Blimey - I’m getting good at this blogging lark - two in one day!! It’s a record.

Anyhoo, I’ve started to undertake a wee twitter experiment.

Why? I hear you ask…

Well, firstly, I’m fascinated by it. I think it’s both bizarre and brilliant that people will post the most random things that they are doing. It’s a complete social taboo from the very private times of yesteryear (when I was a lad, etc etc) and apart from it being a bit of a burglars delight (”hey, I’m on holiday - feel free to rob me” often reads the message), it’s also a really weird social phenomenon, not dissimilar to when Big Brother launched all those years ago. So, there we go - you can tell I’m hooked.

So, my experiment is very simple and is two fold.

Initially I’m going to try and get as many followers as possible - I’m hoping for 1000 to begin with. Now, I’m doing this in a ‘two pronged’ attack type manner. Firstly I’m following a number of people whom I hope will then follow me back. Again, this is pretty interesting as you get to see what type of ‘friends’ other people have. For example - I went through Hugh Hefners friends last night. Man - he is one lucky dude!! I’m now following about 50 play boy bunnies - all in the name of research I have to add - it’s hilarious!!

Secondly I’m trying to reply to famous people with pretty random comments to see if I can evoke a response from them and thus get some of their followers to follow me. You follow? So, if you see me tweeting some famous dudes some pretty weird stuff - don’t worry, I’m not going bonkers - just trying to get some exposure.

The second part of my experiment is thus. I’m going to see how easy it is to monetise followers from twitter and convert them into users/purchasers on Prezzybox.com. I read recently that Dell had generated £1m turnover from users on twitter in 6 months. Not huge admittedly - especially for a company their size - but it does prove that the concept works. I don’t know how I’m gonna do this yet - hopefully something a little cleverer than merely linking to products etc. I’ll keep you posted.

So, I’ll be tweeting with renewed vigour from now on. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Toodle pip!

Zak.

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Prezzybox.com is looking to employ a junior member for their technical team.

You interested?

Based in a Farm House in the rural Midlands (junction 11 M42), the award winning online gift retailer is looking to recruit a highly motivated candidate to be part of their forward thinking - yet fun and personal – team.

Role: Junior Web Developer

Mandatory Skills Required

• Programming experience
• ASP.NET with VB.NET 
• An understanding of general programming algorithms such as Sequence, Selection, Iteration, and Recursion 
• An understanding of HTML 
•  Trouble Shooting in Windows XP/Vista and Microsoft Office

Desired Skills

• PHP
• Understanding of XML
• Classic ASP and/or VBScript would be useful 
• SQL would be useful 
• JavaScript would be useful 
• Familiarity with Dream Weaver and Visual Studio are an advantage. As is an understanding of Flash. 
• Web design skills are NOT required  
• Management of peripheral devices such as printers and external storage devices
• Basic networking skills including network card configuration IP addresses, subnet masks, routers

The Role

Because of the small, yet dynamic nature of the company the role will be incredibly varied. It will encompass a range of tasks including;

• Development, deployment and maintenance of web applications in VB.NET. Includes anything from producing new features for the website through to formulating reports and queries and actually developing new sites for our portfolio
• Wordpress website management and installation, Integration with 3rd party e-commerce websites such as Amazon and Play.com
• Desktop Application Development of custom tools, for example an automated Web page generator
• Assistance in Server maintenance
• Security and office software management
• Basic hardware diagnostics and repair
• Basic network configuration

This hands-on I.T. role will go to a candidate who is happy to work hard, but is keen to get involved in exciting new projects and become a member of a fun and dedicated team in a fast growing company in the online gift sector.

Anything else?

• Flexible Working Hours
• Attractive Holiday (22 days a year plus bank holidays including a 10/11 day break every Christmas)
• Good Career Prospects in a small yet fast growing team in a dynamic and fast paced market sector
• Delightful working environment in a farm house in the middle of the Warwickshire countryside

Interested?

If so please feel free to email Zak Edwards on jobs@prezzybox.com with your CV or call 0844 2495 007 for an informal chat. Alternatively write to: Zak Edwards, Prezzybox.com, Hollybank Farm House, No Mans Heath Lane, Austrey, Warks, CV9 3EW.

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Well folks,

I’ve got to say I’m pretty chuffed at being nominated for the 3rd year running for the Publishers Choice of Affiliate Manager. I’ve got to say I feel a little bit like a cheat as Ben and Bianca (our designers come techies come marketing legends) do the bulk of all of the clever stuff - I’m just the chappie who chats to affiliates a lot and make sure things which are meant to happen, happen! OK - that’s not strictly true but you know what I mean…

So - I hope you’re going to visit the awards and vote (click here), but who you going to vote for???

Well, that’s the big question.

I’ve got to say that I’m up against some really top people in my category and feel pretty honoured to get to the final 4. Last years winner Chris Clarkson of Sunshine fame runs a great affiliate campaign, whilst I’m a big fan of Naomi at Firebox. I know Naomi is responsible for a lot of their marketing and we all know what a good job they (she) does. Making up the quintet is Joshna of Red Letter Days. I’m big buddies with Graham of Buyagift, so feel a bit of a turncoat writing this (hey - he’s voting for Naomi so I’m only repaying the favour!! ;-)), but Red Letter Days are getting a lot of exposure in the affiliate sphere so Joshna must be doing a good job.

So, there we go folks. Get yourselves along to the Affiliate Awards, get your votes in and then I’ll see you for a knees up on the 2nd of June.

Toodle Pip.

TBW.  

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Fancy winning an all inclusive holiday to a 5* Hotel in Dubai? Or how about a Skiing Holiday?

Prezzybox are giving away UNLIMITED PRIZES for our Winter Promotion. The prizes are:

• Star Prize One – 5* All Inclusive 7 Night Holiday to the Hilton Ras al Khaimah Resort in Dubai
• Star Prize Two – 7 Night Skiing Holiday in Europe
• Gold Prize – Golf Weekend at the Belfry OR Overnight Stay at a Luxury Spa for 2 OR Trip to Paris OR Rally and Track Experience
• Silver Prize – Porsche-v-Ferrari Racing Day OR Relaxing Spa Day for 2
• Bronze Prize – Mishake MP3 Player OR Spa Day for 2 OR Ferrari Thrill Ride

The Rules

The rules are simple!

1. Time Period. It’s called a Winter promotion as the time period is 1st Oct through to 14th Feb, so as well as Christmas, you’ve got January Sales and Valentine’s Day to generate sales.
2. Reach one of our targets as detailed in the table below and you are GUARANTEED TO WIN the relevant prize:

Prezzybox Affiliate Prizes

That’s right. We’re not limiting it to 1 or 2 affiliates. EVERY Affiliate who reaches one of the targets will win that prize.
So. If you generate £25,000 of sales YOU ARE GUARANTEED TO WIN an all inclusive 5* Holiday to Dubai.
It gets better…. You can win multiple places on the two Star Prize Holidays.

So, for example, if you generate £50,000 of sales revenue you can choose 2 places to Dubai or 3 places to Skiing and so on. There is literally no limit to how many places you can win and you get to choose where you go!

Bring the missus, a friend or a colleague.

But what if I’m not able to generate that level of sales revenue?

Well, so we don’t leave out any of our favourite Affiliates we’ve also got 3 special prize categories:

• Best New Affiliate (signed up after 01.08.08) – Wins a trip to Dubai.
• Most improved Affiliate (on same period last year) – Wins a trip to Dubai.
• Wildcard – Generate £500 of Sales Revenue and get entered into the prize draw to win a trip to Dubai. We’ll pick a name out of the hat at random.

That’s right. Every Affiliate who generates £500 sales revenue will get 1 entry into the hat. The winner (who will be picked out of the hat at random) will win 1 place to the Dubai Holiday.

And if that’s not enough we’ll also be rewarding our Best New Affiliate and our Most Improved Affiliate too!

Phew!

About the trips

5* All Inclusive Holiday to Dubai

The hotel is the stunning Hilton Ras al Khaimah Hotel in Dubai. It’s 5* and is all inclusive so you can eat and drink as much as you like. R & R will be the order of the day but there will be water sports aplenty and the opportunity to ride the awesome Dune Buggies.

Skiing Holiday to Europe

We’ll provide the flights, the accommodation, the lift pass and the ski-hire. All you need to do is come along and bring a ski jacket. We’ll then have 7 days of glorious skiing.

Whilst on either the Dubai or Skiing trips we’ll be giving you enough space to do your own thing, but will organise a number of group activities for the lucky winners. The only bad news is that you’ll have to put up with me (or one of my colleagues) as a chaperone to make sure everything goes swimmingly.

To enter into the competition all you need to do is email zak@prezzybox.com saying “I want to go!”

Good luck folks!

Zak.

2 Comments »

Hello folks,

I, like most other people who check out the Affiliate Forum on a regular basis have been impressed with the number of prizes on offer of late. Affiliate Future are running their annual trip to Barbados, the chaps at Sunshine are giving away holidays a plenty, Sky and Buy.at are offering “once in a lifetime” visits to the Grand Prix and IWOOT have (very comically in my opinion) got in on the act with their “no frills” version of the event. Classic chaps! We have even been partial to running the odd competition ourselves - normally at Christmas.

However, do affiliates want these competitions? Don’t get me wrong, I think the incentives are fantastic and I know for a fact that the winners of the Buyagift trips to Vegas have had a fantastic trip. So, let me rephrase the question….

As a merchant we only have a certain “margin” to work with, lets say for the sake of argument the standard margin is 25%. Most companies - unless they have a huge marketing budget - have to work within these margins with regards to all of their activities which consequently includes commission, prizes, network override, credit card processing charges etc.

So, my revised question is this…

Do affiliates prefer the chance to win a prize or would they prefer a higher commission?

I honestly don’t know the answer to this. some affiliates are commission junkies (cash is king), whilst others I know like the thrill of the chase. This obviously makes it pretty difficult for us Affiliate Managers. Do we splash out on a big prize or do we try and raise the commission by a % or two? In an ideal world we’d be able to offer huge commissions, massive cookie lengths and fantastic prizes for all of our affiliate buddies, but then we’d probably go bust very quickly.

Secondly how much impact do these super dooper prizes have?

If Buyagift for example (sorry Graham) didn’t run the trips to Vegas would affiliates still promote them because they are a good merchant, convert well, offer decent commission etc? If the answer is “Yes”, then there’s half an arguement not to run the competition so as to save themselves £ (x lots) in marketing expense. If, for example the trip to Vegas cost £20,000 (a complete guess) and Buyagift make 20% margin (again a complete guess) then to pay for the trip they will need to turnover an extra £100,000 just to break even. To flip this over completely, if they didn’t run the competition would they turnover £100,000 less? If the answer is no, then it’s difficult to justify the trip from a fiscal viewpoint.

As I say I’m completely flummoxed as to the right way to go on this one so answers on a postcard please…

 Over and out.

TBW.

1 Comment »

I’ve spent a lot of this year doing in-depth analysis. Consequently I’ve been thinking of this question for a while now and whilst it is hypothetical I think it’s a valuable one to ask as an Affiliate Manager….

So. Would I promote Prezzybox if I was an affiliate?

Upon initial reflection this question seems pretty straight forward and I think the answer would be Yes.

Why? 

Well, Prezzybox have a reputation for being very pro-affiliate and attentive to affiliates needs. They offer lifetime commission, they always release creative and content early, they think outside the box (for example they were the first merchant to launch their Vidibox Video Content Units), they adopt all of the new initiatives that the networks provide and they’re generally good guys to work with.

But is this enough as competition in their sector grows?

Nowadays for example, more and more merchants are cottoning on to the fact that they have to produce a lot of creative in the form of content units, widgets Inter Alia. Consequently this isn’t as much of a differentiating factor for Prezzybox as it once was. Also, how important is commission rate, EPC, validation time period to an affiliate? And how much weight is attributed to this over all of the other ‘none-statistical’ personal factors?

Or, to put it another way, Would I promote Prezzybox instead of Merchant X, if Merchant X was paying higher commission or offering a longer cookie period?

Now, a lot of these questions are purely hypothetical and it’s difficult to look at them from a purely fiscal viewpoint. However, I think, in order to remain a proactive and popular merchant, we (and in fact every other merchant) need to be asking themselves these questions on a regular basis.

So, it looks like my current parlance with analytics is set to continue. I feel to maintain our position as one of the market leaders in our sector (in terms of affiliate marketing at least) I need to look at all of our competitors programmes (direct and indirect competitors) on a regular basis and analyse what they do better than us and leverage the areas where we are better than them.

And it’s just dawned on me…. that’s exactly what affiliates must do on a daily basis…

Over and out. ten ten.

TBW

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