A4U Awards This Is One Event The US Writers Strike Cant Stop

The writers strike is still in full flow in the USA and fair play to them! Programs have stopped filming and there is no clear end to the strike. Even the recent Golden Globes awards were basically cancelled due to the strike. However one event that will not be cancelled is the annual A4U affiliate awards 2008!

This years event is set to be a big affair.  The ceremony will take place on the 5th June 2008 at the Sheraton Park Hotel. There are going to be awards for innovative Affiliate Marketing activity in the following vertical sectors:

Finance
Retail
Gaming
Travel and Leisure
Technology and Telecommunications

Edit: Matthew Wood has just informed me that there will be another award - The Best Affiliate Blog 2008!

Check out the official a4u awards website for further details. Also please let me know if you are going, meeting up would be good!

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AOL Buys Buy.at

AOL have announced that they have added the affiliate network Buy.at to their profile today. Buy.at have announced they are pleased with the deal as it will allow them to expand their infrastructure, services and technology.

“Advertising.com and buy.at will be able to expand their advertiser offerings, driving more revenue opportunities for affiliate publishers who specialise in both e-commerce websites and retail focused content. This will help to generate sales for advertisers and increased revenue for publishers. Publishers will be able to work with Advertising.com and buy.at across several product lines, earning revenue for inventory across their display, video, mobile, and affiliate channels”

Buy.at have offices all over the world and currently employ around 70 people. They run just over 200 affiliate programs on their network and have recently made improvements to the tools and reporting section of their website. I hope this development will lead to more tools like their great content engine that affiliates currently benefit from.

This is not the first buy out of an affiliate network within the past few months and I am sure it will not be the last. The affiliate industry is clearly growing rapidly and I predict more takeovers are around the corner!

Popularity: 39% [?]

If At First You Don’t Succeed

I am a firm believer of the saying if at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again. This is a statement that I apply to my affiliate marketing efforts and it is something that should feature prominently in yours! You see affiliate marketing relies on webmasters skills, ideas and ability to adapt to the problems you face during the day to day running of your site(s). It also relies on perseverance and patience.

Let me give you a personal example, I have a number of websites that operate in very competitive niches. If I had taken sites on their first months income alone and given up it could have cost me thousands in profit, Instead I have more often than not decided to trial and error different techniques to make sure the site worked for me. This taught me the valuable lesson of patience and the need to try different things before admitting defeat.

I have read a great deal of forum posts and have received lots of emails from people who have underperforming web sites and I always try to give the best advice I can. But one thing I can not give is determination or the will to succeed, so back to the point of this post (yes there is a point ), when you are feeling nothing is going your way with your affiliate ventures take a step back and have think about what you want to acheive and why, then try again! Never give up at the first hurdle.

I’d like to finish with some inspirational links to show you that your patience can pay off:

Kierons famous site point bank statement for one month:

Jeremy shoemakers huge adsense cheque:

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Microsoft To Buy Yahoo ? Will It Ever Happen?

Reuters (New York) have just announced that Microsoft have placed a bid for Yahoo Inc for a staggering $44.6 Billion, that’s £22.4 billion pounds! If this were to happen it would be the largest merger since Time Warner and Aol joined forces.

My question is two fold:

1. Will it ever happen?

2. Will it actually have any impact on the search engines? (e.g. google etc)

I am going to leave it at that and just see what happens. Your guess is as good as mine!

Popularity: 38% [?]