Open Letter to Affiliate Future / Progressive
I “heart” Affiliate Future.
We’ve worked with them for over seven years, as affiliates then merchants. We’ve seen them grow from the plucky underdog, to the biggest Travel network in the UK market. Maz Darvish was probably the first person to recognise the value in what we were doing with Holiday Watchdog, and helped us a great deal getting more travel companies into Affiliate Marketing.
Recently, it’s fair to say things haven’t being going well. Issues with payments to affiliates is the one thing a network can’t afford to let happen. As a network, there are two things you have to get absolutely right. Tracking and payments. That’s it, everything else is an “extra”.
I’m led to believe the payments issues of late aren’t actually a financial problem, but mostly technical issues leading to payment runs not being completed.
In our own dealings with AF of late, technical support/development just isn’t there. I know they lost a lot of key development staff after the buy-out, some of whom are probably irreplaceable. However, it seems that there hasn’t been much effort to fill this gaping void in the development area, as evident by the payment issues.
So, to Progressive Digital Media, the current owners of Affiliate Future. Please, please work very hard to reinstate AF to it’s place in the top tier of UK affiliate networks. A damaged reputation in this industry takes a long long time to get back, ask anyone who used DGM in the early 2000′s. Invest in the technical development of AF, as it’s badly letting down some of the best network staff in our industry.
Take James Little, one of the best relationship builders in the UK AM scene, but seemingly has to spend his days currently sticking his fingers in the dam that is the a4u forum.
I fear some relationships may have been ruined for good, a few of our largest affiliates were very keen for us to take our programme elsewhere, part of the reason for our recent launch with Paid On Results. Once you lose an affiliate’s trust it is desperately hard to get it back.
I’m not going to tell you how to run your business, I just want to point out these issues and hope it spurs some action.
However…
if I were you, I’d get someone on the first train out of London, get up to Glasgow and speak to Paid On Results, who have by far the best tracking and payment systems in the UK.
From a very concerned friend,
Chris
Developer
We’re looking to hire a full time developer for sunshine.co.uk Ltd.
Here’s the specs -
Firm Knowledge of:
- PHP
- MYSQL
- JavaScript
- XML
- JSON
The following would also be advantageous:
- *nix enviroment experience
- A degree in something computery
- real world experience
- revision control experience
- ability to operate with 4 hours sleep per day
Applicants should provide examples of current and previous projects.
You’d initially be working in the Cheshire area, to be assimilated, then working remotely from wherever you like.
Salary will be commensurate with your ninja level (more than you’re getting just now).
To apply, contact me. How? You work it out…
Creating Tenerife.co.uk
Yesterday was a big deal for us, we had a baby!
As you may have seen, our latest site tenerife.co.uk was launched publicly with a very nice article on tnooz.
Almost a year after acquiring the domain and about 8 months since we started working on it, it’s always a great feeling when a site goes “out there”.
As explained in the tnooz article, the aim of the site is to provide more in the way of information for our visitors than the price-orientated sunshine.co.uk site, while leveraging the domain to rank well in the search engines.
Greg’s DVD Box Sets
Following on from one of my previous posts, Frank’s Underwear, I thought I’d occasionally blog about affiliate sites that impress me. Hopefully, “occasionally” will mean more than once every eleven months, fingers crossed.
I was at the Affiliate Doctors panel at last years London a4uExpo and was hugely impressed by one of the sites the panel reviewed.
I spoke to Greg Findley (@gregfindley) at the time and he’s since taken on board the recommendations of the panel, continuing to develop DVD Box Sets (dvdboxsets.co.uk) into a great example of a price comparison site. I sent Greg a few vague questions to get an idea of his journey which I hope you’ll find interesting too! Read the rest of this entry »
