Starting today in our Bristol HQ, Stuart will be actively contributing to improving affiliate, merchant and network contact and build on the success of previous years events.

Stuart joins us after several years as sales manager for a corporate skiing and Alpine events company. A keen cyclist, Stuart is also a blackbelt tea drinker and tablefootball demon.

It’s an exciting time for EAM and we’ll be working on a steady but ambitous growth strategy over the coming year which will enable us to add additional value for both clients and their publishers.

Our new version of Affiliates4u brings you the latest industry news and gossip. The ‘News’ section will cover latest news and analysis on all areas that cover or
touch Affiliate & Performance Marketing, from social media, SEO, performance-based video, email marketing, third party applications, blogging and voucher codes, through to best practice, web design, conversion & analytics and mobile, technology & datafeeds.

As with all news features in these ‘social’ eras, full sharing capabilities are available, along with the ability to anonymously ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ an article, along with an area to share your comments with the rest of the Affiliates4u Community.

For a light-hearted view of Affiliate Marketing’s recreation, we have a section dedicated to industry laughs and antics, called ‘Off the Record’. Anyone from the Affiliates4u community can become our stealthy reporter for the day by sending news, rumours, pictures and videos to us at otr@affiliates4u.com.

For any industry news, send it through to news@affiliates4u.com

Today we’ll be talking about ‘The Pool’, a new place to share your Affiliate & Performance Marketing related content with the Affiliates4u community.

Replacing the blog aggregator on the existing Affiliates4u version, The Pool is completely submission based, and any of our users can submit links to content for others to see and comment on.

Submitting content to us, whether it’s a blog, video or image, is simple and can be done either on site, or via our new a4u submission buttons.

Once submitted to a4u, users can vote on the content and also make any comments they wish. This a4u submit button will be replacing the ‘back me’ feature on blogs.

Whether it’s a blog article you’ve seen on SEO 101 that you found invaluable, or a video interview with a key person within the industry, ‘The Pool’ section on Affiliates4u will become another daily ‘must visit’ resource within the industry.

There will still be a place for your company / affiliate blogs, but we chose not to carry the aggregator through to the new site. This is to ensure the content you see on the new Affiliates4u is more targeted to your Affiliate & Performance Marketing activity.

Tomorrow we’ll let you know about another of our ‘new’s section ;)

With the Head to Head post now at 17 pages strong on affiliates4u.com I’ve now had a few requests for it to be distributed publicly, so here it is.

What does it do?

1. Strips out any un-nesscissary php and database calls wherever possible.
2. Structures the theme in a semantic way using POSH
3. Resets the css using the Eric Meyers’ YUI stylesheet
4. Provides css hints for styling elements.
5. Seperates stylesheets into elements (type, comments etc…)
6. Provides a nicer default for comment and form styling (via a seperate stylesheet so you don’t have to use them)
7. Formats html in posts in a cleaner manner
8. Provides a paging system, independent of a plugin
9. Provides a better post excerpt that can be adjusted to suit any text length
10. Includes conditionals for IE6 and IE7 aswell as a default style for really old browsers
11. Includes a custom post image field for uploading and including post thumbnails. These image scale dynamically and can be adjusted easily from within the theme files. (You will need 777 permissons on the cache folder on your server for this to work)

What it doesn’t do

1. Style the theme in anyway, bar a few defaults
2. Include custom templates for different page layouts
3. Assume a beginners knowledge. Having some idea of how to use a wordpress theme is advised
4. Style widgets.
5. Work with pre 2.8.5 wordpress versions
6. Come with a users manual, though you can ask questions on this post if you wish

If you want a copy, it’s free to download here. Please note, I’ve made a few tweaks to it so there maybe a few bugs. If you come across one, please let me know.

P.S - You’re only allowed to use it if you say thank you ;)

Otherwise, Enjoy.

We’ve also been rather busy behind the scenes sourcing a new venue for 2010 after seeking a change from the Hilton on Park Lane this year.

You may be surprised to hear that venues that are able to host 600+ people in a black tie setting in central London are actually very limited, we’ve contacted and seen them all over the past few weeks and after careful deliberation we’ve decided to head to none other than the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane, Mayfair.

If you’ve ever been the The Great Room, which strangely was once an Ice Rink! You are instantly overwhelmed by it’s sheer size (Check this ‘day in the life’ video out) It’s apparently Europe’s largest Ballroom. This certainly gives us a home for the awards and room to grow but that fact does pose a challenge for us and the affiliate marketing community as a whole as we need to fill it!

We love a challenge and making things happen, so on June 9th next year we’ll be bringing together the crème of the industry for what we’re calling the most glamourous night on the affiliate marketing calenedar.

In addition to logistical planning we are busy re-jigging the categories and judging process and will be releasing more details shortly.

For instant updates we encourage you to subscribe to our Awards RSS Feed or follow us on Twitter @a4uawards

Make sure you save the date, and we very much hope to see you there!

My role at Existem is Social Media & Events, so I’ll be involved in upcoming & existing web projects, managing social media campaigns and also working on the events side.

Often over the telephone, I’m asked where I come from, and because I’ve been in the UK for 5 and a half years I forget about my accent and reply with my most recent location instead of  South Africa! Before you ask - no - I don’t miss the snakes and spiders and other goggos!

(gogga, goggo (gho-gha or gho-gho) - Insect, bug. From the Khoikhoi xo-xon.)

I’m really excited about being here and I’m looking forward to meeting you all in the near future.

Sarah

Was great to catch up with old faces, as well as meeting some new faces too. I think our a4uexpo stickers turned out to be a great way to remind all that were there last night about the Conference in October (there were some comedians who will not be named sticking them to the backs of attendees, which worked out well when they were queueing at the bar)

For those of you who have forgotten we were giving out a discount code for a4uexpo delegate passes, valid until the 14th August. Check your emails from the Affiliate Networking Event for the code or alternatively send us an email.

I was quite amazed how quickly the bar tab ran out last night, i’d only made it there twice in the first two hours and luckily overheard that the tab had just ended, as there was an unfortunate incident where one affiliate ordered about 10 3drinks not realising that he had to pay for them all - his face was a picture.

The food was very nice - BBQ outside with burgers, “spicy” chicken and sausages, along with potato salad and veg. Not too sure what was going on with the queue for the food however, don’t people get angry when they need to eat!!

Thanks to those networks who kept the drinks coming on their expense accounts :) - Next up for me is the a4uexpo roadshows in Manchester next Tuesday and Edinburgh next Wednesday. Register your place for free here - Commission Junction have kindly offered to place there card behind the bar
at the Manchester event for a while next week. Both roadshows are being held at The Living Room - getting there early? Vouchers available for dining there from our website restaurantvouchers.co.uk

Cheers for a good night, see those of you who are coming to Manchester on Tuesday

the affiliate market is growing, and expected to double over the next 12 months with big traction from Finance and Travel brands.

If you’re interested in the Indian Affiliate Market please do join up and add to the discussion!