Today I want to reveal the real me. When I started this blog a year ago I was exploring affiliate marketing as a way out of my deadend day job. I was hoping to make enough money to quit that job but at the same time I didn’t want to burn my bridges. The company I worked for was involved in setting up an affiliate scheme and there was a real chance someone would find my blog and realise I was planning on quitting. Hence I adopted the pseudonym Monty.
Why was I so worried about them finding out? I’m still not 100% sure. There was a healthy dose of paranoia certainly but also I was concerned that they accuse me of a conflict of interest (affiliate by night, quasi affiliate manager by day) or that it would undermine my negotiating power when it came to salary rises. There was also a potential conflict of interest with one of my affiliate sites which promoted a niche my employer was also active in.
Needless to say that none of these potential conflicts actually occurred. I was very careful not to do anything which was underhand or abused my position. In fact, by the time I was really getting going as an affiliate my employer had effectively pulled the plug on their own programme.
Yesterday was my last day working in that job. As I’ve previously blogged I’m moving into a new role working in the public sector from Monday and at last I feel I’m able to step out from the shadows and reveal my true identity.
So hello, I’m Simon Briggs and I’m an affiliate.
I’ve just noticed (three days late) that it’s been a whole year since I started this blog. I might not have achieved my ambition of leaving the day job but I have learnt a hell of a lot about online marketing and I do have a new day job lined up so I’m moving in the right direction.
I’m planning to do another post in a day or two recounting what I’ve learned in the past year but I’ll just say now that I’m particularly pleased that this blog has achieved a PageRank of 3 and an Alexa rank under a million. Thanks for reading over the last year, thanks to everyone who’s subscribed to the feed and I promise I’ll try to most more frequently in future!
Yesterday evening UK time Steve Jobs unveiled the new iPhone and the much-promised mobile internet was born.
There have been many attempts at internet on the move in recent years but something has always held it back. No single device has covered all the bases. The new iPhone knocks those previous attempts to the floor and batters them to a pulp.
My much loved Nokia N95 has 3G and a competent built in browser but the screen is too tiny for surfing, there’s no QWERTY keyboard and until recently Vodafone’s data pricing made the mobile internet an expensive and unpredictable proposition. The built in wifi is good but you need to install a third party app such as Devicescape to make hopping onto wifi hotspots a breeze.
The new iPhone brings the Apple handset into the 21st century with 3G for high speed mobile internet access and has the customary huge screen, excellent Safari browser and multi touch interface. But what’s really going to kickstart the mobile web on the iPhone is the pricing.
At last the iPhone is available on the sort of price deals that UK and European mobile users expect. An 18 month £35 contract gets you 600 minutes and the handset is just £99. You can even get the 8GB model for free if you’re prepared to pay £45 a month. All tariffs include unlimited 3G browsing and unlimited wifi browsing via The Cloud and BT Openzone.
Pay as you go pricing is apparently “coming soon”. That opens the iPhone up to the mass market who don’t want or can’t get a contract.
The techy crowd are still bemoaning the low spec 2 megapixel camera that doesn’t include a flash and certainly that’s the feature that is a bit of a downer for me, but the mass market mobile phone users really don’t care that much about the camera. People don’t really expect their phones to take fantastic shots they just want to be able to take a few snaps when they’re out down the pub.
Of more interest to the techies though is the App Store. Apple have opened up development of iPhone applications and provided a one stop shop for selling your wares. This could be huge. What sells Windows isn’t the operating system it’s the applications you can run on it. No phone so far has had a wealth of applications that can easily be installed by the average Joe User. The iPhone may just be the first one that does.
So for us affiliates now is the time to start building the mobile web. I think we’re going to see a huge land grab over the next 6-12 months. It may not be immediately profitable but it’s going to be like Web 2.0 all over again : get users, build loyalty, monetise when you can. This is the mobile web 2.0 and it’s going to be massive.