Posts Tagged Sunshine
Get Affiliate Inspiration from a Secret Millionaire
Posted by Jason Dale in Affiliate Marketing on October 18, 2010
Last night (16th October), many affiliates tuned in to Channel 4’s Secret Millionaire as it featured Chris Brown. Chris is one of the guys behind Sunshine.co.uk and before that he was an affiliate working on the successful Holiday Watchdog website. He and Chris Clarkson have had amazing, and well deserved, success with their travel business.
In Secret Millionaire, millionaire’s pose as “other people” and visit communities in the hope to surprise them at the end with some financial support. Someone posted on Twitter that if a mystery person arrives with a film crew at your needy place in the future and doesn’t turn out to be a millionaire then you might be a tad disappointed.
Chris posed as a photographer and spent some time in Manchester. In the end he helped a number of people including Talbot House, Mustard Tree and a legend called Oscar who turned down Chris’ money, but accepted it in the form of toys for the kids. Chris came across brilliantly – a gadget loving family guy done good!
What I found interesting about the programme was the reaction via Twitter. For the most part reaction was excellent – most certainly from the affiliate community. Some twitter people were quick to dismiss Chris or decide they dislike him – for me that was quite eye opening. Mind you anyone who stepped out of line got short thrift from a certain Mr C Duncan!
What I especially liked about Chris on the programme was that it’s real stars were the people he helped – I’m still laughing at Bernie’s comment about living with her son “tins in the microwave – acceptable risk”. Other than a brief moment at the start you’d probably have no idea who Chris worked for or that he was involved in affiliate marketing.
But he is involved, and it’s nice to feel uplifted by an affiliate “done good”. An affiliate “done good” who’s actually a nice guy. He should be an inspiration to people and to others in the industry.
Chris, however, isn’t the only affiliate in this series of Secret Millionaire. Mark Pearson – “multimillionaire, philanthropist and all round good guy” – will be appearing on the 7th November 2010. Should be interesting!
However, you don’t need to be a millionaire or even a secret millionaire to do a bit of good to help people. One way is to join the Kiva Affiliates Team . By making small $25 loans you can help entrepreneurs around the world get started or further their own business.
The group, set up by Chris Frost, has so far made 457 loans totalling $12,600. That money gets repaid but most of the time it’s recycled into other Kiva projects. It’s a good way to do something – and something is better than nothing.
If you missed Chris Brown in action, and want to be inspired, then you catch up with the show via Channel4OD on Youtube.
Paid On Results Shines as The Sun Sets on DGM
Posted by Jason Dale in Affiliate Marketing on August 16, 2010
It was with a touch of irony that I read an A4U piece on OLD’s 2010 blogger award this weekend. In an interview after the awards they asked me why I thought so few UK affiliates maintain a blog… and pretty much since then I’ve hardly posted here. In part because I’ve been doing other stuff like taking photos of boats and bees, but also because sometimes it’s nice just to take a step back once in a while.
But the affiliate world doesn’t stand still and the fortunes of three UK affiliate networks are in focus at the moment.
At the end of July DGM went into administration, but it’s taken a further fortnight for the plugged to be pulled. As of the end of last week affiliates who had not removed links were given a pretty lousy 12 hours notice that dgmPro for the UK was being switched off by ADH Holdings who had acquired the system.
There’s an announcement on A4U and some quite direct comments in response to things.
Going public with views, at least in The UK AM industry, is often not the “done thing” so it’s quite refreshing to see some open commentary, especially from those involved. Quite often (and I’ve said this before) there’s an assumption that those involved in AM know what’s happening “behind closed doors” when they don’t.
Actually in fairness, I’m a nosey so and so and just want more gossip.
However open commentary isn’t being confined to just the end of DGM in The UK. Sunshine’s Chris Clarkson has posted an emotive post on his blog about Affiliate Future. His open letter is an interesting read and hopefully those who can react to his suggestions take them on board. In fact it’s Sunshine’s and their affiliates’ frustration with AF’s development (or lack of it) that has led to them opening with Paid On Results.
This move could be a key one for POR and early indications suggest that they realise this with the launch of their Sunshine Report. This is a bespoke reporting suite for affiliates of Sunshine.co.uk on POR and first impressions are pretty impressive. I’d be surprised if other travel merchants and affiliates aren’t raising one or two eyebrows in POR’s direction after seeing what they can potentially offer them versus what they may be getting elsewhere.
In fairness POR aren’t the only network innovating. Tradedoubler quietly announced Product Level Tracking (PLT) with RouteOne. From the email “PLT enables commissions to be offered to you on individual products”. So if RouteOne want their affiliates to focus on DC branded gear they can raise the commission for it. An interesting development to keep an eye on in the future.
For now though, the sun is most certainly shining on POR up in Scotland.
