Web Affiliate Marketing Blog

Whilst on a voice conference, I got a little bored and started looking at everyone’s twitter pages and noticed that nearly all were exactly the same. This is most probably as most people use TwitterFox or something similar to follow other people, and TwitterBar to update their own status (unless you’re mobile twitter).

Although big brands such as Ford, British Airways and BBC are on Twitter, their pages are some what uninspiring. Not much effort or thought has been put into the Twitter Backgrounds and Starbucks simply stuck a coffee cup on the side – job done!

Your Twitter page is the first thing anyone sees. Maybe not so important for personal Twitter followings, but if you’re using Twitter as a form of social marketing, then maybe some time and effort should be spent personalising or treating it as an extension to your website?

It really doesn’t take design skills to knock up an appealing background. Any old package can transform the plain blue background to one that’s a bit more exciting, personal and says something about you.

Over the past few weeks, I have fun (albeit expensive fun) playing around with Aquanakes domain cathcing service over at Caught.co.uk. I’ve caught a few domains, some of which are questionable, others however I believe have potentional if I get the time to develop.

One domain I caught should be great as an Eco Friendly niche website that I hope will grow inline with consumers opinions and shopping habits over the next 12 to 18 months. It’s based on WordPress (surprise surprise) but the design was taken from a CSS template, and cut and pasted back together with all of wordpress tags by yours truely – my first attempt :)

I’ve already implemented a newsletter (although don’t expect the first one to be sent until 2009) which is seeing a trickle of people subscribe. I’ve also implemented Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan’s WP-Email pluggin which allows people to send articles to friends and family, hopefully spreading the word further.

All the pretty green eco friendly images were bought from iStockPhoto which is fantastic resource for affiliates, offering images for website developement and very reasonable prices.

BuyEco will also be my very first attempt at swapping links with similar websites, but this time with a twist. I’ve been following John Lamerton’s blog with interest recently, as he’s written a fair amount about link building, website content and most recently links within content.

No more building a simple links page, adding a whole load of websites in a uniformed list! Its time to link a handful of website in who load of eco friendly articles that will be added over the next few days. Now I just need to make contact with similarly themed websites and get the links in place.

If you’re interested in swapping links or have any suggestions of how to improve the look, feel or functionality of the site, then please get in touch.

A number of months ago I had a dream, an idea, a vision… call it what you will. It was one of my “must do” items this year, and as we enter November I’m aware that my dream still hasn’t materialised. Sadly it’s not because my dream is unrealistic nor is it due to lack of funds. My dream hasn’t been implemented yet simply because I’ve been let down on more occasions than I wish to recall, by so-called professional developers.

What Am I After?
Well, I am on the search of a developer who has good PHP and design skills for a quick, simple little project. I know from my own PHP skills that it’s nothing too hard and nothing that shouldn’t take more than 1 or 2 nights of work. Sadly my brain is full and can’t take any more on board, so it’s out of my reach otherwise I would have done it a long time ago.

Are you handy with PHP? Have some spare time to knock something up quickly? Have good design skills so things look pretty? Want to earn a couple of extra £? If so, or if you know someone, then grab me on MSN or email me.

Last year I blogged about how important it was to plan and build new websites for different seasons such as Valentines and Christmas. Sadly I forgot to heed my own advice and have left it very late to start planning my Christmas 2008 website and am now in a hurry to get content in place ready for the Christmas rush (hopefully).

Thankfully after checking a few key phrases I am still featuring #1 in Google despite my Christmas website being orientated to 2007 until today. I am therefore hoping that the update should be relatively pain free and still earn me a few £’s here and there considering the number of visitors I am seeing increase over the past 7 days.

Due to time restraints I’ve had to change things around a little and use a different backend. Previously the backend was Affilistore which I use for a number of other websites such as my makeup website, but this year I’m once again relying on a good old WordPress blog. A tweak here and there to a free wordpress template obtained from BlogOhBlog and an image or two downloaded from iStockPhoto and we are ready to rock and roll!

I plan to make more use of content units this year, opposed to feeds last year just to help get content up and running quickly with the minimum effort and as usual am looking for any links swaps. This year I’ll once again be making use of the BuyAGift Landing Page created by Paul last year just to drive a few additional sales in the hope to win the Affiliate Road Trip incentive they have introduced.

…..A brain dump you sick people!

This post has come about due to the loss of my Favourites folders and the time it took to gather all my useful development links back into one place. Some of these maybe useful for others, some may not, either way I need to so here goes;

Browser Compatability
Utilities that allow you to check the look and feel of your website as others will see it

• Browsershots

WordPress
The easiest and quickest way to create a simple, SEO friendly, website. At the time of this post, 2.5 hasn’t yet been released but by the demo’s I’ve seen there are a fair few changes

• WordPress

WordPress Themes
4 handy resources for themes are WordPress themselves, OS Skins and WPThemes. Between them you should be able to find something for your blog/website.

• WordPress Themes
• WP Free Themes
• OS Skins
• Justin Adlock

WordPress Plugins
Some pluggins I use regularly are;

• WP Plugins
• All In One SEO
• Ajax Newsletter
• Goole Sitemaps
• Popular Posts
• Simple Sitemaps
• Secure Contact Form
• RSS Footer
• Stat Traq
• Spam Karma
• Automatic WordPress Backup

Keyword Analysis
Important for PPC and also determining which keywords to focus on when writing content for your website

• Good Keywords
• MSN Adlab
• Google Keywords

Stats

• Google Webmaste Central
• Affmeter

Thats it for now! I feel a lot lighter :D