I really enjoy the fact that I can make a living out of creating websites, from knowing nothing, absolutely nothing, only 4 years ago. I vividly remember starting out and scouring the net for information to help me along, and the long dry first year where making any reasonable amount of cash seemed unlikely.

I was fortunate to spend time in the company of others (virtually) who were making a living doing this stuff and still do. If it wasn’t for those long through-the-night chat sessions on the old A4U ezboard I don’t doubt I’d have given in after a few months. Whenever I find myself in conversation with anyone starting down this road I always try and pass on the message that it doesn’t happen immediately, but with a lot of hard work you can make your living from affiliate marketing.

To this end I’m going to do what most people who blog about Affiliate Marketing don’t do and ”show you the good stuff”, a financial history of one of our sites, that started off very small and has grown to become a very nice earner. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone who runs a website had to start somewhere, begging and scrounging for links as best you can. The tried and tested formula of emailing sites telling them “I really liked your site and found it very useful…” hoping your hit rate might grab a few link exchanges with sites higher up the PR chain.

Eventually, all going well and a few years later, you end up being the one getting these requests and it does get a bit annoying after a while, but as I said we’ve all been there.

So, today I encountered a new method from a certain “Online Marketing Agency” and thought I’d share it. Rather than the usual pleasantries and over the top compliments, it was more of a demand.

Hi,

Can you tell me how i can go about placing a link on your holiday watchdog forum at the footer of the page for one of our holiday web sites?

Regards

xxxx

I’m guessing they are working along the lines that although we have a fairly well SEO’d site we don’t actually know what the hell we’re doing and we’ll just stick up links because we will believe they have a right to them. I had to IM Chris just to make sure he was there and it wasn’t a kidnap demand.

So it’s still early morning and I’ve only had one cup of coffee, so feeling slightly abused I replied:

Hi xxxx,

1) Download an FTP client, Cute FTP being my preferred option.

2) Find out our login and passwords

3) Edit the page footer script to include your new link

4) Upload changes via ftp client

Voila!

Probably unprofessional? Yea, but no more so than the original contact. I’m keen to see new methods webmasters / agencies are employing to gain some link love, but please don’t automatically assume the people you’re sending these emails to are stupid.

as Ben Elton used to say.

This Thursday sees local elections across the UK, but in Scotland we also have the election for the Scottish Parliament. It might not mean much to you now, but by Friday it will probably dominate the news.

As things stand, looking at the opinion polls over the last few weeks, the likely outcome is a coalition government led by Alex Salmond’s Scottish National Party. For the first time in 50 years, Labour won’t be the dominant party in an election in Scotland.

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We were invited to a Travel Marketing Event hosted by Affiliate Future in London last week. As we hadn’t got all us HW’ers together for a while we thought it was the perfect excuse!

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It’s baby fever here at HW Headquarters! Chris and Claire had a surprise this week when Ella arrived a few weeks early, I’m sure he’ll be blogging about it whenever he gets a few minutes..

I’m pleased to be able to finally make our own future arrival public knowledge too, with Baby Clarkson #2 due on the 18th October. Just got back from our (well, Lorna’s) 12 week scan and all is well. Poppy got to see her future brother/sister on the ultrasound scan and is finally happy to reply “a baby” to the question “What’s in mummy’s tummy?”.

eStuff are looking to hire a new web developer, to help us get through our ever increasing to-do list!

This is a great opportunity to join an exciting young company on the way to world domination. This is a full-time position working from home.

Requirements:

• HTML / CSS 
• PHP / MySQL
• Build Websites from brief to completion
• A firm grasp of the English language
• Knowledge of JavaScript and XML and AJAX would be useful, but not essential.

The key attributes we’re looking for is someone who works hard and is willing to learn, willing to follow the companies coding practices and ask for advice if needed.

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Went along to the first ever Barcamp Scotland yesterday with Alan, Clarke and Fraser. I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect, but it was an interesting experience.

The general concept is that it’s all very informal and everyone participates to some degree. On arrival we wrote our names on bits of paper along with 3 words to “tag” ourselves. This was then cellotaped to our chests leading to the usual conference chest-gazing at strangers.

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It’s not very often I get to wear my full kilt outfit these days, but it’s going to be a doubler this weekend.

Tonight is the rugby club’s Burns Supper. Yes, I know it’s the 24th of February. Almost a full month since actual Burns Night. It’s been getting later and later every year, mainly to ensure we get good entertaining speakers I believe.

Sunday night I’m off to the Scottish Hotels of The Year awards, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Glasgow. Looking forward to it, might even do a post on it!

It’s been an interesting year so far, lots of meetings, the January rush and my rugby weekend away. Suddenly I’ve got nothing in my calendar! Back to a proper weeks work with no major distractions.

Thankfully Fraser got in touch to tell me about BarCamp Scotland, which looks promising. I’ve also convinced him we should carry on after for some beer and curry, so that’s going to be a nice networking day!

I can also start planning a holiday for sometime in the next few months, as soon as I can work out where to go. I did consider trying to get over to the US for one of the big search marketing conference/expos and tie it in to a holiday, but it seems everytime I look another one gets announced/invented.

So I’m currently trying to find the last to-do list I put together sometime in December and see what still needs done. I’m willing to bet whatever #1 was it’s still not been done. I’m sure this not having a “real job” thing used to be much simpler.

Big weekend coming up. Heading off in the early hours of Friday to London for the England v Scotland game. Just to be clear, I go with no expectation of Scotland winning. At all.

I love 6N away trips, it’s just such a great party atmosphere no matter where you go. If you’re a football fan you’ll never have experienced anything like it. There’s still a good bit of banter but as long as the beer keeps flowing, the songs keep ringing and the bar staff get used to Scottish currency, everyone is generally happy.

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