I could feel the beads of sweat forming on my forehead. There’s nothing I fear more than giving a major client a recommendation for a 3rd party service provider. As they say “you’re only as good as the friends you keep.” A bad recommendation can tank your rep faster than than my kids at the cake table.

All I could recommend was that he trust Google. After all, any SEO worth his salt should be able to top the rankings on his own keyword!
Happy as a clam at my ‘fantastic insight’ Gerald was off to continue his recession-proof shopping spree.

I got home and thought I’d better test my own advice. Ran a Google Keyword Query for ‘affiliate south africa‘ and was quite happy to see we’re still #1. Same for ‘affiliate network south africa’ and a few others.

Seems you can trust Google after all

As we started rolling through our domains and servers we found an increasing number of these incidents, where our wordpress installations had been penetrated and the .htacess files had been altered causing the site to display the landing page, but then on any subsequent click redirect off to a spamvertized site.

If you’re seeing the same thing – watch out for the false ‘Virus Warning’ that warns you it’s found all sorts of nefarious software on your PC and recommends you do an immediate download of the tool to fix it all.

Luckily for us we work with some really smart people and we’ve already traced the source of the attack back to its source and alterted the authorities.

Aaaah, you’ve got to love mondays.

Said well known industry entrepreneur and founder of BunduBlog.com Marc Ashton “we’ve had our most successful month yet with converted leads and sales being credited to our account.”    Ashton further noted that they’d seen a 15% increase in the click through rates, a strong indication that EasyAds is serving better targeted and more relevant adverts, resulting in higher earnings for BunduBlog. 

We’re simply thrilled that EasyAds is already impacting our publishers in such a positive way.  We’ve seen a significant upswing in earnings from publishers that have implemented the platform.  Within the next week we’ll be releasing the second phase of the project, which will extend the self-service capabilities and enable advertisers to load and deploy their own ads, targeting the South African market.

The well balanced article went on to note that there instances of misspelling on ads, which is an issue that we’re looking to rectify by developing an inline spell checker to ensure only correct copy is trafficked.  We’re also working hard on geo- and lifestyle targeting to better understand the way audiences interact with the ads and so ensure that our optimisation is continuously improved. 

 EasyAds optimisation is unique.  Rather than just being contextually focused our algorithm takes into account the audience shopping behaviour and will serve ads that have a higher probability of earning income for the publisher. 

 We welcome any feedback and comments you may have and look forward to working with you to make EasyAds your ad partner of choice!  For the full review by BunduBlog click here.

This week Twitter unveiled their long awaited monetization strategy to leverage the over 23 Million users currently on the platform.  
The Promoted Tweets ad platform will inject a sponsored advert into the twitter stream, based on the conversation and keywords being used. 
An early adopter of the program, Starbucks, will use the platform to advertise their in-store specials whenever the keyword ‘starbucks’ is used in a conversation.  

Twitter will use what’s calling ‘resonance measurement’ to measure the impact of a promoted tweet.  Essentially it’s an algorithm that’ll take into account the number of people that saw the ad as well as other factors including number of retweets and clicks.  Scant information has yet been released on the pricing model but if industry trends hold true the ad network will use a performance based model to determine pricing. 

The pricing for an ad is said to vary based on the increase in visibility above other tweets.  So the more people see and interact with the ad – the higher the cost. 

What does this mean for affiliates?  One thing’s certain – there’ll be plenty of search marketers testing the platform.  How successful its going to be will depend on twitter users reactions to the ads being injected into their conversations.

Drive your conversions this silly season by promoting Beckersurf’s Free Shipping on all orders over $49 offer.

This offer is valid through to Christmas and applies to affiliates in CJ & OfferForge.

To get your code or sign up as an affiliate visit http://beckersurf.forgeaffiliates.com

Twitter’s added a new icon to spot retweets (tweets reposted by other users). This icon is currently in Beta and replaces the current RT in the messages.

Personally I think this’ll be a cool addition to the the service – it’s easier on the eye

You’ll also now only see retweets from people you follow, ensuring that you don’t get retweeted to death!

Having worked with Todd for years now we’re so pleased to see him acknowledged in this way not only for building a great business but for giving back so much to the community and charity through ongoing donations. You may not know, but AlexCoupons was initially founded in order to pay for his daughter’s Christmas presents while she underwent leukemia treatment. It’s a great affiliate success story and we’re proud to be associated with Todd & his team!

For the full press release click here

Celestial Gift experiences delivers present-day gift solutions! Extraordinary activity gifts for others, or treat yourself. From all out action packed adrenaline to tranquil spa days.

We believe that the perfect gift should touch the heart, inspire the mind and invigorate the senses. Together with our expertise and stylishly packaged range of gift experiences, we guarantee the response you get will be truly overwhelming! Treat your recipient to the most exciting, fun and inspirational gift experiences South Africa has to offer.

We endeavor to provide experiences to suit all personalities and ages ensuring there is something for everyone! We enjoy adding an experiential dimension to celebrations and thrive on making available South Africa’s top adrenaline and adventure activities. We stay in touch with your needs structuring our gift vouchers so you can easily select gift experiences for individuals, family couples or colleagues.

Our sites online functionality is designed to make selecting a gift easy! Ideal for those who dislike shopping, struggle to find a suitable gift or procrastinate until the last minute. Now you can select an appropriate gift at your leisure.

Affiliate Program Payout: R100 per sale

Search Marketing: Open

Cookie Days: 90 day return cookie

Affiliate Signup Link: http://za.offerforge.com

Hollard Life Cover has launched a lead program with an awesome new short form format.
Payout: R60 per lead.

Approved affiliates can Post Data via API, CSV upload or email.

Lead quality is important and each affiliate is evaluated based on lead to sale conversion.

It’s not all fun and games at the Summit. It’s really hard work networking with the old-timers. As you can clearly see we’re hard at work putting the final touches to our devious plans.

On the positive side, I did get to connect with Skip Graham owner of the Old Timers Association and brother to the ever-engaging Chris Graham’s. Finally had the pleasure of meeting Steve from Adrants.com (who took the picture). Hard work indeed.