After looking at my rather battered blackberry, I just did a search for ‘vodafone‘ to find www.offers-compared.com sitting in the paid number two position.
After the recent change by Google on the Brandname Guidelines I’m hoping this arbitrage page is a short term problem that will be ironed out in the coming weeks as its certainly against what Google are trying to achieve in terms of user experience.
Arbitrage, a method of mass advertising on Google works by paying a small CPC with Google Adwords and earning a higher rate revenue share from an alternative search engine or CPA source. In this case the search engine ASK. Naturally you have to factor in the click through rate of your landing page into the equation, but by looking at the volume of branded terms utilising such arbitrage pages just now, its appears to be a worthwhile short term opportunity. Just make sure you don’t use your main Adwords account or it will most likely get penalised!
This made me laugh! Thanks to Daniel from gettingpersonal.co.uk for the mug that was awaiting on my desk after returning from my wedding earlier this week.
(I promise to get some photos of the wedding up soon!)
It all stemmed from thread over at affiliates4u.com, the picture looks scarily realistic!
Back in January when we announced the first major Affiliate Marketing Awards for the affiliate industry, some felt the industry was not yet ready for its own ceremony. News this week that the a4uAwards had Sold Out came as a shock to some. However we’ve been back to the venue to secure a few extra tables, but this means that the 5th June 2008 will see the cream of the affiliate marketing industry congregate for an evening of entertainment and networking with more than 300 super affiliates, merchants and industry figures - It has to be the hottest ticket of the year.
If you’ve not already secured a ticket or a table, then contact us now to secure one before it’s too late. We also have just two sponsorship positions available which both include a table of 10.
Everyone has a part to play in the awards. It’s split into judged awards which require you (affiliates, networks, agencies or merchants) to submit a short one page summary on why you feel you should win. A template is available to download to guide you through the process, it takes less time than you think!
The remaining awards are community and publisher choice awards, these very special awards are voted for by the members of affiliates4u.com, and you can vote until this Friday.
The awards will be presented by Mr Michael McIntyre, one of the hottest new comedians on the circuit.
On Thursday last week me and Nick traveled down to the big smoke to attend the FOWD and I’ve got to say, rotating Aston Martins and slightly dodgy hotel aside it was a really informative and productive day.
The event had completely sold out so when we arrived for registration at around ten to nine there was a huge line waiting to be registered. Not a problem as it moved fairly swiftly and by around 9:15 we had found a seat and only really missed the first 5 minutes of the first session.
In the interests of keeping this review fairly short I thought I would just focus on what were, for me, the stand out sessions of the day. I will say at this point that I enjoyed every session that day and even the plug from Adobe wasn’t too bad (Microsoft please take note).
I really enjoyed hearing from Andy Clarke stuffandnonsense.co.uk and Steve Pearce pokelondon.com and picked up some good pointers but the first session I really engaged with was Andy Budd clearleft.com .
Andy spoke about the user experience curve and how we as people judge an experience like a curve. His point throughout was if you make the experience as easy, fun and engaging for the user over the time period they are immersed in the experience then their impression of your product and brand is something they will use again, and tell their friends.
He spoke of things as simple as using friendly, personal language that the user can emote with. This, he stressed is really important when things go wrong (such as form errors etc…) as it can turn a negative into a positive.
The next session from Elliot Jay Stocks elliotjaystocks.com I had been looking forward to for a good long while as it was actually an approach I had been a fan of for quite some time.
Elliot spoke about what we as web designers can learn from print design.
What really spoke to me from this session was not actually translating ‘look’ of print design to the web but the idea that web design does and should have strong narrative.
He argued that what makes a website outstanding is its use of narrative structure to convey an overall feeling about a site, and thus, a brand. I thought this was clever way to look at web design and user experience and it is defiantly something I will be thinking about more.
Next up was my stand out session of the day from John Hicks hicksdesign.co.uk. I probably learned more layout tips in that half hour than I did in 3 years at uni.
John had made a website for the presentation cheesophile.com and ran us through how it made it.
I really liked the idea of using a default template system to start each project from and his tips on stylesheets and IE6 bugs was invaluable.
The top two tips I picked up were that the main cause of IE bugs is something called ‘hasLayout’ and that it can be simply cured by adding something like div, li {zoom:1;} to the IE stylesheet.
The other top tip was to use a sliding scale for typefaces. By this I mean starting specifically, ie HelveticaNeue Light > HelveticaNeue > Helvetica > Arial > Sans-Serif. I thought this was genius and so simple.
In Conclusion
I found FOWD engaging and enjoyable. The sessions were great and the atmosphere was friendly and eager.
My only negatives were the sales pitches (from Microsoft especially), the price of the beer at the after-show (£5 is too much for a bottle of beer in my book) and the rather ‘Faulty-Towers-esque’ hotel which promised free wifi in all rooms, satellite TV and continental breakfast but actually delivered no wifi, 14 channels of freeview, toast and jam and no shower gel or soap of any kind. (The hotel in question was the Montana in Kensington)
The a4uAwards have been high on the agenda here at existem, and this morning we distributed a press release calling for entries. 7 of the awards are Publisher and Community Choice where nominations are already open online. The remaining are judged by a panel.
Entering the a4uAwards is free, so what are you waiting for - get recognised for your work whether you are a merchant, agency, network or affiliate - find full instructions on the a4uAwards website.
Here is the press release.
Nominations for this year’s prestigious a4uAwards are already flooding in, but there’s only another 30 days left to ensure entries are received in time for the judging process to formally begin.
The a4uAwards, which were launched last year to celebrate the innovation & commitment being demonstrated by those working in the £3bn Affiliate Marketing sector at present, are this year being co-sponsored by jackpotjoy and in association with NMA. They include 16 distinct categories, with the gala event taking place on June 5 at the Sheraton Park Lane Hotel in Central London.
Nine of the prestigious awards will be judged by an independent panel consisting of some of experienced practitioners working in the sector, including Affiliates, Merchants, Network Directors, Agency Heads as well as commentators on the industry. For each award, the panel will be looking for evidence of innovation, creativity, fulfilment of client objectives and effectiveness of delivery.
The remaining seven awards will be Publisher & Community Awards, which apart from the affiliates4u Award for Excellence, will be decided by a controlled online vote via the 20,000 strong affiliates4u forum.
Nominations for the affiliates4u Award for Excellence are to be submitted by members of the Affiliate Community via an online entry form, attaching a testimonial as to why the nominated individual, team or company should win. The number & quality of these nominations will then be taken into account by the independent judging panel.
Matthew Wood, founder of affiliates4u and organiser of the a4uAwards, says: “Giving the Awards their own spotlight, with their own prestigious event, has once again raised the profile of this dynamic industry and will ensure that those delivering the goods will be recognised and celebrated in style.
“We’ve been inundated with entries already, which just goes to show the level of interest & support the industry is giving these awards and I’d like to thank everyone so far for their input, views and comments over how we can make this year’s event as special as it should be. I‘m now very much looking forward to watching the voting debate formally unfold.”
The 16 award categories, which will reward both a highly commended entry and overall trophy winner, are:
- Best Use of Creative
- Best Network Innovation
- Best Merchant Innovation
- Agency of the Year
- Publisher of the Year
- Best Use of AM as part of an Integrated Campaign
- affiliates4u Award for Excellence
- Publishers’ Choice of Network
- Publishers’ Choice of Account Manager
- Affiliate Marketing Blog of 2008
- Affiliate Manager of 2008
plus awards for innovative AM activity in the following vertical sectors:
Entry for each category is free, and submissions need to be received no later than April 25, 2008. For more information about the event, individual categories and details on criteria for entry, please go to www.a4uawards.com
Having started my Affiliate Marketing career from my back room nearly 10 years ago, it’s fair to say I’ve had a bumpy but exciting ride in Affiliate Marketing.
I’ve made mistakes, I’ve missed some opportunities, but I’ve also had some great successes along my varied path as an affiliate. I thought I would share with you some of the things I have learned in that Journey.
You may think some are obvious, some not so but all in my mind are very important to grasp if you want to be successful in this industry.
Let’s kick off with one of the more obvious, but equally important ones.
It’s the old motto, ‘If you don’t ask, you don’t get’
How does this relate to Affiliate Marketing? Well it could be:
- Acquiring exclusive discount codes for your site
- Asking for prizes from merchants to give to your users
- The opportunity to be involved with direct to merchant PPC, even Brand!
- Higher commission tiers and / or longer cookie durations
- Co-branded landing pages with special offers
- Custom / unique editorial from the merchant or agency
- The opportunity to get involved with exclusive CPA or CPC campaigns
However most of all, by being pro-active with the network, agency or merchant you put yourself on the map, people start to know about you, your website(s) and your business.
They will then start coming to you with offers and promotions that may give you a competitive advantage.
This could be by getting insider information on upcoming hot sellers thus giving you a head start on your peers on both organic SEO and SEM activity.
When you work from home its’ easy to not treat Affiliate Marketing like a business, but if you do reach out you will start to build a relationship, and those relationships will open doors.
I’m feeling a little fragile this morning after celebrating my stag weekend over in Madrid- my head from a lethal mixture of San Miguel, Tequila, Guinness and dodgy tapas and foot from a bull running incident - so this blog is thus a little brief!
Iv’e always been a fan of the site which utilises the power of social media groups and local search perfectly. Cap plan to combine the site, which carries reviews and recommendations, with its own network of local radio brands - A powerful combination.
The site which is still in its infancy is a perfect example of what a good team can deliver utilising many different technologies and revenue streams. The latter which may not be in place today certainly will in the near future as the local space extends its reach and matures.
Congratulations to both Duncan and Max well deserved.
Last week I got chatting to some of the buy.at Bristolian adventurers (after some serious quad biking and hover crafting) about logo creation and I thought It might make a nice post to have a look at some of the process behind a logo. So without further a-do, heres the process we went through creating the a4uAwards logo.
1. Look out, here comes a font.
It’s not usually my way of starting a logo design unless I really have an idea of what voice I want a logo and brand to have already. In this case I knew from the off that I was going to use a serif font as its a more classic and elegant solution than sans-serif and it brings with it certain traditions and connotations.
2. The first version is often a dog.
After settling on what style of font I was using, I played with the idea of Awards as being a celebration of what is perceived to be the best in its field. With this in mind I played with adding the number ‘1′ into the logo.
Nice idea, but its neither clear or pretty. Has potential though.
3. Refining and adding bits.
At this point I wanted to make the ‘1′ part of the logo more distinctive and easier to read. This was achieved by finishing the serif bottom of the ‘1′ and running the rest of the ‘d’ around it, then varying the color shade slightly. Also at this stage I added in the ‘Affiliate Marketing’ part. I used a sans-serif font for this, mainly as I find too much serif to be hard to read, but also because affiliate marking is in the realm of the new and sans-serif fonts convey this better in my opinion.
I quite liked this though I felt the shapes of some of the letters and the leading and kerning were quite off. Good attempt at this stage I feel but something was niggling me and I didn’t feel it was screaming awards, more like that it was the first awards and that wouldn’t have much longevity now would it.
Team exitem agreed. Now where’s that drawing board
4. Look out, here comes a font (face).
After playing around with serif typefaces I found this little beauty call ‘Byington’. It resolved many issues I had with the previous font face. The ‘A’ was more pointed at the tip and the letters had a more rounded and friendly feel. Add a little bit of kerning and leading to this and it was good to go.
5. A little change goes a long way.
After tweaking my font I was ready to approach from a new angle. I wanted to get more visual with my interpretation of awards and being awarded. I played around with plenty of imagery, most of which was lame (trophy’s, certificates etc…) until I came up with the idea of wrapping a rosette around the ‘d’. This had been my focal point on the word before as its the only lowercase letter to break the horizontal letter height and seems to be a good place for accents.
We felt that the number ‘1′ was still the wrong connotation, plus it was felt that we needed to include the a4u part in the logo too!
After a quick change this was the logo. I was relatively happy with this logo as I felt it combined the new and the old well and was a strong brand After a few weeks of discussion though it was decided that the rosette idea wasn’t viable. I personally liked this logo and battled for it for quite a while.
However, a compromise was needed.
6. Its ugly, but some good came out of it.
After removing the rosette I approached the logo with its preservation in mind. Probably the wrong move and I was, by my own admission struggling for ideas. While playing around with older mock ups I found a version where I had used the number ‘1′ in the letter ‘r’. This gave me an idea as I noticed how the ‘r’ still retained most of its shape and legibility even without the upward stem. Maybe I could fill that with something else.
7. By jobe, I think we have it.
I added in the a4u to replace the stalk of the ‘r’ and changed the colours slightly to give the orange more vibrancy and added a hint of cyan to the black.
There we have it, the a4uA4awards logo in 7 steps. Not all of them easy, but there you go.
We have two full time positions available at existem here at the Paintworks in Bristol.
We are looking for a talented PHP Developer to join Nick on the technical side. We have some awesome ideas lined up and we need someone passionate about emerging technologies to put them into action with support of Pete our full time designer and the rest of the team.
We also have a new position for a Sales and Events Executive to assist Claire wih a4uexpo and other events.
We offer a fun, relaxed working environment, 24 days holiday + bank holidays, an active social calender and a company contributed pension scheme.
If you’re interested apply to matthew at existem.com attaching your CV, or call me on 01179 723998 and we can have a chat.
If you are reading this and know someone who would be ideal for either position - introduce them to us and if they get the job we’ll send you £150 or a Magnum or two of Champagne!
Finally if you are a recruitment agency reading this, please don’t waste mine or your time by calling!
The a4uexpo London 2008 website will be launched next week! - If you can’t wait until then here is the video we shot at last year’s conference!
a4uexpo 2008 is already shaping up to be huge. We’ve listened to all the feedback from last year’s event and introduced a number of new features - watch this space!
We all think it’s important to look after the planet we live on. To help do this we always offset carbon generated by our flights and travel. Our servers are also carbon neutral!
well deserved.
