Leaving The Day Job

Affmeter Free No More

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Affmeter is an essential part of any affiliate’s setup so I was rather saddened to learn that it is no longer going to be available for free.

I discovered Affmeter shortly after becoming an affiliate last year. It’s a really handy bit of software that logs in to all the affiliate networks you are signed up with and amalgamates all your earnings into one report. Every half hour it pops up a message on the screen telling you how well (or in my case usually, how poorly) your earnings are progressing. Best of all it’s been available for free.

So it was somewhat disappointing to be greeted with a message today informing me that the free version is being discontinued. It looks like the announcement was made last week but the news has only just caught up with me. It’s a shame but I quite understand their reasons. I’d often wondered how much money they made off their Pro version when the free version did 99% of what most affiliates want. Obviously not enough to keep the wolves from the door.

As someone who develops software for a living, I know how much time and effort it takes to produce a quality product like Affmeter. There’s nothing similar on the market that I’m aware of and the people behind it are very responsive to affiliates’ needs. It’s a well-respected product but you can only get so far on the respect and good wishes of your users. Bills need paying. Stomachs need filling.

So it’s a shame that a good thing has come to an end but I’ll be paying the very reasonable upgrade fee (less than £20 at current exchange rates). Affmeter Free is dead, long live Affmeter Pro.

Get your site removed from Google - quick!

Most of the time we’re struggling to get our sites INTO Google but sometimes you need to get them OUT of Google quickly. It’s easily done but a fiddle to find.

In my case, I wanted to get my old Blogspot version of Leaving The Day Job removed from Google. I’d moved the blog a few months back but there’s no way of doing a 301 redirect from Blogspot and Google was still listing my old posts at an address which just 404ed. I also suspect that this is keeping down the PageRank for this new site as Google will see it as duplicate content.

If you have your site set up and authenticated within Google’s Webmaster Tools you can simply remove URLs using the Tools/ Remove URLs option. Otherwise you need to use their Webpage Removal Request Tool. In my case I simply wanted to remove an out of date link but there are also various options for requesting removal of a third party’s web page including obscene material, lists of credit card numbers etc.

I simply input the link, gave it a couple of days and hey presto Google’s out of date links to my old blog were gone. Of course, outdated or non-existent pages will eventually disappear from the results anyway as Google gradually recrawls the web but this is a quick and easy way to give the big G a nudge.

Can Yahoo, OpenID build your community site?

Yahoo today announced that they will be supporting the OpenID authentication protocol. This could be really big news to anyone trying to build a community based site such as a forum as users can jump straight in and get involved much more easily.

I’ll explain that logic in a minute but first : what the heck is OpenID anyway? OpenID is a open, decentralised authentication system. What that means is that you get a username and password from one website and you can use it to log in to any other website which supports OpenID. Think of it as being like Microsoft Passport was supposed to be a few years back only open, free and adopted by many more websites.

Users can choose which ID provider they want to use. When they want to log in to an OpenID-supporting website they simple provide their username (which often looks like a web addresss eg fred.myopenid.com) and the website redirects them to their ID provider to log in. The ID provider then passes back a message to the website telling them whether or not the log in was successful.

OpenID has been around for a while and it’s not really taken off outside the geek community because it’s all been a bit complicated for the average user. Why create yet another login for something you don’t really understand anyway?

What Yahoo have announced is that they will become an OpenID provider meaning that users will be able to log in to an OpenID-supporting website using their Yahoo user name and password. This more than trebles the number of OpenID accounts to about 370 million.

So back to my original point: how this can help your community website. People are swamped by user names and passwords. Getting them to create a login for your site to add to the hundreds they already have is a barrier to them using your site. Instead they’ll see a button labelled ‘Sign in with your Yahoo! ID’ and be taken straight to a familiar Yahoo login page before being bounced back to your site.

By allowing them to use their existing Yahoo credentials on your site you’re making it easier and quicker for them join your forums, comment on your blog or upload their user-generated content to your site. No form filling, no validating their email address and no illegible captchas to decipher. They’ll have a smoother path into your site and as a consequence be more likely to contribute.

There are more details at the OpenID website

Entrecard - Fashionably late to the party

Entrecard has made quite a splash on US-based affiliate and money making blogs but doesn’t seem to have gained much traction amongst UK bloggers. I’ve decided to give it a try.

Entrecard is yet another social networking/blog advertising widget to put in your sidebar. The twist in this case is the fact that it’s tied in to free 125×125 button advertising.

The way it works is this: you create an Entrecard in the form of a 125×125 image and place the Entrecard widget on your site. Other bloggers come along and click on your Entrecard to “drop” theirs. This is the social networking aspect of it, when you log back into Entrecard you can see all the cards that have been dropped on your site. So far, so bog standard.

The fun bit is that you gain a credit every time you go and click on someone else’s Entrecard. You can then exchange these credit for adverts on other sites within the network. Likewise people can exchange their credits for advertising on your site, in which case their 125×125 Entrecard occupies the widget space on your blog for a day.

I’ve tried a few widgets on my site along these lines before but I’m still looking for the one that brings in good traffic and preferably doesn’t slow my site’s load time down to the point that you think you’re back on dial up. The main incentive to try Entrecard is that it’s being used by some of the biggest bloggers on the planet. For example, saving up enough credits can score you a day’s advertising on the mighty John Chow’s blog.

Entrecard is free to join, free to use and easy to install on your site (just one line of Javascript cut-and-pasted). You can try it out and gauge the response yourself in no time at all.

If you decide to join up, or if you already have, drop your Entrecard in my sidebar and I’ll come visit your blog.

Friday Night Emails : An Affiliate Account Manager responds

I made a bit of a stroppy post the other evening about the sudden influx of emails I received from affiliate managers right after 5pm on a Friday. Julia Stent from Affiliate Window was kind enough to respond to my post and also give me permission to quote her response here. So here’s the relevant part of her email:

“Just wanted to send you a quick message about your post regarding Dixons emails on Friday night. First off - sorry about that, that was our team here!

“I thought it might be relevant to explain something to do with our email system (and I suspect other networks too). Sending out emails to the potentially thousands of affiliates joined to a programme puts a big load on our email server. If this is done during office hours, it can slow down our receiving external emails from affiliates. This means we have to delay sending out some programme notifications until after peak times.

“I realise this isn’t ideal, and believe me we are working on it! Already at the end of last year we added a whole batch of new servers but these were prioritised to tracking and reporting. I’m not an IT wizard but I suspect there’s a delay at our email supplier’s end as well.”

As a day-jobbing IT manager I can quite understand why Affiliate Window would want to send their bulk emails at a quieter time of day. I know one particular employee at my day job who seems to delight in jamming up our internet connection for an hour or so by sending large PDF files to 500 external contacts at the same time.

Equally, you’re never going to please all the people all the time. For every Monty who objects to Friday evening emails there’ll be A N Other Affiliate who prefers it that way.

So apologies to any affiliate managers who were offended by my first post. Obviously you have your reasons. It’s just that this particular Friday evening was a perfect storm of things annoying me and getting those emails was one of them.

What does anyone else think?

2008 - Here we don’t go

This pretty much sums up my start to 2008 as far as affiliate work goes.

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

I know there’s a load I should be doing but I just can’t seem to get over the fact that I need to be doing it.

Friday Night’s All Right for Fighting (a torrent of emails)

What is it with affiliate managers and Friday evenings? I’m only a small time affiliate signed up to a relatively small number of merchants but by 6.20pm this evening I’d received seven emails sent after 5pm today. For comparison, I only received seven emails in the first 17 hours of the day.

I know this is a constant bugbear of many affiliates but I’m already in a bad mood (see post above about Dell) and it really grates with me today. OK so I do most of my affiliate work evenings and weekends but that doesn’t mean I like spending Friday nights reading emails. At least let me have one evening a week when I can switch off.

In the sin bin (so far) this evening : The Link, HMV, Dixons (2 emails), Argos and O2 (2 emails again).

Update (6.30pm) : Cosmos Holidays join the fun. At least they start their email by apologizing for the late email.

Dell and Walsh Western - Where is my laptop?

Dell and Walsh Western’s incompetent, useless and lying customer service drives me close to mental but no closer to my laptop.

On December 5th I ordered a nice new laptop from Dell. They charged me an extortionate £60 for delivery but even so they were still cheaper than comparable laptops elsewhere so I decided to order anyway. They also only deliver to the cardholder’s registered address which is not great when I’m out at work all day but I figured I could arrange a redelivery for a convenient date and take the day off work.

Initially the delivery estimate was December 14th. On December 12th they email to tell me it will now not be until January 3rd. Ho hum. Happens some time. I resign myself to waiting.

Imagine my surprise when I check the Dell order status website just after Christmas to discover that my laptop has been delivered. Delivered when and to whom? According to the tracking website of Walsh Western (Dell’s delivery company) it was delivered on the morning of Christmas Eve and there’s even a signature to prove it. Except, it’s not my signature and I know I was at home Christmas Eve. They also claim to have attempted delivery a few days earlier and left a card - this is a lie.

I discovered all this at the weekend when both Dell and Walsh Western shut down their phone lines. I start worrying that they’ve delivered to the wrong address and some unscrupulous bugger has decided they’ll accept the free laptop and keep it quiet. Or maybe one of my neighbours received it and hasn’t told me yet. I contact something like 25 of my neighbours but none of them have seen it.

I called Walsh Western’s customer service on New Year’s Eve but all I get is an automated system telling me my parcel has been delivered and giving me no option to speak to anyone. I call their head office and get told all I can do is call the customer service number. I say, there’s no human being there. They say, try in the new year.

I phone Dell. I go through something like two million options and wait ten minutes to talk to someone in India. The someone in India says he’s the wrong person and he’ll put me through to someone else. I wait another ten minutes (all this on an 0870 number of course).

Eventually I speak to someone in Ireland who tells me that Walsh Western pass the parcel on to a local delivery company for the actual delivery. The local delivery company have decided they didn’t want to hold my parcel over Christmas so they’ve sent it back to Walsh Western’s depot. That apparently qualifies as a delivery which explains the status and the signature (presumably of the person at the depot who received it back).

The nice Irish lady says she’ll get them to send it again. I ask if I can have it delivered to my work address. She says yes but it will delay things while they find the parcel and change the label. Not a problem. I give her my work address and she schedules delivery for today.

I check Walsh Western’s website the following day and lo and behold the delivery address has been changed. Only now it’s been changed to a strange amalgam of my home address and work address. I hope that it’s just the website that’s screwy but email Dell asking them to check it’s correct. Two days later and they still haven’t acknowledged my email.

And so to today. I hoped I would get the package since the post code was at least correct and I’d given my mobile number so the driver could call me if he got to the right road but didn’t know which office to deliver to. I check the Walsh Western website all day and it shows my parcel out for delivery. Five o’clock rolls around and there’s no parcel. Check the website again and apparently they attempted delivery at 9am, no one was home and they left a card - this is a lie. We have a warehouse where the staff spend all day receiving and despatching parcels. They would have been there from 8.30 am at the latest. There’s no way that they could have attempted delivery and not found somebody to accept it.

So I come home half expecting to find a “while you were out card” after they came to the wrong address but no, nothing. Phone Walsh Western. This time I get an option to speak to someone except their office is closed. No mention of when it might reopen. I call Dell. Five million menu options later I get told that my order has been placed with the business sales department and they close at 4pm. The guy I’m talking to can’t help as he only deals with home customers.

Remember that this is a delivery service I’ve paid sixty quid for. It has now reached the point where it would have been cheaper, easier and quicker for me to book myself on Ryan Air and go and collect it from their factory in Limerick myself.

I’m so angry and frustrated with Dell I’d just cancel the order were it not for that fact that the laptop is (or was supposed to be) a Christmas present and I’ve already told the recipient it’s on its way. I’ve now got to wait until Monday until I can even contact anyone and then God knows how long until they can redeliver. It’s taken a month so far and, of course, they’ve already charged my credit card. If you’re thinking of ordering from Dell, don’t bother. Their uselessness and incompetence is matched only by their ineptitude in choosing a delivery company who can, you know, deliver a parcel.

Can you get dyslexia in your fingers?

I’ve never been a great typist. I’m fast but inaccurate. Recently though a weird kind of disconnect between my brain and my fingers has been making my typing life a misery.

I learned to type back in the early 80s as child banging out code on a Sinclair ZX81. After 25 years of practice I ought to be getting better at it. But no. One of my former colleagues told me how much it used to drive her round the bend listening to me clattering away at the keyboard only for it to be followed by repeated pounding on the backspace key as I try to undo all the mistakes I’ve made. Another friend commented on how quickly I could type especially considering I spent half my time deleting.

In the past year or so I’ve developed an even stranger affliction. It’s not down to inaccurate typing it’s that somewhere between my brain and my fingers the words I’m typing change. In that last sentence for example I thought “somewhere” but typed “something”. This is why I think it’s like dyslexia. The words are getting themselves jumbled up. They’re not mistyped, they’re not in the wrong order, they’re just not the word they should be.

It’s really annoying because when I type the wrong word I type it correctly. Spellcheckers don’t pick up on the mistake because it’s correctly spelled. I’ve always been good at spelling and grammar but recently I’ve been misusing “there”, “their” and “they’re”. It’s not that I don’t know the difference. It’s not that I don’t know which is the correct one to use. It’s that my fingers on the keyboard have their own idea of which word I want to use.

I vaguely remember from my university Psychology course that there’s a phenomenon in learning called “chaining”. Basically, as you learn to do tasks your brain stops needing to think about the next step and just initiates a chain of steps. For example, when you start driving you need to think about stepping off the accelerator, engaging the clutch, moving the gear stick, releasing the clutch, pressing down the accelerator. As you get more experienced you don’t think about each step you just do the “change gear” chain of actions.

My theory is that I’ve learned chains of actions to type certain words semi-automatically and for some reason my brain is picking the wrong chain. Or it could be that I’m just mental. The jury’s out.

Any psychology experts or fellow finger-dyslexia sufferers out there?

Me and Facebook Ads have a falling out

Unlike many in the affiliate marketing world I’d had a bit of success with Facebook Ads but I’ve had enough of them now and I’m moving myself into the sceptics’ camp. In my previous posts I’ve written about the ups and downs and given a couple of tips I’d picked up on the way. I thought I had it figured. This week, Facebook decided to pull the rug from underneath me.

First up, they’ve taken to pulling ads without so much as a hint what the problem might be. In fact, they give you a hint as to what the problem almost certainly isn’t. I had one ad pulled because the ad wasn’t representative of the product. Except it was. It said “Get a free Nintendo Wii when you buy a qualifying mobile” and took you to the merchant’s site where the qualifying mobiles are displayed. Apparently this isn’t enough.

A second ad was pulled because “The text and/or image of this ad violates part or all of sections 4, 5, and 6 of Facebook’s Advertising Guidelines.” So I emailed them to find out what was wrong. Apparently if you run an ad for a dating site you have to mention the site name in the ad. Is this in their terms and conditions? No, it isn’t.

Now I don’t mind Facebook having rules. I don’t even mind them having quirky rules for no good reason. But what I do mind is them having secret rules they don’t bother to tell anyone and which require several emails before they’ll even tell you.

The second thing relates to stats. I’ve blogged before about the bizarre stats system which shows you rolling totals for the past 24 hours. There’s no historical data other than the total number of impressions and clicks per day. You can’t see which ad has been getting the clicks. There’s no way to export data for analysis. There’s no indication of how CPC relates to the number of impressions you get. You end up spending all day checking your stats and babysitting your bids just to make sure you aren’t blowing all your budget.

Which brings me to my third point: the daily budget limit which isn’t limited. Half way through one day last week I decided my return on Facebook ads was in danger of falling too low. So I lowered my daily budget to make sure I didn’t end up spending more than I was comfortable with losing if conversions dropped off. I was somewhat surprised therefore that I ended that day exceeding my new budget. Again, I don’t mind too much if a budget can’t be changed during the day but if that’s the case then tell me about it! Don’t just leave me to figure it out after the fact.

All in all I’ve decided that Facebook ads are more trouble than they’re worth. It’s mainly poor execution and Facebook’s characteristic disregard for what anyone thinks of them. They’ve already backpedalled on Beacon, let’s hope they go and rethink the rest of their ad platform too.

Regular readers will be pleased to know this is the last posting I’m doing on Facebook for a while. I never intended to write this much about them. I hope it’s at least been some use to someone.