I Blame The Kids

Thought this was worth sharing, giving you an insight into the daily trials and tribulations of an Online Travel Agency.

We received the following email one day last year from one of our suppliers -

I just wanted to provide you with information regarding one of your clients, Mrs removed who booked through sunshine.co.uk to stay at the removed in removed.
 
The clients arrived on removed and we were informed by our local agent that the the hotel manager contacted them this morning to advise the clients have been arrested in a drunken state due to fighting between themselves and also for mistreating their children and the parents have also caused damage in the hotel which has to be paid for.
 
The children are being held in a childrens detention centre whilst the police take necessary action and none of them are allowed to return to the hotel other than to collect their luggage but they must have a police escort.  

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SEO – Aim High

When I was first starting out in Affiliate Marketing I read everything that was out there on SEO. I spent more time reading than doing to begin with. Most of what was true then still holds true today, the rules of SEO haven’t changed all that much.

Using the now defunct Overture Keyword Tool I’d choose my keywords and aim for a phrase somewhere below the top, assuming that the main one or two word phrases would belong to the big online brands and SEO Jedis.

This seemed like a good long tail tactic to get started as a noob and produced a few trickles of traffic. When I accidently started ranking for a few of the “top” keyphrases I’d tried to avoid, I realised it was possible to aim higher with some success.

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Where’s Doug?

Since being poked in the ribs by a certain Doug Scott I thought I’d better get back to some blogging. Doug’s eloquently titled post “Chris Clarkson of sunshine.co.uk is getting lazy” seems to have done the trick.

I am a little worried however Doug’s blog may have been hacked, and someone with a political agenda and proper spelling and grammer appears to have taken over!

So while I may have been lazy with my recent blogging, at least I’m still writing them myself!

Chris calling Doug out.

Posted in personal | 7 Comments »

Kicking Out Crappy Affiliates

or…Why a High EPC is Ideal for Commission Junction, Linkshare and Shareasale

The EPC is a number that every affiliate program on the major affiliate networks has, its like a batting average. EPC stands for earnings per 100 clicks. So if a merchant on CJ, Linkshare or SAS has an EPC of $30, it produces $30 for every hundred clicks that are sent to the merchant’s website. The EPC can be a very inaccurate number if the merchant is not expiring or kicking out affiliates that produce garbage clicks and no conversions. This can seriously skew the EPC downward. In CJ, Linkshare, and Shareasale, affiliates should look at a merchant’s EPC to see which offers are perfoming the best. As a merchant you should be trying to keep a very high EPC by keeping crappy affiliate traffic out of your program and working on making your website conversion rate to improve your click-to-sale ration.

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This Is My Desk!

Well, kind of. Welcome to my new theme, designed by Caboodle Design.

The design process went along the lines of -

Caboodle: How do you spend your time, what makes you you?

Me: I’m mostly in front of my PC.

Caboodle: Hmm, what about in your spare time?

Me: I’m mostly in front of my PC.

Caboodle: Uh-huh, do you have any other hobbies?

Me: I’m mostly in front of my PC.

Caboodle: *sigh*

You get the idea! So we settled upon a poetic representation of my desk. Not entirely original, but enough of “me” to make it unique.

All I need now are recommendations for sweet plug-ins and stuff to put in the menus and footer!

Let me know what you think of the new design, good and bad. All comments will be passed onto Caboodle, and Michelle will take the right hump if you don’t like!  

Posted in internet | 4 Comments »