Will Google Wave change anything?

I watched the Google Wave presentation recently and aside from getting a few laughs from the speakers crashing the sandbox version of the new open source Google Wave project it really does look like it has the potential to change online messaging or more specifcally change the online collaborative documentation offering.

The discussion elements available as part of collaboration on a specific document (including stunning multiple editing features) seems to set it apart from others in a way the industry hasn’t really gone down yet.

Will it revolutionise the messaging (email / IM) industry?

Who knows, there are too many factors to inlcude in that call at this point.

Will it take over the existing online document collaboration elements available?

I would think so.

The real question at this point is how much weight are Google going to put behind it? If they go hammer and tong force feeding people out of Gmail and into Wave then there’s going to be a lot riding on it.

Watch the presentation yourself and comment on what you believe it will change…

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PPC Humour ..

I don’t usually write about other blogs that I’ve come across but it’s pretty rare to find a blog that’s actually full of PPC humour!

PPCVillan.com is a laugh, it’s a great take on what you can actually find out there in the PPC world and covers the best of the best in terms of what not to do…

Here’s a link to the top ten signs you’re a PPC Poser :)

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Short URL services for affiliate marketing

If you’ve ever used Twitter or if you’re really into short URL’s you will be likely to have come across the URL shortening services that are available from a few different companies.

The idea behind the service provided is to solve the problem of the ever increasing length and complexity of URL’s.

Many sites will have increasingly difficult and long URL’s that do not suit linking the entire URL within a piece of content on another web page.

My understanding is that these services started out as a way for people to link to content within emails, specifically so that long URL’s do not wrap to different lines on an email, they have however evolved into more common usage for content services where short URL’s have major advantages.

News articles, particularly excerpts, are starting to use these shortened URL services as well as the new micro-blogging systems (e.g. Twitter) where the amount on content in any single post is limited to a number of characters so space is a premium and the shorter the URL the better.

Since their launch, URL services have also been promoted by their companies as a way for affiliates to link to an affiliate URL without displaying the fact that it’s an affiliate link.

In its worst form, there are people who have started to use services like Twitter to link to ‘interesting’ information where the link is in fact a hidden affiliate link.

The real problem here is the user who is clicking on the link has no way of knowing where the link is going to take them. This leaves the situation quite open to abuse by either trusted parties or potentially by someone who could hack the URL shortening service itself.

One of the immediate benefits of some of these services in affiliate marketing is the option to include tracking statistics on things like the number of clicks and timing of when people have clicked through.

If you don’t already have a tracking system in place, this can be a good use of a freely available system to track certain links e.g. email links or even links through social networks.

Here are examples of some of the services that provide the short URLs:

The key in using these URL services is about trust. Make sure you don’t leave a feeling like you mislead the user into clicking to somewhere they didn’t know they were going. If you’re always clear about where the link is going to take the user or at the least what service it will take the user to then the Short URL’s can have a real place in your marketing.

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New Zealand Internet Blackout

If you haven’t heard about it yet, you need to get along to the Creative Freedom Foundation to help join the protest surrounding the looming implementation of a copyright Act that is coming close to becoming law which effectively creates what people are calling a “Guilt Upon Accusation” situation.

There is an Internet Blackout running where everyone is supporting the protest by covering their social networking profile photos with a black box or loading banners like the one on the right.

There are plenty of instructions available for blacking out your Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or Bebo accounts as well as options for promotion on your website or you can sign the petition as well.

Join in and show that we don’t all agree with blanket rules that remove people’s basic rights!

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Guest Article: Hiding ugly affiliate links using redirects

Prompted from a discussion in the forums about working with bad URL’s from certain affiliate programs we have a guest article from Harvey Kane a local SEO Consultant;

Hiding ugly Affiliate links using redirects

At some point in your affiliate career, you will invariably come across affiliate links that look a little bit too much like affiliate links. And while there’s a percentage of the population who will click on almost anything, some people won’t be so inclined to click an affiliate link.

There are a number of methods out there for working around this problem, but by far the most common method is to use an intermediary redirect script. I wanted to talk about how to do this properly, and also provide some example code for PHP.

Getting started
First, we need an affiliate link that we will be redirecting to. Let’s use a real affiliate link as an example, this way you are able to click all the example links and see them in action. This link is for Webdrive, whom I host my website with - http://www.webdrive.co.nz/?REF=HAR612 (yep, looks pretty much like an affiliate link).

Instead of linking to Webdrive directly, we want link to an intermediary page with a less affiliate-looking URL. Such as http://www.ragepank.com/webdrive/ (if you click the link it will redirect you to Webdrive).
It is up to you to choose a format for your intermediary redirect page, and make sure it is configured to redirect correctly. I’ll discuss a few ways of doing this below.

Subdomains
You will sometimes see affiliates using subdomains for their affiliate links - eg http://webdrive.ragepank.com - these look a little more official, and if you are lucky, your web host will let you setup the redirect via their control panel (no code required). If you can setup subdomain redirects via your web host, I would recommend using this method.

Easy Redirect Screenshot

If your web host allows, this is the easiest way to setup a redirect.

Domains
Funnily enough, I was digging around one afternoon and noticed that web-drive.co.nz was available (note the dash). I grabbed it, and setup a redirect sending all traffic to my affiliate link. I figured a few affiliate signups would easily cover the domain registration costs. I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t believe this is cybersquatting - and you could argue that I’m doing them a favour (I’m trying to drive more traffic to their site right?). However, you can understand if merchants don’t see the funny side of this approach. I was contacted by Webdrive’s managing director a few weeks later, and because I’m a mature adult, I handed the domain over without any fuss.
Needless to say, I wouldn’t entirely recommend this approach.

Regular redirects
The normal way of doing a redirect is to setup a script on your own hosting account. You have full control over the how you want the URLs to look, but in my experience it’s best to keep them simple and obvious. If you only have a handful of redirects, it’s easy enough to edit them manually, otherwise you can store the redirects in a database to make management simpler (which is what I do).

Redirect using PHP
If your web hosting supports PHP, then this is the most reliable way of doing redirects, and won’t give you too much grief getting them setup. However, the resulting URLs aren’t quire as nice looking as they can be.

Create a new file in the root of your website with the following code…

<?php
/* array of all affiliate links you need */
$redirects = array(
‘webdrive’ => ‘http://www.webdrive.co.nz/?REF=HAR612′,
‘example’ => ‘http://www.example.com?aff_id=1235′,
);
/* if the specified ID is in our list, do the redirect */
foreach ($redirects as $id => $destination) {
if (isset($_GET[$id])) redirect($destination);
}

/* general-purpose redirect function */
function redirect($url, $type=301) {
if ($type == 301) header(”HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”);
header(”Location: $url”);
echo ‘This page has moved to <a href=”‘.$url.’”>’.$url.’</a>’;
exit();
}

/* if there is no match, issue a ‘not found’ header */
header(”HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found”);
echo ‘This page could not be found’;
exit;

Edit the $redirects array (adding extra lines if you need to) to reflect all the redirects that you need.
Then, link to www.ragepank.com/r.php?webdrive (replace ragepank.com with your own domain).

This redirect should now work - minimum fuss, and unlikely to run into any compatibility issues on most web hosting providers.

.htaccess method
The above method is great because it’s simple and reliable. But if you are looking for a URL that looks more like http://www.ragepank.com/webdrive/ (which I consider easier on the eye) you will want to look at the .htaccess method instead. This will only work for Apache based websites, and the Apache extension mod_rewrite needs to be enabled - ask your web host if in doubt. There are similar methods for IIS and other web servers, though I’m not going into the details in this article.

First, get the above PHP method working. The .htaccess method builds on this code.

Then, look in the root of your website for a file named .htaccess - if this doesn’t exist, create it. Otherwise, open it up for editing.

Add the following code into .htaccess

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(webdrive)/?$ r.php?$1

Note that “RewriteEngine On” may already be in your .htaccess file - if this is the case, no need to add it a second time.

To add additional redirects, copy the line containing “webdrive” and replace with the URL you want to use. If you want your link to be http://www.example.com/fishpond/ then the code would be:
RewriteRule ^(fishpond)/?$ r.php?$1

Simply use a new line for each redirect you need to setup. It’s worth noting that the .htaccess method will slow down your website if you have too many redirects in the list. If you find yourself needing more than about 50 redirects, it’s probably time to look for a different solution. If you only need a few redirects, then you won’t notice any difference in performance.

It’s possible you will get a “500 Internal Server Error” at this stage. Generally, this means your web host doesn’t allow this code to be run in .htaccess, so at this stage I would contact their support team and ask for assistance.

The poor man’s method
If the .htaccess method gives you trouble, and you only need a couple of redirects setup, you can always do it the old-fashioned way.

Create a new folder within your website, called “webdrive” (or whatever you want the link to be). Inside the folder, create an index.php file, and place the following code inside:

<?php
header(”HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”);
header(”Location: http://www.webdrive.co.nz/?REF=HAR612″);
exit;

Simply change the Affiliate link to whatever you need it to be, and that’s all the configuration needed. You will need to repeat this process for each redirect you want to create. It’s not the most technically elegant solution, but it works, and it’s easy.

All of the redirect methods mentioned here are good ways of masking the affiliate links, and these techniques are commonly used by many affiliates.

Harvey Kane is an SEO consultant, who blogs at www.ragepank.com

Thanks to Harvey for the guest article, it gives a good summary of options that most affiliates will take some time to get through while they’re building up their repotoire of code.

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Busy season online in NZ ..

I’ve been a little light in posting and chatting in the forum around here for the last month and that’s mainly because of this time of the year being the busy season online in NZ.

While retailers have increased levels of shoppers at their doors over the Christmas and Holiday Season, web traffic is just as cyclical across the year just at different points.

Generally it’s the cold winter months, where people are locked away in their living rooms with the TV blaring away in the background (with the Olympics on at the moment of course) that are the peak periods for many online sites in NZ.

The Summer holiday season is when the average reader is out and about at BBQ’s, the beach or shopping down at the local mall.

With this in mind it’s good to prepare for the busy season you’re going to have by making sure your website’s already been through a development cycle as you come into the winter months. This way, while you’re dealing with the traffic increase you’re not also trying to re-launch your design!

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Shopping globally from New Zealand

I had an interesting discussion with today with Lisa from ShopAmerica.co.nz. Lisa has some great ideas around finding ways to bring US products to New Zealand shores.

For anyone like myself who shops globally online from New Zealand it can be very difficult to find the few stores around the world that do actually ship internationally. I’m looking forward to seeing this type of thing come online through-out different industries in NZ with many more international shopping opportunities becoming viable as the NZD increases in value in comparison to the USD.

Local NZ Affiliates come across the same sort of problems when trying to find affiliate programs that will ship directly to NZ shores. Perhaps this type of site that’s working to bring off-shore products directly to NZ shores will become the next generation of retailing options for affiliates in NZ to promote international products while working with a local supplier?

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Google Ad Manager could change the affiliate industry ..

If you hadn’t heard that Google recently bought DoubleClick (still seeking commission appovals) then you must have been hiding under a rock for the past six months.

The question when they did this was what were they going to do with it?

Late last year I spoke with the Australian DoubleClick sales rep who essentially said they believed it would be business as usual.

It looks like Google have now shown exactly why they bought DoubleClick and it follows their new standard practice. Buy up a big company where small businesses can’t afford their services, roll a limited version of their services out for free to the small business, drop the price to enterprises and bring on ten times the number of enterprises thereby effectively becoming the default provider in the market.

This is what Google Ad Manager looks like it could achieve.

From an affiliate perspective, the constant complaint (or frustration for affiliate managers) is that affiliates just don’t have sophisticated systems for optimising advertising placements across their site. This has always been the area of enterprise level websites only.

Google Ad Manager has just launched its website as “Invitation Only” with a basic tour of what the package will be when it’s available.

It’s every affiliate’s dream.

A simple system the affiliate (or any publisher) can roll out on a new site to start serving adverts, optimising adverts and pulling them up and down based on timing and impressions.

To date the only options have been to do some basic HTML, use a system that an affiliate program has built just for themselves or go the whole way and install an open-source version of an ad server (like OpenAds). None of these provided an easy, quick or intelligent solution across multiple sites with many banner spots.

Check out the new Google Ad Manager yourself. Hopefully it’ll be available for more publishers soon.

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One year on … Affiliate Forums next?

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays :)

AffiliatePrograms.co.nz has now been running for one full year and I have to say that the responses have been quite positive. On a semi-regularly basis, I receive emails with further questions about affiliate marketing as well as thanks for the content on the site.

This has prompted looking into launching an Affiliate Forum for the New Zealand market on which I will post answers to questions as well as try to get the affiliate programs themselves involved.

If anyone has any ideas on what they would like to see in an Affiliate Forum for New Zealand Webmasters, drop me a note to gary[at]affiliateprograms.co.nz.

This is a pretty quiet period (Christmas and New Year) in the New Zealand Internet scene as traffic dips down while everyone is relaxing outside next to the BBQ or the beach, away from their desks at work. So it’s a good time for things like site development and thinking about the ‘big picture’ or ‘where to in 2008′.

Interestingly, this is also one of the busiest times of year in the northern hemisphere Internet world (particularly in entertainment), right when people are at home, wrapped up from the cold outside and looking for something to entertain themsleves. If you’re an affiliate targeting northern hemisphere clients (e.g. the US market) you’ll hopefully be as busy as you can be.

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Affiliate marketing through seasonal keywords

Building seasonal specific sections of your website is already an age-old tradition in affiliate marketing but it’s still a basic that some people just don’t get around to. Aside from the obvious season terms that every other affiliate marketer is getting articles and blog posts written about (e.g. Christmas and Valentines Day marketing terms), why not look into what else is going on seasonally that you could be gaining traffic for?

Recently I was discussing an affiliate site which is based around promoting online games and the owner of the site has a few different smaller sites which are wholly targeted on the world champs for those online games that happen only once a year. For a period of around a month there is a massive jump in traffic to that site and then it just sits, with only the odd small additional content added over the rest of the year.

When this is done in combination with a few different sites which are using different affiliate marketing terms that are searched heavily on for just a couple of weeks or a month in the year then you can end up with a good amount of seasonal traffic to help boost your standard levels through-out the year.

What do your viewers love to get involved in? Is it the yearly Young Farmers Awards or is it the New Zealand Tennis Open? I’m sure keyword traffic to these takes significant spikes over the period that they’re running in.

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