Sunday, August 31, 2008
Firefox Affiliate Program - And the point is...?
Google Referrals was recently "retired", to use the corporate BS for it, which means an end to the Firefox with Google Toolbar referrals and Google Pack referrals which had been earning me a pretty solid £50/day for as long as I can remember. That's a pretty nasty kick in the shins, but what ho, there's a credit crunch on don't you know and at least now I can empathise a little better with those feeling the pinch.
So, with no decent alternatives, I switched over to the Spread Firefox Affiliate Program. I got going mid week, and based on past seven day figures, I'm ranked in the top 15 and I think I could make it into the top referees over a full week's data. Now, you don't get any payment back from Spread Firefox for your efforts. I understand that - Firefox is free after all, and has always had a good community vibe about it, so to many it might seem a bit vulgar to be sloshing cash about in exchange for a recommendation. I understand that many people in fact chose not to use the Google Adsense Referral links and opted to just refer free of charge because they love the product. You do get points though, which put you on a leaderboard and on that leaderboard your username can be a link back to your site.
That's fair enough I guess: you give them loads of referrals, they give you a link back. This is community spirit in action, I thought, and in the absence of any money, a very nice PR back link would suffice. Except those folks over at sFX decided to add the NoFollow attribute to the links. Ah, what happened to the community spirit, guys! Someone actually took a conscious decision to deny affiliates the default benefit of a hyperlink, by adding this parameter which actively makes the link no good at all. That's a bit of a slap in the face for the "affiliates" I'd say, and is all the more strange when you notice that the links they provide for banners etc back to them don't include this NoFollow attribute which is a little inconsistent.
It's a bit like a friend giving you a donut/doughnut after they've just taken the jam out of it. You might still eat the thing, but you'd be entitled to wonder why a friend would think to take the jam out to make it less enjoyable than it was designed to be!?
Now I think this is a pretty rum deal but even after all that, I have no problems accepting its their browser and their program and they can do whatever they like. But I'm just left wondering... what's the actual point of the "affiliate program". Why even term it an affiliate program when you're not only not rewarding affiliates, but you're almost offending them by adding something specifically to render their backlink less useful than its default form would make it. So why not just scrap the "affiliate" program and just have links and banners for those want to use them, and I probably still would, but without the pretence that there's an affiliate scheme to speak of.
So, with no decent alternatives, I switched over to the Spread Firefox Affiliate Program. I got going mid week, and based on past seven day figures, I'm ranked in the top 15 and I think I could make it into the top referees over a full week's data. Now, you don't get any payment back from Spread Firefox for your efforts. I understand that - Firefox is free after all, and has always had a good community vibe about it, so to many it might seem a bit vulgar to be sloshing cash about in exchange for a recommendation. I understand that many people in fact chose not to use the Google Adsense Referral links and opted to just refer free of charge because they love the product. You do get points though, which put you on a leaderboard and on that leaderboard your username can be a link back to your site.
That's fair enough I guess: you give them loads of referrals, they give you a link back. This is community spirit in action, I thought, and in the absence of any money, a very nice PR back link would suffice. Except those folks over at sFX decided to add the NoFollow attribute to the links. Ah, what happened to the community spirit, guys! Someone actually took a conscious decision to deny affiliates the default benefit of a hyperlink, by adding this parameter which actively makes the link no good at all. That's a bit of a slap in the face for the "affiliates" I'd say, and is all the more strange when you notice that the links they provide for banners etc back to them don't include this NoFollow attribute which is a little inconsistent.
It's a bit like a friend giving you a donut/doughnut after they've just taken the jam out of it. You might still eat the thing, but you'd be entitled to wonder why a friend would think to take the jam out to make it less enjoyable than it was designed to be!?
Now I think this is a pretty rum deal but even after all that, I have no problems accepting its their browser and their program and they can do whatever they like. But I'm just left wondering... what's the actual point of the "affiliate program". Why even term it an affiliate program when you're not only not rewarding affiliates, but you're almost offending them by adding something specifically to render their backlink less useful than its default form would make it. So why not just scrap the "affiliate" program and just have links and banners for those want to use them, and I probably still would, but without the pretence that there's an affiliate scheme to speak of.
Labels: firefox
Monday, March 10, 2008
Quick Way To Look Up Domain Availability
I love this new Firefox plugin called Domain Lookup, which lets you quickly look for domain name availability on keywords which you simply highlight on your browser page.
So you see some combination of words in a webpage and wonder to yourself if they would be available to register as a domain name. All you do is highlight the text with your cursor, right click and do a domain lookup. A new tab opens up with the results of your domain name search. The plugin does the useful stuff you'd need it to, like remove spaces and illegal characters, and can be customised to use different registrars depending on your preference - there's a big list already and you just need to request other ones be added if you don't see your favourite there.
You can specify your top level domain of choice, such as .com, .co.uk, .net etc, but most registars tend to give most of the available options on the results page anyway.
I think it's especially useful if you're going through keywords on something like the Google Adwords Keyword Tool (see below).
A very nifty plugin for anyone that buys a lot of domains: Domain Lookup Firefox Extension.
So you see some combination of words in a webpage and wonder to yourself if they would be available to register as a domain name. All you do is highlight the text with your cursor, right click and do a domain lookup. A new tab opens up with the results of your domain name search. The plugin does the useful stuff you'd need it to, like remove spaces and illegal characters, and can be customised to use different registrars depending on your preference - there's a big list already and you just need to request other ones be added if you don't see your favourite there.
You can specify your top level domain of choice, such as .com, .co.uk, .net etc, but most registars tend to give most of the available options on the results page anyway.
I think it's especially useful if you're going through keywords on something like the Google Adwords Keyword Tool (see below).
A very nifty plugin for anyone that buys a lot of domains: Domain Lookup Firefox Extension.
Labels: affiliate tools, firefox
Friday, January 12, 2007
My Favourite Firefox Add Ons
A comment from Keith Bond earlier on, made me think about the Firefox extensions I use. I don't think they're a particularly imaginative selection and probably everyone already has them, but here's what I use:
Google Page Rank Status
I keep reading that Google PR means less and less, but I still like to see it on any site I visit and I still wish mine were all higher - can't break out past a 4 at the moment! PR Lightweight, I am.
Skype Extension for Firefox
Ever since I bought SkypeOut credits and a SkypeIn number, I've really got into Skype and this great add on is really cool for identifying phone numbers in web pages and turning them into Skype links.
Web Developer
I love this toolbar. The thing I mostly use it for is to outline table cells and divs when I'm looking at a website and want to understand the layout and how its been put together.
And after a few hours of use, Keith's recommendation of the Adsense Notifier has quickly become an essential tool.
I'm probably missing out on other cool ones, so if there's any others you really benefit from, I'd love to know.
Google Page Rank Status
I keep reading that Google PR means less and less, but I still like to see it on any site I visit and I still wish mine were all higher - can't break out past a 4 at the moment! PR Lightweight, I am.
Skype Extension for Firefox
Ever since I bought SkypeOut credits and a SkypeIn number, I've really got into Skype and this great add on is really cool for identifying phone numbers in web pages and turning them into Skype links.
Web Developer
I love this toolbar. The thing I mostly use it for is to outline table cells and divs when I'm looking at a website and want to understand the layout and how its been put together.
And after a few hours of use, Keith's recommendation of the Adsense Notifier has quickly become an essential tool.
I'm probably missing out on other cool ones, so if there's any others you really benefit from, I'd love to know.
Labels: firefox
Monday, December 18, 2006
Why I Love Firefox
With the end of 2006 approaching, it seems like the right time to reflect on what's been achieved in the last year.
Probably the single most successful online enterprise me in the last year was thanks to the browser, Firefox.
It just over a year ago - November 30th to be exact - that I was winding down for the evening and and suddenly had an idea for a website about Mozilla Firefox. It's no exageration to say that I had a domain registered and a small site ready to go within an hour or so. It's also no exageration to say that I've hardly had to do any work on the site since then - maybe another hour or so, here and there.
My intention was to pick up search engine traffic for a particular term including the word firefox. What I hadn't realised was that I was able to rank very highly on one search engine for the term "firefox" itself, which meant more traffic than I had anticipated.
Since that night last November, almost 10,000 people have downloaded Firefox through my site. When monetising sites works as brilliantly and simpy as that, this seems like the perfect job and if only every idea worked out as well, I'd probably be spending this Christmas on the beach somewhere.
Probably the single most successful online enterprise me in the last year was thanks to the browser, Firefox.
It just over a year ago - November 30th to be exact - that I was winding down for the evening and and suddenly had an idea for a website about Mozilla Firefox. It's no exageration to say that I had a domain registered and a small site ready to go within an hour or so. It's also no exageration to say that I've hardly had to do any work on the site since then - maybe another hour or so, here and there.
My intention was to pick up search engine traffic for a particular term including the word firefox. What I hadn't realised was that I was able to rank very highly on one search engine for the term "firefox" itself, which meant more traffic than I had anticipated.
Since that night last November, almost 10,000 people have downloaded Firefox through my site. When monetising sites works as brilliantly and simpy as that, this seems like the perfect job and if only every idea worked out as well, I'd probably be spending this Christmas on the beach somewhere.
Labels: adsense, firefox, progress
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