David Fiske A subtle blend of affiliate marketing and web development

May 2008 Archives

30/05/08 - Kimberley Returns Expecting A Link Exchange

You may remember I had one of the best emails ever asking for a link exchange.

Kimberley has sent through another email with a bit more details this time. This time though she's more demanding. More

29/05/08 - A Moan About... Royal Mail

Woo hoo! They've made it to another rant post. After being picky about an envelope flap, various strikes and failed deliveries, you'd have thought they would have made changes, learned lessons and moved on.

Well in reality land, nothing has changed and I've suffered another "Sorry, you were out" attack whilst I was in. In a double blow, their sister company Parcel Force is also dealing blows. More

29/05/08 - The Value Of PageRank (Or Not)

I don't want to disclose the domain name but I've got a site with a PageRank of 2. Big whoop you say?

When I say site I mean holding page! I was suprised when Google awarded it a PR1 a while back given it's got no external links, no Google sitemap and no other contact with the world. More

29/05/08 - New Permanent Design

Automatically changing designs seemed such a good idea when I set about creating them but six months in, I've gone off them. I must have been taking something because the colour schemes where horrid!

So jumping on the bandwagon that is known as the redesign train, I've joined Kirsty, Keith, Amazon, Play and CD-Wow in launching a new template. More

29/05/08 - Calling UK Affiliate Marketing Bloggers

If you are a UK affiliate marketer and have a blog, I want to link to you!

I'm after reciprocal blogroll links (now shown on the side of the blog where it ought to be) as well as an RSS feed URL to add to the aggregator. More

28/05/08 - Studio Reminds Customers Christmas Is Just Around The Corner

Studio, the catalogue shop which suffered from some order fulfilment issues last year, has sent out a Christmas 2008 brochure on 28th May 2008.



As there's now less than 7 months to go, people must now be thinking about Christmas. More

27/05/08 - The Best Link Exchange Request I've Ever Received

Sometimes you have to laugh. Here's the email:

Link Exchange Request. Thank You

That's it! No website address, no link page location, no reciprocal link requests. Nothing.

The email was sent from Kimberly of LinkHelpers and whilst I cannot vouch for their services, their link exchange policy seems a little too direct! More

27/05/08 - Remember To Target The Correct Market

I was in Cardiff on Sunday (taking advantage of the all-day park and ride for £3 - much cheaper than pay and display parking in Cardiff itself and takes 5 minutes on the bus either way) and was stopped by a salesman.

I tend to avoid people like this who stand in the middle of a town/city centre trying to get you to buy something or have a leaflet for this, that or the other. Anyhow, I didn't spot this one and he pounced.

"How much do you spend on your mobile?"

Given I use a landline 99.9% of the time, I only go through a fiver here and there. That's what I responded with.

"Well for £35 a month, you can have a new phone...."

Eh? I spend a fiver here or there and you are trying to sell me a £35 a month contract? More

24/05/08 - New Comment Policy

The comments on this blog have been free from the nofollow tag for some time now as I believe that relevant comments should be rewarded. If you've taken the time to read and comment on a post, you can quite happily post a link to your site which may be of benefit to readers of the blog.

However, comment spam is becoming more intelligent these days. Spammers are actually reading the blog! Because of this, I am changing the blog comment policy to reflect changes to the way I'm receiving comments.

The policy is a as follows. More

22/05/08 - 5 Easy Ways To Win The A4U Affiliate Marketing Blog Of The Year Award

First off, congratulations to Kieron, Jason, Kirsty, Lee and Paul for being nominated. Last year I voted for Kieron as his blog was top notch. This year it’s slipped a little, with more focus on cars than affiliate marketing. It’s his blog and he can do with it what he likes but I fear he is digressing too far. I’ve suggested a dedicated car blog to feed his addiction and time will tell whether he takes advantage of the suggestion.

This year’s vote went to Jason who has been very vocal in the affiliate advice arena. Kirsty almost certainly gets my vote next year.

Anyhow, the question we all want to know is what do we have to do to get nominated and subsequently win the award? Here’s my interpretation. More

21/05/08 - Look For A Gap

There's literally millions of gaps in the affiliate marketing market. In fact that's true for every market in business. It's simply a case of identifying that gap and exploiting it to the best of your capabilities.

Here's some examples (real world and on the interweb) of people exploiting a gap in the market. More

17/05/08 - Thanks To A4U Expo For My Mug

In exchange for putting an A4U Expo banner on this site, I've bagged myself a free mug!

Just like Kieron, if you send me free stuff, I'll blog about it :-). More

16/05/08 - Travelodge Has A Makeover!

Travelodge, the king of cheap nationwide hotels, has unveiled a new website design The old design was practical and functional, just nothing too great to look at. The new one is a million miles away from this, and features a smidgen of web 2.0 principles too. More

01/05/08 - Think Niche But Not Too Niche

There are several goals you will have put in place when developing a new website. More than likely they are:

1. To fulfil a purpose
2. To fill a gap in the market
3. To make money consistently

That's about it. In affiliate marketing, it's not enough just creating a hobby site. It won't make you enough money to warrant the time you invest in it.

When it comes to adding content, you need to keep a broad but narrow mind. It sounds daft and impossible but here's what I mean. More