I’ve got the Alexa Sparky ranking add-on installed in Firefox & obviously, the displayed figure is the only one you notice on a day to day basis. However, since my Cashback Shopper ranking started plummeting day by day (following on from the Google Vince update), from 205,000 at its peak, to around 460,000 & falling now; although my rankings for Cashback Shopper seem to have recovered & stabilised a bit recently, the ranking is still falling, so I decided to look into the figures a little more.

My attention was drawn to the following:

Cashbackshopper.co.uk users come from these countries:

• 77.3% United Kingdom
• 1.5% France
• 21.5% OTHER

and:

Cashbackshopper.co.uk traffic rank in other countries:

• 602,105 France
• 25,967 United Kingdom

This was very interesting – as my overall ranking is falling, my UK traffic rank seems to be rising! The last time I looked, it was over 28,000 & now is 25,967. Bearing in mind the fact that Cashback Shopper is a site for UK residents only, I can only assume that despite the displayed figure falling, the fact that my UK traffic rank is rising can only be a GOOD thing! My site is the 25,967th most visited site in the UK?

Perhaps I’m interpreting this wrong, but would be interested to know if anyone else has a view on this, or perhaps knows for sure whether this is the case or not?!

It’s nearly been a month since I blogged on here, mainly due to the amount of web design work I am doing.

One project is for a home security company, www.guardedhomes.co.uk, offering ipCCTV, gates, railings, shutters, safe rooms & the like, another new(ish) recruitment firm, as well as 3 home page mock-ups for another well-established recruitment company, not to mention a local escort agency!!!! On top of that, I’ve had a few other enquiries & just never seem to have the time for blogging at the moment. When I actually get paid for some of this work will be interesting though O

I’ve not been able to do much work on Cashback Shopper, or My Travel Extras recently & absolutely NONE on Love Your Pets or UK Shopping Spree & really want to redesign My Travel Extras to be less cluttered & more Web 2.0, but will have to wait for a quiet spell I guess. Once I get paid, I want to promote my dating sites a bit more I recently bought a number of new domains, but guess they will also have to go on the back burner for now: cheapcarhirealicante.com, webtraveloffers.com, travelcheapinfo.com, cheapsmallbusinessbroadband.co.uk, scifigoodies.co.uk, findmegaydates.co.uk, findmelesbiandates.co.uk, plus I wanted to try to resurrect easylolly.com for some sort of financial site.

On top of this Ei42 have just launched in the US, so I’ve been link building for www.cashbackshoppers.biz, in the hope that I can get some more interest in this, but think this is going to need some articles and forum postings to get anywhere…..I did start writing to schools asking them to consider joining as a way to raise funds for their school, but haven’t had the time to carry on.

Maybe I have my fingers in too many pies & am spreading myself a bit too thin, but we’ll see.

In the last few days, I’ve set up 5 Tweet accounts, focusing on My Travel Extras, Cashback Shopper, Freshwebz, Love Your Pets & UK Shopping Spree. I’m going to follow relevant Tweets through each of these accounts and add blog entries from the relevant blogs. How does this help promote a website? Other than bringing your site to the attention of other people, I’m not sure, but it doesn’t take much to add posts, so we’ll see!

I had a bid in an auction for the domain webtraveloffers.com, but the auction ended whilst my system was still going through one of it’s interminable Vista upgrade attempts! I assumed that I would have lost the auction at the last minute, but amazingly, I got it, for the minimum bid price of $69!

Now I have to decide what to do with it lol. As mentioned before, I want to tie it in with My Travel Extras & link between the two sites somehow, offering travel offers from one, followed by holiday extras from the other. I think it could be a big job, but using Datafeedr may help to get it going.

Was half way through writing this blog when my Internet went off!!!! I’ve decided to dump Tiscali (another post about that experience to follow soon) & get Sky+HD  )  & it was obviously switched whilst I was typing….all is back on now & now it’s time to get going…..

It’s been a hectic time, changing my web host, my OS, my ISP, digital TV supplier etc. I’m hoping things have all settled down now & I can find some new motivation to kick on!!

I’m considering setting up a travel site, probably using datafeedr, to complement My Travel Extras. I’ve already purchased travelcheapinfo.com but am also in 2 auctions for clearsea.com & webtraveloffers.com.

Clear Sea sounds more evocative & is the most expensive at the moment, but web travel offers seems more appropriate for what I’m going to be selling????  The auctions only have another day to run, so we’ll see which one comes through!!

Good News! Another network has just been added to Datafeedr… TradeDoubler UK merchants are now available for Datafeedr members.

As an European affiliate network TradeDoubler is hosting merchants from different countries such as UK, France, Germany, and many more.

65 TradeDoubler UK merchants are now available with more being added in the next coming weeks.

Other TradeDoubler countries will be added in the next coming months.

Following the demise of the Empire Direct electrical chain, an interesting thread started on the A4U forum to which I made a contribution (or was it a rant? lol)!!

You can view the thread here

I recently received an interesting message from Kelkoo in relation to its payments to cashback websites.

“The Kelkoo programme is revising its commission structure for all Loyalty affiliates.

To align with Kelkoo business objectives, commissions for Loyalty websites on the Kelkoo UK affiliate programme will be set at 1p and not 1% as previously stated.

As of Monday 19th January the commission structure on the programme will reflect these changes.”

I have to say, I predicted this about 2 years ago when I was running my previous cashback site & advised members that this “daily click” payment wouldn’t continue once the merchants realised what was going on. My only surprise is that they’ve lasted this long!

The fact that Kelkoo are now saying they will only pay a nominal 1p to searches from incentive sites, would seem to indicate that this particular “daily click” has had its day! I can’t imagine sites paying out 1/2p to anyone & even the 100% sites will only be able to pay the 1p they receive!!!

Despite the “daily clickers” strange obsession with earning their 1p here & 2p there, I imagine it will be hard for even them to justify the time spent logging in, clicking & wiping cookies when they’re only going to earn 1p! Thank goodness!!!

It was the “daily click” administration that forced me to shut down my previous site & cost me £000′s. Even though Cashback Shopper doesn’t offer them, I won’t be sorry to see them go!

The plan for the Ei42 business opportunity is “so simple” that in truth many people you speak to will not believe it. “It’s a con”, “it’s a scam”, “too good to be true”, “it won’t work”, “it’s a pyramid scheme”. I’ve had the same response to my cashback site! Everyone is looking for a catch!

Despite all of the arguments every single day hundreds of people continue to join.

One statistic that is fascinating is the forecast made by the managing director at the very beginning. He said that everyone should work on the basis that on average all sales will generate 1% of distributable income (worst case) that is 1% to the buyer and 1% to the network (after Ei42 has taken its margin). Today, almost a year later and with sales (not commissions) into the millions the actual average percentage is 2.11% to the buyer and 2.11% to the network, more than DOUBLE what he told members to expect. In addition if we look at the total number of members today (bearing in mind that some have been members a few hours, some days, weeks, months and a few for almost 1 year), the average spend PER MEMBER is £98.15, with 13 days left before the end of the first year, we are on target for members to achieve more than double the first year forecast.

What was actually said was that the average household spends £940 per year on-line, so if every member of Ei42 spends £100 PER YEAR then you’d get at least 1% yourself plus the distribution from your network. It was also made very clear this is not nor will it ever be a get rich quick deal. (Legal things never are!)

So, what would I do if I were you?

Your first objective is simple. You need to build a team of 5 people who each have 5 people and then help/nudge/remind them to do the same. So Pick 5 people, some could be your existing people or they could all be new people, but make a plan “my job is to get 5 people” and every time you get a new member pass that simple message on; “If you are joining Ei42 your job is to get 5 people… pass it on:-)“. Once you have built a solid working 5 x 5 x 5 (you told 5 and your 5 told 5 each) then start a new 5. This way you can keep focused on helping your friends build their team of 5.

One other thing. Don’t expect the earth when you start! If you spent £250,000 buying a McDonald’s franchise it would take a considerable amount of time & effort before you got anywhere near making a profit and you certainly would not be considering giving up & closing it within a few weeks/months!

Stick with it, be patient, it will take time but it’s free and it will work. It’s a bit like losing weight we all want it now but if the target is 1 year away it becomes achievable.

And a Final Thought

Many people might say that they can’t really be bothered with Ei42 as you only earn pennies, so ask them if they have a Tesco Club Card! If they answer yes, ask them… “Why? it only pays 1p for every £1 you spend… surely it’s not worth bothering?”

I would rather earn 1% off a 100 people’s efforts than 100% of my own efforts. John D. Rockefeller

There’s been a lot going on recently including a new blog for My Travel Extras, transferring the travel related posts from this blog; a change of web host (followed by changing straight back again!) & trying to get some more web design business.

First of all the change of web host! I decided that I should move my sites to a hosting company with its servers based in the UK as Get to the Top on Google: Tips and Techniques to Get Your Site to the Top of Google and Stay There suggests that Google.co.uk gives higher importance in the UK rankings to websites where the server is based in the UK. As I use 1and1 & their servers appear as being in Germany, this may be harming my .co.uk domains.

I chose Heart Internet as they offered web hosting at the same price, but with 100 mySQL databases as opposed to the 2 I have with 1and1. I transferred all my domains over to Heart, the .co.uk being free & the .com costing £5 each. Unfortunately, it was only when I had a number of the .co.uk domains transferred, that I realised that I was unable to apply more than one domain to the hosting account unless I paid a “domain mapping” charge of £20pa for each other domain!

With around 30 domains, there was no way it was worth doing that, so the only alternative was a reseller account, whereby I would also be selling web hosting! As this cost a minimum of £25 per month, with no guarantee of selling any hosting, I couldn’t consider doing this & was gutted that I’d spent loads transferring the domains over & now would end up paying through the nose for something I didn’t really need.

I have to say that this domain mapping was not something mentioned anywhere on the hosting section of the Heart site & now I will be very cautious about it if I ever consider changing my hosting again!!! It was only by going through the support database, that I found any reference to it!

I decided to bite the bullet, take the loss & transfer my domains back to 1and1 /  Luckily however, the .com transfers had not been completed and so they could be cancelled & the charges refunded. Because Heart also offers a 30 day money back guarantee, I got my hosting costs back too <phew>. I would like to say thanks to the support team at Heart Internet though, who responded to my enquiries within minutes & were very helpful in sorting this problem out, even though they were losing a customer. Excellent customer service – if only Tiscali could be like this, but that’s another story!

I decided to also set up a separate blog for My Travel Extras, removing all the travel related posts from this one. Whether it makes a difference or not I’m not sure, but I presume that travel related content on the travel site would be viewed better by Google, than travel related posts on a web design domain. Fingers crossed this may help bring some visitors to My Travel Extras which has not been setting the world on fire recently and may even benefit the Freshwebz rankings too!