Development 
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Over the past 4 months, I’ve been tinkering aroundwith my websites in an attempt to improve performance, reduce load times & bandwidth, without impacting the layout.
During the course, I’ve stumbled across a few little tools & websites, that I’ve found invaluable and thought I post them here to share with others;
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Development 1 Comment 
Thats right! Now is the time to really start planning your Christmas strategy if you’re wanting to make the most of the busiest season in affiliate marketing.
Already a number of merchants and one network have dropped me emails asking what my plans are, how we can work closer together, and what opportunities are available for extra exposure etc. The difference I’m seeing this year is that some of the merchants are the biggies, the ones that usually suffer from more red tape than a chinese new year!
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Web stats are a boring part of Affiliate Marketing, almost as bad as link building, but are essential if you’re to tweak and improve the performance of a website and see if your visitors are behaving in the way you think/expect.
I’ve always found that most tools out there, either confuse the hell out of me, or show me too much information meaning I never pay much attention to them. For some of my sites, I’ve no idea how people are finding me, what keywords they’re using, and where they are clicking out to. A few months ago however, I stumbled across Piwik, a downloadable, open source, real time web analytics software program which I implented across a few of my website such as The Outdoors.
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Development 2 Comments 
Admittedly Skimlinks isn’t new to the scene, having been around since 2008 and winning A4U Awards in 2009, however it’s only now I’ve started tinkering around with it.
Heading off to Affiliate Summit, and offering my room to Joe (another story for which I still feel terrible about… I had no phone signal!), I felt compelled to give it a try, so to save Joe from any hard sell he may feel compelled to do.
In a nutshell, Skimlinks skims the page that’s being displayed to your visitors to see if its possible to monetise the content. By simply adding a single line of code to the footer.php of your WordPress theme you can continue to focus on the content. Whenever you add a link directly to a merchant, for example http://www.wickes.co.uk, Skimlinks will track it as an affiliate link despite it looking like a noraml link out. Genius!
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Development 5 Comments Well I’ve made a Christmas wishlist to help my family who have no idea what on earth I want or need this year. Goes without saying boxers and socks are always welcome, along with a few specifics such as:
However this year, I’ve asked friends & family to send me Kiva vouchers if they’re stuck for ideas. I know some people aren’t happy receiving charity Christmas presents, but right at this very moment, there isn’t a great deal I need. Rather than see friends and family wasting money as they have to buy me a gift, I’d much prefer to give it someone who could use it to make a change in their life for the better.
Since first mentioning Kiva in June 2009, we affiliates have donated over $3,000 and invested in over 100 different projects all over the world ranging from a Barber Shop in Tanzania (no use to me) to a Pub in Uganda (what a surprise for affiliates!).
So who’s in our Kiva group and who can join? Anyone can join, and the more the merrier… To name a few, we’ve got;
I hope in the run up to Christmas, we’ll see more affiliates, merchants and networks join our Kiva group and donate $25, or £15, helping make someone elses life a little more comfortable. It’s only the equivalent to 2 bottles of wine, 3 packs of cigs or 4 beers!