Dead trees are in trouble.
Budgets are being slashed and new projects canned in print media.
So several freelance writer friends are now accepting new clients for web work.
If you need top-quality web content – ie. not merely looking to fill empty space with random words – these people are perfect.
Between them, they have written for:
Dear reader, I’m sure I don’t need to spell it out: we’re talking the cream of the crop.
If you’d like to be introduced, please contact me.
Yesterday TechCrunch broke the news that Skimlinks has secured first round investment.
Co-founder Joe Stepniewski told me about Skimlinks at PubCon Vegas. This, I thought, was a million dollar idea.
Skimlinks makes monetizing any site simple. It makes ‘normal’ links into affiliate links instantly, automatically and discreetly.
If you have a site with plenty of content but poor monetization (think forums, user-generated content sites), Skimlinks could answer a lot of your problems.
QN: Introduce Skimlinks in a few sentences.
JS: Skimlinks is a simplified affiliate marketing service for publishers. We are the ‘Adsense of affiliate marketing’, providing a solution that automates the creation of affiliate links in editorial content.
Editors continue creating content as they normally do, including links to retailer sites. When a visitor clicks on the retailer link, Skimlinks automatically converts this link into its affiliate link equivalent on-the-fly, without affecting the user experience.
We are integrated with over 7000 international merchants, and 16 affiliate networks, with more being added all the time.
QN: I know you already have some major publishers on board. Where can readers see it in use in the wild?
JS: Any of the Shiny Media sites (catwalkqueen.tv, shinyshiny.tv, techdigest.tv); Retrotogo.com, Greenmystyle.com, T3.com, g35driver.com and many more.
QN: Why would established affiliates use Skimlinks over direct relationships with networks?
JS: As every business person knows, time is money. Affiliates could spend their time signing up for networks and programs, working out the deeplinking syntax for each merchant, creating links, and updating them when merchants close or change their programs.
However, this is time they can spend on content creation, SEO, community management, site design and development, and other core parts of their business. By outsourcing their affiliate marketing management to Skimlinks, we do a better overall job than they could do, and give them more time to focus on what is fundamental to their business.
Plus, Skimlinks has unique support for non-deeplinking merchants, and keeps links in their natural state until the user clicks on them, leading to higher click-throughs.
QN: In the current climate, financial stability is a key question for affiliates. How do they know their earnings are safe with Skimlinks? Are affiliate commissions ringfenced from operating expenses etc?
JS: Yes, all incoming commissions are escrowed in a separate account, and never mixed with our operating expenses.
We have also just closed one of the only seed funding deals happening in the UK in this climate, and our backers are some of the top VCs and government funds in the country, so we have enough money to keep us protected throughout throughout this financial crisis.
QN: What is Skimlinks’ cut for providing the service?
JS: We retain 25% of whatever the affiliate networks pay us, and pay the rest to affiliates. We pay when the minimum threshold across our entire network of merchants is reached, which means affiliates could be paid sooner than if they had to wait to reach the threshold of each individual network.
Also, we can negotiate better deals with merchants and networks due to our scale. That means affiliates can sometimes the same commission through Skimlinks as if they went direct.
QN: Can you explain the setup process for Skimlinks?
JS: Setup takes minutes at most. It is a similar installation process to Google Analytics: once you are approved to Skimlinks, you can login to the service, where you can copy and past the Skimlinks code to your site’s footer. Your whole site is fully enabled straight away.
QN: Where will Skimlinks be in a year’s time?
JS: We are planning on launching a series of tools that help publishers monetise their site’s content in a simple, ethical way. We feel strongly about giving publishers the tools to help them to survive in these troubled times, and to reward them for the value they bring to both users and merchants.
Interested? Signup to Skimlinks now.
SEO Toolbar offers one-click analysis of a site’s SEO efforts, from backlink profiles to traffic volumes to HTTP headers.
Watch Aaron’s video for a full introduction or install it now.
I’m a huge fan of both WordPress and Joost’s WordPress plugins.
He spoke at A4U Expo last year on SEO tweaks for WordPress and WP themes. Watch the video below, or follow his ‘SEO for WordPress’ presentation online.
I came away with a stack of ideas. Highly recommended.
Want to lose friends and alienate people in affiliate marketing?
Simply tell your peers that discount vouchers – the bedrock of monster affiliate sites, like My Voucher Codes – are BAD FOR BUSINESS.
Advertising guru David Ogilvy summed up why I think discounting to win business is a mistake:
A steady diet of price-off promotions lowers the esteem in which the consumer holds the product: can anything which is always sold at a discount be desirable?
Ogilvy’s Confessions of An Advertising Man – essential reading for any marketer – was published in 1963. But in an age when consumers can price compare any product in real time, I believe it is more true now than ever before.
People search for vouchers or cashback deals at the point of sale. Not while researching retailers: while they are a heartbeat away from entering their credit card details.
Question: Why discount goods that consumers are about to pay full whack for?
Voucher codes mean slashing margins to appease fickle, unfaithful consumers. The same shoppers who’ll likely buy elsewhere in future. Or return voucher-in-hand if they do come back.
“I cut prices harder and for longer!” sounds like a rather desperate customer acquisition strategy.
Discounting is a race to the bottom, just like cashback sites (witness GreasyPalm vs Quidco) and newspaper price wars. Sell at the market price and be done with it.
If you want proof, spend a little time reading the extraordinarily popular Money Saving Expert forums. The site can send a metric tonne of traffic, and presumably sales to match. But the clue is in the strapline: “consumer revenge”.
Skip the war stories like “the time I saved 50p on dented tinned goods”. Instead, read carefully what MSE users have to say about discount vouchers and how they use them. Here are some quotes from the first few threads I checked:
These don’t sound like incremental sales to me.
(Incidentally, MSE is what Arthur Daley would call a ‘nice little earner’. It’s seldom discussed – although disclosed on the site – that MSE is an affiliate and earns generous commissions on many finance products).
So why do so many retailers offer discount codes? For some, voucher codes work. But for the rest:
1. “Everyone else is doing it”. A weak justification for everything from teenage delinquicy to fascism. Next!
2. “Consumers love them”. I, too, am fond of free money. Vouchers make goods punters are about to buy anyway cost less.
3. Voucher sites earn a fortune for the industry. Big voucher sites earn millions of pounds a year in affiliate commission. The affiliate networks earn 30% override, the management agencies get their taste too. Could their loyalties possibly lie with their pocketbooks?
Retailers: Price competitively, cut out voucher affiliates who add no value and add 10-15% to your bottom line on these sales. You can thank me later.
The sorry state of credit crunch Britain (© Daily Mail) has already made some major retailers rethink their policy on voucher codes.
DRL Ltd – who operate kitchen appliance sites for the likes of Sainsburys, Boots and Next – have canned vouchers. Comet are testing a three month pause.
Expect more to follow suit.
After all this, I have a confession to make. Yes, dear reader, in spite of my distaste for voucher codes, I still promote them on a couple of sites.
The justification is simple: because my competitors do. How can I compete if rival affiliates swipe commission last second using ‘click to reveal‘ at checkout?
At the risk of sounding like the odious Richard Littlejohn: am I merely saying what everyone else is thinking? Your thoughts, please, in the comments. Hate mail to the usual address.
Domain Lookup for Firefox passed 10,000 active users in January. Before I start planning the next version, I’d love to hear feedback from users. Let me know what works, what doesn’t and what you want to see more of via the contact form. Thanks!