I was contacted this afternoon by TradeTracker UK who were after a little mention (unpaid of course!). It’s a new affiliate network from their Dutch parent company who have ambitious plans for the UK and Europe generally.

I’ve just completed my online registration and somebody else is working this evening because I’ve just been accepted. Note that some on-page text is still in Dutch prior to logging in.

The user interface looks good with a quite informative affiliate overview – it’s a dashboard style and on first impression it appears to have the info you’re after.

Available merchants? Ah, well, there’s just one at the moment for the UK and it’s a custom adventure holiday company called shoestring.co.uk (aff link).  A little searching leads me to Stephen Pratley, a fellow search marketer that I’ve spotted in the forums once or twice. Stephen appears to be behind the shoestring offering and blogs about it and tradetracker in this post. So if you’re active in the custom holidays arena (unlike us currently) then there’s another opportunity for you.

Tradetracker have a news section but unfortunately they don’t offer a blog yet. Isn’t this one area where affiliates do much better than the networks they partner with?

Best of luck to both shoestring and tradetracker and here’s hoping they bring on board some more new UK merchants.

I’ve seen a quiet couple of days with regard to transaction volumes with amazon UK. I’m guessing that the postal strikes are putting potential purchasers off spending. The last sentence in the graphic informing that Super Saver Delivery orders will be delayed is the problem I think.

I tend to rely on customers bulking their order value up to £15 in order to get the free delivery – I can target lesser value products and expect a certain percentage of buyers to spend that bit extra to bump the order value to £15 (on say the 7% performance tier that’s £1.05 in commission). It’s a simple strategy that seems to work, especially if your target product is around the £11-£12 mark, presumably that’s why amazon have pitched it at this level. Even at higher basket values, supersaver delivery is another big plus with amazon.

So, with some media reports predicting the Post Office equivalent of the miners strike of the 80′s, maybe amazon UK associates will be seeing lower volumes of transactions for a while? Regardless of the issues, I can only see the strikes damaging the Post Office and further increasing the pressures on the business. With post over internet protocol (poip.co.uk is one of my domains by the way) services from the likes of viapost on their way things won’t be getting any easier for The Royal Mail (even though they are current partners) in the years ahead and making their customers look for alternatives now can only harm the business.

I find a few network newsletters in my inbox this evening. Tradedoubler can claim the boobie prize for the hard-to-read smallest font.

Kieron Donoghue has an interesting post about adjug.com (go take a look – I won’t repeat what’s already been said).

If you’ve got a site that you’re struggling to monetise sufficiently with adsense or whatever maybe this could be a way forward for you? It looks interesting. Remember of course, google isn’t too keen on those naughty boys and girls who buy and sell text links though, if you’re tempted to go down that road.

I’ve just had a quick glance and spotted an old finance site that I’m aware of that’s signed up. Nick, if you’re reading ..you’ll spot it too!

Web Publishing adjug.com

Just read a brilliant post from Rae Hoffman. If you’re into affiliate / search marketing then you should certainly read it.

Loved the line about Google doesnt hate all affiliate sites… because deep down most site publishers with affiliate based revenue models just know it’s true.

Even if we don’t want to hear it.

Affiliate Marketing

Read an article in The Telegraph about how the warm weather in April had hit sales of products such as Bisto. Yet on the plus side, people have more barbecues when it’s warmer and as a result of last years scorching summer sales of Branston Pickle were up 40%. As a slight aside Premier Foods, owner of both these brands, could do rather better in the SERPS for their products.

So what’s gravy powder and chutney sales got to do with search marketing? Well, nothing at all really, other than these sales reports indicate how external factors can affect your search marketing endeavours. For instance, I’m sure (though I haven’t checked to confirm) that my adsense revenue drops when there’s a good footy match on TV, especially when on terrestrial TV. I notice a general decline in revenue when we have sunny/hot weekends too. It’s obvious why this happens – people tend not to sit in front of PCs looking for car insurance and dvd rentals when they get the chance to enjoy the weather.

It’s not just the weather that can suddenly have an adverse effect on your sales. Just imagine if you were an affiliate of Bernard Matthews, happily making commission on turkey twizzlers or whatever every week. Then bird flu is discovered at one of the companies turkey farms in Suffolk and everyone suddenly loses their taste for turkey – your sales plummet.

The moral of this post? Don’t rely on a single income stream for your search marketing business. Diversity is the key to success. Oh, and fingers crossed it rains!

Search Marketing

Only spotted earlier this week that CJ have their own blog for us UK affiliates.

Seems to me that network blogs are few and far between. James Little was thinking along similar lines and is (or was) attempting to help affiliate networks/managers blog with this free (and ad free) affiliatemanagement.net offering (jolly decent of him I’d say) – thing is, those that have joined haven’t really posted that much yet from what I can see.

Clarke Duncan, a director of Paid On Results has been blogging for a month or two here and he seems to be letting us know about new merchants on several, competing UK networks. Jess Luthi who publishes this appears to be active in offering consultancy services to would-be affiliated merchants.

If you’re an amazon UK associate then their relatively new blog should be in your feed reader too.

But, to my knowledge, that’s about it really. Sure, most of the networks send regular newsletters via email but there isn’t much blogging going on.

Feel free to let me know me of all the ones I’ve missed (there must be a few at least).

Affiliate Marketing

Just received an email from Inside Adsense (no feed in reader yet) detailing the new beta for adsense non-google referrals. I’ve posted upon this topic before and todays beta news ties in with that post neatly. Take a look at adsense referrals beta for the lowdown.

Unfortunately, us UK publishers aren’t being considered for this beta at the moment – only US publishers I’m afraid. It’ll be interesting to see what mix of industries and merchants become available over time.

Glancing at the FAQs I notice this point

You may not use search engine marketing to purchase traffic for the specific and sole purpose of generating conversions, unless you have the express permission of the advertiser.

Always got to watch and abide by the T&Cs of course.

It’ll be very interesting to watch this referral programme develop!

SEOptimise report that Adam Parikh has spotted that adwords appear to be testing the display of the actual (well presumably rounded) number of searches for a given keyword phrase.

Such a feature would be more informative than the current 1-5 scale.

I’d really like the ability to have a nested sort on ascending “advertiser competition” within descending “search volume” to save me scrolling up and down looking for non-targetted, popular keyword phrases.

adwords Search Marketing

A lot of affiliates rely on the affiliate networks to keep them up-to-date on the latest news from the merchants that they promote. Some merchants are pro-active too, emailing you with new product info and the like. But what are your merchants saying to their customer base and are you hearing the same message?

Well, here’s a simple tip that you might want to adopt…

Wherever possible I subscribe to my merchants email list/newsletter or whatever they call it. That way I get to hear what my potential customers are hearing. From personal experience I know it’s certainly worth doing – I’ve heard about new product releases ages before I hear anything via the affiliate route.

You might even consider signing up to competing affiliate sites newsletters too. A number of the affiliate shopping portals run them and if you subscribe you get to hear about what your competitors are up to.

Affiliate Marketing