Zarr Blog :Experiences of running a UK web design company

Affiliate network AffiliateFuture have released a press release today which states that its launching “consumer friendly tracking” called VeraciTag - which and to quote them:

works by storing anonymous tracking information in the web browser of the user’s computer. Operating in this way means the tags cannot be blocked, as cookies can.

Its apparently available immediately, but looking at the “get links” for several merchants, there doesn’t seem to be any difference in the links that are generated. 

I’m intrigued as to exactly how this new tecnology works and if anyone knows, please leave some comments.

For affiliate marketers as well as retailers, Christmas is the most profitable time of year and the money earned in the two months in the run-up to Christmas can often exceed the income for the rest of the year.

But with Christmas soon to be out the way should you sit back and do nothing until autumn next year? 

Think ahead for the other big events where gifts/purchases are made - such as Valentines Day, Mothers Day, Fathers Day or Easter.

Good domain names are quite hard to get these days as most dictionary words have been taken and finding a name to match your business or idea can be quite hard.  You can of course try registering a domain and keep trying until you find a domain name that hasn’t been taken.

Alternatively there are several auction sites that auction existing domain names to the highest bidder and I noticed today that Christmas.co.uk is on sale for £12,000 - and I suspect the bidding will go much higher. 

That may seem like a lot of money, but over the last few months, records have been broken in the .UK domain world with fly.co.uk selling for about £85,000 and recycle.co.uk sold for £150,000.

For Christmas.co.uk, I’d guess its too late this year to get anything worthwhile revenue from it - although I’m sure a PPC campaign could do quite well if the content of the site could be generated quickly enough.

But baring in mind that the new owner could then have 9 months after this christmas to perfect their site, put on a lot of content or products to sell, or link through to affiliate programmes - next christmas they could make some serious money and could make back their investment easily within the first year.  From that point onwards it could be a real money generator.

If only I had £12,000 to spare, I’d be queuing up to buy it…

If you’ve bought anything online or surfed the web, you’ve probably come across Affiliate Marketing in some form, but you may not have realised it.

Affiliate marketing is where a merchant (eg. a retailer) rewards an affiliate for a customer, lead, visitor or sale thats been generated through their efforts.  For those of you in the UK, if you’ve seen or heard of the financial comparison website called MoneySupermarket.com, then that website is based around affiliate marketing.

While browsing or comparing credit cards, mortgages, insurance or any of the other products on that website, when you click through to the bank or financial body providing that particular service, MoneySupermarket.com get effectively a commission from you doing that.  If for example, you complete an application for a credit card, MoneySupermarket.com get something in the region of £30 or more.  As they generate so much leads, I would expect they can demand higher affiliate commissions - probably closer to £50 or more per lead.

There is very big money to be made from affiliate marketing from the affiliate’s perspective.  One blog that I regulary read since discovering it earlier this year is Keiron Donoghue’s blog.  Keiron has been running several successful websites for a long time (well back to the early part of this decade) and uses PPC marketing to generate traffic to his websites which then convert to affiliate sales.  There is one page that stands out on one of his sites and that talks about how he got to where he is - which is probably one of the most successful affiliate markers and PPC’s in the UK.

Keiron generates his income from a variety of successful websites which he regulary updates (by hand too it seems).  I can definately recommend his blog for something to stirr your enthusiasm.