numbers were almost identical to the previous month, with only a handful between the two.

The Apprentice features heavily in my most frequent search phrases alongside a variety of other interesting ones.

• adsense vs tradedoubler (Fight!!)
  
• apart from sainsbury s where can i buy reggae reggae sauce?
• katie hopkins snake in the grass
• amstrad emailer bulk supplies (proof that product placement works?)
• closed groups ppc
• amazon web-services xml over http (the walkthrough is coming...!)
  
• science experiments involving lollies
• netklix (Oh yeah... Netkkix! Forgot about them!)
  
• how much do nick hewer and margaret mountford earn a year

Labels: about this site, blogs

Just been checking the Awstats for this blog and am pleased to see that the number of unique visitors is up again. The puzzling thing is the visitor is total is up by about 1/7 but the bandwidth used has quadrupled. That's something I'll need to look into I guess - maybe it was down to my blog redesign or maybe someone's hot-linking to some images.

Top referrers this month were my A4U Forum profile page (wow, that one post I made last month must have gone down well!), Bumpzee and Keith's Internet Marketing Blogs site.

Most search engine traffic came from Google - obviously, I guess - and there was plenty of Apprentice related search terms in there. People do love The Apprentice (me included!)

Here's some choice search terms that brought people here last month:

• reggae reggae sauce recipes
• podcast monetise
• google adsense referrals beta
• using product feeds tradedoubler
• open a csv file that has 200000 rows
• wii rsi friendly
• simon ambrose running for the phone apprentice
• where was margaret mountford born
• naomi lay video porn or sex or homemade

Labels: awstats, blogs

As has been widely reported, Tim O'Reilly has come up with a draft code of conduct for bloggers, which includes points such as :

• Take responsibility not just for your own words, but for the comments you allow on your blog.
• Label your tolerance level for abusive comments..
• Consider eliminating anonymous comments.
• Ignore the trolls.
• Take the conversation offline, and talk directly, or find an intermediary who can do so.
• If you know someone who is behaving badly, tell them so.
• Don't say anything online that you wouldn't say in person.

I don't have any particular disagreement with any of the points made. But rather the exercise itself seems absurd.

Does a blog represent a significantly different entity from other websites that it requires some special code of conduct? To my mind, no. The idea that because something is labelled a blog, then you might suddenly decide to apply a code of conduct to it seems bizarre to me.

I don't know the web will develop. But I know that things change. When I first got online, IRC and Usenet were cool places to hang out. They seemed to become less popular and everyone was using web forums. Before I knew it everyone had their own blog and now maybe things are shifting again with some people spending more time twittering than blogging. The way we use the web, express ourselves and interact with others seems to be something that's always changing.

So it seems to me that a code of conduct for blogging is pretty irrelevant, unenforceable and almost certainly a waste of time. By all means have some best practice recommendations that maybe a new blogger can get in a welcome email (in the same way that netiquette has always existed), but a code of conduct that presumably people should sign up to, and adhere to else risk losing their "bloggers' badge" and be cast into the underworld of rogue bloggers with their profanity and anonymous comments sounds like a real non starter.

Labels: blogs, code of conduct

Was just checking my Awstats for the blog and was pleased to see the number of unique visitors to the blog up by over 30% on the previous month.

I guess I have been helped this recently by talking about Dragons' Den, which is a popular show and usually generates traffic as people search for the stuff they saw on there. Also been getting plenty of hits from Bumpzee which is great.
Publish
Seeing the keyphrases that bring people to the site is always fascinating to me, so here's a selection of March's search terms:

• Mummymits
• postit adsense background
• remove tradedoubler ads javascript firefox
• hand fetishists
• dragons den peter jones wife
• donald trump anthony borelli
• toys best seller christmas predictor
• tradedoubler where is my commissions
• www.what do women do to annoy men search

Labels: blogs

There's a whole load of affiliate blogs out there, and luckily there's a few tools to help keep track of them.

Bumpzee is really a fantastic new site from Scott Jangro, which has been going for a few weeks now and I meant to mention it before now. It allows you to get a great overview of a big selection of affiliate related blogs, and incorporates social networking elements and the ability to "bump" or "dump" postings in a digg style. This has quickly become my first choice affiliate marketing resource. Bumpzee is one to watch because other communities could be added later, so this could grow and grow.

Keith Bond has just launched Internet Marketing Blogs UK, which pulls together all the UK blogs, and he intends it to cover not just affiliate marketing but the whole realm of internet marketing, including subjects like SEO.

And I shoudn't forget MashedBlogs.com which was probably the first site I saw which was aggregating the affiliate marketing blogs and has been a useful provider of traffic to my own blog.

Labels: affiliate tools, blogs

I only just noticed that Amazon.co.uk was running a blog about its Associates program. Doesn't seem to have been running too long - first post was in November - and I only just spotted it in the side menu when logged in to Amazon.

Seems a useful read though, and worth keeping an eye on.

Amazon Associates Blog

Labels: amazon, blogs