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.
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Address:
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Always at your service.
Yours Faithfully,
Mrs. Nucleo joaima
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All rights reserved. © 1995-2010 FedEx.
Facebook – it’s mental
Look at this facebook group – almost 1 million members.
The name of the group is “I need a holiday” and there is no monetisation going on.
SEO and job applications
Thought for the day
When employers are getting 200 applications for every vacancy you have got to expect that someone will be doing a quick filter of all the applications they get, so it’s important to make sure you get your keywords in (matched to the profile on the advertisement), so now am I going to apply some SEO techniques to my CV and cover letter.
Then when it comes to interview, I will use some conversion techniques to close the sale and earn the commission.
New Office
Affiliates help merchants in more ways than one
It’s not just about generating sales . . . .
Comment from the MD of a large online travel company on one of the advantages of having affiliate partners :
“It’s like having an army of beta testers“
Of course this only works for this particular company because they manage their affiliate scheme well and so have open communication channels with their affiliates.
Great things about affiliate marketing
Below are some of the great things about affiliate marketing.
I will elaborate on these later. Please sign up to the RSS feed or follow me on Twitter to stay updated.
1) You get to work at times that suit you.
2) No more commute.
3) You are your own boss.
4) You could win some great incentives.
5) You could make some good money.
Don’t spam Martin Lewis
Just wanted to share a little anecdote from a friend.
He had an account on moneysavingexpert forums and had successfully struck a balance between helping people with their questions and promoting his own sites with relevant links (his description). All OK until a little while ago when he must have come up on Martin’s radar. Like in previous times he got involved in a discussion about a product and snuck in a link to a review on his own site. Came back a few days later and saw the post was gone and he had a life ban. All his posts have now been removed so all his efforts have been thwarted ! However what surprised him was when he read an article by Martin that same day and saw it contained information if not the exact text from the page on his site!
Moral :
1) Don’t bother.
2) If you do, don’t be too cocky and once you get a reasonable number of posts / links on there quit while you’re ahead !
Thing is, most of the forum members must go to cashback sites anyway thought I, so it’s no great loss to him. However a vote going on at the site now reveals (at time of writing and 2500 votes) that 44% of voters don’t understand them, never heard of them, or can’t be bothered, while 49% occasionally, usually or always use cashback sites. Not as high as I had presumed given the members at that site. As cashback sites are one of the enemies of the content affiliate marketeer I spoke to 2 e-tailers that use cashback sites and both have said that they don’t drive “that much volume” one adding though, “they are an important part of the mix”.
If you had a page as cool as this . . .
If you had a webpage as smart as this on your site . . .
http://www.yucca.co.uk/team.asp
What icon would you be ?
why ? ( optional )
Traditionally I’ve been known as Peacock ( The )
But on Twitter I have gone for a Danish pastry.
No particular reason just a reflection from when I worked in Denmark.
The next pricing model for airlines ?
Pay what you want for flights, hotels, cruises and car-hire?
In these days of over capacity in almost any market you care to mention, except maybe bankruptcy administrators and liquidators, it could be time for a new pricing model to be applied. In the travel industry, the owners of inventory face the challenge that they can’t stockpile the product. When the 10:15 flight to Tenerife departs, every empty seat is zero revenue, zero ancillary revenue and zero chance of a repeat customer. Worse – it could be extra revenue and customer ownership by one of your competitors.
Over at the Big Apple Times, they are reporting on an real life trial of a pricing model called ” Pay what you want ” in which a team of researchers studied the affect of offering the price promotion at three different businesses – a cinema, a deli and a Chinese buffet – near Frankfurt, Germany. For some products consumers actually paid more than the previous prices, and in the case of the Chinese buffet average price fell but the increase in custom made up for it.
You can read the executive summary of the report here, I have also copied some of the conclusions below :
“Overall, the results of the experiments indicate that PWYW might be suitable as a price promotion tool and may also help improve the seller’s credibility by letting the consumers decide about the prices of products. Implementing PWYW, the seller can demonstrate to consumers that he or she believes in the quality of the products because lower prices can compensate for lower quality without signaling low quality by lower posted prices. The application is also simple and easy to communicate to consumers. This may increase the chance of word of mouth and build up a positive pricing image among consumers. However, PWYW poses a risk that the price buyers pay will be much lower than the seller’s cost or even equal to zero. Especially for high-priced products, PWYW does not seem to be an appropriate pricing mechanism, because the incentives to realize a large deal profit may outweigh aspects of fairness. In such a situation, revenues will probably suffer if the seller cannot set a minimum price threshold.
In the three field studies of this article, a personal interaction between seller and buyer exists and potentially supports the applicability of PWYW. Further research should analyze the importance of such personal interactions on consumers’ decision process. Furthermore, PWYW might be a profitable alternative to free samples for new product introductions or money-back guarantees. “
If airlines adopted the scheme on certain routes on certain days ( e.g. Tuesdays ) they would at least attract good PR, and if the flying crew deliver a great product then the revenue might just surprise the bean counters too. Some airlines are already giving away flights in various ways, so how about this – 10 seats on the worst flights given away on a PWYW basis. .
Who will be first to give it a go ?
Enemies of Travel Industry Affiliates
- Cashback sites - These sites offer customers a split of the commission paid out from affiliate schemes so even if an affiliate has worked hard generating compelling content on their website to encourage a booking at XXXtravel merchant, the affiliate doesn’t get the credit. Now big media companies including Kelkoo and TheSun have cashback offerings meaning an even wider potential of losing a sale at the lastminute.
- Vouchercode sites - like the cashback sites they come in at the end of the customers journey / decision making process and via a google search for “discount code for XXXtravel merchant” end up being the last click before sale and so get the affiliate commission.
- Megabrands - There is a trend in the travel industry for the owners of inventory (i.e the flight seats, hotel rooms etc) to regain control of their stock and distribute it themselves through their own websites. The worst example for travel industry affiliate and travel agent alike is Ryanair who have such a well known brand and excel at PR that they don’t need help generating traffic to their site. There is no real example in the hotel side yet but increased consolidation could mean we see that day.
- Travel Companies Call Centres – There will always be a certain amount of leakage caused by customers that the affiliate has delivered to the website booking with the travel supplier – but by the phone so the affiliate gets zilch. As a rule of thumb the more complex the product the more likely the leakage to the telephone, e.g. flight only, not likely, deluxe cruise, ‘fraid so. Look out for a lack of an online booking discount, prominently displayed telephone numbers as 2 factors that won’t help the affiliate feed his or her kids. Affiliates can try and reduce the leakage by answering as many questions customers may have on their landing pages. Some merchants are kind enough to provide a version of their site without a phone number for affiliates.
