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Recently much has been made about the numbers of followers people have in Twitter, when in reality, the opposite should be more important. I’m not a preacher and therefore if I have 10, 50 or 1,000 people following me, it doesn’t really make a difference. What is important to me, is what other people are saying, recommending or talking about as it may help me in the future.

Twitter, to me, is a business (and occasionally social) networking tool, more akin to LinkedIn than Facebook. My Twitter account is locked, meaning I prefer to see who wants to follow me, and check that either I know them or I share some interests. It’s far too easy to open access up to everyone and have 100’s of spam bots or Russian escorts who promise to show you a good time for £1.

How do you find relevant people or companies to follow?
Well TweetPromote is relatively new to the scene, and is by far the fastest, easiest and most powerful way of finding targeted people worth following on Twitter. You can find people based on your interests and keywords, and also drill down to friends of friends!

In the example to the right, I follow Fraser and both of us have tagged “Affiliate” and “Marketing” as being an interest of ours. I can now take this one step further and explore Fraser’s contacts to see any that he follows, which I don’t, that also have similar interests.

As a result I find Fraser is following someone called Jim Banks. Jim is old school SEO but also happens to run Global Media Network which is an affiliate network I haven’t heard of before and has UK merchants!

So TweetPromote has helped me locate Jim who maybe worth following and reading what he has to say in the future, and also has opened up the possibility of working with a new network.

TweetPromote is about helping you find people to follow and learn from NOT about getting gazillions of automated followers! There’s no automation, no robots, no spam, just quick and simple exploration of the Twitter users that match your interests.

If you’re looking to makes stacks of cash on a business investment opportunity, then this blog post is of no use to you. Seriously…!

If you fancy making a small investment in a new business that gives someone less fortunate an opportunity to succeed or in some cases, survive, then read on!

Introducing KIVA

Kiva is a micro-financing website, whereby someone applies for a loan, and many people lend small amounts meaning the risk is spread out. Zopa is a “for profits” version, allowing you to help people buy a new car or improve their home, whereas Kiva helps people buy cattle or fertiliser so they can continue to survive.

I’ve been meaning to join Kiva for sometime but was always one of those things I never quite got round to sorting. After joining and depositing $100 via PayPal, I’ve issued 4 loans helping;

• Ravshankul, a farmer in Tajikistan, to purchase seeds & fertilizer
• Hoàng, a farmer in Viet Nam, to help expanding her livestock business
• Luisa, a farmer in Peru, to purchase fertiliser for use on her coffee crops
• Kandakhorov, a farmer in Tajikistan, to purchase two cattle

Because of how micro-financing works, you don’t have to invest £100 in one project and run the risk of never having the money returned. You invest small amount across a number of projects so that you share the risk with other investors. £16 ($25) isn’t a lot to many of us Affiliates, yet to someone on Peru it can be the difference of having a field full of crops to sell or a dust bowl and struggling to feed a family.

You will NOT make any profit from your investment as you’ll only receive the same amount of money you offered. However just take a minute to ponder. You have a car! You’re house is being paid off monthly and you even have an insurance policy should anything happen to you! Maybe you spend £5 a day on a pack of cigarettes like I used to?

£16 or $25… it’s not a lot is it! How about next months bank interest?

JOIN ME, CLARKE DUNCAN AND JP JONES AND JOIN THE KIVA AFFILIATES COMMUNITY WHERE A SMALL NUMBER OF US CAN MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE!

Over the past few weeks, I’ve seen a slow but steady increase in comment spam on my blog which although being caught by Spam Karma, is still annoying, taking up my time and I’m aware that Spam Karma is no longer being developed, maintained or supported.

I’ve had challenge and response in place for well over a year, but it was a pretty basic one such as “What colour is the sea? RED/BLUE?” but have decided that it was time to see what else was available and happened to stumble across reCaptcha.

I’ve seen reCaptcha on a number of websites, but was unaware of it being available to Wordpress users. The reCaptcha system uses successful decodings to helps digitise books for online use at the same time as protecting blogs from spammers. If the human can’t read what is shown, they can request a new set of words or can request they are played out loud.

If you mix the reCaptcha system with the Michael Toppa’s Deko Boko plugin, you can incorporate the reCaptcha process not only in your comments section, but your contact forms too.

It was widely reported last week, that Cisco have declared video as the next killer application. Their research shows that by 2013, internet traffic will reach 667 exabytes and 90% of that will be made up of video or in lamens terms, the equivalent of 10 billion DVDs worth of information, would cross the internet monthly!

If their prediction comes true, some boffins over at ScientificAmerican have concluded that it would take more than a half a million years to watch all the online video!

We all know about YouTube and the 100’s of other imitation websites that are out there allowing everyone their 15 minutes of fame. Personally I find 99% of online videos are nothing short of crap, and the good one’s that do exist, such as Web 2.0 - The Machine Is Using Us, hidden away in hard to find places.

A relatively new application website tool has been gaining support and recognition from all corners of the world - Animoto. Animoto can produce MTV style music video’s using your own photographs uploaded directly, or imported from Flickr, Facebook, Picasa and others - meaning creating a video like mine below, is a piece of cake!

Why I want to live in Oz

What’s extra clever about Animoto is that it integrates with Facebook’s photo tagging features, so if you’ve tagged friend in a photo you use in a video, they’ll still get an alert! No wonder the internet is due to come clogged up with Video, with tools like Animoto being available to all.

It makes perfect sense to summarise your holiday in 6 minutes rather than putting friends and family through a 2 hours viewing of over 240 photographs. Just trust me on this one!

How can this be used in Affiliate Marketing? Well over the past 2 years, we’ve seen more and more merchants follow Prezzybox’s footsteps, offering affiliates video content as an alternative advertising medium. Previously not all merchants had the knowledge or budget to produce these videos, however with Animoto there really isn’t any excuse. All merchants can easily, quickly and cheaply create a video that allows them the chance to not only promote their own website/products, but also give affiliates the tools they need and want.

Wanting to see what other people thought about personalised car number plates, I searched for a Twitter application that would allow me to post a poll which other people could quickly and easily take part in.

Came across Twtapps which, in my opinion, is a fantastic suite of Twitter tools that are useful not only for personal Tweets, but business too!

TwtPoll
Create an online poll by simply typing in a 140 chars question, multiple choice answers, and embed or share it!

Twtvite
Create an event, enter the location, date, time, your 140 chars description, and share it whilst managing RSVPs.

TwtBizCard
Send and manage your Twitter business card by adding #twtbizcard to your tweets.

TwtQpon
A simple coupon creator for businesses. Enter your promotion details, choose an image and enter a code + url!

Twtjobs
Got a job opening or wanting a change in career? Create your “Twitter resume,” post job openings, apply to jobs, and embed and share them!

TwtBiz
A Twitter business directory allowing you to find businesses, entrepreneurs and even investors!

Other useful and fun applications twtapps have developed include;
twtTRIP - travel organizer
twtwlst - gift registry
twtcard - greeting cards
twtpets - game for pet lovers

As you would expect, you can follow Twtapps and keep up to date with their new developments and suggestions on how best to use the mini applications to help promote your business.

A4U Awards

Before heading off to the A4U Awards in Park lane, myself and Jane headed for a cheeky drink or two courtesy of the DGM guys & girls in the Met Bar where we were lucky enough to stumble across the current F1 Leader, Jenson Button.

After chatting to him for 5 or so minutes, it transpired that we has on bottled water as he was racing (and won) in Turkey at the weekend. He was surprised at the number of people Tux’d up in the Met Bar, and asked what was going on. Didn’t bore him with what affiliate marketing was, just explained there was a big party with about 500 people just down the road and left it at that.

The awards took place with not too many surprises (well done to all!), and the next morning a rather sore head was dragged out of bed to make the Eurostar to Paris for the next 5 days. Luckily we had fantastic weather in Paris and made plenty of friends by opting for Italian Wine with our meals

Sadly we didn’t go in the Moulin Rouge but headed to Crazy Horse instead. After little more than 10 minutes I was counting the number of lights in the ceiling and look at my watch wondering how much more I had to endure. If we could have, I think we would have escaped at the earliest convenience especially as it was €20 for a regular bottle of Leffe!

Bing, Microsofts new decision engine, isn’t yet live to the majority of us peasants, but already the internet is full of positive chatter. From what I’m reading, Bing may well have an impact on the affiliate marketing industry in more ways than one! The new decision engine technology is due to be integrated in Windows7, which is a vast improvement on Vista, and already I’m benefiting from fantastic stability and we’re only in RC1… anyway I digress…

Bing.com is already rumoured to include features such as CashBack and Price Predictor, which presumably is just an integrated version of their Farecast utility, which predicts when the best time is to buy a ticket on a certain route (sadly only US based at the moment).

At All Things Digital last week, Steve Ballmer talked about Microsoft’s new search engine, explaining how it’s designed to help the surfer make smarter, faster more informed decisions that could save money at the same time.

Steve Ballmer at All Things Digital

Obviously the major players have had chance to review the new decision engine, with the hope that the PR machine will kick in, and be positive, which appears to be the case:

“While there have been a few occasions where I’ve found Google results to be better, the substantial gap that existed between Google and Live Search is largely gone with Bing.”
Greg Sterling - Search Engine Land

“Bing does much more than search for relevant links. It retrieves and processes data, and renders it smartly. That makes finding a great restaurant or an airline ticket, a snap. But the service is far from perfect.”
Ryan Singel - Wired

Sometimes though, reviews and reviewers will conclude that Microsoft’s ambition is to displace Google completely. Maybe Microsoft’s aim is to run along side Google, offering a viable alternative and simply increasing their current 10% search share?

Personaly I’m intrigued as to what effect this will have on Affiliate Marketing once goes live on a global basis. Will it be a major blow to cashback, comparison and even discount code website? From the Bing video introduction, it’s apparent that they plan to list online coupons and deals for merchants that offer particular products when searched for.

The end of cashback and coupon sites? I know a lot of people will be hoping so… Verb Up

In this weeks Marketing Week there’s a number of interesting articles discussing and questioning the use and effectiveness of discount codes and vouchers, both on and offline.

I was interviewed a number of weeks ago by Marketing Week, and it’s interesting to hear other peoples opinions, in particular:

Consumers expect year round discounts.
Two-thrids (66%) of UK Retailers feel that customers expectations have changed so much that larger price cuts are required to achieve an uplift in sales.

Who really beneifts from your vouchers?
A question and viewpoint raised by a merchant, who experiecned odd redemption patterns inconsistent with brand sales when it came to offline voucher management.

Create element of excitement
As the recession continues, brand loyalty goes out the window meaning consumers are willing to experiment. Innovation and emotional factors are now just as large a driver for sales and new customers, as price cuts we 12 months ago.

On a final note…
Birds Eye have re-introduced the Arctic Roll… Created in 1961, the delicious ice cream and sponge dessert is soon set to decome a teatime favourite all over again! Absolute Class!

Sadly my entry didn’t make the shortlist for the A4U Awards (wish the comments had counted towards the votes!). Having said that, I’m sure I would have faced extremely touch competition especially from the two most notable entries - ECU and Skimlinks. I’ve seen their innovations and think they truely deserve to be in the running!

Anyway, the full list has been posted on the A4 Awards blog, and as usual, a few surprises have come out. Congratulations to all those that made it and look forward to having a few jars with you all in 2 weeks time!

I guess my innovation was a little ahead of its time

I know it’s a little bit on the sad side, but with other half in London walking around in her Bra for charityand me staying at home due to work and oncall commitments, I found myself tuning in to Eurovision. Don’t laugh!

This year, new voting rules aimed at ensuring that the 54th Eurovision was a song contest, rather than a test of which country has the most allies, seemed to work. Marks awarded by national juries judging musical merit were combined with public votes before each nation awarded its points.

This resulted in the Top 5 countries being somewhat different to 2009;
1st Norway (previously placed 5th)
2nd Iceland (not in 2008 final)
3rd Azerbaijan (previously placed 8th)
4th Turkey (previously placed 7th)
5th United Kingdom (previously placed 25th)

The winning song “Fairytale” is quite strange number, written and sung by 2005 Norwegian Pop Idol Alexander Rybak who is classically-trained violinist so not your usual trashy Europop (although there was plenty of that… wasn’t there Germany?). Apparently he originates from USSR (now Belarus) which explains the Russian undertones the song has got and actually has a pretty good voice as is shown in this clip where he does a Jason Moraz number.

If you haven’t yet heard the song - its here on Spotify!

As stocks tumble all around us, there is one thats increasing in public interest. The UK Laughing Stock!

Yep I’m talking about those people who we chose to represent us, and our future with a view of distributing our hard earned taxes fairly, in order to beneift those that need it and invest in our services. However, as the NHS is once again having to cut costs and staff numbers, our Members of Parliment think nothing of claiming a £50 call-out fee to fix their home cinema sound system and expecting us UK tax payers to pick up the bill.

What planet do these idiots live on?

Take Lord Foulkes for example… firstly what has he ever done to be graced with the title of Lord - other than sit in his big fat ass eating far to many pies. Lord Pucker maybe more appropriate! A nerve was obviously hit when he was interview by BBC News and rather than answer the question being posed, turned it on the TV presenter Carrie Gracie. See Interview.

He for one, I would like to see brought to justice if there is a case against him, by the Daily Mail’s Members of Parliment - Bring them to justice Order campaign. In my opinion Lord Fucks is simply using up oxygen that could and should be saved in order to help reduce green house gases. After all shit does produce carbon dioxide doesn’t it?

So what action will be taken?

Well, as expect pretty much nothing. Despite overwhelming evidence of crooked expenses claims among MPs, legal experts think it highly unlikely that police and the Crown Prosecution Service will bring criminal charges against any of them. And the police wonder why they have such a bad reputation lately?

If the government truely listens to what the people, whom it is meant to represent, want then they have to act accordingly. The general consensus is that prosecutions are brough against these money laundering tossers, as the polls show.

Therefore the Daily Mail and the Tax-Payers Alliance have launched a campaign for the private prosecutions of backbenchers and ministers who have pocketed thousands of pounds through dishonest claims. Why is it Police are arrested for inflating expenses, yet MP’s aren’t despite a poll showing what the public think!

• MPs Expense scandals published on Twitter
• An online petition calling for Gordon Brown to resign
• Daily Mails Campaign For Justice aimed at prosecuting MP’s

What do you want to see done?
What if you’re not from the UK - what do you make of all of this?
Most importantly… what should I have for my tea?