On 2nd of January I wrote Zero percent equals time to ditch Dixons Electricals, today I think its only fair to report that Dixons have listened to the concerns of affiliates and increased the commissions on all the 0% and 0.5% product ranges, details here, a special thank you to Julia Stent of Affiliate Window for being proactive on behalf of Affiliates and guiding the merchant into making this positive move.

While the new commissions are not the best we could have hoped for it is certainly a move in the right direction and will help to raise Dixons profile in affiliate marketing, something that has taken quite a battering in recent months.

Which merchant will be NEXT to make a positive move to improve their image?

There has been a lot of negativity of late surrounding UK Affiliate Marketing so taking inspiration from Jason Dale’s article I’m going to Accentuate The Positive – Eliminate The Negative.

What I am going to do is take a few recent and ongoing issues and flip them over.

1. Next and others dropping commissions … FLIP … Other merchants raising commissions notably EBTM and Attractiontix spring to mind.
2. Uplifted Lingerie go bust (excuse the pun) leaving a stack of unpaid commissions … FLIP … Webgains to pay outstanding Uplifted commissions from their own funds, something they also did when CD Wow had problems.
3. Argos paying a paltry insulting 25p for click and collect … FLIP … Comet see the value of the affiliate sales channel and pay 3.5% on click and collect.
4. Next leaving Affiliate Window … FLIP … AffiliateWindow in association with Equator launch the Bhs (British Home Stores) affiliate program paying 8% until 1st of May and 5% thereafter.
5. Dixons and others paying 0% on some lines … FLIP … Do some work boys and girls and take a look around plenty of merchants pay decent commissions on all these lines.

So you see it ain’t all bad in Affiliate Marketing, every cloud has a silver lining

In Fraser Edwards recent Discount Codes Podcast in which I was involved along with Joe Connor and Chris Frost we touched on the subject of the Paid On Results Voucher Manager Tool.

It is around three months since POR launched their voucher manager tool, one of the purposes of of me writing this article is to serve as a reminder to merchants and affiliates alike of its existence.

What does it do?

The purpose of the Voucher Manager Tool is for merchants to quickly and easily inform affiliates about discount voucher codes which are available, both generic and exclusive.

The tool also allows affiliates to request exclusive codes from merchants.

Can it be improved?

Undoubtedly, as this is only the first release of the tool several improvement will be made I’m sure, POR have never been the type of company to say “right we’ve done that, lets forget about it”.

A couple of things I’d like to see in future releases are:

• Email Alerts – notification of new codes already exists however I’d like to see this extended to expiring codes etc.
• The addition of another column on the table of codes possibly colour coded for pending, live and expired codes.

Personally I think this tool is a great innovation, however like anything else it will only build up into a useful resource if it is used and kept up to date.

In the wake of some of the commission cuts that have occurred of late from merchants who clearly do not fully understand the potential of affiliate marketing it makes a refreshing change to receive an email such as this one.

AttractionTix – Commission Drastically Raised

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our affiliates who have worked hard to promote our website over the past 18 months.
Things have changed significantly during that time, most notably our product range has really pushed out into a truly worldwide offering.As a result of these changes I am pleased to announce that I have raised effective immediately our commission from 2% to 6% for all sales except Florida and Disney Paris. These two areas are unfortunately highly competitive and as a result we do not have much margin to play with.
Thank you for all you do and I look forward to working with you all this year!

Peter Barnsley

Thankfully Attractiontix are not alone, other merchants also value their affiliates, EBTM immediately spring to mind having recently increased commissions from 10% to 15%, and there are many others such as Buyagift and IWOOT who are taking their top affiliates on nice jollies, fighter jets and snowboarding respectively.

Ignore the doom mongerers who say affiliate marketing is on its way out, I say its stronger than ever and I’m sure all the merchants mentioned here will agree.

Attractiontix, Buyagift and IWOOT are all on Affiliate Window and EBTM are on Paid On Results.

If you arrived here looking for the Attractiontix website click here.

One of the original dragons in the TV series Dragons’ Den, will today reveal an enterprising scheme to give aspiring businesses that essential leg up on the ladder of success.

Doug Richard, one of the United Kingdoms top entrepreneurs is launching a Nationwide tour which aims to create 5,000 businesses during in the next two years.

Fellow Dragon Duncan Bannatyne will join Mr Richard in Newcastle today for the launch of ‘The Doug Richard Project’, this will take the form of a series of boot camps giving advice and guidance to businesspeople, in order to fast track the business start up and showing them what mistakes and pitfalls must be avoided.

The first event will be held at Newcastle University on February 27.

For more details, visit www.thedougrichardproject.com