Guest post by David Merry a Director at online live casino CastleCasino.com and manages the affiliate program marketing. You can find out more about promoting CastleCasino.com at www.castleaffiliates.com.

Reliable tracking software holds the affiliate industry together, without it we wouldn’t be able to put any faith in the programs which we promote and rely on. Regardless of the confidence which you have in your affiliate software operator it is always best to get another third party perspective, something which Google Analytics allows you to do in spectacular fashion.
Even if you have 100% faith in the tracking capability of your affiliate software, the greatest benefits come from the mountain of extra data analysis opportunities it provides you with. As a quick example to entice you to read further, you may naturally assume that the 100 clicks you send per day to your merchant come predominantly from a particular keyword you get 2000 visits for; however you may discover that actually they come from a keyword which only sends 500 visitors – therefore enabling you to shift your focus and allocate your budget better based on accurate statistics. In short, you could spend less money and make a lot more. What have you got to lose?

How to implement:

In order to allow Google Analytics to start tracking your outbound affiliate clicks as goals you need to complete the following:

Step 1: Assign a tracker to each link.

You will need to input an artificial tracker to each link that you want to track, which is created by tagging the page with the _trackPageview() JavaScript function. As an example, if you wanted to log every click on a particular link to www.keithbond.co.uk as a page view for /G1/keithbond.co.uk, you would add the following attribute to the link’s tag:

Although adding a tracker to every link is long winded initially it can be speeded up using a find and replace source code tool. From that point it becomes simple and second nature to include the JavaScript tracker when building a link. Please note, the G1 included in the link stands for ‘goal 1’ and just helps me categorise, you can add whatever you like.

Step 2: Use the JavaScript generated tracker as a goal

The task is now simple, simply add the tracking link to your Google Analytics goals section (Website Profile > Edit). Using the code above as an example you would add the following:
/G1/keithbond_co.uk

This should be added as a URL destination with head match selected in Google Analytics.

Simple!

How to use the tracking

Once the process that I have outlined has been implemented you should start to receive data reported as goals within hours.

The most basic report you will find is an overview of the goals which have been completed and the conversion rate. This doesn’t help analyse anything in particular however may give you insights into trended data, for example which date of the month are your conversion rates generally the highest.

Next browse the traffic sources section in your Analytics and break it down further to the traffic sources list. Then click on the ‘Goal Set’ tab and you will be greeted with exact click through percentages that every single source has given you. This should help you identify which sources are actually earning you the money and sending traffic to your merchant. Remember that traffic levels is just a worthless number, it is the traffic which converts which pays the mortgage.

You can also use this same method with the keywords which you rank in search engines for, allowing you to identify the consumer intent of those visiting your site through them. Remember, you can now filter out all of the keywords which are sending you non-converting traffic and allocate budget into what earns you money.

As my last example (from the millions I have!) you can even break this down into territories. The example below shoes me that people from Spain seem a lot more inclined to click on this particular brand – all I have to do to improve conversions for this is to include this brand on the Spanish versions of our sites. Simple, yet effective.

I think you are starting to get the point, try it out for yourself and see what is and isn’t working for you!

Tracking affiliate clicks as goals with Google Analytics

Twitter

I had a chat recently with Graeme Sandwell (Director at Paid on results and the genius behind their technical innovations which are widely copied but seldom equalled) and he pointed out that Internet Marketing Blogs UK was no longer updating it’s twitter account and when I took a look I found it hadn’t been for a number of months, shows how off the ball I have been of late.

Well to cut a long story short Graeme kindly helped me to get the site tweeting again, more about that in a future post, but massive thanks to Graeme.

The Cull

I took the opportunity while sorting out Internet Marketing Blogs to cull the blogs that hadn’t been updated for quiet some time and in all removed around 40 the remaining channel list is here. If you are no longer on the list of bloggers and wish to be re-added once you become active again give me a shout (contact form) same goes for any active UK focused Internet Marketing / Affiliate bloggers who would like to be included.

Please note that in the main merchants and agency’s who predominantly blog product newsletters appear here and not in the main feed.

Internet Marketing Blogs cull and return to Twitter

Guest article by Oliver Ackers of www.SimplyFreeGadgets.com

As you may already know, getting into affiliate marketing can be quite daunting, and is hard to get going in the correct direction, and then most people will usually give up anyway. Well here’s something that may help you get your foot in the door with a little more ease. Often referred to as, “Freebie Sites”, “Referral Sites” and so on, these sites are very easy to use and to understand, that anyone can use them.

So usually, to get a sale through an affiliate, you need to make a website and promote it, and hope people will click through and buy things for you to get your commission, but with this there’s an extra incentive. The main thing that will hooks people to these sites is the opportunity of getting a free gift, which can be one of the latest gadgets on the market. This instantly gives you an easy audience to target, as there are new gadgets being released all of the time, the Kinect has just been released, and there’s always new Apple gear coming out. So you could even get a Free iPhone

So to complete one of these sites the first thing that you need to do is sign up to the website, and then complete an offer that the freebie site is advertising. These offers are the affiliate part of the website, as when you sign up, the freebie site will get paid a certain amount, which is about (£/$)20 on average. Then you need to refer some friends to the website to do the same thing. So say you’re going for a Nintendo Wii, which costs around £180, this would mean 9x£20 = £180, which will pay for your gift. Then the gift is usually ordered from Amazon, straight to your house.

You don’t just have to get free gifts though, you can of course request for a bank transfer, so you’ll get the money instead!
So as you can see, this is a much more attractive version of affiliate marketing, because instead of just advertising a company alone, you can advertise getting a free gift instead, and in the long run, you are pretty much getting all the affiliate money that you have earned through them. The way they make their profit is usually on people signing up, completing an offer, maybe referring a few friends, and then giving up. Don’t be one of those people! Make something of it! Make sure you get your Free Xbox or anything else that you want!

To get going, just go to www.SimplyFreeGadgets.com

Affiliate Referral Websites – Getting a Free Gift

Silverbean the online marketing agency who are based in Newcastle have just launched a dedicated Affiliate Website.

I have worked with Silverbean for a long time and they are always helpful and willing to go the extra mile to help affiliates promote the merchant programs they look after.

The blurb on their new site says it all really;

We built this site to solely cater for you the affiliate, to make it easier for you to contact and communicate with us, obtain valuable industry information and insights, access resources and receive information about our merchants.

Silverbean look after almost 30 merchant clients including Racing UK, Brora, Fashion Union and Wiltshire Farmfoods.

Check out the new website here www.sbnaffiliates.co.uk

Silverbean launch new Affiliate Website

Bit of a belated review of a4uexpo London 2010 and much of it has already been covered, see the a4uexpo blog What’s being said about a4uexpo London 2010?

Highlights

Of the sessions I attended 3 absolutely stood out these were the gems I unearthed ata4uexpo. I’m not going to go into any detail as slides and videos are available somewhere, (Chris Johnski where are they).

Starting off with SEO David Naylor of Broncho first session day one spoke about:

The Three Pillars of SEO – An Advanced Review

I said in my timetable post that Dave is a legend and he lived up to the hype, he mentioned a load of tools he uses daily in his SEO many of which I will now also be using.

Conversion Rate Experts for the day 2 early risers told us about:

Conversion Killing Mistakes : 15 things Affiliates still aren’t doing in 2010

I don’t think I have ever made as many notes in an expo session before, and thanks to my shiny new I pad I can actually read them, cheers guys.

Last but not least in my top 3 is Kevin Gibbons of Seoptimise who gave us:

20 Social Media Tools & 20 WordPress Plugins Boost Your Performance

This is an amazing list some I knew about and some I didn’t, Kevin has blogged about his session with links to everything he mentioned in his well presented illuminating talk. Check it out here > 40 Social Media Tools & WordPress Plugins – a4uexpo Presentation.

Those were my highlights and well worth attending for, and I only scratched the surface, 12 time slots and 50 sessions makes seeing everything an impossible task and I will be looking at the Videos and slides as soon as I get the chance.

So how can A4uexpo be improved?

Well I’d like to see an area set aside for open workshops that people could drop in and out of, for example Conversion Rate Experts (yes them again) did a clinic where they looked at various websites, illuminating not only for the website owner in question but a plethora of ideas for all in attendance when the hour was over they still had a mountain of sites they hadn’t looked at, imagine if that had been running for half a day.

Second point was from a merchant who I spoke to on day 2 who was on a day pass they said that they would gladly have paid more to upgrade to a full pass just for the one day, however they were unable to attend on the first day so a full 2 day pass was out of the question. (Apologies to Matt if this option was already available).

Any thing you want to add please comment below and/or leave feedback on the A4uexpo website.

Memorable Quote

This came from the negative SEO session and is a word of warning to anyone when buying links.

“Shitty links will hurt rankings, lose Google love, and getting trust back is very difficult”

so be warned

Expo thanks from me to…

Matthew Wood and his entire team for another excellent event.

All the speakers mentioned above.

Mark Russell and the Existem AM crew for their fine hospitality.

And finally everyone who attended, would have been no show without you.

Unearthed gems of a4uexpo London 2010

Again there has been a distinct lack of posts from me of late, but this time I have an excuse I’ve been moving house and endured all the broadband hell that goes with it. Consequently I have just got round to looking at the agenda for a4uexpo London 2010 as always I’m going to highlight the sessions that I intend attending so that I print off this page as a reminder of where I want to be, if anyone else finds this useful that is a bonus.

Please note there are over 50 sessions and I’m only going to mention the ones I’m interested in.

Monday 11th October

a4uexpo kicks off with the traditional Ignite Party, this year it is being held at the Parlour Bar, Canada Square Park from 6pm take along your ID and registration number.

Tuesday 12th October

Registration opens at 8am

The sessions

9:00 – 10:00 room 14-16

The Three Pillars of SEO – An Advanced Review

• David Naylor,?Bronco

When it comes to SEO Dave Naylor is a legend and a fellow Yorkshireman too

10:30 – 11:30 room 14-16

Negative SEO: Online Nightmares Come True

• Paul Madden,?SEOidiot
• Jon Myers,?Mediavest
• David Naylor,?Bronco
• Marcus Tandler,?Mediadonis
• Ralph Tegtmeier,?fantomaster.com GmbH

Thats right 2 SEO sessions straight off the belt, need to get my SEO fix in early.

I was also interested in Advanced Analytics for Affiliates which is on at the same time.

12:00 – 13:00 room Expo Theatre

The Truth About Cookie Overwriting

• Owen Hewitson,?Affiliate Window and Buy.at

A session about how many affiliates are typically involved in a sale and the extent to which their cookies overwrite each other.

I must admit I was tempted to attend SEO Ranking Factors in 2010.

13:15 – 14:15 room Expo Theatre

Becoming an Affiliate: A Reality Check

• Paul Brown,?affilinet
• John Lamerton,?Easy Content Units
• Kirsty McCubbin,?Blue Indian Media
• Nick Smith,?Hardly Rocket Science

Right on lunch time but this should be good and it would be rude not to show support for my good friends Kirsty and John.

14:30 – 15:30 room 17

Successful Information Architecture

• Richard Baxter,?SEOgadget.co.uk

According to the blurb Richard has experience getting sites with millions of pages fully indexed, getting the paltry 2000 pages of my main site fully optimised should be a doddle after that.

16:00 – 17:00

Not sure what to attend here yet my just have a walk round the exhibition hall.

17:15 – 18:15 room 2-4

a4uexpo – The Grill!

• Sanjit Atwal,?TradeDoubler
• Gary Bicker,?affilinet
• David Hall,?Affiliate Window and Buy.at
• Duncan Popham,?Total Search Solutions
• Daniel Powell,?Commission Junction

Moderated Q & A session with Publishing Directors of some of the major UK networks, hopefully very illuminating.

18:00 – 19:15

Drinks reception, Speed Networking or Black Hat Protection hmm difficult choice if I’m flagging the drinks will win if not then its Black Hat SEO time.

Day one concludes with the Breakout Party at The Troxy.

Wednesday 13th October

a4uexpo London 2010 – My Timetable

I recently caught up with Matthew Wood Managing Director of Existem Ltd and founder of the leading affiliate conference a4uexpo and the popular affiliate forum affiliates4u, with a4uexpo 2010 looming large Matthew agreed to answer a few questions. So without further ado…

Hi Matthew, Can you give me a bit of the background of A4uexpo, how did the initial concept come to fruition?

Within the industry affiliates have a desire to meet people who really ‘get’ affiliate marketing. After all, it’s not something you want to bore and chat to your mates about down the pub!

We started with local Get2Gethers around the UK, much like the ones we have recently held in Dublin, Bristol and in Manchester this week.  The popularity of our events in London were frankly bewildering with our last bar style event at the Pitcher & Piano attracting nearly 600 people.

Was the time right though to launch a fully blown conference? We had some hard thinking to do.

What was the biggest challenge getting A4uexpo off the ground?

The risk. Let’s face it we were a very small team in Bristol; affiliates by nature  – certainly not event or conference managers and to invest £250,000 in a conference at ExCeL was mind-blowing.

I sat down with key players in the market to gauge appetite and most importantly support.

Back in 2007 Affiliate Marketing was going through a big transition, its reputation growing but brands were still unclear about its actual ROI.

With significant support from affiliate networks we were able to push forward and it was a bumpy yet exciting ride.

The most important thing however was that the whole industry backed the event networks, bloggers, agencies and so forth and saw it as a way of getting everyone together at the same time in the same place and to really put our channel in the limelight.

Four London Expo’s and two in Europe, any plans to go intercontinental?

Affiliate Marketing whilst established in the UK, USA and major mainland European markets such as Germany is still embryonic in nature elsewhere.  However that said we are hoping to launch some a4uexpo ‘lite’ events in 2011 in emerging markets. Keep an eye on our twitter account @a4uexpo for details.

If you were only able to go to one session at this year’s a4uexpo which one would it be?

I think it would have to be the a4uexpo Grilling Session – Day 1 @ 17.15 in Room 2-4. A session which involves the Publisher Directors of some UK Networks, Duncan Popham I’m sure will be providing some controversial questions towards them. I’m expecting the questions to cover Affiliate Payments, De-duplication, Closed Groups and Confidentiality, but we’ve left these questions in the capable hands of Duncan!

That’s just one. It’s an incredibly difficult task to schedule 50 sessions and to ensure we cover the latest trends and topics often before they hit the minds of those in the industry. I urge people to take a good look and if there is not something for you let me know!

Which one person in the affiliate marketing industry do you most admire?

That’s incredibly hard. The beauty of Affiliate Marketing is that it can be used to supplement your lifestyle alongside a day job or enable entrepreneurs to create tangible businesses.

It’s fair to say people have come and gone, so anyone who has innovated to stay in the game gets my admiration.

What is the biggest change you have seen since you started in the affiliate industry?

I’ve been around long enough to see many types of business model leap to the top of the earnings chart. However the biggest change I guess is the overall acknowledgement of Affiliate Marketing as a professional and genuine online marketing channel. That said it frustrates me that leading publications still don’t give us the credit we deserve.

Where do you see affiliate marketing in say 5 or 10 years time?

It’s going to change to Performance Marketing and will be closely aligned with other marketing channels in an integrated fashion. There will be far greater segmentation of publisher business models, many traditional affiliates will fade away and be replaced with top level high tier publishers, performance marketing enabled mobile applications and high value add web applications. Everything will be open sourced with closer collaboration and a keener eye on the actual ROI. That’s next year though! – It’s just impossible to go further ahead!

Finally is there any particular funny anecdote or incident from a previous a4uexpo you would like to share with my readers?

Too many to mention! Though I’m sure I’ve seen some videos of James Little from Affiliate future and Mark White from UK Web Media dancing on youtube.

Thank you very much Matthew for taking time out of your busy schedule, see you in October.

Oh here are the video’s Matt mentions:

a4uexpo 2010 Europe’s largest Performance Marketing Conference with over 1,000 delegates, 48 conference sessions will be held in London on the 12th and 13th October 2010.

An Interview with Matthew Wood of a4uexpo

Earlier this week I attended the LinkShare UK Symposium in London’s Westminster, this was going to be a straight review however Symposium UK – Official Event Wrapup and The Need For Feeds @ LinkShare’s Symposium have saved me the effort thanks guys ‘n’ gals.

The theme for the event ‘Targeting Your Efforts – in 2010 and beyond’ and Linkshare UK certainly hit their target with this event right on the bullseye.

Despite a few logistical nightmares, which must have had Liane Dietrich, Managing Director of LinkShare UK and her team tearing their hair out in the run up to the event as various speakers had to cancel due the flight ban brought on by the Icelandic volcano eruption, the whole day went really well, the quality of the speaking was excellent and was in my opinion pitched at the right level for a mixed and varied audience, kudos to those drafted in at last minute to fill the breach it must have been a bit daunting with so little time to prepare.

2 important points which came out time and time again over the course of the day were:

• Embrace social media, at the very least ensure your company has a twitter account and a facebook page and engage with your users.
• The importance of accurate up to date product feeds, Existem’s Chris Johnson covers this in more detail in the article referenced above.

Lunch was a resounding success and the caterers deserve a round of applause, don’t think I have attended an industry event before where I have heard absolutely no complaints about the food.

The afternoon Dealmaker Tradeshow was a fabulous networking opportunity, a chance to catch up with old friends and meet new ones plus the chance meet the people behind the merchant name and talk about how we can work together towards the common goal of making sales.

The evenings after party went well too in less formal surroundings over a beer or two plenty more chance to network, I would have liked to have seen more merchants in attendance though, its at the end of the day when everyone is a little more relaxed that you can really get to know people and long standing friendships as well as business partnerships can be forged even though the conversation tends to be less about work.

All in all it was a very successful day, and I look forward to Linkshare Symposium UK 2011.

Thank you very much to all at Linkshare for hosting the event, the fantastic hospitality you extended throughout the day and for an interesting session of 2 truths and a lie over a late night Chinese, that will be a topic of conversation for many months to come .

Linkshare UK Hit The Bullseye

When thinking of branching out into a new niche one first questions that pops up is who sells relevent products? the task of finding out recently got easier thanks to a new feature that Easy Content Units (ecu) have added to their already fantastic product.

To do your research simply log into your ECU account and click on the Product Search link in the menu, type in a key word, click search and bobs your uncle…

…and it doesn’t stop there you can filter your results by Merchant, Brand and Network.

And theres more, now you can either select and store the products you want, this allows you to make a content unit later, or if you click on the link icon a box pops up with a deep link url, a HTML link, an image link and the Html for an image with product link embedded, all nicely configured with your affiliate tracking code.

This is just scratching the surface of what you can do with the product search from Easy Content Units, give it a whirl.

Researching a Niche using Easy Content Units Product Search

Way back at the end of May 2007 I wrote an article Affiliate deep linking tools and the one click deep link creator from Paid On Results, which had been around a while even then, came out top of the pops.

Since then other networks have developed one click deeplinking too, Affiliate Window, Linkshare and just recently Buy.at, I love them all it makes my life as a affiliate much easier to just simply navigate to the merchant page, click a link on my toolbar and bingo a deep link.

The question is how do they all stack up?

Paid On Results

To set it up go to your POR account, follow the ‘Deep Link Generator’ link in the Tools menu and you will see full instructions.

Positive

Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer

Generates either the deeplink URL or full HTML code

Provision for a click ref

Negative

No facility to generate a short URL

Takes user away from merchant page to generate the deep link

Linkshare

You will find instructions to set up the Linkshare Bookmarklet in the BentoBox here.

Positive

Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer

Generates the deeplink URL

Creates short URL’s

One click posting to Facebook and Twitter

Negative

Doesn’t generate full HTML code

No provision for a click ref

Affiliate Window

To install go log into your Affiliate Window account and click the Plug-ins link in the menu under Web Services and Tools.

Positive

Works with Firefox

Generates either the deeplink URL or full HTML code

Provision for a click ref

Creates short URL’s

Negative

Does not work with Internet Explorer as its a Firefox Plugin.

Buy.at

To Install log into your Buy.at account, click Content & Creative > LinkEngine, then follow the instructions on the Firefox LinkEngine tab.

Positive

Generates the deeplink URL

Works with Firefox

Negative

Does not work with Internet Explorer as its a Firefox Plugin

Doesn’t generate full HTML code

No provision for a click ref

No facility to generate a short URL.

So which is best?

Basically I like each and everyone of them but because Paid On Results has been around so long without being upgraded it has stood the test of time plus the negative points are so minor I am going to award it 9/10.

Second place goes to Linkshare they have embraced social media with the Facebook and Twitter integration 8/10.

Affiliate Window is only let down by being tied to Firefox only, not a problem for me but I know others that wont use that browser 7.5/10.

I am very pleased that Buy.at have produced one click deep linking as it will get me using them more, this tool like I said is the new kid on the block and still very much in beta I’m sure we will see massive improvements in time 5/10.

One Click Deep Linking – Affiliate Network Tools