Affiliate Marketing Blog from UK Offer MediaWelcome to Kieron’s blog - the life and times of an Internet Marketeer

Thanks to Gadfly and New Media Age - Internet Stars and their Cars

Thanks to Gadfly for the mention in this weeks’ New Media Age magazine. In this article he talks about my Internet Stars and their cars blog post from last year. As a result I’ve seen a spike in traffic today from visitors looking for the original article. Well, here it is

I’ll probably be doing a follow up to my original post in the coming weeks, so if anybody has any recommendations of people on ‘tinternet who are petrolheads, please leave suggestions in the comments below:

What I’m listening to right now: Kieron’s R&B Mixtape Volume 3

Bring Spotify to the USA – America needs free music!

Today sees the launch of the ShareMyPlaylists.com campaign to bring Spotify to our American cousins across the pond. If you don’t yet know what Spotify is all about then, here is my review.

Of course you may well at this point be asking why do this? Well the reason is that every day I get emails to ShareMyPlaylists.com from people in the USA asking if I have any Spotify invites for them. They’ve seen some of the great press that Spotify is getting and understandably want a piece of the action.

Newsweek and  Wired have also written articles on why Spotify is awesome and should be brought to the USA.

Unfortunately Spotify isn’t available in the USA…yet. So I thought it would be good to set up a Facebook group so that we can get together a bunch of support to demonstrate the demand for Spotify to get a release in the USA.

I asked Spotify if they would comment on why they haven’t launched in the USA, and when they plan to. Here was their response:

“Our dream is to one day make Spotify available everywhere in the world and we’re working hard to make that dream a reality. We’ve been bowled over by the interest we’ve received from music fans across the pond and the day we launch in the US will be a very special one indeed. As soon as we have more information we’ll be sure to let you all know. Happy listening and good luck with the campaign!”

I’m a firm believer that Spotify is the future of music, so the more people and countries that embrace it, the more support we will get from the music industry. Which in turn will lead to a greater choice of artists and music available for us all…for free.

In honour of all things USA, enjoy these American themed Spotify playlists

College Rock
Americana
Harley Davidson Music
Country and Americana
Failed Muso’s History Of New York
The Sarah Palin Playlist

Let’s make this happen guys, please lend your support to the cause and tell everybody you know to join the Bring Spotify to the USA – Facebook Group. Power to the people!!

A4U Awards Shortlist

I just wanted to write a quick post to say a huge thankyou to everybody reading this blog who voted for me in the A4U Awards. I’m delighted that I’ve made it onto the shortlist with 4 of my peers. The second round of voting is now open until midday 22nd May. So please, please go and make your final vote now. It doesn’t matter who you vote for, but what does matter s that you do vote and we get as many people involved as possible.

On a related note, I’m also honoured to be on the judging panel again this year and today will start the momentous task of judging and commenting on this year’s entries. I won’t say how many entries there are to judge but there are so many that they have been sent out via courier, printed and bound for ease of use and scoring. I have to say that I’m really enjoying reading them all and learning of innovative ways in which our sector has developed and grown over the last year. Absolutely fascinating stuff!

See you in June 2nd, London for what promises to be a fantastic night.

What I’m listening to right now: Vanessa’s Playlist

North East networking events: BarCamp NorthEast and Thursday Fizz

Seeing as I’ve been involved in the Internet sector for 9 or so years now and run a multitude of online businesses I’ve decided that I should make more of a commitment and contribution to the “Digital” networking scene here in the North East. To be absolutely honest, up until very recently I wasn’t even aware that we had one. However it transpires that there are quite a few of us around as well as a couple of regular networking events. I love networking and meeting people who don’t just stare at you blankly when you try to explain to them that you make a living online and are not a web designer/porn peddler/spammer/eBay shop. So needless to say I’m really looking forward to getting together with like-minded people and making some new contacts.

So the first event I will be attending is BarCamp NorthEast on May16th in Newcastle, get your free tickets here. I really don’t know what to expect from this event but found the following on the website under “The Rules of BarCamp”.

BarCamp is an ad-hoc unconference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees.

Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join.

When you come, be prepared to share with barcampers.

When you leave, be prepared to share it with the world.

NO SPECTATORS, ONLY PARTICIPANTS

Attendees must give a demo, a session, or help with one, or otherwise volunteer / contribute in some way to support the event. All presentations are scheduled the day they happen. Prepare in advance, but come early to get a slot on the wall. The people present at the event will select the demos or presentations they want to see.

OK sounds cool, I have no idea what to talk about though. I may go with my Affiliate Marketing presentation that I gave at Think Visibility in March, or I may talk about ShareMyPlaylists.com. I’ll decide nearer the time. Follow BarCamp NorthEast on Twitter @BarCampNE.

The second event I intend to attend is Thursday Fizz held in Newcastle once a month. Here’s how they describe it on the site.

Thursday Fizz is a monthly meet up for anyone who works in/with/or aspires to be in the creative or media industries. Our aim is grow a like-minded community that will inspire, support and mentor each other whilst having fun at the same time.

Our events are social driven and are mix of live music, good food and cocktails. Everyone is welcome. However due to demand events are often by invitation only, so make sure you’ve signed up to our mailing list!

I admit that I like the idea of the cocktails but this also looks like a great way to meet people in the North East who work with the web. I fully intended to visit the last Thursday Fizz last week but couldn’t due to a ridiculously stupid eye infection that had me quarantined for a few days. However whenever the next one is announced, I will be there! Follow Thursday Fizz on Twitter @ThursdayFizz.

So, have I missed any other regular North East networking events? Please do let me know if I have via the comments and I’ll be sure to blog about them here.

What I’m listening to right now: Teairra Marie Ft Kanye West – “Diamonds”

How to use Twitter to grow your online business

In a couple of my recent posts about Twitter I’ve received comments from a lot of people who say they still don’t “get” Twitter and certainly don’t see how it can be a tool to drive customers to your site and indeed grow your business. So I thought I would share a few techniques and real-life examples here that have worked for me. The following guide presumes you know how Twitter works, if you don’t read here first.

1. The Basics - tell people who you are

It never ceases to amaze me how many people still fail miserably at this first hurdle. When you are setting up your Twitter profile you can set up an avatar/photo, your name, your Twitter username and a 160 character bio. This is so when people visit your Twitter page they can instantly see who you are and what you’re all about. The first thing I do when I’m “followed” by someone on Twitter is look at their profile page to see who they are, what they do and if I think they’re worth following in return.

Bizarrely, some people don’t fill there’s in, so all you have to make a decision on whether to follow them or not is something like this:

This is the profile of someone who recently followed me. As you can see this person is helpfully called “Creator111″ which is of no use whatsoever, and tells me nothing about him/her. Likewise their profile is blank. So will I be following them? Of course not. Remember that people will use the Twitter search function to find you, so if you have a personal Twitter account it’s a really good idea for your Twitter name to be the same as your real name. I.e. my personal Twitter account name is @kierondonoghue so anyone trying to find me via Twitter searching for “Kieron Donoghue” will find me. Simple eh? So you may think it’s cool to be called @sexyeyes007 or something but that really won’t help anyone find you or identify who you are.

Now, compare the above Twitter profile with the one I created for my site ShareMyPlaylists.com.

As you can see my Twitter account name is the same as the name of my site. I also have a link to my site within the profile along with a concise description of what the site does. I’ve also carried along the visual theme of the site by incorporating the logo as my Twitter avatar.

I’ve then taken the branding one step further by customising the background of my Twitter profile page to match the colour scheme and look and feel of ShareMyPlaylists.com.

Hopefully, anybody visiting the ShareMyPlaylists.com Twitter profile page can now instantly see what we’re all about. For anyone interested the perfect size for a Twitter background seems to be 2048 x 1707. Bizarrely Twitter don’t tell you this in their FAQ’s.

Although all of the above may seem obvious it never ceases to amaze me how many people just don’t do it. Your Twitter profile page is your own personal ad and you should use everything at your disposal to engage anybody visiting it and sell yourself and your site/services etc.

2. Publicise your Twitter URL wherever you can

Again this may sound obvious but the best thing you can do is to feature your Twitter account on your website. So, using ShareMyPlaylists.com as an example again, if you visit the site you will see this:

As pointed out by the helpful giant blue arrow I have a “Follow us on Twitter” link that goes straight to my Twitter profile page. This has helped me get over 1000 followers in just over 7 weeks, not bad.

You can also have a Twitter widget embedded on your blog or site. If you look to the right of this page you can see I have one on this very page, it’s really easy to grab these from within your Twitter account and simply cut and paste the code into the site you want to display it on.

There is also a great WordPress plugin called TweetMeMe that enables you to put a little widget onto your blog posts so that if readers enjoy your post then can “Tweet” it to their users and thus spread the love. I’ll be installing this on my blog soon.

You can also put your Twitter details in email signatures, press releases, business cards, pretty much anywhere really. Just think of it in the same way as you do your email address or phone number.

3. Don’t be vain

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that it’s cool to follow as few people as possible but still expect to have hundreds of followers yourself. Twiter is all about conversation and in order to “hear” what other Twitter users are saying then you must follow them. Occassionally you will see people (mainly celebrities) who only have a very small number of people they follow (usually a small amount of other celebrities) yet have hundreds if not thousands of followers themselves. This is just bad manners, rude and gives the impression that you think you’re too good to follow “Joe Public”. Unfortunately some business users are like this too. Take for example, the woefully bad Twitter account from affiliate network Zanox:

As you can see they (rather amazingly I think) have 440 followers but selfishly only follow 8 people. And guess who those 8 people are? Other Zanoz Twitter accounts. Not cool guys.

4. The juicy bits - join the conversation

Following on from my Twitter guide to affiliate networks where I talk about the sort of tone and approach you should adopt when using Twitter as a marketing channel, I’ve given some real life examples below of what’s worked for me. I’ve already said that your Twitter account to promote your site should be a mix between conversation, announcements and chat about industry topics but how do you do that in practice?

Once again using ShareMyPlaylist.com as an example I used Twitter search to find people who are talking about Spotify (my site is a Spotify community site). Straight away, I found Tweets like these:

Seeing as all of the above Tweets are positive towards Spotify I immediately follow the authors of these Tweets. My logic is that if they love Spotify then hopefully they will also love my Spotify community site. So my first step is to seek out people who I think will like my service and simply follow them. I don’t Tweet or message them, I simply follow them. The hope is that they will see I have followed them, visit my profile page - which is full of info about my site as per step 1 - and they will like what they see and follow me. Job done.

You can then get a bit more specific with your Twitter search and this time I searched for Spotify playlist. So know I’m really drilling down the search results to find Twitter users who I think will really have a use for my site. Here are some results:

As you can see, the above people are pretty much my core target audience for my site. So what I do in these instances is follow them and then send them a Tweet. I’m always careful to make the Tweets personal so they don’t think I’m a bot. Also, I don’t do this often, as I don’t want to flood my Twitter page with lots of the same types of posts. So using the example above, this is what I’d Tweet:

There you go, a nice personalised message that pretty much always receives a positive reaction. A lot of users really like the fact that you have taken the time to seek them out and reply to them in a non spammy way. Below are a few examples of responses I’ve received using this approach:

As you can see my Tweets have been met with positive responses and people have already started to send the message out to other Twitter users about my site. I think the key to this approach is (a) keep the messages personalised to the individual and (b) don’t overdo it and Tweet the same kind of message to lots of people, especially not within a short period of time. If you do this then there’s a chance when people view your profile page they’ll think you’re a spammer if they see you tweeted the same type of message to 50 people in the last hour.

5. Network

As well as the approach outlined above I also use Twitter to network and meet “influencers” in the shape of Twitter users who represent large media outlets, websites,  press, journalists, pr agencies etc. I then reach out to these people and let them know a bit about me and my site and ask if they would be interested in writing about it. I recently came across Web User magazine on Twitter so thought it would be a good idea to follow them and see if I could drum up some publicity. Here’s my Tweet to them:

This was their reply:

So I sent them a DM (Direct Message) saying who I was and what the site was about, then I got this back:

So with 1 Tweet and 1 Direct Message I had managed to get my site reviewed in the most popular Internet magazine in the UK. Thankyou Twitter! (Thanks to @webusermagazine too!) This just goes to illustrate that Twitter is a great medium for having conversations with all sorts of people that you wouldn’t normally have access to. There are lots and lots of opportunities out there just like what I’ve described above.

One really good method of finding new followers and contacts that you normally wouldn’t have access to is by viewing the people who your contact follow. While I was looking around Twitter for music journalists I happened to find 1 using Twitter search. I then viewed the people he follows and “Bob’s your Uncle” I immediately found 500 or so other music journalists and music PR company contacts. Sweet.

It was using this method that I happened to stumble upon the Twitter account for the editor of NME.com. He was listed in the contacts (or “followers” in Twitter speak) of a journalist who I was following. So I simply followed him, and tbh didn’t even get round to contacting him, before I received this DM from him:

How awesome is that?! One of the biggest and most influential music sites in the UK and had written this fantastic article about my site! And I didn’t even ask them to!! What’s even more fantastic is that they called my site “Genius“. Did you hear that? I’ll repeat it in case you didn’t. Genius. Am I going to dine out on that quote for as long as I can? Am I going to put up a “press” page on the site for no other reason than to display that quote? You bet!

When browsing through other people’s PR and music contacts I also came across Polydor Records, so I followed them and a day or two later I got an email from then saying that one of their new priority artists for 2009, Gary Go, is a big fan of Spotify and has created some playlists, can they feature them on my site? Of course! I said, but would you mind linking back to my site from Gary’s? They were happy to oblige and I now have a link here. Sweet. Not only that but seeing as I was now in a dialogue with the record company I asked if Gary would like to write a blog post to feature on ShareMyPlaylists.com. “Yes” was the answer and here’s the post. Brilliant. BTW it’s entirely possible that you haven’t heard of Gary Go yet but you will. He’s a huge priority for Polydor this year and he’s supporting Take That in their stadium tour. Watch this space, as they say.

So basically the result of all my activity above is that I’ve gotten my site featured on NME.com, it will be reviewed in Web User, it was awarded “site of the week” by New Media Age (forgot to mention that above) and I’m starting to forge some relationships with record labels. All thanks to Twitter.

6. The ReTweet

A ReTweet is when somebody else copies your tweet and broadcasts is to their followers. Think of it in the same way as if you forwarded a funny email to a bunch of your friends. The bigger the base of followers you acquire and the more loyal your “fan base” becomes then the more chance you have of being ReTweeted. When I announced that I was running a competition then none other than Spotify themselves decided to ReTweet me:

As Spotify have thousands of followers it meant that not only did my traffic reach 5 times what it normally does that day but I also gained over 100 new followers in just over an hour. All in all a great way to build users and traffic.

7. Search for yourself

It’s also worth using the Twitter search function to search for your company name, Twitter name etc. from time to time too. As your reputation and awareness of your site grows you may find that more and more people are talking about you on Twitter. So use the Twitter search function to search for variations and mis-spellings of your company name. It may well be that you find that people are praising you, if so then thank them. This goes a long way to building trust and relationships and proves that you’re not just another faceless Twitter robot that just churns out boring press releases and doesn’t enagage people. Likewise, you may find people are complaining about you/your service. If this is the case then politely ask them if you can help them. Once again, you will be surprised at how well people take to this and you can usually turn a negative experince into a positive one, just by entering into a discussion. Th Twitter search tool is absolutely brilliant, I can’t think of any other example of finding out what people are saying about you, right now.

So there you have it, my thoughts on how Twitter can really help grow your online business both in terms of traffic and users but also in terms of reaching out into the online community and making new connections. The examples given above are of course specific to my site but the approach and methods I use can be adapted to any site in any sector.

Please let me know your thoughts on Twitter, particularly if you have any other ways of using it to market your business.

What I’m listening to right now: Old School Rap

Content for Links

There seems to be a lively debate centred on content for-links as a link building strategy and on the apparent loss of rankings a particular site who are alleged to be using this approach.

We have been explicitly named in some posts and are therefore responding to, hopefully, help to set the record straight. We apologise in advance for the length of this post! Can we also thank the many people who have responded in a balanced way in other posts – it is reassuring to know that not everyone is driven by a crushing competitive agenda or simple malice.

KEY POINTS FOR ANYONE IN A RUSH!
- Chris Young is NOT associated with our search businesses
- We specifically avoid creating a co-operative network - any technology and databases used are simply for efficiency
- We NEVER pay for links or content-for-link partners
- We cannot confirm or deny any specific client associations for legal reasons

THE DETAILS

WHO IS INVOLVED?
First of all, we cannot confirm that we have any relationship with sites named in some of the other posts. We are contractually excluded from publically discussing the identities of some clients which, as most of you know, is not uncommon in our industry. This response is neither a confirmation nor a denial of a relationship - we promise we are not being evasive - that’s the best we can do on that front according to the lawyers – sorry! We would also point out that per the section at the end of this post, there are other firms using a very similar approach.

Secondly, we can confirm that Content Now LLP is Co-Owned by UK Offer Media Limited (Kieron Donoghue, MD) and Search Sciences LLP (Simon Snelling, CEO). We provide a range of solutions for clients including content-driven linking campaigns.

Thirdly, Chris Young is a close friend of Simon’s but he has absolutely no involvement with the running of our search businesses — so please direct everything at us!!

DO WE CREATE CO-OPERATIVE NETWORKS?
No. We entirely agree that co-operative networks are harmful. It would seem that our use of technology in parts of the process has been completely misinterpreted by some people as intending to create such a network.

Quite the opposite.

As an example, we exclude ALL clients from linking with each other under any of our campaigns although many would be highly relevant for each other. This is the opposite to the approach taken by many firms who ruthlessly raid their own databases for potential link partners.

ALL potential link partners are identified from public sources, including the main search engines, based entirely upon their relevance for the client in question. Period. The information we hold in our systems is used for the management of conversations with potential and live link partners. It is not used to target them. We have specifically built our systems and procedures to avoid such a network, recognising that such networks are a problem elsewhere in the SEO industry.

DO WE USE BLACK HAT TECHNIQUES?
No we do not. We can only assume that the use of a client-hosted response page that links to one of our systems has been entirely misunderstood. The response page is simply there as an option for potential - and existing - link partners to use for sending messages (we all know how flaky email can be sometimes) and to provide FAQ and more detailed information on various elements of the approach and campaign. It also allows partners to obtain and to provide information which goes directly into our systems, helping with accuracy and efficiency. Once again, it is absolutely not used to create a co-op network.

We make no bones about the fact that we keep our brand visibility at a low profile during conversations with link partners. Any of you who have ever actually run a linking campaign will recognise that the activities of unscrupulous firms, many of them located off-shore, have made an approach by an SEO firm almost meaningless – how is a poor site owner supposed to distinguish from a genuine and ethical offer versus a spammy co-op network – or worse – contact harvesting exercise?

This is absolutely the ONLY reason we minimise our involvement.

We work extremely hard to stick to best practice and we stand tall by our work. In fact, any of you who have ever had a linking dialogue with any of our client campaigns beyond the initial email will know that we state that we are managing the campaign responses at the foot of the email.

We will address the issues specifically surrounding the ethics of content-for-links in a further section below.

ARE SITES GETTING BANNED AS A RESULT OF THE APPROACH?
The only comments that we are able to make on specific cases (see restrictions in “WHO IS INVOLVED?” above) are 1) there are now a number of posts suggesting that there are other factors at play here possibly relating to a new version of the site in question. 2) we have had NO reports of ranking penalties for clients, many of who have been running content-driven campaigns for some time. Actually quite the contrary – all of our established clients are flourishing for relevant search terms.

PAYMENT FOR LINKS
We do not pay for links. Period.

We have turned away clients who wanted us to run paid linking campaigns. Any time a potential link partner responds requiring payment, we will add them to our exclusions system – we know of thousands of sites that require payment for links and we never contact them again.

CONTENT FOR LINKS – IS IT ETHICAL?
Ask 20 SEO specialists regards linking in general and you’ll get 21 ‘best practice’ approaches. Whilst the search engines rightly penalise overly aggressive tactics; co-op networks; off-theme linking; paid links and so forth, there is widespread acceptance that link popularity remains a significant factor in achieving decent search engine rankings.

Perhaps in an ideal world, all sites would be so amazingly stuffed with brilliant link bait that the right links would miraculously appear – how nice would that be? We completely recognise the benefits of social media optimisation, link baiting etc. and practise in these areas. However, in 2009, there remains a healthy market demand for the direct approach to creating relationships with relevant link partners through legitimate means.

There is widespread debate as to the validity of reciprocal linking (which incidentally we also practice carefully based upon relevance). Paying for links is quite rightly against Google TOS and is unethical – primarily because the motivation is wrong which effects relevancy and because it creates an unequal playing field wherein those sites with the deepest pockets win.

Linking must therefore be about the fair exchange of value. For some clients this may be some form of reciprocal or three way type linking; for others it may involve offering relevant content in return for a link.

The point here is relevant. The client and link partner will be in a relevant space for each other. The content will be specifically researched and hand written by our own (UK based) writing team or in some cases the client’s own editorial team around a relevant theme specifically agreed with the link partner. No-one is ever coerced and all link partners have the absolute right to approve, modify or reject the content created for them at any time.

We never make any attempt to disguise the fact that the link is the objective – link partners understand this. From the link partner’s perspective, content is often something that they struggle to produce in their own right. Don’t assume, as has been suggested elsewhere, that this is some massive SEO firm preying on a bunch of unsuspecting one man bands. On the contrary, many of the content-for-links partners are full sized businesses who recognise the importance of content but just don’t have the time or resource – made worse by the current economic climate.

SO WILL THE PARTNER BENEFIT FROM THE CONTENT?
The best answer any honest SEO firm can give to almost any SEO question, given that none of us control the search engine algorithms, is that to the best of our knowledge they should. We don’t think there will be too many people arguing that relevant content isn’t helpful for SEO. The content is unique, written specifically for the link partner on a subject relevant to their site. There is one simple undisguised HTML link to the client’s site included towards the end of the content. To the best of our knowledge and based upon over 10 years of link building experience, once the search engines have indexed the content, the link partner is likely to see the benefits long before the engines attribute ranking benefit for the client from the link – it varies tremendously but the search engines understandably view new links with caution and attribute value to them only over a period of time.

Actually, we regularly receive requests from link partners for more content; some become content clients (or linking clients); others have even pinged us simply to thank us and to tell us they were ranking for the content.

ARE WE PERFECT?
No of course not. The odd bit of sub-standard content may make it out there. A few partners may not be perfectly on-theme. Our processes involve humans throughout and as we all know, none of us are perfect! Any errors brought to our attention are promptly corrected and we are constantly striving to improve systems and processes. We have a decent, very hard working team and we are deeply proud of them. Just as importantly we have a lot of happy clients with good rankings, as we hope do the ethical and fair SEO bloggers among you!

IS IT US?
Aside from the comments above regards client confidentiality, we are well aware that our approach has been copied by a number of webmasters and, indeed we are told possibly some other SEO firms. This means that emails of a similar structure may well have come from other firms or individual webmasters – just to add to the confusion!

CONCLUDING COMMENTS
There is probably tons more to say but this post is far too long already. We realise that some of you will have questions and we will do our best to answer them but please bear with us if responses are slow – pressure of work as usual!

As a final thought, if the content-for-links approach is so “black hat” because it is motivating partners through the value of the content to include a link, where does that leave, for example, content affiliates who are paid for the traffic – some via natural links tracked via merchant’s own programmes . . .or many bloggers . . or possibly the bulk of today’s social media system . . .where does it stop?

Have a great weekend.

Thanks and kind regards – Simon & Kieron

Kieron Donoghue & Simon Snelling
Partners and Co-Founders, Content Now LLP

UPDATE:

As of just before 10AM GMT this morning (April 27th 2009), the site that was at the centre of the discussion has begun to re-appear at #1 in the Google SERPs for its brand name. It appears to be ranking for some other terms as well. This isn’t totally consistent as yet because it takes a while to replicate around data centres so you may see it jump in and out of the results. Given that the drop in rankings for this site originally sparked this debate, we thought you would appreciate the update.

The B.A.B.E. Award - Bigmouthmedia Affiliate Blogging Excellence Award

Yesterday Bigmouthmedia announced the B.A.B.E. Award. Babe stands for Bigmouthmedia Affiliate Blogging Excellence Award and it’s purpose is to recognise and reward the UK affiliate blog that has contributed the most to the affiliate community in the last year.

First of all, who are Bigmouthmedia?

For anybody not sure of who Bigmouth are, they are a digital agency who manage SEO, PPC, Affiliate campaigns and much more besides. They are big hitters, have been around for 12 years and have offices on 10 countries. Despite their “blue chip” status I think they very much maintain their grass roots status and still strive to forge close partnerships with the SEO and affiliate community. Case in point, they have a dedicated Twitter account (@bigmouthmedia) as well as a more specialised Twitter account for affiliates (@bigmouth_aff).

So what is this award all about and why should I care?

Well I believe the award is designed to not only recognise affiliate bloggers but also to recognise the affiliate marketing sector as a whole and to increase the visibility of our sector to the masses. After all, there are countless SEO awards, conferences etc. but very little in terms of affiliate marketing (with the obvious exception being the annual awards and Expo ran by Affiliates 4U). So for a mainly SEO based digital agency to publicise our sector, we should welcome it as an opportunity to preach our gospel to a wider audience.

How do I vote and who shall I vote for?

Simply visit the site here and complete 3 short fields asking for the blog URL of your favourite blog, the name of the blog author and your name. That’s it, it will take you 10 seconds. As I mentioned above I think it’s a really good thing that Bigmouth are promoting our sector so I would urge everyone reading this to vote. As to who you should vote for, well…tbh I think the most important thing I can say right now is that you SHOULD vote. It doesn’t matter who for, the fact that you have taken the time to vote and help spread the love we all share for affiliate marketing is what counts. Wouldn’t it be great if Bigmouth received a record number of votes that just blew them away?

What I’m listening to right now: Jive ’til you bleed

Free book, a real book and not a pretend ebook

Want a free book? A real book made from real paper and not a crapola ebook? Then click here, avoid the dodgy sales letter type page and sign up for your free business book. You have to pay £2.97 postage but that’s it. Or you can go to Amazon and pay £8.97 for it plus postage. There are currently only 270 free books left so be quick.

What I’m listening to right now: Lenny Kravitz - Playlist

ShareMyPlaylists.com competition - win a Sony PlayStation 3

I’m delighted to say that ShareMyPlaylists.com has been rocking along since it’s launch 4 weeks ago. Our traffic levels are growing on a daily basis and we’re almost at 700 Spotify playlists submitted in just 4 short weeks! I would like to thank everybody who has taken the time out to submit a playlist, or who blogged, tweeted or give us a “shout out” anywhere on the Interweb since launch. Please, please keep them coming.

Twitter in particular has been a very useful tool in delivering traffic and users to the site. As of today Twitter is second only to Google in terms of referrals to the site. Following on from this post I will write a more in-depth report soon on how I used Twitter to help market the site.

So, as a thankyou to everyone who has contributed to the site in one way or another and to give the users something back I’m giving away a Sony PS3 All you need to do to enter is submit a playlist to the site before May 2nd. In fact, you can submit as many (different) playlists as you like, each will count as an entry. Full details are below, I’ve even persuaded the nice Spotify people themselves to judge the competition, so should be fun!

Competition Details

Would you like your chance to win a brand new Sony PlayStation 3 compete with LittleBigPlanet game? Here’s how you can courtesy of ShareMyPlaylists.com.

We’re looking for examples of Spotify playlists that are well thought out, original and innovative. Maybe they will reflect a part of your life that holds strong memories, possibly your favourite songs from a particularly special holiday. Or they could be songs that were played at your wedding, engagement party or a special birthday party. If you’re a big fan or a particular artist or band then it could be that you’ve compiled a special “Best Of” playlist to celebrate their music. Whatever the reason for the playlist, we’re especially looking for originality and uniqueness.

To enter the competition all you have to do is submit a Spotify playlist to us before the closing date of midnight 2nd May 2009. Then simply drop us a line via the contact page telling us the name of your playlist that you would like to enter into the competition.

To qualify for the competition a playlist must have a minimum of 10 songs. You are free to enter the competition as many times as you wish and submit as many different playlists as you wish.

Then shortly after the closing date we will be making a shortlist of the playlists that we think show the most originality and creativity. This shortlist will then be judged by our friends at Spotify who will decide on the ultimate winner and the new owner of a Sony PlayStation 3.

Keep checking back to our blog, where we will be posting some of the best entries received along the way.

This competition is open to UK residents only.

Good luck!

What I’m listening to right now: Funky Stuff!

A4U Awards 2009

Yes it’s that time of year again, the A4U Awards 2009 are here! For anybody who didn’t know, the annual A4U Awards are now in their 3rd year and are the biggest and best affiliate marketing specific awards  held in the UK. They will be held on the 2nd June 2009 in the Hilton Park Lane London and expect over 300 industry professionals to be in attendance.

Of course in order to make the event a success your vote is needed! There are 12 categories that will be judged by a panel led by experts within the industry but there are also 5 categories that will be voted for by members of the A4U Forum. One of these categories is “Affiliate Marketing  Blog of 2009″ which I am delighted to have the honour of winning over the last 2 years.

The closing date for entries is April 24th 2009 so please head on over and make your vote count.

I will be hosting  a table at the awards and still have some places available, so please drop me a line if you want to join us for some Peroni/Champagne.

If anybody missed it last year, take a look at my recap. Last year’s ceremony rocked, you will definitely miss a great night if you don’t go

What I’m listening to right now: Trey Songz – “I Need a Girl”