I turned down the chance to watch Boro’s biggest game of the season as some friends from affiliate marketing, SEO and the blogging community spent the weekend in Leeds for the third Think Visibility.

It was an opportunity to catch up with late night Vegas friends @ChrisClarkson, @KieronDonoghue and @BonyToad on my doorstep whilst also welcoming @ClarkeDuncan and his mate @ukstripclubs to sample the delights of Leeds.

It was again hosted in my local, Alea Casino, which is a great choice of location, particularly for the early Saturday morning start, which unsurprisingly I still missed.

I didn’t get to see all the talks, as the Peroni and chat was flowing at the Royal Armouries square but I did get to see my voucher code site on the Alea cinema screen.

ShopCodes on the Alea cinema screen with the Think Visibility SimpleUsability results

Thanks to @SimpleUsability for dragging people off the street to use my “very busy” site.  It was insightful to see how the users actually interacted and copied the voucher code and which links they clicked.

There were a few surprises and so I’ll be re-installing Crazy Egg, as there’s 7 Things Affiliates Can Learn From Heatmaps, writes @GetVisible.

At the end of the evening I signed up to a No-Limit poker tournament. I finished in the money but it was no compensation for my disastrous blackjack play earlier in the afternoon. Plus poker is a very long game, too long, when you’re missing out on a free bar and VIP entry to a local strip club!

Chip stack when 2 tables remaining

I’ve been to all three Think Viz’s and it was good to see people venture to and have a great time in Leeds.

Well done to @TheHodge and to all these people for another great conference and if you’re able to handle 5am finishes, then see you in September for the next DrinkVisibility.

Now that affiliates4u, the hub of performance marketing, has had a long overdue redesign it is time to remove the “Back Me” buttons and messages from your affiliate blogs and replace them with the new buttons available at www.affiliates4u.com/buttons/

I’ve plugged mine in as seen here:

There’s a choice of black or white and subtle and bold and you’ll need to select one as your old button will link to a “Sorry, we couldn’t find that.  We’re not sure what you were looking for” page.

Clicking the new buttons will take you to a submit page to the new ‘The Pool’.  Here you specify a title and summary and it’s worth expanding on the 250 character limit summary as this is what will prompt people to read and potentially vote for your content.

In the new system you can’t see which supporters you have for your content, the voting is all anonymous, which takes away part of the appeal and fun of it. But it does mean you can “slap” a post and hide.