The book is structured in 3 parts:

• Part 1: Questions and Answers
• Part 2: Affiliate Manager & Merchant Mistakes
• Part 3: Ideas for affiliate programme promotion

Part 1 is divided into 3 subsections, outlining what you need to consider during the various phases of setting up a affiliate programme:

1. Pre-launch phase
2. Launch Phase
3. Pro Level

The 2nd part outlines a variety of mistakes, which could be encountered in affiliate marketing:

1. Mistakes made within the affiliate programme
2. Mistakes made within the website that runs an affiliate programme
3. Day-to-Day affiliate programme management mistakes

Part 3 is also very useful, with 30 ideas for affiliate programme promotion. It is a great resource for getting some inspiration even if not all of the ideas may be suitable for your programme.

In overall, I can only recommend this book, even if you are a complete novice or if you’re about to start a programme yourself, as it will be a great guide to keeping your programme on track. This book is definitely a keeper!

This was my first ever time at an official SMX event and I was really happy that my company let me attend the event, despite the recesssion. I wasn´t really sure what to expect to be honest but I reckon in comparison to the events in London or in the states, the SMX Madrid is a lot smaller scale event. Other conference visitors who had been at the event in 2008 said that this year’s participation must have been only about 1/3 or even 1/4 of the previous years’ . So the recession took its turn quite a bit this year.

At first I was a little bit worried about the event being carried out completely in Spanish, although I understand a lot more than I speak, but most of the keynote speakers did their talks in English.

The keynote speakers included

• Barney Pell from Powerset, a Microsoft company
• Russell E. Perry, from 123People
• Faisal Galaria, Ex-Director of Kayak
• Sara Holoubek, presiden of SEMPO, who filled in for Julio Fernandez

Sara Holoubek, a very charismatic public speaker, kept the crowd awake talking a lot about social media. Twitter was a big buzz word throughout the 2 day event.

Barney Pell introduced Bing, the “decision making” search engine, which certainly had a couple of features I liked, for example that a video would start playing by hovering over it, rather clicking on it. Apart from that I don’t think it will take off the way Microsoft will hope for, although a massive marketing budget was made available for the launch.

Russell E. Perry introduced 123people, a website designed purely for “spying” on People. When making a search for a person, it returns anything from pictures to social networking profiles of that person, including email addresses. The question of privacy was obviously raised and Perry assured that the site only contains links to the various websites where personal content is been entered but realisticly people require to take care of their own privacy. If your email address is publicly available somewhere, it will appear on the 123people website. I think it’s a great way of managing your own “brand”.

My favourite 2 speakers, and I am probably a bit biased there, as I used to work with them at Bigmouthmedia, were Andrew Girdwood and Susana Inarejos. Andrew shared some really great insights and stats in terms of search behaviour in different countries, whereas Susana talked about synergy between SEO and PPC, which I think is so often overlooked but yet so important.

My overall verdict: I think the SMX Madrid is certainly valuable for people who work in-House or are still fairly new to search. Main bonus of these events is that they are a great place for networking.

Madrid is beautiful as well, so it’s definitely worth going but I have my heart set on going to the SMX Advanced in Seattle next year. Let’s see whether I manage.

As promised last month, here comes another book review. “Guidelines for online success – The Dos and Don’ts of the internet  from the best interactive agencies around the world” by Rob Ford and Julius Wiedemann.

First impression, especially if you like to judge a book by its cover (I know it’s very shallow but I have to admit on occasion I do!), it is indeed a very aesthetically pleasing book.  Funky big pink letters on a greyish paperback, with a white elastic band holding the book together. Very different! Each of the 6 chapters are colour coded and tabbed, so it’s easy to find the chapter you are interested in.

The book concentrates on these 6 key areas:

1) Interface & Design

2) Marketing & Communication

3) Technology & Programming

4) Technical advice

5) Content/ Content Management

6) E-commerce

I thought “wow, this could be essentially “the” bible for the internet world!”.

Each section  within a chapter has an explanatory introduction, followed by 3 Dos & Don’ts. They are easy to read but don’t give you a very in depth analysis or explanation on important aspects of the web. Not “the” bible then… The information given in the book is really not appropriate for anyone having worked in an interactive agency for any length of time. The suggestions are often repeated and most of them don’t really tell you anything you didn’t know before, such as “Know your audience”.  Hmm, that’s a thinker!

However, the pictures and images of example websites are a sight for sore eyes! Each chapter has outstanding glossy imagery of some of the best sites I’ve ever seen and alone for that the book is worth a look.

In overall, I was slightly disappointed with the written content, as it was voted “Book of the month” a while back by .net magazine and as I personally could not really take away major value from it. But I now own an unususal book with some amazing artwork in it. I would only recommend the book to anyone who is very new to working in a web agency as an account handler, it will give some sound (superficial) advice and a rough overview of what is  part of the web development cycle and some online marketing aspects. If you are experienced in this area, only buy the book if you like great looking websites.

Having carried out a number of web copywriting courses over the years and also adviced and written content for clients, I thought I had a pretty good understanding of what is important when compiling web content. Surprisingly the book still had a few insights, which I think would be valuable for anyone working in the internet industry or who is responsible for website content.

Redish, who is also an usability expert, explains all stages of preparing, writing and structuring content in detail, referring to many useful resources and websites to find out more about certain topics, such as accessibilty and usability issues.  The book is divided into 13 chapters, each focusing on topics such as how to understand your web audience, getting to grips with your home and pathway pages, what to consider when designing a page, how to best write the content and integrate lists, tables, headings and how to write meaningful link text and compile a style guide.

Every chapter has “before” and “after” examples, outlining problems of certain pages and what was changed to get their purpose across, whilst being reminded of usability and accessibility factors.

In overall a great book whether you are a seasoned web professional or just starting out on a smaller scale in-House project. I recommend this book highly and will certainly keep it handy as a  reference at work.

I know, I’ve been slacking over the past month… At least I can say I feel refreshed and ready to get back stuck into blogging again.

Every January seems to be the same for me, existing clients remember that they have a website and all of a sudden various new clients remember that they could be doing online marketing for their sites. So, I’ve been busy with proposals and meetings, which are very time-consuming, as many of you will concur with me .

But don’t despair! I’ve already thought of a few things to write about. As over the Christmas period I always seem to be catching up on my reading, I will be reviewing 2 books pretty soon. One of them is Janice Reddish’s “Letting go of the words”, a really informative book on web content, which goes well beyond writing words (hence the title), which I really enjoyed reading, as well as “Guidelines for Online Success” by Rob Ford and Julius Wiedemann, a great book on Do’s and Don’ts of the internet with lots of amazing pictures of great websites but more about that in my review.

In the following months you can also expect to hear a lot more about the German market, as I’m about to embark on a a couple of new projects geo-targeting Germany. I’m very excited about that, as I’ve always enjoyed multi-lingual online marketing projects and it’s always good to keep using your mothertongue once in a while.

I hope all of you are experiencing a good start to the New Year and hope that you will continue to stop by my blog!

I know, a lot of people think, why do you bother with usability, you’re a SEO but if you drive visitors to any site, you want them to convert and Steve Krug really makes it easy to understand.

The book is pretty thin and it covers everything from the first impression your website makes to how to actually undertake usability tests. Really interesting and easy to understand. Everything just seems pretty much common sense…. If you have a couple of spare hours, read it!