Web Affiliate Marketing Blog

I’ve just received a phonecall from Fiona over at Equator agency, and was informed that i’ve won another competition! Wickes (on the Affiliate Window network) ran a competition over the past few weeks where the prize up for grabs was a complete Avalon Bathroom worth over £1200!

Over 6 weeks affiliates had to send at least one sale to the Wickes bathroom site with a total order value of over £200 which was simply enough considering the average order value was over £500. The nice thing about this competition was that old and new affiliates stood an equal chance of winning the prize, as each affiliate was only be entered once, none of this 10 sales = 10 extra tickets we see so often.

The prize was an unsual one for sure, and makes a nice difference rather than the usual make 10 sales get and extra 2.5% commission. Its something that you actually see and use for all your hardwork and troubles.

Good timing? Well it couldn’t have been better having spent the past few weekends measuring up my bathroom trying to decided what to get and when to get it resulting in regular visits to Wickes, Homebase and B&Q. No more shopping for me :D

Thanks Wickes for putting up such a good and unusual prize, and thanks to Julia at Eqrt for pulling my name out of the hat!

Photo’s of me making use of the bath (with bubbles in stratgeic positions) to follow… ;)

Only minutes after writing a post about my trip to Barbados thanks to SunShine.co.uk and Affiliate Future, do I stumble across a thread over at A4U Forums detailing another affiliate incentive.

Again this is another beauty that’s well worth going for, and is achievable by everyone, not just ‘Super Affiliates’ or ‘Pretty Good Affiliates‘ ;)

The Prize
The prize is a brand new bathroom (fitting excluded as far as I can see) from Wickes. Obviously the merchant that’s offering the prize is Wickes themselves, managed by Equator via the Affiliate Window network.

How To Enter
All you have to do to gain entry to the prize draw is make a single Wickes bathroom sale over £200. Each affiliate can only have one entry, so once again the chances of winning are just as good for small new affiliates, as those larger more established ones.

Once again merchants have missed the opportunity to make the most of bank holiday visitors to my website due to poor plannnig and communication of their special event and bank holiday sales.

I presume merchants have, somewhere in their offices, a calendar of sorts… it doesn’t have to be a special all singing all dancing calendar, just black and white or a simple photocopy will do! These low-tech gadgets tend to HIGHLIGHT when we have bank holidays in the UK and can be a very useful tool in planning ahead!

Sadly some merchants and/or account managers, have left it until the very last minute to inform affiliates about what special offers they have taking place this bank holiday. When a merchant knows something is being planned… you know like a Bank Holiday sale, why don’t they let us affiliates know in advance?

Merchants obviously have to prepare their back end for price changes, have to arrange with development teams the changes to the look and feel of graphics, and for those that have outlets, have to also prepare signage to be shown in shop windows. This is all prepared weeks in advance, yet when it comes to their business on the Internet, it is presumed we affiliates need nothing more than a couple of hours or in some cases minutes!

The problem is, what maybe some merchants don’t fully understand, is that I and other affiliates have what’s known in the trade as a newsletter. This newsletter is prepared a day or two before an event such as a bank holiday, in order that it gets sent out today. This way I can make the most of people who have registered their works email addresses, and gives them something to read waiting for the Friday 5pm bell to toll.

In order for a merchant to be listed in my newsletter, and others I guess, they need to have told me a day or two before what they have planned and have creatives (if required) in place. Failure to do so means that by the time you have sent me an email at 4pm on Friday afternoon, you have already missed the opportunity of being in my newsletter, and 9 times out of 10, I don’t have the inkling to update my site.

Now lets not be totally negative… Over the past few years things have improved immensley when it comes to providing seasonal information, allowing us to plan our sites and newsletter distributions. But there is still a lot of work to be done, in order for a merchant to make the most of what us affiliates have to offer.

HELP IS HERE
Any merchant without a calendar, pop over to Getting Personal and treat yourself… I’ve even managed to get you an exclusive £5 discount!
Other sites – don’t think about stealing this code you bstards!