Elaine’s Space

‘cos you didn’t come to Think Visibility.

Two of the illustrious speakers (and I don’t mean me and Dave) gave away some brilliant information  -  but only to the audience
and were quite happy to expand on this off stage as well - but you had to be there.

So, although, most of the conference is being released on video to everybody, some of it is staying secret.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself and learnt lots - apart from THAT hour - but I managed to stay upright, not swear, get all my words mixed up and not have a domestic with Dave - well, not during the presentation.  Nope - that came later, and unfortunately, Dom got in the way - hope your bruises heal quickly Dom

See what you missed by not shelling out a measly £75.

There’s a strong rumour it’s all happening again in March - so, start saving  £5 a week now, and we’ll see you there.

Just a very short post today - whipping my presentation into shape about how we managed to attract 4 million visitors last year, produce nearly 2 million in sales for our merchants and a nice 6 figure income for me, Dave and Eldon Square Shopping Mall, Newcastle

Anyways nice article in The Yorkshire Evening Post here .  See you in 2 days time

I cannot believe that there are tickets still availabe for Think Visibility on Saturday 12th September, the price of £79 (with code ALLKIDS) is unbelievably good value - especially when compared with other SEO/Affiliate/Blogging conferences.

One Day Comparison Tool

Think Visibility - £79 for everyone
A4U Expo - £124 affiliate, £174.00 merchant
SEOMoz London - £274
Pubcon Las Vegas - £183

I cannot believe that t’internet folk are willing to shell out hundreds of pounds for London Hotels and London Prices, especially during midweek, when prices are higher -there are very, very few events held at the weekend - but won’t pay the paltry (by comparison) hotel prices in Leeds.

I cannot believe that t’internet folk are quite happy to interrupt their working week = losing money!!! - to attend these London based events, but aren’t swarming up the A1/M1 to spend a pleasant/informative day in Leeds - ON A SATURDAY.

I cannot believe that the affiliate community in particular aren’t turning out in droves, when they complain loudly that the London based events are overrun with Agency/Network folks badgering them to sign up for this, promote t’other - NOT AT THINK VISIBILITY - just plain (not figuratively speaking) honest to goodness seo’s, bloggers, analysers, affiliates, twitterers etc

I cannot believe that anyone ponders this for even a nano - second - perm any 3 speakers and the £79 would still be excellent value - never mind 17 of ‘em.

I cannot believe that everyone goes to London, takes their partners and spends hours searching for inexpensive restaurants, nightclubs, casinos, shopping - when Leeds has all this within easy walking distance - you get to spend 1 day and 2 nights with some of the best in the industry and your partner gets a lovely day in Leeds doing whatever they fancy-

Words fail me ………. (well, obviously not)

Think Visibility, 12th September in my home town of Leeds - can’t flippin’ wait (well, apart from the 1 hour when I will be speaking/making a fool of myself/having an onstage domestic with Dave - or maybe all three - could be worth the ticket price alone :0)

The price is ONLY - (ONLY - this is incredibly cheap) - £99 AND, Dom being the nice chap he is, is giving 20% off, so, that’s even less - use code ALLKIDS.

Oh - and for those getting there early on Friday Tim Nash is giving a free seminar (for TV registrants - everyone else it’s £50 - I think)

The line up of speakers is astonishing (in no particular order - but starting with the ones I’ve had the pleasure of hearing)

Judith Lewis - chocolatemaster extraordinaire, SEO and Paid Search guruess, very fascinating & knowledgeable speaker

Joost De Valk - mega blogger bloke, knows his stuff inside and out, an extremely nice guy and entertaining.

Tom Smith - helps businesses understand Social Media, what they need and how to get it

Chris Clarkson - who doesn’t want to hear how Chris, and partners, took Holiday Watchdog, made it a mega success and sold it for a trillion pounds, and then launched another extremely successful site - Sunshine.co.uk - very talented guy.

Patrick, Chris, Al and Kieron aka The Panel - what can I say - a fantastic assortment of t’internet whiz kids

Artur Ortega - Accessibility Evangelist -  often overlooked, but imperitive when designing websites

Paul Robinson - promises to be invaluable if you run on online business and want to increase the revenue

Karen Fleeting -PR expert through the power of blogging - which can be a very powerful tool!

Fiona Thomson - how do customers use your website - it’s all about following the eyeballs!

Zoe Piper -  likes spending tons of money - other peoples  - on Adwords :), tinkering with SEO and has just helped launch Bethemiddleman.com

Rob Manual -  yep - promises to be different and lively (come on, I’m a 50+ grandmother, I’m not going to ‘get’ everything -  I did find the ‘how to poach an egg’ link disturbing.)

Julian Sambles -the last speaker of the day and well worth waiting for- I’m hoping for some excellent SEO tips

Me and Dave - juggling different hats - affiliate, merchant, salesman, wannabee SEOer, business guru’s, entrepreneur, mentors, scrambled egg connoisseurs …

PLUS 2 nights of networking with the above and all the t’internet savvy folk who’ve already registered
PLUS - Leeds is a fantastic city, with some fantastice people, great nightlife, brilliant shops, restaurants and culture (I’m pretty certain I’ve seen some culture)
PLUS - Leeds United have moved their match to the Friday Night (how Dom managed that, I don’t know ;)), so’s not to clash.

All in all I think you’d be silly not to go.

ps - the above is all my own work and in good faith, but I’ll apologise now if I’ve got something wrong.

By heck this has been a long, long drawn out process - longest labour in history - that’s what it’s felt like at times - but it’s finally here
THE BRAND NEW VERSION OF ALLKIDS

It’s been over 15 months since I first approached Becky at Bronco with my vision for the future

- a site that I could easily update by category or supplier

- a site where I could cascade special offers and discount vouchers across all the necessary products at the press of a button - and just as easily remove them

- a site which I could easily, and seemlessly, add new categories and sub categories without having to struggle with CSS and pesky html tables

- a site that looked stunning - feast your eyes here at the new Nursery Furniture page

They delivered all this, and more, within a few months and I started the long, laborious job of transferring all the content, removing outdated and broken links (many, many) and including new products and images - with a launch date of September 2008 ….. how the God’s conspire!!

Situations overtook events and I found myself knee deep (thank heavens I haven’t got long legs!) and wading through the treacle of php and mysql and doing battle with the backend of Children’s Rooms, which was an ongoing nightmare for many months, and completely took over our lives, and those of our 3 fantastic kids (do hope they don’t read this, they’ll get big-headed).

Any thought of launching the new Allkids was put firmly on the back burner, I hardly had chance to update the site with Christmas Goodies, never mind populate the new one. Salvation came at the hands of Dan Robbins - our Knight in Shining  Armour- and another blog post.

So with great thanks to Becky for being so patient and helpful, Chris for such an easy peasy backend, Kean for a brilliant design  and DaveN (UK Seo and Leeds supporter) - and I truly do appreciate their long-suffering patience and understanding (and their silence over one or two, shall we say, cock-ups!! ) the new site is now up and running and I can now go and catch up with I’m  A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here …..

I really, really don’t have time to write this, but Amazon are really taking the proverbial out of their affiliates and showing us complete contempt.

I’m knee deep in populating V2 of Allkids, cannot move in this house for random links, optimised images and the occasional new merchant - the good news is that I am was on track to launch it sometime next week.

I don’t even have time to investigate why Children’s Rooms has suddenly bucked the trend - the big summer school holidays is when we can expect to take a rest; if our normal visitors aren’t on holiday, they’re outside in the sun or the kids have taken over the computer ‘cos it’s raining.

Anywhichway it usually means a reduction in orders - not a massive rise as we’ve seen since last week with everybody having to work full out, especially Kev, who will probably be knee deep in t’other type of sh** in a few weeks, when he takes paternity leave.  And unfortunately, Darren’s not knee deep in any thing, except excruciating pain as he’s appeared to have torn something vital in his knee region - which means I’m off to the warehouse soon and will be knee deep in kids duvets, lamps and borders!!!!

So, quickly, back to Amazon and their amazing total disregard and urine extraction of affiliates. I’ve been that busy I’ve only fleetingly had time to get really annoyed with their recent commission restructure.

I’m not overly happy with the removal of the 2.5% bonus which I enjoyed, but it’s something I could live with and it is quite easy to swap links to other merchants with the same product if necessary.

BUT THEIR LUDICROUS REASON TO IMPLEMENT THE £7 CAP ACROSS  ALL PRODUCTS IS  BREATHTAKINGLY INSULTING - okay, sorry for shouting, normal volume will now be resumed.

Most affiliates know that certain sectors have a shallow profit margin - white goods, electricals and electronics etc and accept a low commission rate of, approximately, 2% and I’m blooming well sure, that not many got confused with the old Amazon system, of having the commission on these tpes of  products capped at £7.

But to insult our intelligence by suggesting they are doing us a favour by capping the commission on all products at £7 is beyond belief.  Obviously I immediately swapped (or deleted) all links on products over £150 to merchants who credit me with a bit of intelligence, but occasionally I see  £7 in that end column, this morning I saw 3!!!

BOYS CAR BED | £399.00 | 1.75% | £7
CHEST OF DRAWERS | £199 | 3.52% | £7
BOOKCASE | £210 | 3.33% | £7

So I earned a massive £21 on these 3 items - if this sale had been with any other merchant, I would have expected a rate of over 10%, as the profit margin on these types of goods is very high, but even at 8%, I’d have had an extra £64 in my account BUT WTF  -  1.75% COMMISSION RATE - unbloodybelievable!!!!

With Christmas fast approaching I would expect to see many more high end items creeping into my Amazon report, not something I’m willing to chance.

So Amazon will now be joining the ranks of Argos, ToysRus,  Tesco Direct and any other merchant who thinks it’s acceptable to offer affiliates ’slave wages’, and will now enjoy very limited exposure on Allkids.

ps and for those who think I’m crazy having an incredibly popular parenting/childrens directory and NOT promoting the major retailers, such as Argos and ToysRus -think again  - I’ve said this before - my visitors are looking for ideas and products - not famous name retailers, if they were they’d simply go there!!!

PPS - so come on networks, if you have a relevant merchant who’ll fit nicely on Allkids and won’t treat me like an idiot, let me know.

No the title’s not cryptic - we’ve just bought some really nice cups from Morrisons, it makes drinking hot beverages just that bit nicer.

They’re bone china, so not chunky, dish washer safe, with a nice comfortable handle and large enough for a good cuppa without being too large.
And at 2 for £5, not expensive either.

Time and time again someone asks on the forum about keyword density, on page SEO etc and we have long conversation about keyword stuffing and the best way of optimising the page/site to gain the holy grail of that first page of Google.

And, invariably the answer comes back - forget about keyword density, don’t worry about onpage SEO, don’t keyword stuff as it will get you banned - just write for your visitors, good quality content is what counts - mmmmmmmmm - maybe!

Unfortunately it’s not the visitors who get you on the top page in the first place - it’s a piece of software!

It’s a piece of software that follows certain rules - the main one being to ascertain the focus of the page and site.  And how does it do this?

By looking for repetitive words, similar words, linking words, pages with similar words, linking out to sites with similar words, sites linking to you with similar words!

It’s all about the words.

This site has the top spot for  Ben 10 Bedding, (showing google’s text only cache) and has been for some time, and I don’t think it’s inline for any literary awards this year

You could write the most definitive, interesting article and only mention the subject once  - but that’s not going to get you diddly, unless you have some  major, relevant high PR sites linking in ( with the correct anchor text, of course.)

Google might well have human quality controllers who go in and check the suitability of pages and who look for well written, focused, relevant content - but I reckon, only for those high revenue sections and only when they reach the upper echelons of the search engine - you have to get there first, by fair means or foul.

Also, if you have that stickiness factor and visitors keep coming back and spending time on your site without hitting that back button because you have great content, that will certainly help you achieve your goal of staying in those coveted spots - but they’ve got to find you first?

So, by all means, sit down and spend an hour writing that interesting, relevant, quality content - and then spend the next few days checking you’ve included enough keywords - but not too many, the anchor text, the H1 titles, the meta titles and meta description,  the inbound links and the outbound links, the blogs, twitter and facebook links - and then, don’t forget to  investigage those sites already ranking for your chosen keywords - which, maybe, you should have  gotten round to first.

Then you can sit back, relax and bask in the warm rays of your well written content - fingers crossed!

Our New Warehouse

It’s been no secret that we’ve had a difficult 12 months at Children’s Rooms, I blogged about this last year -here

Approaching Christmas we quickly filled the new units with new lines and some cracking bargains thanks to the negotiating skills of Dave and Ourkev and the festive season was incredibly busy (we did see a downturn during the Woolworths fiasco though) but the New Year Sale proved even more popular.

The trend has continued throughout the year- thankfully.  Thanks to Darren and Carolyn being so capable, Dave and Kev have had plenty of time to source new suppliers and, even more important, the time to  go and see them and forge beneficial relationships - there’s a lot to be said for face to face contact in this electronic age!

By February it was obvious that if we were going to take advantage of the multitude of excellent deals that we were being offered we would have to start looking for larger premises.

And boy, did we strike lucky.

Not only is the warehouse much closer to home (Ourkev can easily! cycle there) it’s nearly twice the size at roughly half the price.

We also qualified for a £5000 Legi (Local Enterprise Growth Initiative Grant), so we were able to install a mezzanine floor and a second office.

Our landlords, also local folk, are incredibly nice, very accommodating and helpful. (and luckily  have a variety of other warehouses and business units in the area, which we could be taking advantage of in the near future ;))

We’re now fully moved and in the process of creating the best use of the available space - not an easy task, but we are getting there, allthough the amount of accumulated dust and debris is awesome.

Part 2 - Our Knight in Shining Armour - coming soon

The whole point of this experiment is to try and determine what will happen to the site when I launch the new one - will Google take kindly to new urls and 301 redirects?

Bearing this in mind it was pointed out that it would have been better to create one new url and 301 the old page directly to this, and then wait untill the new page was indexed correctly and then split the page - made sense.

May 21st - Sooo - not being scared of changing stuff willy nilly, I set about deleting the new pages and resurrecting the old page

It took approximately a week for the old page to be reindexed and today, for the term xxx bedding, it shows in 6th position, secondary to a 404 page, (another long deleted page, which Google has resurrected for this term - go figure).

For the term xxx toys, Google is now showing pageB (now deleted) in position 6 - so this bodes well for when I do eventually split the page.

We shall wait now for Google to realise her mistake and stop using 404 pages for my main term and reinstate the old page to it’s former glory - fingers crossed.

I shall keep you informed.