I wasn’t in the mood for updating codes last night. I was starting to burn out and needed to work on something light-hearted and a little different. So past the watershed and before bed time I knocked up this Ibiza Sunshine site using the latest affiliate tools from SunShine.co.uk.
However I’m not that good with PhotoShop so I set my friends this morning a little task to win themselves some beer from me this evening.
The task was to build me a new logo.
Consolation prize goes to Stephen who took great pride in this facebook graffiti entry. He wins at least one pint.
The winner is James with his “ibiza holidayz innit” logo. James wins himself some nice Stella and as he doesn’t drink much there may be a rollover!
Thanks go to all the other entrants too.
I shall be missing the Summer A4UAwards as I’m going to squeeze in a bit of sunshine drinking elsewhere. There’ll be no black ties in sight. Only hot pants and speedos.
Handily I’ve been using a Sunshine.co.uk incentive competition entry to check out the latest deals for Magalluf. The Palma Nova Majorca site has been set up by an affiliate for a chance to win a dream prize to Barbados. Good luck to them.
New travel merchant Sunshine.co.uk announced on 11th April they are offering tickets to the Affiliate Future Barbados 2008 event.
On 22nd June, a group of affiliates and merchants are jetting off to Barbados for 7 days of bathing in the sun and spending the evenings drinking rum.
Chris Clarkson has been blogging and has had 3 tickets to give away. He has set a series of missions, which at the end of them should still prove useful for those who entered but didn’t win as they should have a stand-alone travel site that they could be proud of.
One ticket will be offered as a prize draw for every affiliate that gets 100 sales over the course of the incentive. I’d assume this would go to an already established travel site.
The other 2 tickets have been up for any type of affiliate to get involved in and a summary of the missions were:
- Mission #1 Register a domain name for a Sunshine.co.uk resort, region or country
- Mission #2 Sunshine.co.uk are sending an affiliate and their partner on a 7-day holiday this week. The affiliate who entered Mission #1 has to report back daily pictured with a gentleman sporting a pair of speedos!
- Mission #3 The affiliates with the domain names had to get a home page up within 72 hours. The page had to be optimised and look presentable.
- Mission #4 With 4 tickets remaining, affiliates or even their colleagues, friends and family are encouraged to blog about the competition. But don’t tell too many people eh? I really wouldn’t mind winning a Sunshine.co.uk holiday this year!
Sunshine.co.uk have their own affiliate section on their site that includes dynamic banners, search boxes, HTML newsletters and RSS feeds.
ShopCodes has been featured and reviewed in a new feature of Affiliate Window’s merchant newsletter that is distributed to over 600 shops and services.
In the 1st April edition, the newsletter introduces two affiliates to their merchants; includes technical tips; advice on how to build an affiliate friendly site and has a focus on the fashion sector.
The site review covers 4 areas and gives a total score out of 100. ShopCodes scores a respectable 74.
- Content 11/25
- Functionality 21/25
- Originality 22/25
- Creativity 20/25
- Total 74/100
The review notes that the site is well established in the UK (it launched February 2006) and that it focuses on end user offers, particularly promotional codes.
It highlights that the site is user friendly by not hiding codes, a topical subject at the moment as 2 other affiliates are now considering to do so.
The site is very user friendly as all the codes are clearly visible without any ‘click for code’ buttons that hide content and force new windows to open making the site more streamlined for the end user.
One of the lowest scores was for content, reflected as “basic and to the point”.
Content is an area I’ve been working on late into the night throughout April and by adding more non-code content to my pages, SEO traffic has increased by 400%.
The review highlights that I have the ShopCodes.com domain waiting in the wings and that this domain “should establish Shopcodes as a key player in the UK market.”
Grand National Saturday was also a grand day for ShopCodes as visitors searched the site for their £10 free bets.
I didn’t promote the Grand National specifically as I’d left it a little late but that didn’t stop hundreds of visitors looking for a bookmakers offer in time for the big race.
My Coral page saw the most attention of all the sports betting pages I promote. Coral have lots of bonus codes for sports betting, casino and poker and I update their offers monthly.
The ShopCodes Coral page had 274 page views and at £5 commission and 2% revenue share, it looked to be a grand day.
From all those views though, only 3 sales were made generating £15 in commission.
Not a good conversion rate. I wonder how much more commission I’d have generated if I didn’t openly display the promotional code but enforced a click by using a ‘click for code’ button or used an iframe to the Coral site?
Coral have looked after me in the past though so I am not concerned that I only converted 1% of visitors.
The bookmakers rewarded me last year by sending me £200 in Thomas Cook travel vouchers which have no expiry date and I am still looking forward to use.
