Affiliate Incentive from DFDS
Nice incentive here from DFDS Seaways.
There are eleven prizes up for grabs for affiliates that generate sales and / or add content for DFDS Seaways whose affiliate programme is available on both Buy.at & Tradedoubler. Here’s the prizes :
The sales period for the comp finishes on 28th Feb.
I like this incentive because firstly because the top prize is excellent and also because there is a chance for everyone to have a go.
Opodo Affiliate Programme
Just a quick one to say that the Opodo affiliate programme is closing on Tradedoubler and will be popping up on Affiliate Window instead. Nice WIN for AWIN who are building up a nice collection of travel merchants including BA, LowCostHolidays, Blue Chip Vacations and Hoseasons.
Last date for changing the links is 1st March. Nice to have a bit of notice for a change !
Wordpress Tweaks
- Delete (”trash!”) the first post “Hello World” which also takes care of the first comment.
- Either trash the default about page or add something to replace the default text.
- Change permalinks – under the settings menu. – be aware of any requirements that some plugins or datafeeds might have for permalink structure.
- Upload and activate your chosen wordpress theme under the appearance menu.
- Start installing some of these recommended wordpress plugins.
- Look at the privacy menu under “settings”. Decide whether you want to hide your site from search engines until it is ready.
- Delete the default links from the links section.
- Set-up Askimet to ensure you will get less spam.
- Under settings / writing, increase the size of the post box to 15 or more, and oh, while your there add these extra ping services under Update Services :
- http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
- http://ping.myblog.jp
- http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
- http://bblog.com/ping.php
Hope this helps. I will try and add to the post as I go through the latest site I am working on.
Removing affiliates from affiliate programmes
Removing Inactive & Low Volume affiliates
Not really sure the wisdom of this ?… (see below email I have copied), maybe someone that manages affiliate programmes can enlighten me. I can see that it might make some statistics look good but otherwise can’t see the worth in the time it must take to sort this out… Especially when you consider this is the only email I have ever had from the merchant since joining. What I’m thinking is, there are many reasons why an affiliate hasn’t promoted a merchant significantly – most commonly that they simply haven’t got round to it I guess. This doesn’t mean, however that they never will do, so why waste the time having people re-applying etc. Wouldn’t it be a better use of time and resource to ask affiliates why they are not currently promoting and if there is anything they need to help them promote the merchant better ?
PS – 2 days notice to remove links is also a bit annoying.
Dear Affiliate,
The XXXX Affiliate team have analysed the performance of publishers during XXXX’s 2009 Financial Year (Oct 08- Sep 09) with an eye to clear the database of affiliates who were not generating many impressions or unique visitors.
We have noticed that your site is one of those that has not met these criteria. We will therefore be de-activating your account by 27th January 2010.
If you are still interested in being part of the XXXX Affiliate program, please re-apply to join the programme at any time.
Also, if your performance has boosted since October 2009 please let us know as soon as possible so we can ensure that you are able to continue on the programme.
NOW Is the season to be jolly
Well, Christmas isn’t normally that kind to travel affiliates, who contrary to most other types of affiliates see a drop in traffic and conversions in December. January 2010 has been great though…
- High Basket Values – It’s normally families booking and often for school holidays so it’s not unusual to see £2000 bookings coming through.
- Increased Traffic – Simply the searches go through the roof compared with the preceding months. I love it.
- Good Conversions – Normally travel sites don’t convert that well. Customers search and search but in January most sites have strong call to action and time limited offers so conversion improves.
As far as I can tell from my little patch, 2010 is shaping up to be a great year for the (beach) travel industry, unless they go and do some crazy capacity increases, but I reckon that will also be under control and helped by the big four becoming the big two. My guess is that :
- The snow helped. It was pretty cold there for a while, which can really drive bookings.
- Low interest rates helped. Even if we don’t exactly have consumer confidence back 100%, the low interest rates probably helped people whack a fortnight in Cyprus on their Mastercard.
- People are more happy than ever to convert online (and call centres can end up with calls queueing), Moreover, certain holiday companies are better than ever at converting their traffic online with less people reverting to the phone.
My Blogs are getting spammed by travel companies
Below are four sites that have been spamming my travel websites recently. I expect the holiday companies concerned don’t know about this directly but have hired an SEO agency to do this “work”. The comments left have all been vaguely on topic but not directly related to my original posts so I suspect this in automated process they have set up. On many of my sites I have now disabled comments which is a shame as it is a good way to get direct feedback from real customers but I just found it was too much work to moderate and the percentage of spam was high.
1) ocean-florida.co.uk – On page 1 of Google for the term they have in the anchor text in the links they are leaving in the blog comment so maybe this sh*t does work… Also what’s with the link to a poker site in the footer ?. I reckon they could improve their SEO by getting rid of that !
2) packyourbags.com – Have only made it to page two for the term “Cheap holidays to Turkey” that they were spamming me with but are on page one for “Cheap holidays to Greece” which is another one they have been trying to get their links down for.
3) beatthebrochure.com – Connected to the Florida website and also features the same poker site in the footer. Again this site ranks for the Tenerife Holiday term they have been spamming my sites with.
4) goldtrail.co.uk – Bit of a strange one here, the link they have been trying to get down is cheapaccommodationsinturkey (yes, all one word). It hasn’t worked particularly well for them but if you do search Google for it you can see all the places they have managed to get their comment and link published.
Now I can Retire
Great News in my inbox just now . . . .
Happy New year,
This mail is to remind you of your registered package.Content: Bank Draft of
$800,000 USD and some
end of year gift items. Officially registered by your colleague who is
currently undergoing Survey project with Nigeria National
petroleum Corporation.
For your information the VAT and COD have been paid. The only payment you to
make is for Customs Clearance Form charge of £210 GBP.
Please Contact FedEx Delivery Department Mr. Richard Raynor for shipment
details and requirement.
Email: fedex.service_@live.com Tel: +2348071208793.
It is mandatory to reconfirm your Postal address and telephone numbers for
urgent Service.
Full Name:
Address:
City:
State / Province:
Phone:
Country:
Always at your service.
Yours Faithfully,
Mrs. Nucleo joaima
©Federal Express Corporation
All rights reserved. © 1995-2010 FedEx.
Who paid my mortgage this year
HAPPY NEW YEAR !
As promised when I did the snapshot of a months affiliate earnings by network here is the % breakdown for my sites for the full year 2009.
Non Network – 42% – A whole mix of things ( including some non travel stuff ). Bit of an eye opener it is such a high percentage. The downside with affiliate schemes that are run in house and not via a network is that you have to reach the payment freshold before you can start to cash out, also can mean more messing about with invoices but the upside can be that you earn more when the network isn’t taking a cut!
Commission Junction – 18% – Mostly thanks to TUI Travel Companies but a range of stuff including skyscanner which is small amounts each day but all adds up!.
Affiliate Future – 14% – Mostly thanks to the Sunshine affiliate scheme which is off to a blinder already for 2010.
Euroads – 11% – Mostly thanks to Cimber Sterling. This will probably be less important next year as they have cut their UK capacity a lot.
Affiliate Window – 6% – Diverse earnings. Nothing stands out.
Tradedoubler – 6% – Mostly thanks to First Choice which is now at CJ.
Adsense – 2% – Don’t do much of this as have tested versus earnings via affiliate schemes.
Amazon – 1% – Don’t do much of this but I wish travel sites could convert like this one !
The Perfect Affiliate Scheme ?
One of the biggest (lucrative) things I have learned so far in affiliate marketing is to be very selective about which merchants to promote. It can make a massive difference to the end results. The main thing is to match the site content and domain / search ranking, apart from that the biggest single factor is of course conversion. In addition I like to go for brands that I can be enthusiastic about as “the sell” is so much easier that way.
In no particular order then, below are my most wanted features. If you are an affiliate, a merchant or work at a network / agency what would you add to the list ?
- No Cashback Sites Policy - Not that they don’t have a policy but they have a policy and it doesn’t allow incentivised traffic. What’s the point of me going to great lengths to promote a merchant if I lose the cookie at the last minute to a cashback site?
- No Discount Codes in Checkout Page - Why a merchant would like to distract a booker at this critical point is beyond me. Having the discount code box is almost encouraging them to go back to a search engine to look for a discount code which will either reduce your margin or lead your customer to be cross – sold to a competitor. There are other ways to implement voucher codes.
- High Conversion Rate – Honestly I don’t really care too much about the commission level, what I want is something that converts. Great prices, trustworthy website, call to action (”sale ends soon” / “only 2 seats left”) all helps.
- Leakage Points Blocked – Connected to High Conversion Rate but kind of different. No phone numbers, brochure requests or similar that will encourage an offline sale which leads me to…
- Online Booking Discount - If you have to have a phone number, please don’t make it a free phone number and please offer an online only booking discount to reward your customers for keeping your sales costs down.
- Merchant Doesn’t go bankrupt! – This can be a real pain as it can mean losing out on commissions for sales that were made before the insolvency.
- Available through an affiliate network – I’m in two minds about including this… The reason I like this is it makes reporting easier (all in one place) and don’t have to worry about reaching a payment threshold, but then again there are some excellent non-network schemes around with I guess higher margins because there is no middle man.
Merchant Merry Go Round
It’s like musical chairs at the moment…. Quite annoying to have to wast time changing links when I could be writing compelling content.
- The BA.com affiliate scheme is now off linkshare and available at TD or AWIN.
- Co-operative Travel is off Buy.at and instead on Affiliate Future (including a Christmas incentive to win an iPod). Search box creative coming soon and, separately Co-operative Travel Cruises launch is coming soon.
- Lastminute.com have popped up on Tradedoubler – same commission levels.
- First Choice are now on Commission Junction and will close on TD 7th December.
List of British Affiliate Networks
Couple of new programmes launched recently that I thought are worth a mention :
- Megabus.com at Affiliate Window.
- VivaStay.com at Affiliate Window & Webgains. The telephone number and external links are removed for affiliate traffic which gets a big tick from me.
