The A4U get together was hosted at the fantastic Ogilvy offices at 10 Cabot Square last night. It’s always good to meet up with old friends, and make some new acquaintances. It was certainly interesting to see how many people we had helped with moves in the industry, both as candidates and clients.
The general mood was definitely a positive one, with most people reporting a much improved beginning to the year, over what was overall a fairly tough 2009. However, it seems the industry weathered the storm of the last 12 months better than most.
I’ve been very poor at updating the blog over the past couple of months and this post is equally short unfortunately. It’s a good sign though – it means that we’re busy recruiting!

A4U meet at Ogilvy

The lane near my flat

hope this works

As you may know, I also publish a number of Affiliate Marketing websites too. The original intention was to ensure that I maintained up-to-date knowledge of the industry, as it requires a reasonable understanding of PPC and SEO too (and affiliate Marketing of course). This enables us to work closer with our clients on the online marketing jobs which we specialise in.
While I can build sites by hand in HTML I’ve found, like many others that the Wordpress platform offers an excellent and highly customisable platform to work with.

Anyway, I’m in the process of populating my latest site with products, and it made it’s first sale yesterday (via Amazon). It’s always a huge sigh of relief when it works – knowing that you haven’t been wasting your time for the past week!
It’s always interesting with Amazon too – seeing how many other associates sales you make alongside the original purchase. It really does convert very well, and those added bonuses make it really worthwhile.

Can anyone suggest a decent pair of semi slick mountain bike tyres as I’ve just bought a 2nd hand mountain bike and am upgrading tyres and gear cassette etc.  Already got the cassette and a decent rear wheel and hub, so just need the tyres..

I usually ride a road bike, but never really given time to a mountain bike.  I’m swapping from a road bike to a mountain bike because the roads are so poor in the Hemel Hempstead area that it has become a nightmare to ride, full of potholes and ravines

Any suggestions welcome!

Today,  myself and few colleagues have tried to contact 3 companies via the telephone.  In each instance, the telephone numbers were taken from the website.  Two companies just did not answer, and the other allocated the main number as their fax number. I know what you’re thinking now.. and I can assure you I did not read it wrong, I double checked and rang again.

I think this is poor service from huge techno companies. I just makes me think they’re rubbish. If something so simple is so difficult, I can only imagine what horror might await if something goes wrong with my eventual purchases with these companies..

Last Friday saw the Buy.at 5-a-side football tournament. Held at the incredible David Beckham Academy, it was a well organised and fun day for all involved. Personally, I’d like to say a huge thank you to Neil McDermott from Venturian Media for letting me join their team. Thanks also to Buy.at for hosting a superb event. We didn’t win, but did at least beat one of the Buy.at host teams.
After the football, a group of us headed to the O2 for evening refreshment. While the lure of going in to see Cliff Richard was tempting, I think we all managed to resist joining the blue-rinse brigade.

Here’s a few shots from the day. Sorry I couldn’t get more but I was either busy playing, or desperately trying to catch breath for the next game.

Although not on the 2 levels at Olympia like 2 years ago, Ad:Tech this year was busy, busy, busy. We arrived mid-morning, and already the hall was packed out.

We met up with clients old and new, and most gave a very definite indication that business has been improving dramatically over the past few months. Online marketing jobs are getting more focus and headcount approval is happening again.

Client servicing roles seem to be increasing greatest, with companies making sure that as well as winning new business, they hold on to existing customers too. There’s still a big focus on the more technical side too – from development to hands-on campaign management.

A good day, despite the poor coffee.

For a bit of fun, my daughter and I made a video last weekend. She wanted to do a magic trick and we came up with this.
It was great fun to make and we welcome all suggestion on how we did it!

Magic Shoes from Daniel Goodchild on Vimeo.

A couple of weeks ago my brother completed the Mazda London Triathalon. Spurred on by inspiration and a large dose of guilt, I am now officially in training for next year.

I’ll be attempting the Sprint version – 750m swim, 20K cycle and 5K run. The swim won’t be a problem as I swam competitively as a teen, the cycle I can probably handle, but running has never been my forte. So, I’m in the gym training hard (well, quite hard) to get my fitness levels back to what they were 20 years ago. Actually, perhaps not 20 years ago, but 10 years ago might be achievable.

I’ll keep you posted on how it’s going, and any suggestions for worthy children’s charities to get sponsorship for, are welcome.

Again, the Affiliate Marketing community came together last night to meet new friends and old (and have a beer or two), and everyone seemed to have an excellent time.
We met up with many of our clients (and candidates we’ve introduced to them). There seemed to be a feeling that the industry is in an good position overall, with more merchants / advertisers seeing the benefit of affiliate marketing all the time. There’s also some excellent tools for Affiliates on the market now, such as skimlinks, easycontentunits and of course Wordpress (this site is built on it!). All these go a long way to make it easier for publishers to innovate in other ways.

If you have affiliate marketing jobs which require attention, or you’re looking for a new job in affiliate marketing please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Here’s a brief video shot from the bar last night. Who is that waving?