Sunshine.co.uk Competition - Win a MacBook Air

Posted on March 21, 2008
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Sunshine Affiliate Competition
The travel site Sunshine.co.uk are running an affiliate competition throughout March to win an impressive MacBook Air.

MacBook Air

In order to get an entry into this competition, you need to join the programme on AffiliateFuture, post a banner or link on your site(s). Making 5 sales will also get you an extra entry into the competition. So, what are you waiting for, get those links up today.

Sunshine.co.uk are a great travel site that offers holiday makers cheap hotels, holidays and flights.

This is more like it - An incentive

Posted on March 21, 2008
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Following on from my rant about being dropped from programmes because of inactivity, I have just received this email below. This is exactly the type of thing I was wanting to see and in my opinion is the right way to go.

Dear ********

I would like to increase your commission levels by 10%, in return for a small favour.

I see you have sent us 1 click via affiliate window over the last year, and would like to offer you 11% commission on all sales PERMANENTLY if you would be willing to promote us a little more on your site.

If you’re interested please email me at ***********, and i can offer you help in increasing your sales with us.

For example we can offer voucher codes for your customers to encourage sales, or suggest best selling products that may be suitable for your site.

I hope to hear back from you, and thanks for your time…

Kind Regards,

I will certainly be adding more Needapresent information and products on my new gift related sites from now on.

You are the weakest link - Goodbye

Posted on March 19, 2008
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It does make me mad! When I get an email from a merchant or network saying I’m being dropped from a programme for being inactive because the merchant wants to concentrate on active affiliates.

More often than not this will be the first communication I will have received about the programme after signing up. Merchants will know who is active and doing well on the programme already, so sure, make an extra effort with those people. However, instead of giving the rest the boot, why not send them a reminder of why the prorgamme is such a good one to promote, offer incentives to get active, special offers, anything but the goodbye email.

I assume merchants want the most sales possible from a programme, so dropping affiliates won’t achieve this will it. You need to get the number of active affiliates higher, not chop the programme down, therefore limiting sales.

OK, Rant over!

Datafeeds Offered via Network Interfaces

Posted on March 9, 2008
Filed Under Affiliate Marketing | 2 Comments

I’m dismayed a the level of datafeed function available at the different networks. I’m wanting to change an existing website to offer a smaller selection of goods but i’m also in the process of creating a new site to offer a similar range. The first is JustUndies which currently offer a mix of mens and womens underwear and lingerie. I want to make this just a mens only site allowing me to create a new womens only site at LingerieLocker.

So, to help populate these sites I will be needing a datafeed of merchant goods to offer my visitors. My first choice was to have the datafeeds from JustHom and DeadGoodUndies for JustUndies. The ladies will be getting a selection from BeCheeky or FigLeaves.

So, firstly all of these merchants offer the datafeed facility through the networks. Brilliant I thought. Not so…

The Figleaves datafeed is currently about seven months out-of-date on TradeDoubler. Not a good start is it? BeCheeky offer a feed through DGMPro and AffiliateWindow. They don’t have the same number of products as each other which I would have exprected. The offering from AffiliateWindow has about 300 less products. That offered from DGMPro has errors in. I’m told that the affiliate manager of Figleaves will email an up-to-date version of the feed when updates are necessary, but isn’t this missing the whole point of offering these throught the network interface?

Anyway, when I get a solution sorted I’ll post again.

Linkshare Launch New Interface - Publisher Dashboard

Posted on March 3, 2008
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Linkshare UK Launch New InterfaceI have been a member of the Linkshare Network for a few years now. The user interface during that time hasn’t really changed a great deal and to be honest it isn’t one of my favorite interfaces. Linkshare UK started getting the ball rolling only in the last year. They have started to get some really good merchants on board. We are seeing the likes of Laura Ashley, Figleaves and the LEGO Company to name just three.

So, onto the new interface. All I can say is Wow, what a really vast improvement over the old one. The first thing that you notice is that you are presented with a snapshot of your account in the center of the sceen. This shows a months summary in terms of Clicks, Impressions Orders and Sales etc. Unfortunately this is displayed in US$ even for UK based figures. I hope this can me changed in a later enhancement. Also on the right you have a list of the latest communications from merchants. Just above the message summary you have a new box that displays your ‘Things to do’. This will be a useful feature I’m sure.

Onto the next tab along the top, the Programs tab. In this section you have the standard list of areas within each merchant can be found. There are also sections that show New Advertisers, Premium Advertisers, Advertisers you have already joined and lastly and Private Offers you may be invited to join or are already participating in. All pretty standard stuff really, but nicely and clearly laid out and easy to use.

The Links tab is the next one. Here you find a list of advertisers you are a member of. Hover your mouse pointer over the advertiser name and you get a list of link types available. (Text/email, banners/images, Dynamic Rich Media etc.) Getting the link code is very easy and you’re told when the link is valid from and when it expires. I’m afraid I don’t have tokens for either the data feeds and web services so I can’t use these and so can’t comment on these at this time.

All in all I think this is one of the successful revamps of a network redign, they haven’t all been an initial success on other networks in the last couple of years. So well done to the team at LinkShare for a job well done.

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