The Hitflip UK Blog

We have just sent out following note to our affiliates at CJ:

“Dear Affiliates,
due to high demand we have added deeplinks to our products in the textlink section. Now you can deeplink to search words and EANs.

All you need to do is replace XXX in the code with your required search word or EAN.

Example “Search Word”:
If you would like to link to all games concerning “Golf” on Hitflip:
http://www.hitflip.co.uk/entry.php?source=cj&ref=%zp&
dest=item_all&params=item_typ,4:searchstring,golf

Example “EAN”:
If you would like to link directly to the new Harry Potter book:
http://www.hitflip.co.uk/entry.php?source=cj&ref=%zp&
dest=item&params=EAN,9780747591054

Any Questions: Feel free to drop us a line at partner@hitflip.co.uk

Happy money making with the new functions!

Your Hitflip-Affiliate-Team”

Interested in promoting Hitflip and earning money with each new user? Check out our Hitflip Affiliate Programme

As Europe’s No. 1 swapping site for chocolates media items we challenge Chris from Hotel Chocolat to swap

Chocolates for…	a Lamborghini and Ferarri Experience

At this years CJU in London I won a Lamborghini and Ferrari Experience:

“Experience the kind of dilemma reserved for footballers and playboys: do you prefer the Lamborghini Gallardo (£120,000) or the Ferrari 360 or 355 (£130,000)? Mere mortals don’t even drive a quarter of a million pounds worth of car in their lives, and now you can do that in just a morning! Enjoy blasting round the corners and into the straights while an expert instructor sits by your side to make the most of the incredible pace and handling of these supercars.”

Chris offered to swap the weight of the Lamborghini in chocolates. Now even my own weight would be a threat of bankruptcy.

But here is the offer: We are 30 people here at Hitflip Headquarters. Swap chocolates for a Lamborghini and make them smile

Dear Chris …. Deal or no Deal mate?

Add To Reddit.com

We have just published a release on the appointment of Clear Communications as our new PR agency for the UK.

Looking forward to loads of press coverage and a great relationship - they are really fun to work with. So if you are looking for a good PR agency in the UK - check them out.

This is the continuation of ‘Affiliate Marketing 2.0 - Part 1: What has been said on the subject and what is Web 2.0′
As you have read, we believe we can recognise some trends with respect to Web 2.0. One of these is the new Work with Content. This new Work with Content in connection with Affiliate Marketing is observed under three stages:

1. Created or obtained content
2. Assimilated content
3. Dispersed content

Now that it is a little bit clearer what we mean, we will put forward three examples of how the points mentioned above can be effectively shown. In the following examples we use Video, Photo and dynamic text-content (RSS) but of course there are other types of content conceivable.

Examples of Affiliate Marketing 2.0 with Video content:

Video content can come directly from the merchant, from Affili.net VideoAds or the advertising of Zanox.tv. Affiliates can of course also make their own videos or video podcasts.

If you make your own content, the Affiliate-Links must be visually or acoustically installed. For example the text “hitflip.affiliatedomain.co.uk” can be shown in video, in order to recruit for the Hitflip affiliate programme. It is also possible that funny / viral videos can be associated with ad videos which are then put in an Affiliate-Link (e.g. with CJ Smart Links or similar technologies).

These videos can then be set up next to your own website or blog or with the many different video communities or podcasts in iTunes and similar portals.

Examples of Affiliate Marketing 2.0 with Photo Content:

Here we have already published a very good applied example from our own affiliates.
The content/photos/pictures can be made yourself or you can buy them. If it is not somewhat new/exclusive, you can also arrange them through clever combinations or new perspectives. (An example from Marcus with the WCs)

The adjustment of the content is then inserted accordingly with an Affiliate-URL in the picture.
The dispersion of the content can then occur on your own website or blog via photo communities or directly through News (2.0) sites like Digg.

Examples of Affiliate Marketing with dynamic text / RSS:

An RSS feed is a form with dynamic and continuously renewed text. These can come from a merchant (we offer our members some of it), from Affiliate networks (which I believe are called Dynamic Clicks by CJ and Superclicks - something we recently learned in London )

The adjustment of the content can then be seen in the regular feeds of the merchants to affiliate-links. Here is an example from one of our affiliates of an RSS advertising medium, (only available in German at the moment).
Further adjustments can be seen from ‘wider / bigger’, more specific RSS feeds, e.g. for a website about horror films, you may only receive a list of the new horror dvds from Hitflip. Adjustments of this kind are also of value for the user. Accordingly you can combine many feeds on the same topic into one feed. The circulation of feeds can be found under topic-specific tabs for Netvibes, Pageflakes and iGoogle, through which one can reach a wider readership. Feeds can often also be put into the profiles of diverse social networks (in Widgets, where applicable).

New Work With Content: Summary

We have used three examples (video, photo and RSS) to show how with Affiliates 2.0 this content is firstly created/obtained, then adjusted and finally published and how the concept of Affiliate Marketing 2.0 has come about.

In preparation for the CJU, we felt the need to address a new topic.
We are often associated with the topic of Web 2.0 and our first working-title was “Influences of Web 2.0 on Affiliate Marketing”. We started with the classic googling in german and in english. We didn’t find the results very satisfactory. Mostly it was just “blah blah blah” without any concrete evidence and without good examples, and that’s not what we had visualised. Therefore, we have broken the topic down simply.

What is Web 2.0?

As an introduction, we simply took the characteristics of Web 2.0 websites from Tim O’Reilly as a starting point:

1. They improve by getting more active users
2. They integrate data from different sources, including their own users
3. They open their data to other websites, allowing mashups (API)
4. They make people get together and let them create an online identity
5. Make use of modern technologies for creating great user interfaces

Here is an example from Hitflip:

1. Network effect: The more people with items to exchange and the more choice available, increases the demand and the attractiveness of Hitflip.
2. Data Integration (we will publish more on this at a later point)
3. Open API for mashups
4. Online Identity which we call my.hitflip
5. We continously work on our featureset

From Web 2.0 to Affiliate Marketing 2.0

As the title suggests, the subject of Affiliate Marketing 2.0 will be introduced in different stages as this is becoming too long for a blogpost/working day. In the coming days we will post 4 further posts. The next three will be concerned with the main trends that we believe to have recognised in Affiliate Marketing 2.0. Those are:

1. The new work with content
2. Working with Social Networks
3. New ways to generate conversion

Finally, another blog entry is planned which will summarise the Affiliate Marketing 2.0 blogs and will also contain our lecture from CJU.

As I pointed out a while back we have moved to a new office. We have finally mounted the new company name plate to the wall:

We have just installed a new security system.
Here you can see the first live pic of Jan: