Don’t tar all us agency folk with the same brush

I was just having a looksee at some of the blogs and as a usual reader of John Lamerton’s blog i was particularly struck by a post of his. I have to say, it was an insightful post about why he hates affiliate marketing (after a why I love affiliate marketing post). The bit that really made me chuckle aloud was his section entitled ‘Too many suits, not enough substance’. I totally know where he’s coming from and to a VERY large extent agree – I’ve seen it, and to be perfectly honest I don’t blame him at all. I do love affiliate events – I like meeting the affiliates, and I’ve met some great guys (James Avery and Keith Bond always will get positive mention from me). And I have had some great laughs, but the description of ‘ the plethora of arrogant tossers in their flash suits, coked up, trying to stuff business cards into my hand whilst trying to get into the toilets’ made me acutally laugh out loud and nod in agreement. At times, the aforementioned types do smack of ’80s yuppie of the worst kind a la American Psycho (or the worst episodes of Miami Vice – whatever floats your boat and turns you on).

In response I say: ‘you’re right’ but not all us agency folk are bad, coked up tossers. It’s really hard at these things (I know when I went to my first event not too long ago) to get talking to affiliates and just saying hello. They see that yellow agency name tag and run a mile. I’ve always tried to just talk to people like they were intelligent creatures – as I would like to be spoken to. It does get hard trying to get people’s attention, and with the enormous number of people all vying for the attention of affiliates it could be a bit of an obstacle to ‘affiliate managing/relationship building’.

In the end, I stopped overthinking it did my own thing and well, we’ll see where that got me. In the end, I know what John’s referring to but we ain’t all that bad – honest! Some of us are passionate about the industry, and want to see the right thing being done (whether by the affiliate or by merchant). I know John’s referring to a specific breed of event goer but it has its ramifications on us regular folk. So I’ll make a deal to any affiliate out there – give agency types a couple minutes of your time and if you find you’re dealing with someone you think is ..ahem… of the aforementioned, then feel free to walk away. But at least give some of us a chance – we might actually be, well, human.

The end draws near.. some thoughts

My time at Equator as an affiliate manager is rapidly drawing to an end. For those of you who don’t know, I handed in my notice in the beginning of August as I decided it was time for a change and didn’t want to be here anymore. I know that I definitely want to stay in online marketing, even affiliate management to an extent but I really want to try other things as well – get the chance to flex the old grey matter and take advantage of all the crazy shiznit that goes on the interweb. So I’m off, exploring other opportunities in the online marketing game.

I’ve been at Equator nearly 2 years – and in that time I’ve learned a helluva lot, thanks mostly to Tara Moar who had to teach me everything I know now about affiliates, lessons lasting for about 4 hours straight a day transatlantic, for many months which isn’t easy on both sides – especially when you’re teaching someone who is very, very new to the scene. I also had a scary trial by fire when Tara managed to get knocked up and went off to have a baby with her lovely husband Matt. Left on my own to deal with all the programs, which I managed to do quite swimmingly. I still believe that there’s no better way to learn than by jumping in the deep end and hope you know how to swim! Tara is definitely one of the best people out there in the field, and a tremendously patient teacher with a big heart and I will definitely miss her above everyone else.

Mike and Colin – the two SEO gurus and ridiculous human beings, who’ve made some very difficult months recently more bearable. Always a good laugh and many a piss-taking (usually of me, but every once in a while Mikey will do something ridiculous that will just feed the flames for many a happy week). They’re always looking for something new to try and do, and I am awestruck by their passion and their desire to do more – I have to admit, I’m waiting for the day they do something great (it’s just a matter of time really). I think I will definitely miss sitting across from them and just the general chat – online marketing related or not, they really brightened my day (Colin with his perpetual grin and Mike with his perptual grouchiness). Plus, more importantly they’ve been good friends and have taught me a ridiculous amount and taught me to open my mind – space is the limit with the internet.

And so there it is, after all this time I’m off somewhere else (who knows where yet!) but I’m sure I’ll be popping back up on the scene soon. And then who knows? Maybe it’s time to upsticks and move away again. All I know is that life’s too freakin’ short and I want to see and do stuff. Work should be fun or at least a bearable means to an end – the end being seeing stuff and going places you’ve never been before. One person I’ve developed a ridiculous amount of admiration for is Kirsty McCubbin. She moved from affiliate manager to affiliate and has used that to fund her round the world trip. The beauty of affiliate marketing is that you can do it from everywhere – provided you have a laptop and access to the internet. Her posts on places she’s been are brilliant and I’m tremendously jealous and wish her the very best!

I guess what happens happens, I’ll just go with the flow and see where life takes me. Too much crap has happened that I’ve stopped my plan-making, life finds a way to wreck them horribly if you even try. So I don’t, instead I spend a stupid amount of time laughing hysterically at the dramatic prairie dog. I’m a girl of simple pleasures.

Ok, so I’m pretty easily amused at times

This may be a bit mean but what the hell, I’m kinda mean and cruel anyway! Have a gander at this – it made me laugh almost as much as this did (again, please refer to the title of this post – seriously, I was crying). Anyway back to the point at hand, seeing as the girl was probably flustered etc, we could forgive her if it weren’t for the mind-numbingly unbelievably stupid and rather heavily covered in verbal diarrhea response that came gushing out of her mouth. Her answer is just shockingly bad and really goes to show that these beauty competitions can honestly turn out to be caricatures of themselves. WARNING: really cringe-worthy! But really pretty funny!

Much to do about…. a lot actually

There has been a lot of bruhaha over the past week where the ugly (yet clever) beast of cookie dropping reared its ugly head – as it tends to do every now and then. Along with this, a flurry of blogging activity hit the .. umm.. netwaves?… with many an affiliate, affiliate manager, and network mouthpieces decrying such deplorable activities. Jason over at onelittleduck covered this off well so I’ll spare the duplicate content here – essentially, the problem here is the use of Iframes to drop cookies and what looks to be forcing clicks on customers. This is a big no-no in affiliate marketing because it’s essentially forcing people to do things that they may not necessarily want to do.

Ok so chances are the visitor on your site will click through to the merchant’s site, however you have to give people the clear option not to click through if they don’t want to. What these Iframes do essentially is open up the merchant’s site but within your own – and automatically, therefore dropping the merchant’s affiliate cookie onto the PC without the visitor making the conscious decision to visit the merchant’s site. It’s all a big grey area (we can be very philisophical about whether or not it’s really forcing it as the visitor is likely to click through) but it’s generally understood that you never, ever force people to do something that they may not want to do, otherwise it’ll likely turn around and bite you in the ass. This has happened, with a particular affiliate’s activity being called into question and by everyone and their uncle.

So moral of the story boys and girls? It’s a clever little beast but it’ll hurt you later on – if you’re serious about affiliate marketing than this is definitely not the route to go, because as I’ve learned in my time here the affiliate industry has a long memory.

Really nice idea – to do with shoes of course!

Ok, so yes a bit off topic but anyone who knows me knows my very strong obsession with shoes – particularly really different, interestingly designed shoes. My favorite shoe company that I can afford to buy shoes from is Irregular Choice, my favorite shoe designer who I can’t yet afford but oh-one-day- lord-one-day is Manolo Blahnik (reasons are far too many to go into now but you betcha I’ll post something about it at some other time!).

Anyway, I was doing a quick look to see what kind of shoe blogs are out there and I stumbled upon this site called The Shoe Project. It’s a pretty interesting project, and always cool to see what kind of people where what shoes. Or at least it is to me. Anyway, have a gander if you feel like procrastinating for about 5 minutes.

a4uAwards – It’s time to vote!

This year’s seen a lot of changes and growth with the a4u guys – most notably the further development and changes to the actual forum, bigger and better events, and of course the a4u Expo taking place this fall in London – which they’ve managed to combine with a Search Engine Strategies conference as well. So well done to a4u for carving out a specialist sector in the UK affiliate marketing world.

Now though, a4u have set up the first real affiliate awards – full of nods to affiliates, merchants, agencies, and networks alike. The awards were announced yesterday and already there has been a flurry of activity and posts all over the place. The set up is pretty interesting as well – the categories have been announced and the first round of voting will be a nominations round. I like the idea of this mostly due to the fact that a4u haven’t set down a list of people they think should win or deserve to win but rather left it open to the wider affiliate marketing public.

Anyway, back on point – the nominations will close on September 10th, 2007 and the top five nominees from each category will be chosen, contacted, and announced on both the a4uforum.com and on a4uexpo.com. Voting will then be open once again, only this time we all play to win. Voting will close at 5PM on October 5th, 2007 and votes tallied. The winners and those who were deemed as ‘Highly Commended’ individual/agency/network/merchant will be announced at the a4uexpo at 8PM.

It’ll be really interesting to see who gets nominated and of course who wins the gongs and I know who I’ll be looking out for! I think this shows a further progression and growing up of affiliate marketing – a sentiment that’s been shared on more than one occasion this year (most notably and the fantastic black tie affiliate event Affiliate Window put on at the end of March). I guess we’ll just have to wait and see – and whatever happens I’m sure the drink will be flowing very generously on awards night!

The categories are:

* Innovation in Affiliate Marketing (Merchant Award)
* Innovation in Affiliate Marketing (Network Award)
* Innovation in Affiliate Marketing (Publisher Award)
* Publisher’s Choice Award for a Network
* Publisher’s Choice Award for a Merchant
* Publisher’s Choice Award for an Agency
* Affiliate Manager of 2007
* Merchants Publisher of 2007
* Best New Merchant of 2007
* Best New Publisher of 2007
* Affiliate Marketing Blog of 2007
* Best Agency Account Manager
* Best International Publisher
* Industry Champion Award

a4u and SES join forces to take on the world – or at least the expo

It was announced recently that the a4u expo is partnering up with Search Engine Strategies to provide a 2 day event at the end of October focusing on both affiliate and search engine marketing. This is potentially a really great opportunity to move on and move up – it makes total sense as well, considering that recent changes in the affiliate marketing arena with regards to PPC advertising. More and more affiliates are getting into search engine optimization as the next step in the evolutionary ladder and combining 2 great expos for the price of one is just what this industry needs – well, better late than never.

It would be pretty interesting to see the level of SEO detail they’ll go into there – whether it’s a beginner’s guide or more in depth. This has been a point of grumbling with some SEO affiliates and bods in the past where they’ve commented that a lot of expos and events are basic – i.e. rarely relating anything new or exciting in the field. Still, it would be well worth the visit to check it out – both from an affiliate manager’s point of view and from the point of view of someone involved in an industry that revolves around search engines, specifically the almighty Google.

It is 2007 isn’t it?

There are several things that really get me irrationally more angry than I should be – especially on websites and services that are allegedly available online. I hate when the logo on a website doesn’t click back to the homepage – silly I know, and it’s not something you really notice until you can’t do that. I also get very angry when a service provider doesn’t allow you to pay your bills online – in this day and age! This was my mini-adventure yesterday when I chose to pay my Virgin Media telephone bill online – as per the back of my bill along with the myriad of other payment options available to me. I typed in the URL and my post code and was promptly told that online payment wasn’t available in my post code. What? Are you for real? I live in the middle of Glasgow – right in the middle of the West end of Glasgow, the biggest city in Scotland. And I’m not allowed to pay my bill online because it’s not available in my area? The area being the internet? I hadn’t realized that online bill payment was restricted to an area code – seeing as the internet isn’t tied to any specific area. If Glasgow City Council let me pay my council tax bill online, how can a corporation such as Virgin Media – in this day and age – not have online bill payment in my area?

So instead of easily paying my bill online, I’m going to have to hang outside my living room window (I don’t have great network in my area) to sort this out, which isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world but come on! It is really. really annoying.

Hello and welcome to moviephone

Ok, so I broke and have gotten myself a brand spankin’ new blog, full of thoughts, ideas, advice and issues on things that interest me – mostly within the whole online marketing game. Plus, occasional happenstance that occurs around me as well as potentially many rants. Also a word of warning – I do love shoes and may have some shoe related babbling. Consider yourself warned!