October 2007
GMTV feature Cashback Websites as Money Saving Opportunities.
No, I wasn’t Skiving!
While ‘administrating’ morning e-mails (sectioning your [spam]; the ones that still go through your filter into your inbox - even though your filter has marked it as spam…) I received a text message from a friend, telling me that some guy was on GMTV talking about Cashback Sites.
Being based at work, where the analogue should be digital and the digital should be accessible(!), we’ve struggled to get a TV working in the office as of yet. However by visiting the GMTV website I saw that ’some guy’ was in fact Martin Lewis from Money Saving Expert fame. That’s a good start! This guy is probably the most neutral person you could ask for sitting with Kate ‘I Can’t Dance’ Garraway and Ben Sheppard regarding an overview of Cashback Sites.
Apparently Martin’s interview today was to enlighten the viewer on how to save money around the Christmas period. While I missed the actual interview, I did find Martin’s ‘Money Matters’ page on the GMTV website.;
Cashback Sites. If you’re about to buy something online or get a financial product; check out a cashback website first. These are advertising sites, paid for by providing leads to retailers or financial product providers, to encourage traffic; yet they split some of their revenue with you in the form of cashback. You can get 2%-10% back on your shopping and up to £100 cashback per financial product. Read Martin’s full Top Cashback Sites article to find the best paying sites
The link takes you through to Martin’s review of Cashback Websites and lucky enough for me lists FreeFivers on that page. Call it coincidence if you’d like, but I have been checking the sign up’s to FreeFivers all day, and they have more than threefolded yesterdays total of sign ups.
With Cashback Sites now being featured on ITV and BBC (The One Show), the timing is great for the Christmas rush, where we’re left converting our new users into loyal shoppers. What media is next for Cashback Sites!? Either way, It’s great to see!
Has Hollywood started branding the mediocre comedy?
Wow that sounds like an essay, don’t worry, its not.
I’m not sure how many teen comedies you have watched; you know the innuendo riddled, thin-plotted and badly acted slices of cinematography that often result in 1 and a half hours of cringing? The ones which must have either that one from American Pie, Aston Kutcher or some other 20-something masquerading as a 16 year old?
I personally stay well clear of these types of movie. Obviously there is a market for them, a huge one in-fact, and there’s always plenty of advertising around to remind us all of this fact.
What has stuck me though is how they are seemingly being branded and just how many films in this genre have taken on the brand. I’m not sure if this is a conscious decision by film companies or whether it has grown organically all by itself.
In 2007 I have seen a huge array of advertising for Hollywood made, mediocre comedies and they all seem to share one thing in common, BIG BLOCK CAPITAL RED TEXT.
Over a period of time, I had begun to equate this with my very own ‘rather poor films that i’d rather not see‘ genre. Its only then it dawned on my that maybe this was deliberate. I’m not the target audience for these features so that’s how I define them. Would a teenager who actually enjoys these no-brainers embrace the branding and spend their money at the box office? They’d certainly know what they’d be getting.
So where does this leave films that fall out of this genre in regards to branding? I think it needs some analysis and thought. I don’t claim to be a movie buff nor an expert on brands, all i’ll say is when i saw the poster for ‘3:10 to Yuma‘ (see the poster below) I dismissed it at first due to its similar styling to the afor mentioned genre. The fact that it looks to be a fantastic film, which has received great reviews and has one of my favourite actors in Christian Bale at the helm didn’t register at first. I’m also quite sure any ‘mediocre comedy’ fan that wandered into a screening of 3:10 expecting a ‘Sean William Scott fart joke‘ was probably disappointed too.
Below are some example:
The poster for 3:10 To Yuma
The Existem Pumpkin
Getting into the spirit of Halloween, I spent part of the morning yesterday creating our Existem Pumpkin.
A thread has been started over at affiliates4u.com where users are posting pictures of their pumpkins, if you have one in your office today, why not upload it for all to see.
Furthermore, imagine my shock when I log into my FreeFivers account today to see that I have 666 FreeFiver points! Aaargh!
The newest member of the Existem team
I am looking forward to many years to come with Existem and being a part of the phenomenal success of affiliate marketing.
Affiliate Window, Prezzybox & eConversions all take home Doubles at UK’s first-ever Independent Affiliate Marketing Awards
Affiliate Window, PrezzyBox and eConversions all shared the limelight at last week’s inaugural a4uawards, after each winning two of the gongs at the UK’s first-ever Affiliate Marketing awards event.
Affiliate Window won Innovation in Affiliate Marketing (Network Award) and Publisher/Affiliate’s Choice of Network 2007, whilst eConversions scooped the equivalent Innovation in Affiliate Marketing (Affiliate Award) as well as Best International Publisher 2007.
David Hall, Affiliate Windows’ communications director, says: “To win both awards in the only categories open to Networks is very special. We have achieved this success as a direct consequence of the effort made by our Merchant, Affiliate and Agency partners. Our thanks to everyone who has contributed to making Affiliate Window stand out from the crowd in 2007.”
Duncan Jennings, managing director of eConversions adds: “Winning the Innovation in Affiliate Marketing and Best International Publisher Awards was a great milestone for eConversions and really sets us apart as an industry-leading super affiliate. Over the last year we’ve worked hard to expand into Europe and integrate new technologies, so it’s great to be recognised by our peers at the inaugural a4uawards.”
PrezzyBox, the other big winner on night, won Publisher/Affiliate’s Choice of Merchant 2007 with managing director Zak Edwards also taking home Publisher/Affiliate Manager of 2007.
Zak says: “I was utterly thrilled for Prezzybox to be nominated for three awards. To win two and come second to Amazon in the other is a massive boost for an SME like ourselves and proves that a creative thought process and the utilization of advancements in technology are more than a match for Company size and brawn.”
Amongst the rest of the winners, Amazon won Innovation in Affiliate Marketing and Next was recognised as Best New Merchant of 2007, whilst Dealpond was awarded Best New Affiliate 2007 and UK Web Media scooped Merchants’ Publisher of the Year 2007.
Apart from recognising the top Affiliates, Networks and Merchants, the a4uawards also spotlighted the top Agency performers as well with Existem Affiliate Management being named Publisher/Affiliates’ Choice of Merchant 2007 and webgains’ Hero Grigoraki winning Best Agency/Network Account Manager 2007.
Matthew Wood, founder of affiliates4u, the organisation behind the a4uawards, says: “The a4uawards are all about celebrating the innovation, energy and determination found within the Affiliate Marketing industry and there was certainly a lot of that gathered in the one room at last week’s awards night!
“With over 400 people cheering on the winners, we saw an impressive list of recipients, both winners and highly commendeds, for the 14 different awards and already there’s a buzz over who should be the winners for next year”
Matthew himself was also recognised as Industry Champion of 2007 for all of his and his team’s efforts in pulling together the entire a4uexpo event, which has already booked October 14 & 15 as its 2008 dates at ExCeL, and in keeping with the channel’s tight-knit community approach, Kieron Donoghue received Affiliate Marketing Blog of 2007 for here.org.uk.
A full list of winners, including those who were highly commended can be found on the a4uexpo website.
Affiliate Marketing Jobs @ affiliates4u.com
A few weeks ago Tom added the Affiliate Marketing Jobs section to affiliates4u, so far we have had around 35 jobs added to the database, and word is spreading fast to agencies and recruiters.
This morning we had our first piece of feedback; highly positive too as the recruiter tracked down the perfect candidate who applied via the new feature :) - nice to see our hard work paying off!
It’s free to add a job to the site, and job seekers or those curious can subscribe to tags and receive instant email updates when a new job is added, or subscribe to the jobs RSS feed.
