I am pleased to announce Xpango.com is launching a new commission rate of £7, which is worth around US $12.50, and giving affiliates an early Christmas present with a special voucher code. The new commission rate is now live within the Xpango interface on CJ.

Xpango is replacing its three tiered commission structure with a very generous one tiered £7/$12.50 CPA. Until now affiliates could earn between £3.50/$7 and £5/$10 sign-up plus action, but now they can rake in much more. The new lead rate is almost DOUBLE the previous standard commission!

The CPA is paid out when somebody you refer both signs-up and participates in an action. An action consists of an Xpango member completing offers featured within the Xpango offer directory (many are completely free) or via purchasing a product such as a Clix Package.

And that’s not all, Xpango has launched a fantastic new Christmas coupon code – FreeXmas2008 – exclusive to affiliates. This coupon code entitles the member to one free credit in their Xpango account towards obtaining a games console, mobile phone, MP3 player or TV. This means you can help your customers achieve those all important credits. Simply present the following instruction with the code and watch your Yuletide commissions start to build up.

Coupon Code instruction:
"To claim your Free Xpango Credit, enter the Code FreeXmas2008 in the Referral ID box located on the Xpango Registration page"

Xpango.com have recently added HD televisions to their range of give-away products, which should increase conversions for affiliates.

Feel free to email xpango [at] azam.net should you require anything whatsoever, including email creative etc. I and three members of the Azam Marketing will also be available to talk about the program at next week’s A4U Expo

The Xpango affiliate program is on Commission Junction. If you don’t have a CJ account, you may sign-up to Xpango here.

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Asad Alex Yawar is a London-based lawyer and writer who I first met in the mid-1990s when we were both journalists on a socio-cultural news magazine. One of the most acute commentators I have had the honour of crossing paths with, his writing has often been antithetical to the ‘received wisdom’ of the time but proven to be prescient time and time again.

While investors, economists, politicians and journalists bestowed their expertise on how the supposed Anglo-Saxon boom would go on forever, Yawar has often commented over the last decade on how the fiscal and monetary policies and binge spending culture in countries like the UK and USA was going to lead to a "spectacular crash-landing" and "the biggest bust since that of Lolo Ferrari". In the following piece, Yawar analyses the impact of the credit crunch on London and the imprudence that was behind the city’s current economic woes.

As a result of trying a different, purportedly more efficient route - almost never the wisest idea in London, a city of a thousand transportation delays and alterations - I am running late for a hairdressing appointment. As I haphazardly dash through the streets around Brick Lane, an über-funky neighbourhood to the east of London’s financial quarter, my mind races with a thousand excuses to explain away my poor timing.

Yet as I step through the door of the salon, I am astonished to see that it is all but empty. The hairdresser, with whom I have booked the appointment, an amiable Catalan, is sitting casually on a small sofa, giving the aura of a man with all the time in the world. He does not let me apologise. At the end of the session an hour later, the salon is still almost completely empty, and the receptionist - for the first time in the three years that I have been going here - asks me if I want to book my next appointment right there and then. I politely decline.

As I leave the salon and head back onto Brick Lane, I notice that two retail units that were flourishing as recently as the timing of my last haircut at the beginning of August are no longer in business. One of them was a cafe; as I peer into the windows of the other, the black paint of its facade peeling off in such a way as to obscure its name, I cannot even make out what the previous purpose of the building was. Proceeding towards Bethnal Green, I see empty shisha bars, shuttered shops, and a sudden flowering of letting signs. Commercial activity is scarce.

This is the reality of London in the era of the credit crunch. While macroeconomic events - the failure of major banks, the meltdown of the housing market, and the lurching of a broken financial system towards the point of no return - have, perhaps understandably, dominated headlines in recent months, the interface of these phenomena with events at the microeconomic level, and the consequences of this interaction, has generally not been raised in anything other than prognostic, abstract terms.

But the consequences have already started to arrive in London: failing businesses, stagnant high streets and house prices in freefall. Evidence of these can be seen virtually everywhere across the city, not just in historically deprived east London. In Fulham, a trendy part of west London which has been partially gentrified in the last 25 years, the North End Road, which connects the neighbourhood to wealthy Kensington, is eerily awash with signs indicating that commercial and residential space is up for letting and sale; stores are discounting stock drastically, but there are very few takers [see pictures below].

The streets between Holborn and Tottenham Court Road, including the normally bustling New Oxford Street, contain a number of businesses which have ceased trading: a newsagent, an electronics store and two cafes are the most visible of these. The interest in taking up the leases on these premises appears to be quite minimal, despite their location in the very centre of the city. The volume of human traffic in this area, at times overwhelming during the past few years, has dwindled.

Picking up almost any London property publication provides yet further illustration of a metropolis on a steep economic slide. While GBP £250,000.00 / US $440,000 would have bought you a house only in the most dangerous and least desirable neighbourhoods this time last year, it will now cover the cost of a decent-sized semi-detached property in much of suburbia. Exactly how messily the housing market bubble will burst remains to be seen.

Most if not all the signs are, therefore, that London - and the wider UK economy - are heading towards imminent and painful recession, both at the macroeconomic and microeconomic levels. However, this raises a number of uncomfortable questions which, again, have yet to be addressed by virtually all commentators on this issue.

1. Was the economic boom of the last decade or so effectively a fiction?

The economy of the UK expanded for sixty-three consecutive quarters from the second quarter of 1992 to the second quarter of 2008. Ostensibly, this was a stunning achievement for any economy, but especially so for an economically-developed country. The trappings of mass affluence - gargantuan, ultra-slim televisions, exotic holidays, country retreats, brand new convertibles - could barely be escaped as people trumped each other with outlandish purchases and brazen luxuriating. Aside from a brief blip around 11 September, 2001, people partied like it was 1999 for the best part of a decade.

However, it has been readily apparent for a long time that this boom was underpinned by credit. According to auditing behemoth PricewaterhouseCoopers UK, between 1994 and 2002, the number of active credit card balances surged from approximately 13 million to nearly 30 million; the outstanding balances on credit cards rose by a stunning 18 percent per annum from the first quarter of 1995 to the first quarter of 2004, from £12/$21 billion to £54/$95.5 billion. Outstanding balances on personal loans increased by 34 percent in the three years to April 2004; the amount due to banks on overdrafts also grew by 30 percent over the same period.

Factor in mortgage debt, which spiralled out of control as bankers, many of whom were on lucrative commissions paid per mortgage product "sold", liberally sprayed mortgages on a willing population, and we have arrived at a situation where the total of mortgage, loan and credit card debt stands at £1.44/$2.54 trillion, greater than the total gross domestic product of the UK, which stood at £1.41/$2.5 trillion in August 2008.

Once economic expansion is contingent on unsustainable borrowing to such an extraordinary degree, does it really have any intrinsic value? Or does it instead represent an extension of magical realism from the worlds of art and literature into economics?

2. Can the average job finance people’s basic needs?

Cosseted by credit and mesmerised by celebrity, many UK consumers have spent much of the past ten years attempting to live like David Beckham. Flooding their homes with state of the art electronic equipment, sporting Prada label mobile telephones, and jaunting around the world as if a major soft drinks manufacturer was picking up the tab, they have not had to give too much thought to the question of when it would all eventually be paid for.

Now, however, the days of easy, relatively cheap credit fast are becoming a distant memory. Luxuries are slipping off the agenda, and are being replaced by the more pressing matter of the quite extraordinary recent rises in the cost of many staples, such as energy. In 2005, the average annual energy bill was £676/$1,195, which was at that time thought by most to be excessive, but the equivalent figure for 2009 is estimated to be £1,406/$2,486. The National Housing Federation, which represents 1,300 independent, not-for-profit housing associations in England, has projected that by the end of 2009, around 2.6 million people will be in debt to gas or electricity firms, giving them a stark choice between "heating or eating".

With water companies looking to follow other utility companies in hiking up bills above inflation from 2010, whether the average job can finance people’s basic needs is a question that is likely to be answered increasingly in the negative over the coming years. If this is the case, then a fundamental rethink about the structure of the UK economy, particularly over the private provision of essential services, would appear to be necessary.

 3. Can we ever make the transition back to a savings-based economy?

One of the reasons that the UK, along with the US, is so vulnerable to contractions in the credit supply is that most people no longer save a substantial slice of their net income. They therefore have to finance much of their expenditure via money that is ultimately not their own. While in 1995, the UK household savings rate stood at 10 percent of income, by 2003 that had fallen to a measly 5.7 percent. While the situation is not as critical as in the US - where the household savings rate is currently negative - with US households spending more than their earnings on average - it is still a figure that means the UK economy is contingent on the profusion of large amounts of credit.

By comparison, the savings rate in China is an astonishing 50 percent; in Japan and South Korea it varies between approximately 25 percent and 35 percent; and in India, it is around 22 percent and expected to rise. Clearly, these nations are not going to be anything like as dependent on credit to fund expenditure on goods and services; moreover, these savings can be utilised towards the capital investment so essential for sustainable, long-term economic growth.

In the UK, a cursory look at any weekend supplement will confirm that we have comprehensively made consumerism into our religion of choice. This is an ideology which excludes almost everything except instant gratification. Yet the future economic, social and spiritual health of the country demands that UK citizens learn to live within their means. Is the nation up to this challenge?

4. Is the UK capable of approaching the economy with intelligence?

From the late 1990s until the autumn of 2007, it was nothing less than a heresy in most circles to suggest that all might not be optimal with an economy where debt was outstripping income, where financial services counted for an absurdly high fraction of gross domestic product, and where people were paying for food with credit cards. Economists queued up to announce the superiority and sound nature of the British economy in comparison with almost any other country, echoing the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown’s words that there would be "no return to boom and bust"; rather, that the alchemic formula of low interest rates and low inflation would ensure a prosperity of the like that our forbears could only dream of.

Now, of course, many of these analysts are positioning themselves for recession. To take one example, Roger Bootle, a former lecturer in economics at Oxford University who is presently the Managing Director of macroeconomic research consultancy Capital Economics, stated in July 2008 that house prices were scheduled to drop by around 35 percent over the next three years. Yet in August 2000, the same economist went so far as to claim that the boom and bust cycle that has historically permeated the UK housing market was "a thing of the past", stating that rapid rises and falls in housing prices were, in effect, of historical interest only. Given that this was the opinion of one of the UK’s more prescient and imaginative economic commentators, it is not hard to imagine the mindless hyperbole that lesser ‘experts’ were espousing.

It will be interesting to see whether in the future British politicians, economists and other luminaries can approach the economy in a sober, realistic and intelligent manner. If they are not, then the consequences for the UK economy as a whole could be even worse than those it is currently facing.

London’s immersion in the credit crunch is becoming more evident with each passing week. But this phenomenon has thrown up at least as many questions as answers. It is the responses to these questions which will determine whether the city, and the UK more generally, can formulate and implement an equitable economic regime that is predicated on something more sustainable than recklessly spending money that never belonged to us in the first place.

First published in OhmyNews. Click here for more of Asad Alex Yawar’s articles.

Latest News: Four of the Azam Marketing staff will be attending the a4u Expo in London on 14 and 15 October. You may arrange to meet us by emailing results [at] azam.net or calling 0800 018 5600. If you haven’t booked your ticket, you may do so here.

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Alan Lansdowne is an inspirational figure who spins many plates at once. An entrepreneur, publisher and academic, the last few months for the 32 year old have consisted of attending travel conferences in Singapore, holidays to the Black Sea, journeys around India and the Philippines, completing an MA with associated research trips to Eastern Europe, and ongoing development on his hugely popular attitude Travel project.

An acute and astute observer of the workings of global finance, I managed to grab hold of Alan three days ago while he was in London to ask him about the causes of the havoc we are currently witnessing in the financial system. In the next interview, which will be published in October, I ask Alan about his popular website and he shares the secrets of setting up a business which allows you to earn a handsome income while being free to travel around the world.

Alan, what do you think are the roots and causes of the failures of the financial system we are now experiencing?

Financial institutions have lent out too much money being confident there would only be a certain number of defaults and, as was always going to be inevitable, the defaults have started to come in thick and fast.

This has exposed the institutions had far less assets than we thought they had. Their assets were basically the interest on their loans.

You say that this was inevitable. Why did the supposed brightest minds, the best educated and the best paid people in government and financial institutions not see this?

It is a tragedy of the commons.

If you have a farmer who puts his cow out to a common pasture, it has plenty of grass to eat and he prospers. But then other farmers see that there’s grass for their cows and take them to the common land to allow them to graze. But as you get more farmers sending their cows to the same piece of land, it gets eaten up, doesn’t have time to grow again and becomes barren. Then, none of the cows have anything to eat and every farmer loses out.

All the institutions thought ‘the more we lend out, the more money we’ll make by charging interest on the loans’. They lent more and more and more. Obviously it gets to the point where borrowing individuals and businesses are at such points of debt that they do not have the capacity to pay back the loans or even afford to pay the interest. Then the collapse comes.

Do you think things could have been done differently, or is it evitable this would be happen?

State institutions could and should have regulated how much money was lent out.

But that means you are putting reins on independent businesses. Should they not be allowed to operate how they wish?

If borrowers or lenders are delusional, then those reins will come into play anyway: the credit crunch is those reins.

Considering that reins are inevitable anyway, is it not more sensible to say ‘this is the sensible limit’?

You’re basically asking for more regulation?

I am arguing for not having unfettered lending…

… sorry to interrupt, but if people want to borrow, they will argue you or the government does not have the right to tell them what to do?

I don’t think there is any credit institution which disagrees with credit ratings and credit restrictions. So we are not talking about anything new, we are just talking about recalibrating mechanisms which exist anyway.

Why did we feel we were flush with money over the last few years?

That’s easy. In the history of the United States and the British Isles, credit has never been so easy to get hold of.

The George W. Bush and Tony Blair/Gordon Brown regimes had us believe we were living in times of untold affluence. Was that the reality?

I don’t think we’ve been much more affluent than in the past. People have had more spending power based on having more debt. That is confusing debt with wealth.

Who has got more money? The person living on the street on a cardboard box or somebody £48,000 in debt? Unless the latter can sell their TV and DVD player and be in profit, then the debtor is not affluent.

They are rather foolish to think they are.

But people have got houses worth £300,000 which, despite the recent drops in property prices, are still worth triple that of a few years previously? Does that make them richer than they were?

The value of a house is not terribly significant in and of itself. If you move, you have to buy a new house.

If you sell your house and then move into a youth hostel, you’re quite well off… if you can sell your house that is [smiles].

The only way of capitalising on that increase in property prices is to be flexible enough to find a job abroad where they are cheaper, be a freelancer or an affiliate.

What’s the way out of this financial crisis?

It’s very simple. Pay off your debt as soon as possible. And do not live on money that’s borrowed.

The current crisis pulls the veil off this illusion that people have been very rich. It just exposes that it was a con trick. Regrettably a lot of people have been seduced it would go on forever, that house prices would always go up, credit would always be cheap.

The British and American governments are bailing out financial and other institutions who are going through difficult times. What do you think about that?

I think it is a disaster. It encourages moral hazard. Institutions have not had to bear the consequences of the risks they’ve taken. What’s even worse is the tax-paying public is bearing responsibility.

It is the privatisation of profit and the socialisation of loss. When the good times are rolling, almost all the profits go into the private sector. When companies are crashing, they are bailed out by the taxpayer. And the money they enjoy is not millions, but billions of dollars. In the case of AIG, for instance, it is $85 Billion.

It leads to obscene situations. For instance, banks are borrowing taxpayers money for, let’s say, five dollars and then lending the same money back to the taxpayers for ten dollars!

Do you therefore believe these companies going through difficult times should be allowed to go the wall?

Ideally, yes. Unfortunately, some of them – although it is regrettable – have to be saved. Institutions like Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae have to be saved. While it is morally just for them to bear consequences of their actions, were they to be allowed to fail, the consequences for the wider economy could be more disastrous.

Some of the ‘experts’ are saying we are currently going through the worst point of the crisis. Is that the case and how much longer do you think this is going to play out?

We are not through the worse of it. I have a hunch the economy will bottom out in 2009. Then it will remain at the bottom for 24 months. It won’t be until 2012 that things will start to improve.

What will the impact be on online marketing? Will it lead to decreased expenditure in our sector?

There will be rationalisation. But our sector will be the least affected, because, between 2001 and 2004, it already went through a rationalisation process, and so our field is better equipped to deal with this than many others.

You are a travel publisher. The travel sector has been going through a rough time of late. Do you see any impact on your business and what do you think the coming weeks hold in store for (a) the travel sector as a whole and (b) the resultant impact on travel websites such as yours.

I think business travellers will continue to travel. The general public will go on holiday less. When people do travel, they will look for cheaper travel and cheaper modes of transport.

We’ve seen quite a few airlines collapse of late. Will there be more or have we seen the worst of it.

There will assuredly be more.

Which ones?

Alitalia is likely to be reinvented.

SAS is a candidate for collapse if Lufthansa doesn’t buy it up. I say "candidate", because there is nothing to say Scandinavian governments won’t step in to do something.

It is worth noting that there is all sorts of consolidation taking place in the industry. Lufthansa is in talks to buy Brussels Airlines. In Germany, Condor, German Wings and TUI Fly have been in talks to merge as well.

I think more likely than collapses, more airlines will merge to pre-empt collapse. Just like HBOS has merged with Lloyds TSB. It’s easier to survive when resources are combined.

But when there are mergers, it will lead to job losses. So, if you’re a recent employee with an airline or bank, it may be time to start learning how to design websites and learn affiliate marketing!

What about the impact on affiliate marketing? Will the downturn effect affiliate networks, for instance?

Yes. It already has. There are merchants going out of business. XL has gone out of business on DGM. Reserveahotelonline.com has gone out of business on Affiliate Future.

So networks, agencies and affiliates are already being affected. If a merchant goes out of business, everybody down the chain suffers.

What changes can we start to enact, both on a global, national and individual level, to ensure that boom and bust does not happen again – more so in Britain than any other country?

Before he became an Eco-warrior, George Monbiot proposed a Keynesian idea a while back. He wrote a book called The Age of Consent (UK – USA) and looked into Keynes’ ideas.

One of the ideas he explores is Keynes’ suggestion that if the GDPs of any countries are growing faster than the average GDP around the world, over a certain percentage, they contribute to a central pot, and that those are growing slower than the average GDP take from that pot.

So, instead of this huge chasm between rich and poor and fluctuations in many economies, we converge towards the middle. That is one way of contributing towards evenness in the world.

Is this practical?

Brave new socialist futures are always practical. Forward comrades! [smiles]

We’d be living in a much healthier society if we focused on what people need, rather than spending a lot of time and money trying to convince them to buy crap they don’t need.

With a lot of things, the happiness is transient. People borrow money to buy things they don’t need because they are convinced by marketing they want those things. The satisfaction from owning those possessions is very transient and unfulfilling in the long term. In order to remain satisfied, they have to buy the next thing. People’s genuine needs are not being met. People’s genuine needs are feeling that they make a positive contribution to others and being valued by others. That’s the biggest need that everybody has: to matter to other people.

The things that you can give to others, like reading to children, or being there on the weekend to help somebody to move house, or writing a handwritten thank you to somebody for having been there for you, these things are more important than giving somebody a bought present.

A purchased present is a proxy. Instead of requiring your personal presence, or time, those things are often replaced by a priced commodity.

I’d highly recommend Oliver James Affluenza  (UK – USA) which explores human dissatisfaction as life has become one long series of commodity acquisitions.

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Fresh from her exploits in the national press, our super Senior Affiliate Manager Sinead has been interviewed by Affiliates4U.TV which features interviews with industry figures. You can watch the video here:
 

Talking of televisual interviews, I was invited onto the news of the Sky TV channel DM Digital on Wednesday to be interviewed about the credit crunch and the impact on the number of people holiday abroad. You can see a screengrab of the appearance by clicking here.

Coming Soon: On Saturday I’ll be publishing an interview with publisher Alan Lansdowne about the financial downturn in the USA and UK.

Client News: eDealsUK Limited has now been rebranded as V A C Media Limited to reflect their widening portfolio and expansion into global markets. Visit the new V A C Media website here and their section on our blog here.

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Like many people I’ve always found quotations to be a source of inspiration. I have a whole folder on my computer of ones that I’ve collected over the years. I’ve published many of these when the opportunities have arisen: when I published an online marketing newsletter last year, for instance, I would always round-off each issue with a quotation.

I’ve long planned for this blog to feature quotations to inspire and entertain readers and would like you to get involved by sending in your favourites.

To get the ball rolling, we are launching a competition to find the most thought-provoking, inspiring, motivating, witty or amusing quotation from the 19^th century. We will award the winner Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 Edition for the PC. This software pack includes core applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Access, and Outlook with Business Contact Manager, as well as powerful latest versions of Groove, OneNote, and InfoPath. We will mail these tremendous set of tools, worth £610.99 / $1093.00 to anywhere in the world.

As well as publishing the first prize entry, we will also select four runner ups. Alongside publishing all five quotations we will feature a permanent link to any family-friendly website of each winner’s choosing.

All five winners will also be permanently added to a script which will randomly show quotations on the right-hand side of this blog in its forthcoming incarnation.

How to Enter

We are looking for quotations, mottos and proverbs from the 19^th century that Azam.info readers would like, quotations that are thought-provoking, inspiring, motivating or just witty or amusing. They could do with business, marketing, philosophy, religion, culture, relationships or life in general.

You may send in up to two quotations. Your contribution should include the quotation, the writer or speaker of the quotation, the year of birth and death of the author, and the author’s nationality and profession. Here’s an example from the irrepressible Wilde:

"A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing."

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Irish playwright, poet and author

Please email entries in one email to quotations [at] azam.info by 31 October, 2008.

The five winners will be selected by a panel of three Azam Marketing staff members and contacted by the 5^th of November. The first prize winner will be required to send in his or her postal details and all five top entries their preferred website links by the 10^th of November. Should a response not by received from any winner, we will select a replacement. All five winners will be announced and their quotations published here in mid-November.

Unlike most websites with competitions who add entrants to spam mailing lists, we will not contact you for any reason other than to let you know if you have won.

Terms and Conditions

If source of quotation is not known after having done research, state ‘Anon.’

Quotations originating from all languages are acceptable as long as an accurate English translation is provided.

Your entry just needs to include your quotation(s) and contact email address.

Limit of one entry per household.

Entrants’ quotations and websites must be family-friendly. This means they should not contain foul language or obscenities. Websites must not contain adult material, gambling or any objectionable content.

Grammar, punctuation or spelling errors will count against your entry, so proofread thoroughly.

Paste your entry into the body of the e-mail. Attachments will not be read.

Late entries and entries that do not conform to competition guidelines, will be disqualified. Azam Marketing and its staff are not responsible for any electronic transmission problems.

Azam Marketing cannot be held liable for the Microsoft Office software pack being delayed or lost in transit.

All entries will be examined by an impartial panel of judges. Winners will be judged based on the correct answers. The judges’ decision on all matters connected with this competition will be final and no correspondence will be entertained.

The judges are not in a position to answer queries related to this competition.

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It seems like barely a weeks back when 2008 began and we’re already entering the tail end of the year.

Although the terrible weather in the UK contributed towards making it the most buoyant online retail market I have seen in any summer, to the extent that I was called upon by the Beeb to surmise why online retail sales had shot through the roof, the forthcoming autumn promises even more lucre. Whenever possible I urge consumers to cut back on their expenditure because many are drowning in debt, but as sure as night follows day, people will go on their usual spending splurge from next month until 24 December to ostensibly mark the birth of somebody born circa 2013 years ago.

Anyhow, here goes this month’s round up…

Purple Parking

A while back I shot a five minute video with AffiliateFuture to educate publishers about Purple Parking and help them make more money from the affiliate program. I’m pleased to make it available here:

Purple Parking’s affiliate program is on AffiliateFuture and Tradedoubler.

We’d like to emphasise once again affiliates are not permitted to use PP voucher codes on their sites and link to PP through an affiliate URL. This means the company loses money on transactions. We regularly monitor affiliate websites and should anybody be found to violate this widely-publicised rule we will have no option but to deactivate them from the affiliate program and revoke all commissions. PP will also not pay commissions for customer purchases made using voucher codes that are prohibited to the general public and only for specific categories of members (e.g. BA staff), no matter from where the codes are picked up from.

In some breaking news, we are delighted to reveal PP’s growth continues, with the operator acquiring Q-Park’s Heathrow operations. You can read the press release here: Q-Park and Purple Parking form an alliance.

Affiliate Programs Presentation Pack

We are pleased to have released a PDF presentation with information for publishers about our Affiliate Management clients: High Paying Advertisers – Azam Marketing.

Should you wish to promote any of the advertisers and have a query, do not hesitate to email us at results [at] azam.net or ring +44 (0) 20 7 436 4496 anytime. We will also be able to assist you in any way we can at this month’s industry events including Tradedoubler Summit, Affiliate Future’s retail gathering, and ad:Tech London.

This Blog

Hey ho, so many plans and never enough time. We finally got around to adding a poll to the blog and you can vote your favourite UK affiliate network(s) on the right-hand side.

We are currently busy pimping a blog for a company we consult for and then our designers will be busy on three client websites, but after their backlog of work is out of the way they will be shifting their attention to yours truly and customising Azam.info.

As part of the revamp, we’ll be having a quotations section with your and our favourite proverbs, sayings and mottos. To kick-start our quotation section, I’m pleased to announce we’ll be launching a competition with the first prize being the business software bundle to beat all others, Microsoft Office Ultimate Edition for the PC which is worth £610.99 / $1093.00. It’s simple to enter: all you’ll have to do is send in your favourite quotation(s). Come back on Friday for full details.

If you have a quality blog or website on online marketing and would like to exchange links with or advertise on Azam.info, get in touch with us at results [at] azam.info.

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I was invited by the terrific people at AffiliateFuture to shoot a video to talk about one of the affiliate programs we manage on the network, eDealsUK. The purpose of the network’s video interviews is for merchants to provide useful information about their programs to affiliates which will hopefully help them make more money.

You can watch the video here (though they may look like wheelchairs, they’re just regular seats in AffiliateFuture’s video recording studio!): 

It’s not just been the visual medium I’ve been getting to grips with but I’ve been busy with audio interviews too. The most recent radio appearance was on Thursday on BBC Three Counties Radio which covers Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire. The presenters are fantastic (I’ve been on the station before) and this time they asked me to talk about the relentless growth in online shopping despite it being the summer months. You can listen to the recording by clicking here. The appearance was done as part of our remit to PR another of eDealsUK Limited’s cashback sites, Froggybank.  

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While both the front and back cover of Tuesday’s Daily Express celebrated "wonder girl" Becky Adlington’s achievements, who has now won two swimming gold medals at the Olympics, star of the inside ‘Switch & Save’ supplement was our very own irrepressible Affiliate Manager Sinead Hernen.

Sinead was giving advice on saving money in these difficult times and made sure our client Froggybank.co.uk got a plug in the popular national newspaper which has 800,000 readers.

The paper featured a huge photo of Sinead, her husband Craig and daughter Robyn spread over two pages. You can see a large version of the picture and article by clicking here.

If you would like to benefit from our 20 years of expertise in both Old and New Media to generate publicity for your business email us at results [at] azam.net.

Client News: the Purple Parking affiliate program will be leaving CJ on 31 August, so affiliates on that network should switch their links to the Tradedoubler or Affiliate Future ones. The program will remain on those two networks.

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In the third part of his series on the design of Froggybank.co.uk, Azam Marketing’s Director of Design and Development Ather Mehdi writes about the time-consuming but necessary final steps involved in designing a major website.

We thought today would be ideal to publish the final article in Ather’s acclaimed series as it is wedding day. A heartfelt congratulations to Ather from all his colleagues in the Azam Marketing team!

Ready, Steady, Go!

With all the background research having been done (Part I, Part II), it was time we started sketching and refining the designs for FroggyBank. I hesitate to admit the whole design process took us good two months of fierce brainstorming and prototyping.

The Initial Steps

Site structure: We began by listing the details of the elements that would go on different sections of the website. We shuffled around the layout of the features endlessly. We highlighted what was most important for users and made these and related sections easily accessible for users.

Mockup designs: After the initial site structure was decided, the design team started playing around with the page elements and produced a number of design variations which were unique, usable and visually appealing.

Editing rounds: Just about when we thought the design elements were complete and the job was nearly finished, we were confronted with new feedback, arguments and counter-arguments to revise elements. The client, eDealsUK, was a delight to work with because, despite their need to launch a 100% cashback website as soon as possible, they were there with us every step of the way and supported us through dozens of revisions. We restructed and refined the site at least forty times.

 Proofing and Beta Testing

After countless rounds of redesign, we were confident we had something which truly answered all the client’s needs.

The final prototypes were approved, followed by an interval to convert and implement the new designs on the actual site code. The project was completed with a final round of testing and design purification.

After a year of work, FroggyBank was finally launched on 16 April, 2008.

Final Words

As for the final design as it stands today, we are pleased of its simplicity which explains the purpose of FroggyBank from the first glance.

Every design job has its tedious bits, but we absolutely loved designing Froggybank and giving it a look which is both functional and easy to get to grips with. We congratulate the programmers at eDealsUK who worked very hard to implement the prototypes so wonderfully.

Since the website’s launch, we have received tons of comments in appreciation of the design and usability of Froggybank.co.uk.

The design work was completed at this stage, but then the project was handed over to other divisions within Azam Marketing, specifically the Affiliate Management, Public Relations and Paid Search ones to attract members to the service. The site has been a runaway success, mentioned in hundreds of newspapers and websites, and we are delighted to have helped Froggybank leapfrog 105 cashback sites to become the 8^th most popular in the UK in just a space of three months (popularity based on Alexa rankings, as published on Cashbacknews).

Coming Tomorrow: See a scan of Azam Marketing’s Sinead Hernen in today’s Daily Express as we continue with our marketing blitz to develop Froggybank’s presence.

Job Opportunities: Would you like to join our growing design team and get your teeth into exciting projects like the above? See our job listing here.

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I’ll never forget 4 August 1997 for it is the day Azam Marketing came into being (although the business had a different name in those days) and today marks our 11^th anniversary.

It’s been quite a ride, full of ups and downs, and I thank God for having given us the resilience to survive the many dark days when income levels were pitiful and the future of the business would hang on a combination of how soon those cheques from Books.com and Dealtime would arrive and how much longer I was willing to live on a diet of Sainsbury’s baked beans.

I never forget those bleak days and, when the times are so good that we have new clients beating their way to our door on a daily basis, I keep reminding myself and my team to not become complacent, and to continue to work with the same hunger and humility as those pioneering days in 1997.

I see the majority of businesses and business managers on the interweb become big headed when they become successful and, as sure as night follows day, they eventually pay the price for it. I am constantly reminding myself to keep my feet on the ground. I stay in touch with the grassroots by attending more gatherings than almost anybody else out there and listen attentively to everybody’s views about the industry be they 18 or 48. Just as we’ve always done since day one, the entire Azam Marketing team makes sure everybody we deal with, irrespective of size, is treated like a king.

As we charge into our 12^th year, I have to say none of it could have been done without our many friends and supporters, and offer a special thank you to the many terrific people in online marketing who make it the most inspiring and exhilarating industry to work in.

To shake things up in this month’s round-up of what’s hot and what’s not at Azam Marketing, we decided to list the updates on a divisional, rather than client by client basis.

Affiliate Management

It felt that everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong in the four days in the run-up to the launch of the Moneynet affiliate program, but both our Senior Affiliate Manager Sinead and Commission Junction were at the top of their game: everything got sorted out and we were delighted to launch it on the target day of Thursday, 24 July (we usually launch a program on a Tuesday or Thursday to gain maximum visibility). We’re waiting upon some Is to be dotted and Ts to be crossed on a document and then will also be launching the affiliate program on Webgains towards the end of this month.

All our other affiliate programs are rumbling along nicely and we have published a PDF guide providing an outline of what they have to offer here.

Affiliate Marketing (publisher angle)

Because of the credit crunch, there’s not too much to smile about when it comes to the advertisers we are marketing in the finance sector. Approval rates for credit cards, for instance, have been declining and it has invariably impacted on us as we generate several hundred credit card leads a month.

But our affiliate arm is continuing to grow at such a blazing pace, whether it is in the finance or non-finance verticals, that increased scrub rates or decreased commissions do not stop each month smashing the previous month’s records and being our most profitable to date.

Paid Search Marketing

Long gone are the days when paid search involved ruffling up a few relevant keywords, bashing together an advert, deposting cash into a PPC account, and hey presto, you’re receiving more or less quality traffic.

Such as the complexities, intricacies and inconsistencies of the likes of Google Adwords and Microsoft AdCenter and such is the competitiveness of the search space now, that more and more clients who had an internal person carrying out PPC are outsourcing the work to us to squeeze more revenue out of their campaigns.

We are winning accounts from other agencies as well. Two months ago we took over the paid search account for a retailer previously being managed by one of the supposed top PPC companies in the land. In July we increased the click-through rate from 2.70% to 3.45%, the conversion rate from 1.76% to 2.34% and reduced the cost per conversion from £10.32 to £7.66.

If you too would like to increase the ROI on your PPC expenditure by using our eight years of experience in paid search, contact us at results [at] azam.net .

Search Engine Optimisation

Even though we’ve only been carrying out the SEO for three months for some new sites, we’ve managed to climb to the number four and five slots in Yahoo for several popular brand terms they are focused on. If only Google was so easy, but we’re chiselling away as usual!

It’s satisfying to see companies finally beginning to appreciate the value of high organic rankings and willing to invest to achieve them: last month we were invited to pitch for a £300,000/$600,000 a year and a £50,000/$100,000 a month contract.

Email Marketing

We are now managing the email newsletters for a number of companies, and clients are always overwhelmed with how we use our knowledge of most things internety to generate incredible results. For instance, here’s a quotation from the Director of Purple Parking: "Azam Marketing have been managing our email list since March 2007 and the results they have produced have far exceeded our expectations. Using their considerable know-how, they have ensured that each mailing to our customer base results is highly profitable. The standard of support is second-to-none."

Our newsletter management operations are carried out in a refined and considerate manner, only to double opt-in subscribers, and we are obsessive about the quality of every email we send out to subscribers (many agencies use us to advertise their brands and present the emails we sent out as case studies to their clients). It is therefore incredibly frustrating to see spammers, who have no consideration for whether data is opt-in or not, or collect email addresses from tacky websites promoting prize draws which nobody has a cat in hell’s chance of winning, give the discipline a bad name, but we can only hope that the people who pollute our inboxes with junk – some of whom will be showing their faces at Affiliate Summit Boston in a few days – will eventually be cornered by the law.  

Our other divisions, which deal with Public Relations, Web Design and Domain Name Trading, are as busy as ever, but I’ll leave insights into their workings until a future update… plus I’m not at liberties to write about projects as candidly as I’d like to (one sales guy, who has become a friend of mine, told me a few month’s back "Nadeem, I made sure I’d read your articles every week because you would reveal your clients and then I would cold call them to try to win them over to our company!"). Over and out.

Coming Soon: the third and final part in our series on how we designed Froggybank.co.uk.

Job Openings: the Azam Marketing team is growing and we are seeking a new Web Designer and Manager to join us. Flexible hours to suit your lifestyle. See the ads here and here respectively. Also experienced freelance Affiliate Manager sought: send your full details to vacancies [at] azam.net .

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