Posts Tagged Content
Now Why Am I Content with Content Now?
Posted by Jason Dale in Affiliate Marketing on June 30, 2010
I’ve always been a firm believer that the content on your website should be your own work. But, even old ducks can learn new tricks and also realise there’s actual benefit in outsourcing tasks to others. Time is a precious commodity and no matter how many pointless sites we kill off or tasks we automate there’s always something new to fill the void.
Affiliate marketing was meant to get easier, but it just seems to be an endless stream of admin, updating, twittering, coding, stat checking, blogging, facebooking, emailing, banner removing, banner updating, writing content and hoping that someone buys something to earn you a couple of quid.
This often means that somethings, well one thing – content – tends to get slammed to the back burner. It’s often the “I’ll do that later” item on the to do list I’ve not yet written. Yet, in order to keep some sites ticking over they do need a little bit of daily content and they’re just not getting it and therefore not keeping up with The Jones.
So enter right Content Now and their news service.
Having been the primary writer on Loquax (well actually only writer), giving up this task to an unknown quantity was a bit scary. I like knowing what’s being written, have a structure I like and know (roughly) how I want it to appear. Letting someone else do this is a big deal… ask Jude! So, having emailed Kieron and Simon at Content Now to get the ball rolling for content, I honestly expected a couple of weeks of tweaks, alterations and “not quite rights”, possibly followed by “well we tried it”.
I needn’t of concerned myself and in fact wish we’d done it sooner.
The content is more than fine and more importantly frees up a boat load of time. After the initial month we doubled the order. Any questions are immediately answered and if there’s something not quite right, it’s sorted out quicker than Robert Green can say “whoops, slippery ball”.
Recommended? Most definitely!
Outsourcing “news” though does have a disadvantage in that you’re never quite sure what’s going to arrive in your inbox. Is it what you really want? Is it what you’d do yourself? It can be a worry, at least initially! However, this is actually an advantage. More often than not the content I was writing was a bit fixated (i.e. I stuck to the stuff I wanted to write about). Outsourcing has broken a few barriers and expanded what we cover.
The outsourced content also means I can focus on what I like doing, and if that involves nothing or watching 11 gutless Englishmen lose to Germany then so be it. It’s all good news.
As mentioned above picked up free time has an uncanny knack of getting rapidly filled and there have been much needed tweaks to a couple of sites and extra content added in places, which previously wouldn’t have been done if I’d been doing the routine bits and bobs. However, outsourcing was to make my affiliate life easier not busier.
The key now is to make sure it stays that way!
Doctor Who Affiliate Marketing – Fixed Points in Time and Space
Posted by Jason Dale in Affiliate Marketing on March 25, 2010
We all know that Doctor Who travels in time and space in his TARDIS, but why doesn’t the historical line change as he visits various places? Well the explanation is that there are some events he can interfere with, whilst other events are fixed in time and space and they can’t be changed, for example The Waters of Mars episode. Only The Doctor knows what can and can’t be changed.
So what has that got to do with affiliate marketing?
Well, some things we do to promote a merchant are going to be in flux. They can be changed as and when an update is required. For example if Merchant X has an expired voucher code or old competition and then releases another one, it makes sense to “interfere in time and space” and update that code in the directories or databases we manage.
However, what if we’ve spent some time writing a more indepth article (or blog post) that’s been dated to comment upon or promote something Merchant X is doing? Let’s say they’re having an Easter Egg Treasure Hunt. Our article would be dated, explain what’s going on and because we’re after traffic and sales hopefully SEOed accordingly.
This article or blog post is essentially a fixed point in time and space. By this it means it’s something that’s not going to be changed or interfered with ever again. In exactly the same way that a newspaper or magazine article remains part of the history of that publication if you like.
Writing content takes time and effort, and so there’s nothing more frustrating than getting an email saying “Merchant X has seen your site and wants this, that, and the other doing” to an article that’s “fixed in time and space”! Sorry, but we don’t write articles so that they are to be constantly updated retrospectively.
Why some merchants/agencies don’t “get this” I really don’t know? What I do know is that getting a “we’ve just audited email” (especially when the merchant doesn’t email you at any other time) is just annoying. In fact it just makes you want to not bother writing content or promoting the merchant.
Rather than use the beat them with stick approach perhaps dangling a carrot might work better? For example why not send an email saying “thank you for promoting us. The offer on your page is good, but it’s now out of date, perhaps you could write a new one with our current promotions which are blah….”.
So come on, let’s stop this time wasting auditing milarky. Give an affiliate new content to work with so that they can write more content, linking in their previous articles and building up your promotion. That’s how things should work – and that’s an easier concept to understand than the physics of time and space.
