The Hitflip UK Blog

Last week we announced the launch of our 18 + Porn, Action and Horror swap! This feature was THE feature many of you were waiting for and we are so happy to see that you are loving it. The first load of users have received their code and have started to swap their 18+ items. Compare it to the fish bowl: Life is so much easier and fun if you can share good times. Share it with the Hitflip community and start swapping your DVDs, Music CDs, Books and Video Games now!

We’ve just sent the following newsletter out to our affiliates:

Great news for Affiliates this month, as Hitflip has announced a new 18+ verification feature for members. Conversion rates should increase dramatically as Hitflip becomes the only website where Hardcore Porn can be swapped. It’s not just porn, however, 18+ Action and Horror films are also now available on Hitflip. The new feature should lead to more people signing up, and also more flip sales, so you should see a great increase in earnings.

To help you promote the new feature, we have created a new erotic landing page. You will find the link in the text links section on CJ. There are also a number of other new landing pages, just some include: TV Series DVDs, Bollywood films, Hiphop music and Wii games. Due to Google’s restrictions, the erotic landing page cannot be used in Adwords, but you can link to it from your own site to see an increase in conversions.

You can find your specific links to the new landing pages in the newsletter or on CJ.

It’s trick AND treat at Hitflip this Halloween, as Hitflip finally drops its pants and reveals the news that 18+ DVDs can now be swapped, starting immediately. It’s been one of the most requested features on Hitflip over the past few months, and now what better time for us to announce our new 18+ Verification system than Halloween!Start requesting your scary films now!It’s not just horror and action films that are available for you, however. 18+ erotic and hardcore films can now also be swapped.It’s easy to register to receive 18+ products, just request verification on your Settings page and follow the instructions on screen. There is a one-off processing fee involved in registration. When your age has been verified, you will be given clearance to send and receive 18 rated items, allowing a higher level of fun in your swapping.

Whether you want to swap classics like the Exorcist and The Lover’s Guide , or newer favourites like Hostel and the Erotic Witch Project, the new feature offers gore and porn for everyone!Request to be verified now!

Well at least the delegates did Now don’t get me wrong: They sucked the Vodka out of the ice(sculpture) at what was to become a great after show party for a fantastic event.

Here are the shots of the shots:

What a fantastic expo. Over 40 sessions with experts from all areas of the industry and over 800 delegates to meet.

Time for shoutouts to some great people we met while we were in London:
Marcus Tandler (who also published a picture of Andre and myself eating fish&chips) , Christoph Cemper, Joost de Valk, Stefan Juhl, Joanna Ellis at Superbreak, Neil Sutton at Essential Travel, Jonathan Lender at L2multimedia, Rebekka Barnhusen and Peter Potthast at nonstopconsulting, Dixon Jones, Julie Hegarty, Mark Russel and Peter Wilson at buy.at

Matthew and his team (Greetings to Claire at this point) did a great job and we are definetly looking forward to the a4uexpo 2008 which will be happening on 14th+15th October (my birthday). So note down my birthday and the a4uexpo for 2008 in your calendars

Loads of others have already published their thoughts on the expo - be sure to check them out!

The a4uexpo excitement is beginning as Andre and myself prepare to travel over to London. It should be a great couple of days, with tons of interesting sessions and people to meet. What’s really cool is that Ramada Jarvis is sponsering a free internet cafe at the Expo, and there’s also Wi-Fi access from all conference rooms, so we’ll never be far away from all the latest Hitflip developments!

Be sure to come and say hello if you see us or the Hitflip dolphin around!

You may remember back in July Adam wrote about his deal with Chris Bishop from Hotel Chocolat to swap a Lamborghini and Ferrari experience he won at CJU in London for enough chocolate to make everyone here in the Hitflip office smile. Well Chris certainly kept his side of the deal as we’ve been munching through tons of delicious chocolate over the past couple of weeks.

Here are some photos capturing some of the excitement in the office as the chocolates arrived:

As you can see below, Chris sent a great selection of chocolates, and everyone on the Hitflip team would like to say a massive thanks to him.

Chris is nominated for Publisher’s Manager of 2007 at this years a4uAwards, and everyone at Hitflip will be keeping their fingers crossed for him this Thursday evening as the results are announced.

In 3 days it will again be time for one of the top affiliate events of the year. On the 25^th and 26^th of October, leading figures in the affiliate marketing world will meet at the a4uexpo in London. Among those taking part are Kristopher Jones, the president and CEO of pepperjamSearch, and the UK Managing Director of the AdLink group, Nicky Iapino.

Over the two day conference there are over 40 informative and interactive sessions planned, covering every aspect of Affiliate Marketing, along with further sessions covering Search Engine Strategies.

Along with these sessions, included in the entry fee is unlimited access to the Exhibitor Hall, a number of refreshments and networking meals, along with invitations to the pre-event networking party, to the a4uAwards ceremony on the 25^th October, and also to the exclusive after event party.

If you haven’t registered for the event yet, you have a last chance to register here.

The a4uAwards Ceremony should be a high point of the conference, as we excitedly await the announcement of the lucky winners.

Adam and Andre will be taking part, and would love to meet some of you there.

Further information can be found on the a4uexpo homepage.

Do you want to know how to get more out of Hitflip? Then you should read our How To pages here on the blog. In the next few days we will be adding more and more as we go along.

Today we have made a start by putting a “How to” together on how you can set up your my.Hitflip page in 5 easy steps.

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You should also read how to become a popular member of our Hitflip community by making many friends in 4 easy steps.

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Do you want to know how to be more successful in finding your desired items on Hitflip? Then you should find out about the 4 best ways to search Hitflip.

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Are you wondering how you could swap your items more effectively? Just read our tips on the subject.

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You have some flips and credit and now you want to get some DVDs, CDs or books for them? Then you probably want to know the best ways to find and order highly demanded media items on Hitflip.

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Since Hitflip is a community the more that members contribute, the better Hitflip will be. Maybe you have already noticed that some items do not have a cover picture or review yet. Learn about the 6 different things you can do to contribute.

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Do you want to receive flips for free? You want to have more friends on Hitflip? Then you should invite your friends to join our online community.

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Have you ever scroll down your settings page all the way to the bottom? No? Then you should find out which valuable features and information you are missing out on.

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Maybe you already noticed our Top Members page. It comprises several lists with members that have contributed to Hitflip in different ways. Learn how you can become one of our Top Members.

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Do you want the really exciting thrillers, horrors and erotic movies? Then you should sign up for our 18+ clearance and order 18+ rated items. We have a lot of 18+ rated DVDs immediately available.

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The TU Munich and CJ/Valueclick have conducted a survey together on the subject of Affiliate Marketing. Everyone who took part received the findings in presentation form a few days ago. I’m going to take the liberty of making some comments on a few areas that struck me while browsing through the presentation. But first it needs to be said: Good Survey! It’s great that someone has again done a fresh and well-conducted study on the topic! Now to a few comments.

• At the outset, one must assume a bias, as some of the participants (as I was) were recruited from the CJ environment. It’s clear that Affiliate Marketing will be seen as more important to these participants compared to the general population

• Often the findings seem quite obvious: Banner ads provide more traffic, and Affiliate Marketing more sales :). Banner ads are created mainly for Brand-building, and Affiliate Marketing mainly to bring more Leads/Sales. But it also has a lot to do with the commission model of the Affiliate programme. A solely CPC programme would send traffic figures soaring, but not so much the sales and leads.

• The length of service and budget for Affiliate Marketing have a strong correlation – in the active areas obviously. It’s impossible to create an active Affiliate base with thousands of Affiliates overnight. That goes for Merchants as well as Affiliate networks (see the negative example of Adcatch in Germany, who closed their Affiliate network in April). And whoever uses Affiliate Marketing in the long term sees that it is worth it, and then invests more, for example in the form of continually rising commissions (like we do ;-))

• I find the results of the criteria for the choice of service operators/ affiliate programme networks very good: stability of the system in first place! Then quality of service, and tools for measuring performance. Directly after this is the most important point for me: Size of the network – from my perspective especially relating to the number of affiliates.

• Highly amusing: 17.4% believe “Affiliate Marketing is just hype, and will lose its meaning”. Hilarious! A hype lasting 10 years?

• Very nice confirmation for our blog post New Affiliate Marketing-related Web 2.0 Business model– 70% of those questioned have the same opinion.

• Fascinating: 24.4% plan to build their own affiliate network – aha! Here I’m curious, did they perhaps mean a (network-independent) Standalone Affiliate Programme?

• Affiliate Marketing is used mainly by small and medium-sized firms. - I didn’t know that, but interesting!

So, in any case, the study is well worth reading!

Our upload incentive was a great success. Great for those who love the idea of swapping.

If you have uploaded enough items during the incentive then you will receive a bonusmessage while visiting the site: