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 ;)

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!

It’s the first time that we have taken a stand at any other show and it was a worthwhile experience as attendees used the zone as a meeting point and networking area, just as we imagined.

This year though I must say there did seem to be a lack of affiliates generally at the show though with only Affiliate Window taking an active interest with a stand and speaker session.

I spoke on the panel, joining Kevin Edwards and a range of affiliates – we discussed the value of cashback, voucher codes, affiliate incentivisation strategy and product feeds.

Between my dismal performance on Wii Grand Slam tennis which resided on the stand the show was pretty successful for us, selling stands for a4uexpo, passes and attracting new speakers. Our day was full of meetings too as we try not to head to London too often.

We even had future royalty visiting and chilling on our awesomely comfortable bean bags with Kate Middelton lounging on the a4uexpo stand! - I blame Chris for not getting photo evidence!

Firstly, due to other scheduled meetings throughout the day, I made it to the Delfina for the Speakeasy just in time for the Affiliate Panel. I thought the venue was a good choice, well lit and a comfortable size to fit the day’s attendees in.

Events began with speeches from Michael Steckler, Lord Digby Jones and an IAB update from Kieron Matthews. It was then that I watched the Affiliate Panel, headed up by Warrick Lambert. Panelists included Matt Bailey, Alicia Navarro, Pete Wakim and Chris Morling. An interesting debate proceeded with the issue of the ‘Last Click Model’ returning time after time for discussion. It seems as though the general conclusion was that affiliates who are losing out need to be more innovative in their approach to keep customers on their sites.

I then attended the ‘Hit’, ‘Miss’ or ‘Maybe’ Tech session. An interesting way to approach this, as each attendee was handed a Hit, Miss and a Maybe card which they used to vote after a description / run-through of the Page Peel, Coull Tv and Ticketmaster API. Whilst the Page Peel isn’t really new technology to most of us, the Coull Tv integration looked like a useful development and i’m sure will start rolling out amongst the affiliate community.

The one thing that has really stuck out for me in the light of new technologies coming from the networks is that yes, you can now easily build a big site with thousands / millions of products from datafeeds. However, with all the content that is being made available it is continually duplicate content appearing on more and more affiliate sites. Obviously this isn’t great for SEO and either means you have to manually edit thousands of pages to make them unique or if you are lucky enough to have a website that has strong credibility on Google or a large userbase, you won’t be making big gains from adding these feeds?

Following the sessions we then ate some great food courtesy of buy.at - the food was awesome and well received! - and then undertook an evening of networking. It was a great platform for networking and I managed to speak to many people was great catching up with others too. I was told the DJ was actually a Platform-a employee, music was good although a little too loud which meant most people stayed outside the room to chat!

With only 14 more sleeps to go, I’m now in my final working week at Existem before my maternity leave will start next week. Hopefully, a week to rest and sort out final preparations before our new arrival, after which time I’ve been told my world will be turned upside down and the meaning of time is long forgotten for a while!

Rest assured that the events will be well looked after in my absence by Matthew, Ingrid and the rest of the Existem troops, but hopefully they will miss me a bit!!

I’m very excited about meeting Babytays and the fun times which will follow, keeping me very busy! But I’m sure a4uexpo London will be on the back of my mind as it is one of my favour events and I enjoy working with all exhibitors, sponsors and delegates in the lead up to the event.

If you have any questions, give Matt a shout who will be happy to help and point you in the right direction and you never know I may put in a personal appearance and perhaps even with Babytays in tow!

Incase of the possible early arrival, I just wanted to say goodbye for now and I look forward to working with you all again on my return later this year / early next year.

I’m sure the team will keep you updated with the new arrival, or you can keep updated over at www.babytays.co.uk.

Our aim for a4uexpo Europe was to create a true pan-european conference for the crème of the Affiliate Marketing industry across Europe and by looking at the quality of the delegate list I think we’ve achieved this.

40% of our delegates next week are affiliates, and we are expecting 800 delegates from 30 countries to attend. In a time of economic crisis this is fantastic.

We’re in an industry where there are no borders to opportunity, a4uexpo provides an excellent networking opportunity for delegates who are attending to discover new revenue streams and a perfect environment to build relationships, learn new strategy, do business and look for joint european ventures.

When I started in Affiliate Marketing 10 or so years ago, nothing like a4uexpo existed. So we organised reginal meets for affiliates. Many years on it’s great to see some of the people who attended our regional get2gethers back in 2003-2008 build lifelong friendships and in some cases build their businesses into enterprises earning tens of millions of pounds each year.

I hope some new attendees at a4uexpo will also be inspired to put faith within the Affiliate Marketing sector, embrace its values and continue the trend.

Finally as we’re a small company after all, I’m proud of the team who have once again worked so hard to get everything together ready for the event.  I have a feeling we’ll all be dosing up on pro plus to survive the long hours at the show and the 5 networking parties that we’ve planned!

I hope you all enjoy it too, See you in Amsterdam!