Well I must say that Ray at Befuddled was right. Mega / Cyber Monday was great! However, I actually had an even better “Topping Tuesday” and “Wicked Wednesday” beat the pair of them hands down. I’m not going to bore you with stats because my Duncan’s made me promise not to constantly count up how much I’m earning and what the profit margins are . This is my best Christmas ever. A great feeling for me in view of the fact I’d done no preparation before we got home at the end of September.

The 90,000 keyword campaign I was chatting about just after I got home is a big part of this success, so I’m extremely happy all our wrestling with Google Adwords Editor has now paid brilliant dividends.

Alright, so I’m knocking on about the brilliance of Christmas. But what next? How am I going to build on my best ever Christmas to make sure it carrys on throughout 2008 to make sure this is my best ever year? Well, I’ve been formulating a plan in my mind of which sectors I’m going to promote this coming year. So I thought I might as well share it with you guys. After all, you might tell me if I’ve missed something!!

So here it is ladies and gents…..

My Affiliate Marketing Calendar 2008!!

January

– Everyone is freezing cold and depressed. Therefore they want to do 2 things. Know they will eventually get a break in the sun, and make indoors look nice and inviting. They will also buy themselves what they really wanted for Christmas in the January sales. Once they have done that, and after the over-spending of Christmas they tend to poop their pants about their debt. So my targeted areas for January will be: -
Gifts (people really do buy themselves things they really wanted), Fashion (January Sales!), Holidays, DIY, Furniture, and Credit Report Related Services.

n.b. – I could also target consolidation loans and 0% interest credit cards. However, it’s wickedly competitive and I’ve not had a chance to think through my traffic strategy properly. So perhaps January 2009 for this!!

February

Well, this is easy. ‘Tis the season of love and slushyness. Valentines day will be upon us and the spending shall commence once more. So targeted areas this month will be:-
All things gift related, flowers, chocolates, perfumes, lingerie, any old crap people buy in a panic so they don’t have to sleep on the sofa for a year!

March / April

Mothers day and Easter are upon us, and Spring has sprung. It’s back out to the gift shopping again and dashing outside to the garden to make sure it’s still there. Also, lots of schools will be going on their half term holidays. So there will be a few last minute holiday bookings on the go. Gift shopping is coming to a sad end for another year at this point. Awwww…. Another round of: -
gifts, flowers, chocolates, perfumes, garden maintenance tools and plants, with a tiny bit of travel promotion in there too.

May / June

Gah. No more wild shopping for gifts. But Wait!! It’s Father’s Day in the UK, so a last gasp for the gifts in the week running up to the 15th. But fear not?! What light through yonder window doth break? That’s right!! It’s British Summer! Time for us all to rush outside and get sunburnt / soaked to the skin in our gardens.
So now we add to the mix: -
Outdoor furniture, Barbecues, Garden Lighting, Parasols, Plants, and if I’m very enthusiastic about the weather… Wine and Food merchants.

July / August

Theoretically when BBQ and outdoor season is in full swing. Will it happen? Hmmmm. Won’t be my problem cos I’ll be in Australia!
However, these months are when people really go mad for their Summer holidays over here. They’re going to Marbella and they want to look their best.
So I will be targeting: -
Last minute holiday bookings, Fashion and swimwear, Cosmetics and Skincare, Hair products like GHD’s and all the above mentioned outdoor stuff (possibly sandbags if last years summer was any indicator of what to expect!)

September

Gah, what a depressing month September usually is. Everyone’s been spending their bahookies off for 8 months and they start saving up for Christmas. I usually batten down the hatches and panic in case the money is never coming back. However, this is also a good month to furiously get some last minute Christmas preparations done.

October to December

It’s silly season again!! Hurahhh!!! So We Target: -
Anything at all!! Toys, Games, Clothes, Makeup, Cosmetics, Perfumes, Gifts in All Shapes and Sizes, Hampers, Christmas Decorations, Flowers. ANYTHING!!

Phew. I think I need to go back to bed now, I’ve just lived an entire year of my life in 40 minutes. Ideally speaking, you should be preparing for each of the affiliate seasons a good few weeks in advance. Hence, myself and Duncan are now just monitoring all our Christmas things and have already started preparing our January campaigns. I will also be doing an SEO site for Valentines day this month in the hope of some traffic. Come the start of January we will be in Valentines mode… and so on.

I know there’s loads of sectors I’ve missed out on there, but that’s what I’ll be doing this year. If you are doing something exciting this year and want to add it in the comments, it would be interesting to see what other chaps are up to!

Well, I’ve only just gotten back up the road from Newcastle after staying on for the weekend. I have to say that I’m absolutely knackered after a huge night on Thursday followed by a weekend of drinking with some family members I hadn’t seen for 4 years.

I must say, I had an absolutely wonderful evening. The only downside was that I had a little accident involving Duncan’s expensive camera he usually takes diving and the chocolate fountain. Umm.. lets just say I really do wish I’d left the underwater housing on it. He’s not a happy camper as they don’t make the cameras any more, and the underwater housing cost a bloody packet!! Fortunately, Ray of Befuddled Fame had his camera and lent it to me a couple of times.

There were many highlights to the great evening, but my very favourite bits were…

Being robbed of the last Buy.at Christmas cracker in the building by the above mentioned Ray, who then proceeded to spend an inordinate amount of time flashing around the free fiver that was in there.

Cheers Ray!!

Letting my fellow affiates know just how much I really love them…

*ahem* I’ll be issuing John Lamerton with his written apology for that one later

Learning what I’ve decided to call “The Scouse Shimmy” from my new dancing partner in crime, Chris Frost. For anyone not familiar with this little number that beats the pants off a Paso Doble any day… it basically involves manically jiving around the dancefloor with a hysterical Scottish girl in tow, and jumping right into the middle of as many bewildered revellers as possible. During this, you have to maintain a big scary Scouse grin at all times. I thought it was hilarious, but you’d be amazed how many locals thought that there’d clearly been a breakout from a nearby secure hospital.

Duncan and I having to scab money for nightclub entry from Mark Russell of Existem AM after we got to the front of the line and discovered neither of us had actually brought money with us. Thanks Mark!

Here’s some more magical moments from the evening…

“My” Duncan and Keith Bond have a beer.

Ray and I finally kiss and make up… is it me, or am I looking pissed?

Lee, Me, Duncan, Keith!

Elaine and I having a bit of girl talk (weddings, babies, anything really!!)

Kieron explores the joys of free Peroni with Elaine…

That crazy funkster Ray struts his stuff

I discover an early casualty and decide the kindest thing to do is take pictures of him at his most vunerable. Then…

…Try to crowd everyone else in for a pic only for him to wake up. In case anyone’s wondering, that’s my attempt at a nonchalant escape!

Chris Frost practising his manic grins for our dancing debut.

Duncan finally forgives me for breaking his camera in the Chocolate fountain!

The last picture Duncan’s camera ever took… Dan and the Evil Fountain of Chocolatey Doom!!

I’ve been fiddling around with WordPress for quite some time now. I’ve had a few months to really have a good play around with it. Having recently completed a truly impressive Google compliant Adwords landing page with a WordPress blog skin, I think it’s time to provide a one-stop guide to getting up off your affiliate bums and launching yourself into the world of WordPress!!

The beauty of WordPress is that its totally free, comes with a great and easy to use content management system, and has plugins that can do just about anything you can think of at the touch of a button.

Well, that’s easy for you to say Kirsts but it’s all been sounding complicated to me, so where the buggery do we start?

Well, let’s try the beginning shall we chaps? First off… you will need….

A Proper Domain
No fiddling around with WordPress hosted efforts. Lets invest a tiny bit of time and money in buying a proper domain. A .co.uk costs about a fiver. When you are looking for a domain registrar make sure that they allow you to change name servers without any hassles. Personally speaking, I’ve always used Fasthosts for my domain registration but I’m not linking to them here because sometimes they are the most frustrating shower of arses to deal with (that’ll teach ‘em!).

A Web Host That Provides SQL Databases
Kinda got a bit technical all of a sudden? Now don’t you panic boys and girls, it’s nice and easy to set up a SQL database with a host and once you’ve pressed a few buttons within your hosting control panel, WordPress does the rest.

Unclear? Don’t worry. There are incredibly Detailed Instructions On How To Install WordPress Here. The chaps behind this platform really have worked very hard to make it as simple as possible.

OK, so you’ve got your site all ready to go. What now?

A Decent Looking WordPress Theme Design
It’s really amazing just how many really cool free WordPress Themes there are knocking about at the moment. You can create a really, really professional looking site without having to have a shred of design ability.

You can search through loads of free themes at themes.wordpress.net/, however James Little kindly uploaded a really neat WordPress Pack to his blog a while back which included loads of great themes and some essential plugins. A great time saver.

If you’ve something particular in mind it’s really easy to search for great free themes in Google. Just search for “wordpress theme + site type” I’ve found some total crackers recently by searching on terms such as: -

WordPress Beauty Theme
WordPress Magazine Theme (these are great for creating sites with static home pages and a magazine or news site feel.)
WordPress Fashion Theme

I just love the way you can change the look of your whole WordPress site just by logging into the admin section and selecting another site from your “Presentation” menu.

OK, so you’ve got your site looking smashing, what next?

Right. First off, you’ll be needing a few of the plugins that make WordPress sites a lot more effective in search engine terms. Chris Frost wrote a really interesting post about this on his blog a few days ago, so you don’t just have to take my word for it!

In no particular order, here are a few of the plugins I make use of regularly: -

Akismet – Helps keep those nasty, nasty comment spammers away.

SEO Title Tag – Lets you define the title content for every blog post and category. Hugely powerful as good titles make a huge difference to your SEO efforts.

Comment Relish -For adding feed subscription buttons to your blog.

Google Sitemaps – Adds a Google compliant sitemap of your blog.

Related Posts – Lists a a few related posts.

Some Good Posts About WordPress Plugins

Christ Frost came up trumps again with his Blogging Necessities list. Some great plugins here.

Also, I found this one at The Blog Joint.

Finally…. Some Content!

Cover your topic thoroughly. Write a couple of posts each day on individual products or niche… it doesn’t have to be much, just a couple of hundred words or so.

I recently started this blog: – Natural Beauty Tips. It very quickly started getting traffic from long tail search terms. I still have a lot to do on this one, but it should give you a bit of an idea.

Also, Rob at Monetise This recently posted about a merchant he liked and gave an example of a Personalised Gifts Site he’s created using a WordPress theme. As you’ll see, Rob has been able to create a nice Xmas feel using a suitably festive blog skin which he’ll be able to change at the touch of a button once Santa has returned to Lapland.

Finally Finally….

What more can I say? Give WordPress a go. It’s a delightfully easy way to create affiliate content. I absolutely love it!!

Well, if you can’t beat the Christmas countdowns, join them… that’s my motto!

Tomorrow Duncan and I are off to yet another great UK affiliate event sponsored by those lovely people at Buy.at (I always think people are lovely when they buy me drinks – try it and see )

This is going to be an absolute, well, cracker of an event and will take place at Apartment in Newcastle at 7pm tomorrow night. We’ve booked a hotel just a short stagger away, and we can’t wait to see everyone for what may be the last time before we leave the country again *sniff*

Apart from my perennial favourite, the free bar, there’s a whole host of fab prizes up for grabs. Existem AM are going to be giving away a 60GB Ipod Video,

Euroffice are giving away an Xbox 360,

and Thorntons will be giving away a YEARS SUPPLY OF CHOCOLATE to a lucky attendee.

I can’t wait to get down there tomorrow and indulge in some festive fun.. although I am on a diet so I might have to try really hard to be good!

Another thing that’s been running through my mind of recent times is the preoccupation with “Super Affiliates”. Why is it that the majority of folks who take any more than a passing interest in our industry suddenly leap into the air like people posessed and proclaim in loud and confident voices: -

“That’s it! I’m sick of working for the man!! I’m going to be a SUPER affiliate!!!!” **Cue superhero type music, and imagine our proud and happy protagonist in a pair of red underpants and his mum’s best turquoise tights**

So look, being serious here, I do understand why people find out about chaps such as Amit Mehta of Titanium Amex card fame, Jeremy Shoemaker with his adsense check for $132,994.97, and our very own Kieron Donoghue who spends the debt of a small African country on PPC every month. Of course they’re hugely inspirational…

But ask yourself these two things If you’re an aspiring affiliate, or are just starting out along the long and weary road to the turqouise tights…

1 ) Is affiliate success necessarily going to be achieved by emulating other people?

No.

The reason all these guys earn money faster than they can spend it is because they are unique and can see money making opportunities where others don’t. If you seek to emulate them, it won’t make you as successful as them. Merely a second rate copy… and you still won’t have a clue how YOU can make money, only what other people are up to.

2 ) Honestly, what’s wrong with being merely “Pretty Good”? Have a good think about how you’d define success in real terms. Doubling your salary? Working 2 days a week for the same money and having time to spend with your family?

Personally speaking, I’m not a super affiliate in terms of turning over millions of pounds a month (and that’s what I reckon a real super affiliate is)… and I’ve no desire to be. What’s the point of the affiliate lifestyle if you can’t take them 5 or 6 holidays a year? Furthermore, my Duncan intimated to me last night that (my) preoccupation with money bothers him a little bit sometimes.

Have you thought about whether your current partner wants to wake up next to Sir Alan Sugar instead of you tomorrow morning?

Pretty Good Affiliate is an A-OK job description too in my book!

(n.b. anyone who knows me really well will no doubt be aware there’s bound to be another word in that job description. But in the interests of decency, I’ve left it out! )

Gah…. so ok, I got up this morning and realised the spring in my step has sprung, and my usual determined attitude has slipped away from me. In short, I just can’t be arsed to do anything. Even remaining upright seems like a big ask this morning.

This happens to me every now and again (and probably to most affiliates who work at home all day long), unfortunately I can’t just take the day off which is my usual solution. I was off all last week arranging bits and bobs to do with my wedding, which is probably why I am so unmotivated today. It’s a bit depressing returning to reality!

So what’s my strategy for pulling the affiliate phoenix from the ashes and rescuing my entire day at the height of the Christmas rush?

1 ) Get dressed and wash my bloody face. I’m chronic for still sitting around wearing my favourite Jimmy Jammies with my red fleece dressing gown (the one with the ickle stars on) at 2pm. Good some days, but the trouble is if you are dressed for bed you sometimes spend the whole day feeling like you should still be there. NB if any merchant REALLY wants to impress me, its free Jimmy Jammies they should send me. Possibly with “Make Money While You Sleep” embroidered on the pocket.

2 ) Write myself 3 easy tasks I absolutely must get done today on a big bit of paper and stick it where I can’t fail to see it all the time. That way, when I get distracted looking at pearl tiaras on e-bay I will eventually remember to at least do some actual work in order to pay for my random e-bay purchases.

3 ) Resolve not to sit up till 1am this evening checking out great new niche domain ideas that are sure to bring me in oodles of free traffic. Another failing of mine is working too late at night. It was something I got myself sorted out on after poor old Duncan commented casually (or was it tearfully?!) that he hadn’t signed up for life with a workaholic. He’d rather liked me when I was behaving like an Alcoholic and partying on down till 6am five nights a week (no pleasing some people!). However, I’m slipping again as a result of feeling I need to do a lot of work to get my business back on track after a year of backpacking

4 ) Time to detox from those late night glasses of wine. They’re not good for waking up full of the joys of spring. Nor will the nurse who weighs me every Tuesday at my slimming club be impressed when I start to put on weight from too much wine.

Will this work? Maybe not. I’ve just spent the first half hour of my action plan taking to you guys…

*Rushes off to do some Unique Content For Beauty Blog*

So I’m doing my internet blog rounds today and go visit ShoeMoney’s blog as per usual. SHOCK HORROR MURDER POLIS, as we say in Scotland. He appears to have a mere 6,068 readers compared to yesterdays count of over 14,000

So what can it be? Has the Rich Jerk finally gotten his revenge after their public tiff a while back? Has everyone gotten sick of that really, really, big cheque on the front page of his blog (lucky git!).

Umm… No. It seems that the rather more disappointing and mundane answer is that Feedburner is broken. This issue is because Feedburner (owned by Google) is having problems counting stats from Google Feedfetcher. Also owned by, well… Google! This issue first arose on Saturday (and gave me a real fright because I thought Y’all didn’t love me any more *sniff*).

My own subscribers have dropped by more than half, and poor old Kieron is down in the doldrums with a scant 391 from his usual impressive fan base which is in the high 600′s.

Come on Feedburner… I certainly don’t need any more heart attacks this week. It’s bad enough trying to organise a wedding without being made to think half your subscribers think you’re that crap they don’t want to look at you any more!! I shall be too traumatised for me next dress fitting… you wait and see! *Bridezilla stomps off to have a nice strop*

I went to the “Meet The Super Affiliates” session at the A4U Expo last week. Unsurprisingly, it was one of the most popular sessions I attended.

Lots of good (but understandably general) advice was given out to the attendees. Again, these are just my notes frantically scribbled down on my conference programme to refer back to. If something doesn’t make sense – blame my shorthand!

The session was run by a panel of 4: – Kristopher Jones, Kieron Donoghue, Sri Sharma, and Duncan Jennings. I won’t do a bio on all of them, I’ll say only this: – Each one of them generates millions of pounds of revenue each year. Kieron in particular mentioned a monthly PPC spend I don’t think I’ve achieved in my entire career. That’s what a super affiliate is!

OK, so the session kicked off with a question to all panelists: “How Proprietory To Affiliate Marketing Success Is Technology V’s Strategy?” Here are some of the responses. Alas I can’t tell you who said what. But hey, it’s all wonderful advice!

– Technology helps but strategy is key to success was the overwhelming response from all.

So what strategy tips did we glean for our super affiliate panelists?

– Start small, and build your expertise around a simple strategy.

– Focus on a niche. Become the best within that niche. Create quality content.

– Find an angle to create your income stream.

– Understand the market before you even begin your strategy. Study market stats and buyer behaviour information to help you target your efforts effectively.

– If you lack an essential skillset, try to partner with someone who has those skills on a rev share basis.

– Pick a topic you are passionate about for your marketing efforts.

– Think about a different angle in order to direct relevant, converting traffic to merchants rather than taking on the big boys on generics. The example Kieron gave on this tip was based on promoting satellite TV signups. Rather than targeting people looking for straight satellite TV, look at targeting search terms relating to sporting events only available on pay per view. i.e. A Ricky Hatton fight on Sky.

– Don’t have the technical ability to develop a web site? Use WordPress, Kieron is a huge fan of this excellent, free, and easy to use system. Here’s an example of a really, really basic Photo Developing Offers Blog I’ve recently added to one of my small niche sites. It took about 4 hours to set up, start to finish… including content!

- Want to know what this years top selling products will be? Ask. Next time you’re out shopping, keep your eyes open. Look for any products creating a buzz, ask retailers what they think will sell this year.

The overwhelming response from these guys was that you don’t need to be technical to be a success. Affiliate Marketing is, well, marketing after all. In my personal opinion it’s great if you’re technical or have technical resources at your disposal, but it’s FAR more important to be able to think creatively about new niches and how to target buyers.

Another question posed to the super affiliates was: –

Which Industry Sectors Do You Steer Clear Of?

Kieron: Travel, it’s a huge and competitve sector that involves a lot of work and very little return.
Sri: B2B products, which have a long sale time and where potential customers are likely to make a call rather than completing a purchase online.
Duncan: Web Hosting – Merchants make huge profits in the long term within this area, whilst the affiliate gets a one-off CPA. This makes for a situation where the lead rate is too low and the paid search costs are too high.
Kris: – Non branded products where there is a recognised brand within the same marketplace.

Finally, the panel was asked to give Two Top Tips for success:

Kris:
1 ) Find your strategy, replicate your strategy, and scale it up to build your business.
2 ) Respect the industry. Don’t be tempted to get rich quick, think long term.

Duncan:
1 ) Focus on quality. You’ll benefit far more from this approach.
2 ) Pick an area where merchants pay decent commissions.

Sri:
1 ) If a plan doesn’t make sense in one minute when you are talking about it. Drop it.
2 ) Put in 300%, but enjoy it or it simply won’t work!

Kieron:
1 ) WORDPRESS!
2 ) Don’t lose your shirt on PPC. Learn it first before you jump in with both feet. It’s way too easy to crash and burn!

Very, very simple and straightforward advice… but I really thought it would be very valuable for many of the readers of this blog and also serve as a good example of just how worthwhile it will be to attend A4U Expo 2008. And yes, I am angling for a free pass. Matt Wood, take note!

I was furiously taking notes I thought might be of use to blog readers during some of the sessions at the A4UExpo last week. I attended “The Confluence Of Search And Affiliate Marketing” by Kristopher Jones on the first day of the conference and thought he had some really pertinent points to make. Obviously, the below are not his own words I’ve only noted down some key points which appealed to me and how I interpreted them.

For anyone who is not aware of Kristopher’s work, he is one of the world’s top internet marketing experts, President and CEO of Pepperjam, a full service internet marketing agency which is one of the top 500 privately owned business’ in the US. In other words, he’s a super affiliate and he really, really knows how to generate revenue!

There were lots of really compelling stats right at the start such as 60% of affiliate sales are driven by SEM affiliates, 95% of sales come from 5% of affiliates, and much about how affiliate marketing is a great vehicle for merchants to improve sales. But this is a blog for affiliates, so we don’t need much convincing.

Kristopher’s original strategy way back in the day was to find a way he could generate a small amount of revenue each and every month for every merchant on the scene (around 2,000 at that time). His aim was to find $50 of revenue for each one, and he achieved this in 2000 / 2001. For those of you with poor mental arithmetic skills, he managed to rake in $100,000 US per month by following a very simple strategy. He found a very small, simple way to make a bit of revenue for a single merchant and then scaled it up to apply to every merchant in sight.

I suspect that brand name bidding had a lot to do with this kind of success back then, but its a very, very, pertinent bit of advice. You only need to find a way to make £5 a day from something 20 times to make £100 a day. That’s a very strong part of my own strategy. I always aim to get something up and out there every day. Following this formula I grew my own affiliate business to a full time income within 3 months.

Look to the long term – Perhaps this might seem an obvious bit of advice when it’s written right in front of you. However, many conversations I had at the Expo focussed on a distinct group of affiliates who still don’t look beyond next month and towards the way affiliate marketing will change in the future. It’s important to build quality landing pages and content which will support your affiliate business through periods of change. The old saying quality is king is well worn for a good reason.

Make sure you have a strong PPC account structure – We’re all very much aware of the mystic (or is it mythical?!) Adwords Account Quality Score. Much of the cost you pay and the rankings you achieve is based on an overall quality score applied to your account by the great “G”. According to Kris, by bidding on fewer keywords and making them strongly related to each other you can improve the old quality score, reduce your click costs, and improve your rankings. Also, if you have a keyword within an adgroup which has a poor click through rate, you should consider weeding it out or removing it to another adgroup to give your other keywords the best chance for strong performance.

Some Recommended Resources

Kris mentioned a few url’s of some online marketing resources he makes use of…

Competitive Research Tools
GoogSpy – Adwords competitor research.
Hitwise – Search behaviour and interaction data (although I believe this has a rather hefty subscription fee. Perhaps only for people with thousands of sites!)
SEO Digger – Analyse competitor sites to determine which keywords they rank high enough for to be in the top 20. Looks intriguing…
Compete.com – Competitive metrics for every site on the web.

Keyword Tools
Key Compete – Download competitors keywords and adwords. (Dunno about this one personally, I do well from stuff my competitors haven’t thought of yet, but that’s just me!)
Rapid Keyword – Generate keywords and typos (although there are loads of free typo generation tools knocking about.

A Final, Random Hint
If you’re creating an adgroup to target a common mis-spelling of a product name or keyword, spell it wrong in the adcopy. I’d imagine this only works with search terms where people genuinely think they have entered the right spelling into their search engine, as opposed to missing out or interposing letters.

Well, what an event this has been so far. I’m so glad we made the effort to come as it’s the best conference I have ever attended (I went to a fair few boring SEO affairs back in the day).

Unfortunately, Duncan and I were hangover victims for the entire first day after one of the waitresses at the Buy.at pre-event networking party took a shine to Duncan. This resulted in us being somewhat replete with the rather nice free wine and staggering home at a rather disgraceful 2am. I can’t have been too bad mind you, I was free of mystery injuries and there was a notable lack of traffic cones in our room! You can take the girl out of uni…

However, this didn’t stop us from attending some great conference sessions yesterday. I’ve taken lots of notes with tips and resources from some top affiliate industry types and I will be doing some session by session posts where I think there’s something useful for you guys.

Highlights so far…

– Chatting to a Scottish guy for 40 minutes at the buy.at party. He asked me where I was from. When I said, “I’m from near Girvan in Ayrshire.”
He said, “No Way!!! What a coincidence, there’s this girl with a really great blog from down that area, you must live REALLY close to her”
“Umm, that’s me?”
“No WAY!!! I thought you were a bit of a heiffer” (Ayrshire term for someone of bovine appearance)

He really, really ruined that rather nice moment for me.

– The meet the super affiliates panel. Not only is it good to see these guys close up (although I saw Kieron for a quick chat the night before) But there was some good, insightful knowledge and it was jam packed with tips for newbies that made an awful lot of sense.

– Hero from Webgains winning the award for best account manager. I thought this was so well deserved, she works incredibly hard and is a pleasure to deal with. Congratulations Hero!

– Finally getting the fish and chips after the award ceremony. Myself and the lovely people from Figleaves were so hungry that we all ended up seperately ambushing unsuspecting waiting staff for boxes of food. The result? 8 boxes of fish and chips between the four of us! We ate them all too.

– Kieron winning the award for best blog of 2007. Another well deserved win. It must have been a very close call between him and Fraser. Even Kieron felt the night before that Fraser would win. I doubt Fraser will mind to much at the moment, he’s far too busy adoring his new baby.

– The Affiliate Window freebies. Gotta love the first aid kit and the medicine bottles full of Jelly Beans. All the guys were dressed in white coats too. “resolving your affiliate marketing ills” was the general theme, and I thought it was hilarious.

Well, I’m sat in my jim jams right now drinking tea and trying to wake up to go and enjoy another action packed day. I’m going to try and chat with some more people today… I was finding communication somewhat difficult at certain points yesterday!