I hadn’t even stepped out of the lift when I’d collected my first business card and within 10 minutes of arriving I had to head back to my room for more and to chill. Facing merchants before you’ve even had time for a well-needed coffee (after a night of networking) didn’t seem so wise.

I soon realised that the sensible affiliates roamed the stands after lunch, so I allowed myself a lie-in for day 2.

Aside from the following, I left Barcelona with 35 business cards and I’ve not gotten around to emailing any of the people I chatted to about my website.

I didn’t have to email anyone. After a courtesy ‘we’ll give you a day to get back to the office’ the emails started flooding in and whilst I may not be a travel affiliate yet, I’m on my way to be a gaming one.

I’ve secured a few exclusive codes in this sector and a handful are live on ShopCodes for roulette and backgammon brands alongside the more traditional poker and bingo.

I’ve not even replied to all those who have emailed as dealing with gaming merchants can be quite a slow process. You have to play the 5 minute game of CPA or revshare, when all I care about is the content and creatives.

So when I get back from A4uExpo I’ll be keen to implement all the new SEO strategies I’ll be picking up. I think I’ve earmarked to attend all of the sessions.

I’ll then need to continue with my post-CAP strategy, get my October codes in order and then, just maybe, I can become a travel affiliate too.

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As reported on Facebook, this blog and Affiliates4u, Befuddle had been punished by Google for distributing Malware. A search in Google for say “Victoria Beckham drunk”, returned “Warning – visiting this web site may harm your computer!”

Traffic has nose dived. Google organic was sending me approximately 1,000 unique visitors a day and now it’s just a handful.

The site is still receiving a few hundred visitors each day, down from just short of 2,000 visitors.

Not knowing where the problem came from I removed all US based third party advertising and counters. This left the pages looking terribly ugly so I deleted all celebrity pages. This drastic course of action also meant I didn’t have to single handedly have to manually check each one. Some celebrities had 100 pages in their own sections.

I’ve posted up some new drunk celebs pages in a different directory and used the opportunity to display larger size images along with some YouTube clips to make the site more sticky.

I’ve also added Google AdSense to the pages so that not all revenue is lost. AdSense is generating about $6 a day with the current levels of traffic, which is a lot more than the flashing advertising ever did.

On Sunday I submitted my site for review at StopBadware.org where the site is currently in the process of being reviewed.

Thanks for the support here, on Affiliates4u and Facebook.

Befuddle will be saved and will come out stronger.

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