This week I took a rare trip down to London and got to meet some familiar faces and also some new ones whilst at the buy.at Speakeasy.

I managed to mingle well and during the day and night there was a recurring theme of questions, asked of me, so I’ll answer them here. My answers here are probably completely different to what I said at the time but I blame the free Littlewood’s cocktails.

“I REALLY LIKE YOUR BLOG, WHY HAVE YOU STOPPED UPDATING IT?”

Well, I’ve ran out of things to say. I’ve been entertaining my friends instead on facebook with picture stories of my last month, including a stag-do in Newcastle and a holiday to Benidorm.

Since the holiday I’ve not really done much affiliate marketing and my site is in urgent need of an update, so blog posts have been on the backburner.

I had the pleasure of meeting Doug who likes a good heckle in real life and his blog amuses me. But he challenged me to write a bit more.

I’ve got nothing to rant about but I may just have a dig at Black Circles Tyres later for kicking me off their programme with no genuine explanation why.

I’ve also not been locked in a kitchen for a while.

Genuinely, I’ve just chilled a bit and have been spending more time at the gym than I have been in the bedroom updating my sites. The result of unwinding and going to the gym is that I’ve lost 4kg in weight in 3 weeks.

“HOW IS YOUR SITE DOING?”

I obviously wouldn’t be relaxing so much if my site was suffering but it is currently ticking along just fine. Typically when I go on holiday my site bombs as I don’t update it.

During this last holiday I automated it so that different content appeared on the home page from 1am.

Traffic is consistent and is increasing.

I’ve about 3,000 unread emails and 200 of those have been filtered for my attention. I’ll work through these and also the personal emails I receive from the merchants, agencies and networks.

As a measure of how well my site is doing. In a month my commission turnover is three times more than my take home pay from my salary.

I mentioned that my conversions are currently flying and I put this down to one change I made to my site.

Whilst other code affiliates discussed and implemented ‘click for code’ across their pages, I did the exact opposite.

I doubled the font size to 20 pixels and presented the headline code so that it looks like an image. The result is that people are clicking on it and as it isn’t an actual image, the visitor still has the option to just ‘copy-and-paste’ the code if they wanted to.

This transparency is doing my site no harm at all and only this week the merchant day2dayshop has emailed my site as an example of best practice.

“SO WHY ARE YOU STILL AT ORANGE?”

It was only 50 days ago when I made only £23 commission one day. Doug replied “So!”. But I want to have a bit more of a comfort zone than that.

There is the argument that if I leave my full time job that my business will do a lot better. That isn’t lost on me one bit but having got rid of all my debt I now have money coming in every month that I’d previously not seen before. When I get paid now all the money except my rent and gym subscription is mine. Handy cash to have available when you win a free holiday or two.

I’ve been at Orange exactly 11 years. I joined just after Tony Blair became Prime Minister in 1997.

I’m awaiting an imminent re-organisation announcement. I don’t think my role or team will be affected but I’ll see what happens in the wash.

I’m off to Bristol Zoo next week to hear about the future of testing and then in June I’ll be taking another ISEB testing exam. I can still apply for a sabattical which, if approved, would allow between 3 to 9 months off unpaid.

So, there’s no imminent rush to make a decision either way.

“HOW COME YOU WIN EVERYTHING?”

Any combination of the following help …

1. You’ve got to be in it to win it / Be in the right place at the right time
2. If you don’t ask you often don’t get
3. Play the odds
4. Be charming
5. Have a cheeky smile

So on Wednesday night I tested all to get myself a free ticket at the awards. Matt Wood’s face dropped when Claire suggested I should get a seat. However, I was only teasing at that point as nominee Jasper offered me a seat on the Jackpotjoy front-row table.

“ARE YOU GOING TO THE AWARDS?”

I’m not. Despite being offered a seat on a table with mad Jasper and the lovely Claire, it clashes with a lad’s holiday I have pencilled in that week. Two weeks away and I’ve still not booked my trip to Zante yet mind.

I do say that the awards didn’t seem quite right for bedroom affiliates like myself. Though if I start working my way through those 3000 emails, I expect to be there in 2009 as a nominee.