Today started out as a really good day, until we discovered that one of our wordpress powered domains had been tinkered with over the weekend.  The .htaccess file had been modified and replaced.

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.

  Free blogging platform BunduBlog.com has been testing our OfferForge EasyAds  for some time now and has just released their findings.

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.

Tim Ash from sitetuners.com opened his Affiliate Summit session, ‘The Seven Deadly Sins of Landing Page Optimization’ by having everyone raise their hands and confess “I am a sinner!”
He then proceeded to explain the math around conversion optimization and how great conversion rates are the fundamental way to improve your and your affiliates bottom line.

He made everyone admit ‘Their Baby is Ugly!’ and then got down to business!

Tim’s rules for conversion optimization.

1. Have your visitors design your website. Ask them how they want to access information.
2. Subtle changes lead to big gains. There are thousands of on-page variables that affect your visitor’s behavior.
3. Landing Page testing is not Optional. If you’re doing head to head tests you don’t need tons of traffic. Implement AB testing on everything you do. Just because it converts well doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.

The Seven Deadly Sins for Landing Page Design.
1. Unclear call to action.
2. Too many choices.
3. Asking for too much information.
4. Too much text. mea culpa.
5. Not keeping your promises
6. Visual distractions.
7. Lack of trust.

My quote of the day was aimed at site designers: ‘Don’t take your creative urges out at work. Go pierce your nipples or get a tattoo!’

If you think you might be a sinner visit sitetuners.com and check out Tim’s blog!

EyeTracking tools assist advertisers to profile what consumers actually see in an ad. The more consumers look at a particular area of the screen the more that section shows up in a heatmap.

Many advertisers don’t yet use eyetracking but when you look at the heatmap below ad blogged by getelastic it’s clear that the smallest design change can dramatically increase brand recognition and product visibility.

Spot the design difference?

It’s the small stuff that matters in a relationship. Of course you’re expected to deliver the goods, but customers want to be recognised and appreciated – and savvy marketers know that every touchpoint is an opportunity to create a ‘special’ experience.

I don’t know whether Skype intended for this to happen or if it was a big karmic coincidence, but as I was browsing the skype site today I clicked onto a link to turn on Caller ID.

Take a closer look at the picture of the phone.

See how my name was added to the image. That’s a pretty unique touchpoint!

What do you think? I wonder whether it’s a result of:

1. A dedicated CRM effort lead by a highly detailed retention marketing team
2. Jonathan is the most inoffensive name they could find
3. There are more Jonathan’s than any other name – so they just used it
4. The creative guy’s name is Jonathan
5. It’s simply statistically more probable that Jonathan would want CLI

If anybody from Skype would put me out of my misery I’d truly appreciate it!

Until we know for sure, let’s applaud the team at skype for creating enough of a customer connection to get me to blog about them – as if they need the extra free exposure

Working internationally from South Africa is pretty cool. No harsh winters, we’re highly skilled and can service our global customers with ease, if a little later in our day . We’ve got amazing talent and of course, the weak exchange rate means we compete very well on price as an outsourcing destination.

The only major drawback has been our bandwidth and cost of telecoms. Most people who have what they believe to be broadband are simply gobsmacked when they see what a real T1 connection feels like – even sitting in the W Hotel in NYC will quickly illustrate just how far behind the curve we are on the bandwidth ladder.

That’s why none of our critical systems, servers or infrastructure is hosted in South Africa – we don’t want Americans falling asleep waiting for their stats – now do we

All this changed in February after an epic quest and years of searching. Finally there is Light at the end of my Bandwidth Tunnel!

Those of you that know me and follow my blogging will know that I don’t often endorse companies. I’m always worried that the act of doing so will immediately ruin the service and I wake up imagining 20 angry customers blaming me for recommending them!

I am going to step out on a limb though and tell you to get in touch with Technology Concepts. These guys came in, duct-taped (ok bonded if you want to be technical) all my 4MB ADSL lines together and created a single pipe that simply howls data up and down! Finally we can blog, ftp, download 10 GB, watch affiliate video’s and do all those other things that my American friends take for granted.

Imagine my surprise to realize that YouTube was not a collection of static images and Skype, oh my, Skype. I now get to hear a conversation without delays and if i’m feeling cheeky I can even turn on my video! I may even throw out my telco one of these days!

So, if you’re South African – have a little extra cash lying around, are sick of the #GB limit (yes americanos – they do cap our bandwidth here) then get over to Technology Concepts

If you want to help me test my bandwidth – skype me at jon-forge

yours in happy bandwidth.

Jon

If you are a publisher or agency whose business is in California, your livelihood is at risk.

California Bill 178 threatens to change the performance marketing playing field.

This bill, copying a similar one in New York, unfairly categorizing publishers as sales presence for out-of-state advertisers. This means taxes will be levied on out-of-state advertisers, potentially causing them to shut down their publisher relationships in the state (it happened in New York). Learn more at http://www.performancemarketingalliance.com

With your help, we have a great chance to kill this bill: the PMA is working with the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Taxpayers Association lobbying groups to fight this bill. These groups have successfully killed similar bills in the past, but the difference now is the precedent set by New York state. They believe the only way this bill can be killed is to have a coordinated grass-roots effort that demonstrates the devastating effect this bill will have on performance marketers in California.

With the support of CalChamber and CalTax, PMA is launching a coordinated grass-roots campaign that targets congressional representatives. We are developing an attack plan that includes sample letters, fact sheets, congressional contacts by zip code, and a “Visit Sacramento” day, to put faces in front of decision makers.

First step: The PMA is extremely fortunate to have the support and experience of Beth Kirsch, a well known industry leader who was formerly a federal lobbyist. She is leading our effort, but we need your help. We are looking for California performance marketers to get involved. The most seriously impacted are California publishers and OPMs.

We don’t have much time – we have until March 31st to make an impact.

As we learned from our colleagues in New York, the passage of this bill could have devastating effects on California performance marketers. If this passes in California, it virtually assures a firestorm of adoption by other states, which could devastate our entire industry. If we beat this bill, it will severely limit the adoption in other states.

To join the fight contact the Performance Marketing Alliance or at the very least, please forward this email to your Californian friends.

For more information:
Rebecca Madigan
Performance Marketing Alliance, Inc.
805.469.1496
rebecca@performancemarketingalliance.com

I tried AGAIN unsuccessfully to enter two of our award worthy clients, MyJewelryBox.com and Peapod.com, for the Ad-Tech Awards in the ‘Best Affiliate Marketing Campaign’ category.

Both these clients have shown tremendous growth and innovation this year, with MJB adding phenomenal growth in revenue year on year & launching some great social media applications to boot, while Peapod continued its stellar growth year on year with innovative mixed media performance campaigns.

Unfortunately, the Ad-Tech awards site was down again all day so I’m cooling my heels writing this blog post. If I don’t get to enter you for the awards – just a word of thanks to both companies from the team at Forge – it’s a honor to work with great companies such as yourself!

BTW, Same goes for every other client we work for!

Jon

Oh dear. Seems I’m a LinkedIn abuser 8-(

I’ve just been rapped on the fingers by customer support because I had a few people indicate they don’t know me – and now I can’t invite any more people into my network until “the man” clears me ;-(

Here I thought I was being proactive by importing all my contacts into LinkedIn. Okay, I know I have a few hundred active contacts, maybe another few thousand publishers / agencies / service providers we deal with and then of course everybody I’ve ever met at parties, exhibitions or events.

I don’t have the longest attention span in the world, but I’m single minded! So after inviting a few hundred people into my network (and enjoying minute by minute updates as my connections doubled and redoubled) I was on a high! I felt compelled to break the 500 connection mark. I suppose I was swept up in the “old man’s Facebook” hype of wanting ALL MY CONNECTIONS to see my spanking new profile .

Alas, seems there are actually people out there that don’t know me. I’m not sure if I’m contrite at being stripped of my invite-rights or just aghast that I’m not as well known as I thought (LOL)

Ok, if you know me, have earned commission from my company, have been recruited, harassed, cajoled, been hired or hired us, paid us, visited our booth and given me your info, drank my scotch or done business in any way – please accept my humble LinkedIn request.

If you still don’t know who I am – call me! I guarantee we’ll be friends!

Jon

As we near the end of the year some of us reflect on the overheating (some say) valuations of tech and new media stocks. Others (like Vinny and me, lol) are eagerly beavering away to reach the same!

So, thanks to Adam Viener for cutting me down to size an sending me on this blast from the past Billy Joel warped song – which those of us in this industry who are actually over 35 may remember!

At least we can still laugh at ourselves! It’s absolutely worth the download

What would you do if you knew you were loosing $4.5million?

wireless.itworld.com – Cash isn’t king: Apple limits iPhone purchases

That’s what Apple are allegedly loosing in unlocked iPhones. I don’t see Apple getting much sympathy for this but it makes for an interesting predicament. On the one hand they have obligations to their marketing partners – AT & T are seeing a quarter of a million accounts less than they are expecting to see and cannot be happy about that.

On the other hand, (more…)

Disclaimer: I love Facebook! I’m obsessed by fb. So much so I’ll check my updates every few minutes to see who’s doing what.

When David Lewis sends me an invite for yet another ridiculous app i clap! I toss sheep Passionately and giggle when a cow is flung my way!

I dish scotch out to everyone (OK that one mirrors real life).
point is…..I’m engaged with my community of friends and I LOVE it!

Like any idyllic-scene disaster movie beginning you know that something is about to go horribly wrong. The protagonist is going to have to endure a plot change and his world is about to come crashing down.

My first WARNING was the news this week that Google will be able to search and crawl profiles. No more safe walled garden. No more idyllic playground safe for us to share without thought of consequence.

Can you hear the ominous music slowly building in the background?

It’s the cue for the circling Facebook predators to make their entrance……. (to be continued).

Update Disclaimer: I’m also a marketer and think this move has enormous potential for brands, affiliates and companies to engage with their consumers on a very direct and personal way.

But to coin a phrase “don’t be evil”. How evil is marketing really if it uses contextual targeting when people have placed all this personal information about themselves on Facebook for friends to see. Will consumers revolt if they have the perception that the information now gets used “against” them?

What’s your opinion?

I broke the cardinal rule for international travel. Always go direct (same rule applies to marketing actually!)

They say its only once you’ve lost what you had that you value it. Right now I deeply value SAA and their direct flights to the US!

Would have saved me 4 hours and a queue in Heathrow!

Sitting at OR Tambo airport on the tarmac again on my way to CJU in Santa Barbara.

Due to the airports company of south africa’s apparent incompetence the flight plan has been lost for the BA flight to Heathrow!

So, there’a biiiig plane full of fuel, hundreds of angry passengers and a visibility frustrated crew all waiting for a misfiled piece of documenation!

Lovely beginning to a loong night! OIA lol

Or is Facebook, Twitter MySpace and the like nothing other than the blogosphere in a slightly different guise?

- What does it mean for those of us who want something more out of cyberspace than friend requests (‘uhm… didn’t I date her or something back in 1996…?’) or casting our avatars in the pot with those of supposedly like minded strangers in support of or objection against some cause in a ‘group’ while trying to avoid getting drawn into the bickering that lurks in the associated discussion forums and ‘walls’.

(And allowing your psyche to sink even deeper into denial about the realisation that there must be more you can do to make a positive contribution to the world.)

Depending on your stance, online social networking services are either the blogosphere grown up and supercharged to mass-consumption-grade culture or a watered-down sorry excuse for the real thing, or maybe something in between.

As vague as the boundaries are becoming one can draw some interesting distinctions. The first that comes to mind, to my mind at least, is the issue of ownership and control. What you can and can’t do and what value you can get out of the process.

To my mind, the blogosphere is essentially the domain of individuals claiming and working their own little – and sometimes not so little – plots of cyber real estate.

The world of blogging used to be unspoilt frontiers country, and in some ways perhaps still is, but it is getting damn hard not to notice the sprawling arrays of lego-set-like apartment blocks of user-generated content, the thinly veiled silos of at least potentially ‘monetizable’ eyeballs.

But it may be that the competition is a good thing for the blogoshere.

When you sign up to Facebook you agree to use it for your personal “non-commercial” purposes. You might get away incorporating some paying links in some of your personal content but I suspect anything overtly commercial will get you in a spot of hot water. The exception to this being if you have what it takes to develop an application to plug into the Facebook APIs. (but you better play nice!)

In that case the Facebook Developer terms forbids you from showing any ads except on the application canvas pages – which to Facebook’s credit is a relatively fair deal – but allows significantly less fluidity than when you roll-your-own somewhere out in the ferral regions of hyperspace under your own, memorably pithy domain name.

None the less, me thinks that this approach seen in the light of very iinteresting facts and figures around Facebook, like for example that there are about 103 million active Facebook users for every one of the just over 300 employees. Facebook seems to be running a bit like Ultimate Frisbee, a competitive sport in which referees are all but obsolete. This mentality of preserving the ‘spirit of the game’ is why I bet Facebook will sustain resonance with consumers, are in it for the long haul and will go down in history as a marketing success story.

So how is any of this good for us mere bloggers?

Well me thinks a lot of the self satisfied mindless drivel that has been increasingly clogging the arteries of the blogosphere, the gunk congesting the synapses of the noosphere has found a brand new home. One infinitely more efficient at catering to the insipid mundanities of herd instinct, the gratuitous exchange of cutesy clipart and the very life blood of web2.0 as we know it – VANITY! :- )

Don’t get me wrong – I love Facebook ( – maybe this is why ;- )

Facebook and its kin might just have a very positive impact on the quality of ‘real’ blogs. So we’ll see less of what who-ever did who-else in a bout of drunken stupor over the weekend and more skillfully crafted original and meaningful content.

Maybe this will improve the chances for ordinary people to do something that stands out, to enter the commercial media arena on their own terms armed with creativity, conviction, maybe a blogspot account or hand-full of WordPress plugins – and of course a BlogKits Review campaign or two : )

André SC

Yep, here in sunny South Africa we do celebrate Women! It's even a bank holiday. (Of course the guys are keeping the Fort even on a vacation day!) To all our women clients, affiliates, bloggers, girlfriends, wives and of course my team – Happy Woman's Day! Jon

MyJewelryBox has recently been assessed and rated by Internet-Consumers-Report.org. ICR provides detailed reports and opinions about commercial websites. MyJewelryBox received a 5 star rating and an impressive report was completed.

I have included the Internet-Consumers-Report.org’s report below.

My Jewelry Box

Well designed, well organized, and well managed, three phrases that can be used to describe My Jewelry Box. This site was able to take an otherwise generic method of laying out an online market, and turning it into a vibrant website for its patrons.

The high energy use of bright red fused with white really grabs a user’s attention. Utilizing a dual navigation in a very standard method of displaying shopping methods along the side and site navigation links across the top seems to do the trick in keeping things simple for a customer. The home page does an excellent job of attracting customers. As they have quite a bit of motion advertising several promotions, as well as feature bargains of the week and best seller items.

The search feature really stood out in the top right portion, opposite the logo, and featured a very well designed “go” button. This really grabs the user’s attention, and the rest of the search didn’t disappoint. The results were very specific, displaying rows of 4 that included a thumbnail graphic, brief description, price, sale price, savings percentage, as well as buttons to view more details and the “add to bag” shopping cart feature. While there are a lot of features, not once did the site the results seem cluttered or ill managed. Also along the top is several drop-downs which let a user refine their search based on product, metal, color, stone, and price.

The product description page continues this trend of consistency in terms of design as well as the quality of the page layouts. With a thumbnail graphic in the left, a nice feature directly below it is a drop-down that will let a user further refine their search based on different sizes of the product being displayed. Below that is a mini table of related products including a thumbnail, description, as well as price. To the right is all of the necessary product information including description, price, “buy now” button, as well as product specs below that. Nothing seems to be overdone on this page, as all of the information provided seems necessary. The use of several “little features” adds further to the usefulness of the page. A print page feature is provided, which for many, is a nice thing to have should they want to shop around and keep all of the information with them. One can also “email product to a friend” to share the item with others via email.

The checkout process is simple, and all fields are provided in an attractive format that offers security and comfort to those spending a considerable amount of money on a product that they are unable to see in person before purchasing. All of the fields are very straight forward, and with many delivery options MyJewelryBox.com allows a customer to get a close estimate as to when and how their purchase will arrive.

While it’s tough to imagine running into any problems with this site, contacting My Jewelry Box is made easy. With a toll free order line displayed in the banner on every page, this provides a level of consistency that is tough to be matched. There are also “Contact Us” and “Help” links provided in the horizontal navigation on every page as well. These pages are easy to find and include all of the necessary information to get in touch with a representative from the organization.

Offering a pleasant, safe experience, My Jewelry Box is a must for those shopping for jewelry online!

Skype used to be my favourite tool. I loved the way it eased communication, connected individuals and synched video, phone and IM – free of charge!

Today however, for me at least, a new day dawned. Today was the day that I was relentlessly spammed by a company purporting to be a Chinese importer of white goods trying to drum up business.

Here’s the thing – no matter what – I could not turn it off. I could not block the communications or stop the intrusion. Nor could I stop them by going invisible or turning on ‘do not disturb’.

So effectively – the only thing I could do was kill my Skype. So there goes my primary IM channel until this is resolved.

Digg.com landed itself in hot water today when it removed a HD-DVD Hack that had been posted on Digg. Users revolted by reposting the story and encouraging other users to repost – and repost they did in their droves, as reported in an earlier post by Sam Harrelson from CostPerNews. Seems that when you rely on a community to decide what’s relevant and you (rightly or wrongly) moderate the content you run the risk of incurring their wrath!

I don’t envy the Digg guys their position right now – they either have to keep the post alive and face a potential intellectual property lawsuit from some major companies for releasing a hack or bow to corporate pressure and kill their business model.

Some lessons here for companies with blogs. If you’re inviting comment, then you need to be prepared to accept the comment and deal with it – or you could find yourself digging yourself a shallow grave too

Jon

The perception that it takes more AFFILIATES, more SEARCH, more SEO, more LEADS, more deployed AD CAMPAIGNS, more aggressive CPA to drive results.

The truth is that while all these measures are important to the success of your online business, the fact is that if consumers are not IN LOVE WITH YOUR BRAND none of them will matter.

Whether you run an online shopping cart or a professional services firm like us, you have about 4 SECONDS to introduce your consumer to your site, show her who you are and make her fall in love with you, decide to contact you, engage with you and conclude a transaction or request more information from you.

Knowing how to make them fall in love with your brand is perhaps the hardest part.
Each industry is different and the best way to start is by ensuring you’re responding to your customers reason for visiting you in the first place.

Here’s the difficult part – you may not know why your consumer is actually visiting you. You may think you know but let me ask you this: When last have you asked your customers what they want?

So, today implement this ‘Brand Love’ builder action plan:

Ask your best / most recent / highest value / most difficult / random customers…. what they love about your brand.
Why they do business with you. What do you do for them that nobody else does for them.
What do you do differently from anybody else that keeps them happy and engaged with you.

If they answer this positively – write up their responses as landing pages on your site and test them out.
People respond to good copy and your conversions will improve and your affiliates will rejoice

If they answer negatively – you’ve just put your finger on the pulse of your business and you know what to do to fix your most pressing issues to turn around your business and avert a looming disaster.

Now, I’m off to act on my own advice

Jonathan