Doug’s Mouthpiece - Droug.co.uk

Adfero News Competitor?

What we are doing written by Doug Scott

We do loads of news on sites like www.mns.co.uk, www.carrentals.co.uk, www.fly.co.uk, www.recycle.co.uk and lots more sites and wonder if anyone would be interested if we setup a service to run news for people.

The service would involve managing everything from setting up a subdomain, getting content written and getting it into google news.

Would anyone be interested? If so add a comment and we will get back to you.

Cheers

Doug

Discount Voucher Sites and Why Bother?

What we are doing written by Doug Scott

As someone who is heavily involved in this arena I can tell you now not to bother unless you have decent amounts of traffic or want to go after the traffic quite hard.

Lete me explain to you the issues:

1. The overheads just on keeping on top of the codes/offers is quite something. We now have a team of people just collecting deals/offers/codes. Without all the latest offers on your site it’s a pointless exercise. At last count we had close to 3000 offers/codes/deals in our system including Game discount vouchers, Argos discount vouchers, Dixons discount vouchers, Play discount vouchers, Lovefilm discount vouchers, Boot discount vouchers
2. The next issue is keeping on top of the merchants and the rule changes, being approved/disapproved for affiliate schemes etc etc.
3. We run our own site www.discountvouchers.co.uk which ranks quite nicely but we have been doing a lot of work. From the data we see from this site we see conversion rates running at double or treble normal content site rates, but no where near the 10% plus that people talk about. Mind you the IAB guidelines have definitely affected click through rates ( what do you say Mark??:):)
4. You will also find that you do not make much per visitor, be aware

Admittedly there is lots of long tail traffic, but you will need masses of content and power links to not get caught by the Google duplicate content penalty and many of people are after that, generally including the merhcnats themselves who have natural power.

Anyway just my little bit of knowledge, but if you already have a lot of grunt Google power and/or traffic then the effort may be worth doing. If you want a feed then kick the guys at www.promotions.co.uk atleast that may save you a lot of  work and effort.

Doug

Our Staff - The Vouch

Fun, What we are doing written by Doug Scott

Some of the guys in our office as you may know or may not know are in a band, well yesterday they had a bit of a breakthrough and were playing on Radio 2 with Janice Long.

The Vouch with Kid Rad

Many people have already met them at the A4U events in the bandanas.

Good to see they have not quite finished there website, that bit sounds familiar.

The Vouch

I was genuinely surprised how good they sound, I am a hard man to please as they know. But well done Joe, Josh, Adam as it was brilliant.

All the best

Doug

Merchants, Networks and Affiliates Open Disclosure

Affiliate Money Grabbers, What we are doing written by Doug Scott

I was at the IAB meeting last week and an issue was raised. The issues was that merchants and networks sometimes reject affiliates from a program as they do not really know what that affiliate does.

There were numerous suggestions to fix this including:

affiliates to have a simple site showcasing their main sites
affiliates to update their profiles on the affiliates4u forum

We already run www.asapventures.co.uk but I have also updated our a4u profile

Seems like a good and simple idea.

Now we wait for the merchants to disclose what the rules are that they use to remove sales…deduping etc:) Seems only fair that affiliates can see when they will be paid and when they won’t be. Disclosure can’t only be one way.

Doug
Ps. Sorry to Paul Lowndsy as I met him on Thursday and he seemed a nice bloke.

Burn a suit for Comic Relief

Fun, What we are doing written by Doug Scott

Burn baby burn

Carrentals launches multilingually and globally

What we are doing written by Doug Scott

Well we have been tinkering in the background and are almost ready to launch car hire in local languages around the world:) So if any potential car hire partners who we are not talking to wish to contact me please do. The list of urls we will be using are listed below:

Australia - comparecarrentals.com.au compare car rentals
Austria - carrentals.at autovermietung
Belgium - carrentals.be autoverhuur
Czech Republic - 123carrental.cz autopůjčovna
Denmark carrentals.dk biludlejning
France - locature.fr location de voiture
Germany - carrentals.de autovermietung
Hungary - carrentals.hu autóbérlés
Israel carrentals.co.il השכרת רכב
Italy - autonoleggio1.it autonoleggio
Latvia - carrentals.lv car rental
Liechtenstein - carrentals.li autovermietung
Lithuania - carrentals.lt automobiliu nuoma
Luxemburg - carrentals.lu location voiture
Netherland - autoverhuur1.nl autoverhuur
Poland - 123wynajemaut.pl Wynajem Samochodów
Portugal - carrentals.pt alugar carro
Romania - xmasini.ro Maşini de închiriat
Russia - carrentals.ru аренда автомобилей
Slovakia - carrentals.sk autopozicovna
Spain - cochesya.es alquiler de coches
Sweden - carrentals.se biluthyrning
Switzerland (french) - location-de-voiture.ch location voitures
UAE carrentals.ae car rental
USA/Canada - comparecarrentals.com compare car rentals

Plus:)
vanrentals.co.uk van hire

Cheers to all involved, especially Alex who has been running the European stuff:)

Doug

car rentals.co.uk car hire affiliate scheme launched

ASAP Ventures, What we are doing written by Doug Scott

Car hire affiliate scheme from car rentals.co.uk

Can I make a public thank you to everyone involved. This is the first comparator we believe that is offering a cpe type deal to affiliates. Think about it….we have 40 suppliers feeding their sales data into our system which we then feed back to webgains, not a simple task….well done.

So if you have a travel site and want to add an ancillary product that converts much better than anything alse then hopefully we have it.

Doug

Carrentals.co.uk appoint Arctic Sunrise as Affiliate Agency

ASAP Ventures, What we are doing written by Doug Scott

In January www.carrentals.co.uk is launching it’s affiliate program, with Keith Budden and Arctic Sunrise acting as our affiliate agency.

The advantages to anyone who does any business in the car hire space are simply:

• we have the oldest and most established car hire comparator in the market, hence we convert well
• conversion rates massively increase over using any normal car hire affiliate scheme
• we will pay well
• we were affiliates so will give you anything we can

So welcome Keith into our world of fun:)

If you wish to know more please hassle Keith, thats his role:) Click here to hassle Keith

Doug of www.carrentals.co.uk

Droug.co.uk - the new home for Doug’s Mouthpiece

Websites, What we are doing written by Paulh

At last! We finally got Doug to agree to a design from the guys at www.uniqueblogdesigns.com

What do you think?

Spotted any problems?

Anything Chris can do, we can do better

Affiliate Money Grabbers, What we are doing written by Doug Scott

Mr Clarkson of www.sunshine.co.uk fame reckons he should win the EConsultancy Award for innovation for the award “Innovation in Affiliate Marketing”, for what he did with wordpress or sunpress. Come on lets be honest, on the surface it may look good, but it’s only a bloody skin on top of wordpress. You could knock that up in an afternoon.

Come on now a bit of innovation is something like www.promotions.co.uk, it sorts out a problem for lots of people rather than just making money for Chris. So we have applied.

Read his pitch here, then and then vote for us:)

Fill out the form here - Vote for us - Innovation in Affiliate Marketing. Also give me a vote for - Most Innovative Person in Digital Marketing. It’s free to enter.

then email it to - awards@e-consultancy.com

Some reason to do it:

1. Ours is a better idea
2. Chris won the A4U award already
3. Chris loosing would be funny
4. Doug is awful at accepting prizes

Doug has entered