Voodoo Rooms turned out to be a nice place to grab a few pre-dinner drinks and for everyone to get to know each other (quite a few of us had met before, however there were a few new faces) and Grand Cru provided top notch nachos (only reason I wanted to go! we used to go after work in my Bright Grey days), some questionable service, but generally a nice place to neck some ciders and have a chat!

In attendance were Fraser Edwards, Elaine and Dave Forth, Clarke Duncan, Jonathan Cannovan, Geoff IdleBull (not his actual second name, but its works!), Khalid Al-Khames (sometimes referred to as Ethan), Dom Hodgson, Fiona Robertson, Chris Cathcart, Tommy (Mr. Glasgow.com) and myself! It was a great night (which I named #ScotAff10 on Twitter, which went down well with the group), and I thoroughly enjoyed chatting with people with similar interests to my own. I’m keen to get something similar arranged for later on this year. So if you’d be interested in coming to ScotAff10.2 leave a comment and when we get round to organising it you’ll be the first to know! Maybe arrange #XmasScotAff10!

Here are a few pics from the night…

(Elaine, Dave, Fraser and Chris)

(Tommy and Fiona)

(Geoff, Dom and Clarke)

(Johnathan and Khalid)

(A few drinks later at Grand Cru!)

(and finally, Clarke took a photo of me tweeting all the pics!)

Thanks for everyone who made the effort to come along, I think you’ll agree it was a great night and we should definitely do it again sometime soon?

A few weeks back, I accidentally dropped my Logitech Harmony One Universal Remote Control from the side of my bed to the wooden floor below, and unfortunately the screen took the brunt of the fall and the LCD display was internally cracked. The remote was still working, with the touch screen working fine. The only issue was, I couldn’t see what I was pressing! So, the remote was rendered useless… insert sad face here.

People who know me well, know I’m not all that lucky when it comes to electronics. I’m lucky in that I have some cool gadgets, but unlucky in that they always seem to break (I’m not clumsy, its just down to luck, honest!). My contents insurance company soon found out how unlucky I am, and decided not to offer me a renewal, so I wasn’t able to simply claim the remote back on my insurance. However, this is where the magic happened. So, I phoned up Logitech Customer Support on 0800 032 64 33 (they’re dedicated Harmony Remote support number) to tell them of my issue, in an attempt to find out the cost of repair. I had struggled to find anyone online to repair the phone, so figured I’d go direct to Logitech. Turns out, they made the remotes to be unrepairable, as in they cannot be opened with ease. Logitech, then kindly asked me for a few details, and told me they’d send me a brand spanking new remote control for free (yes free!). All I had to do was send them a photo of my broken screen to prove it was bust, and they sent out a new one.

To me, this is phenomenal customer service. Logitech could easily have told me where to go, after all, it was me who dropped it! Instead, they were happy to provide me with a new remote, which they could have sold for in excess of £100 (sure it costs them a fraction of that to make, but still, I’m impressed!).

So, how do we go about setting up the page so that the user must become a fan/like it before they can view the content? Well, just follow these simple steps…

1. Setup the Facebook Page
If you have not already got a page setup, simply goto Facebook.com/Pages and hit the “Create Page” button. I’d suggest taking some time to consider the best name for the page, because once its chosen, you cannot change it at a later date (I’ve found this out the hard way, gaining hundreds of fans for a page, then realising I’d have been better off with a different name!). Once you’ve chosen the best name, do the usual stuff, such as adding a nice juicy image and adding a welcome spiel to the page.

2. Add Static FBML Application
Facebook Markup Language (FBML) is basically a language very similar to HTML, but for, you guessed it… Facebook! It allows you to do all sorts of funky things on additional tabs for your Facebook page and a great example of how it could be used is the BUCS page. In order to use FBML on your page, I’d suggest installing the Static FBML app. To do this, either search for “static fbml” on facebook, or go straight to the app page here. Then just select “Add to my page” below the app’s logo and choose the page you’d like to add it to. Now, browse back to your page, and you’ll see that a tab called “Boxes” has appeared. What I tend to do is hit the “+” button to the right of that and select”FBML” from the dropdown list.

Once you’ve added the application, you can remove all the tabs you don’t really need. I remove all of them (apart from the info tab as that’s not removable). To remove a tab, select it, then select the pencil next to the title, then select “Delete Tab”

3. Spruce up the FBML Tab
First things first, you want to rename the tab to something relevant. To do this, goto the page’s wall (or homepage I guess) and select “Edit Page” under the page’s image. Then scroll down to find the FBML tab, and click “Edit”.

You will then be confronted with two fields; the tab’s title and the actual FBML. Rename the tab by simply changing the title. Now you can get onto the actual FBML’ing that makes your content hidden. What I tend to do is create a quick blurb explaining why the user wants to become a fan/like the page, it could be that they receive a discount for my service, or it could be that they simply get access to the funniest image in the history of the internet, whatever your reason is, make it clear at this stage. So begin the FBMl with the quick blurb (this content will be visible to everyone). Follow this by telling the visitor that they must hit “Like” to view the content. You then need to use the <fb:visible-to-connection> tag to hide any content you wish hidden. Below is an image of a very simple example of how it could be done.

4. Make it the default tab
The final step is to make the tab the default tab. To do this, browse to the page’s wall and hit “Settings”, then just choose your new tab as the page’s default tab. Now whenever a non-fan visits your page they will see this tab first, prompting them to “Like” the page.

So, if you have a Facebook Page for your website or business, why not have a think about how you could increase your fan numbers by hiding some content? In the run up to the grand national, I created around 30 locally targeted pages (such as “You know you live in Aberdeen when…”) and managed to achieve just shy of 900,000 fans, I then promoted various Bookmaker deals to these fans and did very well in terms of commission! Good Luck with your pages, and I’d love to hear if this tip helped increase your fan numbers.

Recently, I found myself (as I quite often do) having an afternoon chat with experienced affiliate, Frank Paul, about our sites and what we’ve got going on at the moment. Next thing I know I’m striking a deal to buy a Lay Betting website. However, I wasn’t offering cash. Those of you who know Frank, know he doesn’t need the money, so a monetary offer was off the table. However, Frank does have a strange facination with Coca Cola. So we sealed the deal. 240 cans of Cola for the domain name LayBetting.org.uk and the site which was on it at the time. The site was receiving a nice amount of traffic from people looking for lay betting strategies and tips, so it was a no brainer for me. The Cola cost me around £55 from Tescos, including delivery direct to Frank’s door. I would need just 2 or 3 signups to the likes of Betfair or BetDaq in order to make my money back. Unfortunately for Frank (but fortunately for his kids, as he only allows them to drink Diet Coke), Tescos thought it would be ok to delivery 9 creates instead of 10, and only 4 crates of full fat coke, rather than 10!

Anyway, since taking control of the site, I’ve added a new wordpress theme, but as you can see I’m yet to add the content. Once the site has content, and a little bit of TLC I am confident I can make the site earn mid to high £xxx per month. However, as is the site’s made a whopping £20 commission, with one sign up to Betdaq, which I’m actually quite happy with considering the lack of content. I won’t retire just yet though!

Anyway, now that I’ve got a little more spare time (or at least 30 mins on this fine Sunday evening), I figured I’d write a blog post, to get this blog back on the road! Here’s a little summary of what I’ve been up to since my last blog post on Christmas Day 2009…

Affiliate Doctors
A couple of months back, Steve from Affiliate Doctors asked if I’d like to join the panel of experts who provide advice to newcomers to affiliate marketing on a regular basis. I was really flattered just to have been asked, so I jumped at the chance. Around six weeks ago, I was officially an Affiliate Doctor, with Steve welcoming me to the team. My first contribution to the site went live on the 18th of March, and there are a few more in the pipeline. It’s an excellent resource for newcomers and experienced affiliates alike, so I’m very happy to be a part of it.

Sold a few sites
Around the beginning of March, I decided I would sell a few of my smaller affiliate sites, mainly to allow me to focus more on my thesis, but also to get some cash together for when I graduate in July. I had never any sold sites before, so was also interested in seeing how the process works. I succesfully sold 10 sites in total, included my first ever affiliate site nrbet.com. I was particularly sad to part ways with nrbet, as it was the first site that I had made, and has always been my “baby” so to speak. However, I just don’t have the time to keep such a site updated, and decided to let it go to a good home, and I’ve very excited to see how it’ll transform over the coming months. The whole process was relatively painless, and I managed to sell any sites with revenue within around 48 hours of listing them on Acorn Domains. I’d also like to thank Khalid, who helped me out by emailing my sale details to his buyers list, resulting in a few sales. The sale of these sites did really help me focus on my thesis, so I’m glad I made the choice to sell up.

A4U
A few months back I was asked to become a moderator on the new A4U forums. I unfortunately haven’t had much time to do much moderating, but now that I’m a little quieter I’ll definitely be frequenting the forums more often, looking for bad guys! Again, I’m flattered to have been asked!

As I’ve still got quite a lot of uni work to go, I won’t be back into the full swing of affiliate marketing until the end of May. At which point, my plan is to work on a few projects I’ve had in the pipeline for a while, and also to get a few joint ventures on the go! In the meantime I’m going to be doing some research, rather than actually creating sites. I’m very interested in getting into domaining, so I’m going to have a look around and see if I can spot any decent opportunities.

You may or may not have noticed, I’ve given this blog a bit of a makeover, I hope you like it!

Fraser Edwards from RedWine.co.uk and WhiteWine.co.uk was kind enough to send over a couple of bottles of wine.

Just wanted to say thanks to Fraser for such a kind gesture! If you’re a wine drinker then head over to Red Wine or White Wine.

Being an affiliate marketer and looking to invest some of my profits in both software and web based businesses I felt the day would be very beneficial, I was not disappointed.

The seminar was held in a lecture hall at the Aberdeen Business School. The very same lecture hall I fall asleep in week in week out on my University course! There were over 100 people attending and the morning started off very fast paced with Doug grilling random people about their business ideas.

Doug gave his insights into which questions you should ask yourself when starting out in business. Overall the day was very interesting and insightful. At the end of the seminar I felt compelled to go and speak to Doug. So I headed down to the front of the lecture hall…

Me : “Hi Doug, just wanted to say, thanks very much, today was excellent, learnt a lot and found it very interesting, I hope you can come back to Aberdeen sometime to give some of your other talks”
Doug : “Glad you liked it, I could be back, it all depends on life. Sorry if I am appearing rude, I’ve got to pack my stuff up pretty quickly cause I’ve got a train to catch!”
Me : “Do you need a lift into town?”
Doug : “That would be great, I’ve actually forgotten to book a taxi”

At this point, you can imagine how excited I am at the prospect of being able to pick a multi millionaire’s brain during a 15 minute drive! So, I ran up to my car and tidied it up a bit, its safe to say the outside has never looked muddier! Headed back down to the building and Doug was ready to go.

I asked if he had a Twitter account, turns out he does (@DouglasRichard), so I then asked if I could take a photo to twitpic, he obliged…

So, I nervously reversed out of my space (I felt I had a great deal of responsibility!) and off we go to Aberdeen Train Station.

We had a great chat in the 15-20 mins he was in the car (I drove particularly slow so we had extra chatting time!) and it turned out to be a very productive journey. I wont say anymore than that, but let’s just say I’m very glad I offered Doug a lift!

Moral of the story, ALWAYS say Thank You (if its deserved!) -  because it might just lead to a 15minute car journey with a very successful millionaire!

Big thanks goes to Informatic Ventures for sponsoring me to attend the course.

I’ve been wanting to get an affiliate marketing/personal blog up for a very long time now. I have only recently discovered (obviously I discovered it years ago, but only recently have I had a decent play with it!) WordPress, however now having had a good play with it I’m confident its an excellent tool and will serve me well.

I’m not the best web designer in the world, so please forgive the messy layout! I tinkered with this theme to get what you see now.

The idea is I’ve scattered a few objects around the design that may let you know a little more about me:

• The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford – Absolutely cracking book, I can read it over and over without getting bored.
• Falkirk FC Badge – I’ve been a Falkirk fan since birth. I grew up in a wee town called Linlithgow, so it was my closest team. (and my Gran’s been a season ticket holder for longer than most of you will have been alive, she’s MAD about footy)
• Counting Crows’ album August and Everything After – Easily the best album ever made, I’d definitely take this to a desert island!
• Google Adwords Professional Badge – I’m just happy I finally have somewhere I can display it.
• £50 note – I love making and spending money. Who doesn’t though?
• The Breakfast Club – best film ever.
• Kilt – I’m Scottish and proud.

So, the plan for the blog is to post a few times a week, hopefully with some good information for newbies and also with some interesting posts for the rest of us. In a year’s time you can let me know how I got on.

Cheers,

Mark