Will google spill its beans?

Just read an interesting article over at timesonline about whether google will be more open about it’s search results algorithm.

I wonder, as more and more businesses come to rely on google search results for what is effectively free advertising, will google be successfully sued one day for dumping a particular company (or product/service) out of its search results?

My affiliate work takes me down two routes; (1) PPC and (2) organic search results. In the past I’ve enjoyed the very welcome benefits of being in the top 1 or 2 google postions for particular keyword phrases….it’s fantastic, loads of free, relevant traffic which in turn gives a boost to your earnings. And then, at some, unexpected point in time, bang! my site has completely disappeared – and a big percentage of my earnings disappear too. It’s not nice. Really not nice.

That’s why I prefer a mix of visitors from organic results and PPC. Sure, your costs are higher but providing your paid-for visitors are earning you a decent margin then you’re making money and you’re in far more control of your own destiny. PPC does allow for better business planning and forecasting.

No matter what any SEO company says – no one can guarantee you a top position in any of the search engines.

thetrainline.com departs

Following on from my earlier post I note that thetrainline.com has now been sold to Exponent, a private equity company, for some £163m. That’s not too bad at all for a website business that managed to survive the .com crash.

It’s obviously a popular website…in the year to March 2006 some £400m worth of tickets were sold through the site, earning revenues in excess of £47m. The company is more than just the one site though – 16 sites are also managed for UK train operators.

Mr Branson will be pleased!

If it can go wrong….

…sooner or later it will.

A number of my sites were down yesterday for about 12 hours because one of the hosting companies I use was down. Apparently, the hosting company uses a fibre optic line that was subject to vandalism.

I think one should expect downtime at some point. So therefore I thought I had reasonable contingency plans in place:

• I’ve got 2 machines. A pc that I use during the day and a laptop that I tend to use of an evening. I’ve purchased the software I want for both machines. So, if either machine dies I’ve got a backup box.
• I back up to DVD (note to self…do backups more frequently.)
• If my broadband link or phone line dies then at a push during the week and I can walk up to our local library and make use of their facilities. Not ideal, but do-able. I could also revert to one of the many online dial-up facilities that are available, like nippy for instance.
• But what can you do if your webhost has problems?

Well, first off, if it looks like it’s going be a lengthy downtime then pause all relevant PPC ads – what’s the point in sending paid-for visitors to a dead site?

If possible, direct PPC traffic to another of your sites or straight to a merchants site. Of course, on the Yahoo network you have to wait for approval of an amended URL that can sometimes take an age, so pausing an ad might be the only solution.

This downtime has reminded me of the need to spread my use of hosting companies and also increase the breadth of my income streams. As an affiliate, I shouldn’t become too reliant on one or two strong income streams – because if these streams dry-up I’m looking at a serious drop in my income. Sure, I can make hay whilst the sun is shining down upon a particular product or service but I should always have other pots of income simmering gently.

affiliate marketing – web hosting

Social networking

I’ve been playing around with technorati and del.icio.us for a bit to basically see what it’s all about.

I’m probably late getting involved in these things but it’s only since I started blogging in April that I’ve taken a real interest in such sites. Of course, I’ve read stacks of advice stating that affiliates should blog about topics that they have a financial interest in to promote their own sites. Actually, thats not really my motivation…I’ve got an idea for a site that I’ve had for quite some time and this idea will need to incorporate aspects of social networking and web 2.0.

technorati

technorati is a real-time search engine for blogs or the blogosphere as they call it. You can create a free account and claim your own blog, submitting it so that other bloggers and searchers can find yours. Additionally, when you blog you can include tags that link to technorati and see what other bloggers are saying about that tag. If you use blogger then everytime you post, blogger updates weblogs which in turn is picked-up by technorati (and I guess thats why tagging your post makes sense…technorati users interested in that tag will pick your post up).

Your blogs are automatically ranked too – getting links from other bloggers will improve your ranking (if that matters to you of course)

There’s a simple bit of javascript to add to your blog template to enable searches on your blog too.

First impressions? The tags are great…I’ve already spent hours visiting new blogs! But is there any easy way (rather than dipping in to the html) of adding tags to the bottom of your blog post?

del.icio.us

What a curious domain name! Here you can create a free account and then start to bookmark sites that are of interest to you (and potentially others) and not only bookmark them but apply tags to them too. For instance, I’ve tagged this blog as affiliate_blogs and bookmarked it along with some other related blogs in my favourites. So, with everyone bookmarking and tagging their favourites sites, blogs, etc you can then share other peoples favourites. I downloaded the firefox plugin to ease the process of bookmarking and tagging sites when I find them.

First impressions? It’s pretty cool.

Google beta testing full-blown affiliate CPA

I read with much interest here and here that Google is testing out a CPA (cost-per-action) programme.

So What does This Mean?

Well, just like you do with merchants on any other affiliate network you only earn your commission when your visitor clicks-thru to the merchants site from your link and actually buys a product or signs up for a quote or whatever. Your user does nothing upon arriving at the merchants site…you don’t get earn anything.

So It’s Going To Be Just Another Affiliate Network?

Yes, it kind of looks like it doesn’t it? A rival for cj, tradedoubler, buy.at and the others. Though it’s still in test so who knows where it will finish. Of course though, any affiliate network needs to offer us affiliates quality merchants, offering products and services that people want to buy. I’m not sure if google will allow publishers to host both adsense ads and these new CPA ads on the same page…there will be a new content referral network to keep track of the CPA stuff.

The big question for me is this…what merchants will be available for promotion on this new network? I wouldn’t be surprised if the personal finance and insurance companies use it – so perhaps I could promote CPA ads for credit cards and car insurance, etc here and presumably get paid by google in the same way that they pay you for a firefox or adsense referral?

It’s certainly something to look forward to.

Affiliate Marketing – google

sprechen ze deutch?

No?

Me neither. I can’t speak German and my French is very ropey too.

But an invite from a German merchant to join their programme on cj.com got me thinking about all the opportunities I’m missing because I can’t speak/write in the languages of central Europe. Okay, you could try a PPC ad campaign in English and hope that the target audience in France/Italy/etc can read English but I suspect the click-thru-ratio will suffer as a result. Nope, the way forward is to brush up on the target language or buy a multi-lingual friend a bottle of red or two.

And then I read about Big Macs and Costa Coffee (a UK chain) lattes being heavily promoted in China. Apparently, the wealthy residents of Shanghai prefer cappuccinos, frescatos and lattes!

So this made me wonder about what opportunities might exist for affiliate marketeers within China. The market is potentially huge of course. Anyone aware of any Chinese affiliate programmes?

This is not just a title

Just read this which I found quite interesting and it made me think just how much of an impact the recent “This is not just…..” campaigns from M&S (or is it Your M&S or My M&S ?) have had.

Now I must be an ad mans dream when it comes to remembering slogans (strap lines) because I seem to remember so many of them – though not always the product, so there’s a bit of mis-spent budget I suppose.

This site has some more classics, though the hall of fame doesn’t seem to have been updated for a year or two.

Just a couple of my favourites:

• “It does exactly what is says on the tin” …Ronseal
• “The future’s bright. The future’s Orange.” …..Orange

easySir

The announcement that Stelios is to receive a knighthood (congrats!) prompted me to take a look at his easy.com portal. It’s interesting to see the groups current list of activities and the brand manual makes for an interesting read. I wasn’t even aware of some of the activities the group now has interests in.

The recognition of the easy brand, primarily due to the success of easyJet (which I’ve used several times and has always been great) and the promotional activities of Stelios, clearly demonstrates the power of branding (as Mr Branson also well knows). Even when I see the colour elsewhere I call it easyJet orange – talk about brand recognition!

easyJet has obviously been a fantastic success and deservedly so. I wonder if the other companies in the group can ever match that success though?

As an affiliate marketeer, I’ve previously promoted easyMoney credit cards which converted quite well but weren’t the most popular of cards and I currently promote easyCinema DVD online rentals and there are a couple of other “easies” that are available to affiliates – but I really wish they’d offer an affiliate programme for easyJet !

So, if you’re reading Sir, how about it?

Biking It

Following on from this I’ve just signed up with a specialist cycling retailer – so that was good timing. I now need to decide whether to go down the pure PPC route and direct traffic just to the merchant or go the “organic” route and develop a sports or biking site.

I’m looking forward to working on this one; I’ve been into bikes for years and I think (hope) that there should be enough scope to make a half-decent return in commissions.

"oh yes!" Churchill

I’m a brand new affiliate of Churchill Insurance and I’m only promoting their breakdown recovery product just at the moment. Well I received an email today from OMG that contained the first Churchill Affiliate News.

The newsletter, a smart HTML presentation, detailed:

• a current bonus promotion
• new banner creative news
• an affiliate competition
• basic SEO information provided by a company that Churchill use
• an invite to an affiliates day in London (bit far for us Northeners)
• commissions breakdown reminder
• a request for feedback

Well I have to say that it I was quite impressed. It’s great to see a big player in the personal insurance market taking the time to actually attempt to improve their relationship with their affiliates. Now the cynics amongst us might say that the SEO outfit produced the newsletter as a way of promoting themselves rather than the Churchill affiliate programme – well maybe, but I don’t think so.

So, top marks Churchill. I look forward to next months newsletter.

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