With the final week of festive trading upon us, many retailers are facing a make or break Christmas this year.

The Centre for Retail Research predicted high street Christmas sales are on course to be £680 million higher than last year, reaching up to £69.1 billion with online sales up by £2.1 billion, at £13.4 billion of the total.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) show the value of sales (excluding fuel) up 3.3 per cent on November a year ago and also suggested it was an excellent month for online retailers – the average weekly spend online increased from £546.4m in October to £787.9m in November.

However, despite this promising outlook, many high street stores are left feeling worried as cut-price sales are slashing their profit margins and the British Retail Consortium says many shops will go bust early in the New Year.

British Retail Consortium Director General, Stephen Robertson, said: “These ONS figures seem to fly in the face of retailers’ experiences on the streets. The evidence we’re receiving suggests consumers have approached this Christmas with great caution, reining in their spending in November and leaving it late to start their Christmas shopping.”

Earlier this month, the government published research that showed a third of high street shops are either ‘degenerating or failing’, saying that retail spending in town centres has fallen to 42% from 49% in 2000 and is projected to fall further to 40% by 2014.

This week struggling music, games and DVD retailer HMV produced a very stark response to the news that it had made a pre-tax loss of £45.7m stating:

“The economic environment and trading circumstances create material uncertainties which may cast significant doubt on the group’s ability to continue as a going concern in the future.”

Despite struggling to compete with cheaper online and supermarket rivals, HMV is hoping to save it’s business by restructuring  and focusing on technology related products including MP3 players, tablets and headphones.

Year on year, even the UK’s biggest and longstanding high street shops are failing to make a profit and so are closing their doors or moving online.

In 2009, Woolworths, one of the best known retailers in the UK was forced to close it’s 807 outlets after going into administration, however, the store was resurrected online after Home Shopping Giant Littlewoods Shop Direct bought the rights to the Woolworths brand name.

Retail expert Mary Portas recently published a report – The Portas Review, that stated the decline in British High Streets has reached crisis point with the high street model being outdated and in need of urgent change.

Portas has listed a number of suggestions which she feels will re-energise the high street and increase trading including free parking, cutting regulations for high street traders and the launch of a national market day.

The Portas Review and its recommendations has received mixed criticism yet despite any negative feedback the report has been successful in drawing attention to the fact that high street businesses are facing difficult times.

It also appears that where as previously offline and online divisions of a business once worked in isolation of each other, they are now joining forces and the expansion of services allowing people to order online and collect from local stores seems to be luring shoppers back to the High Street.

Retailers won’t know until January 2012 whether or not their profits during this year’s festive trading period will have outperformed previous years trading. What is clear is that where as online sales are growing steadily year on year, high street sales are not – the high Street is going to have to adapt quickly and reinvent itself if it is to have a sustainable future.

If you have any comments on the above please leave a reply below or email sinead [at] azam.net. You can also follow @sinead_azammkt on twitter.

If you liked this blog post you may also be interested to read how the internet overtook television to be the UK’s biggest advertising medium.

19 Dec

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It’s that time of the year again when the streets of London are filled with beautiful, glistening Christmas lights and people walking around are happy, smiley and full of excitement of what’s to come.

Christmas presents are mostly all wrapped up and New Year’s resolutions thought out. We are all hoping for a peaceful Holiday Season with family and friends, delicious food before the Santa comes and lots of hopes and dreams for the New Year 2012!

 

 

2012 is full of promise – We would love to hear from you soon and we are looking forward to building great new relationships with you all! Please don’t hesitate to get in touch by emailing us at results [at] azam.net.

19 Dec

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Dave Bird is the Managing Director of the leading UK cost per action network Monetise which rebranded earlier this year, as well as marketing agency Webtistic. In the second half of our feature, Dave explains what a typical afternoon is like in the Monetise offices, and how he switches off once he gets home.

Read part one of the feature here.

14.10: After treating my staff to lunch, I sit down with affiliate manager Ricky and we run through the Monetise stats from the past 24 hours. We use this time to look at how our affiliates are performing as well as checking individual campaigns. We make sure that conversion rates are consistent and that there are no tracking issues or any other ‘red-flags’.

We also do a traffic quality check to look for any suspicious behaviour. Over the years, we have seen some very elaborate attempts at fraud so we have to ensure that the network, and our advertisers, are protected.

15.25: It’s time for our daily presentation. Each day, one member of the team gives a five minute whiteboard presentation covering any new things that have happened in their sector within the last week. It’s SEO staff member Nisha’s turn who tells us about Google’s ridiculous decision to start using https referring links so that search keyword referral data doesn’t appear in Google Analytics accounts, making things a little more difficult for everybody.

As usual, a five minute ‘head-turn’ presentation turns into 20+ minutes…

15.50: After surviving tea round duties, I sit down with a cup of coffee and spend some time with Alex going through the notes he has prepared for a new pay-per-click client who we are due to meet tomorrow. We make a list of traffic sources that we will run through with the client which we know very few other digital marketing agencies will have even heard of.

16.25: I get a call from the head of an affiliate management agency I met at the A4U Expo in London. I’ve been looking to work with them for a while and am keen to help. They ask us to run a lead-generation campaign on Monetise for their leading dating brand.

17.15: Operation Inbox Zero. Every day is the same… I try to leave the office with an empty inbox and rarely get there, but today’s thankfully a good day.

17.50: I head off home knowing that I will probably make heavy use of my iPhone later to stay connected ‘out of hours’ and to respond to some emails I’m expecting from the US.

18.05: Time to have enjoy some family time. We have dinner (Chicken en Croute – a Mrs Bird special), I wash up, and then spend an hour wrestling with my son Alfie, playing ‘catch’ (badly), playing with numerous toys with wheels on, and trying to draw mummy.

Then comes bath time, more milk, and then story time. It started months ago with one story, and now we are up to four a night so I have to cunningly skip pages knowing that one day soon he will realise that his old dad is a story fraud!

19.50: Do a few chores and then settle down with a Lithuanian beer called ‘Utenos’ that our programmer Ignas gave me to try a week or so ago. It’s not too bad and hits the spot nicely!

This is Mrs. Bird’s soaps time so I flop on the sofa, grab my iPad, and read through Affbuzz, a cool syndication of mostly US affiliate bloggers.

After answering a few emails we watch a movie and settle on ‘Limitless’ which stars Bradley Cooper from ‘the Hangover’. It’s a bit disappointing, but I like the concept of ‘smart drugs’, especially for the team on Monday mornings and Friday afternoons.

23.20: Time for bed where, as usual, I am unconscious within approximately three seconds.

We hope you enjoyed this insight into Dave’s daily life at Monetise! If you’re interested in trying the network for yourself, register for an account here. It’s free to join and Dave’s team of marketing experts offer excellent support to help you build profitable CPA-based campaigns.

Or, if you’re an advertiser looking to drive more traffic and sales to your online campaign, contact Monetise by emailing info [at] monetise.co.uk or calling +44 (0) 845 68 002 68. There are no set up or monthly fees.

16 Dec

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Since being rebranded earlier this year, UK cost per action network Monetise (formerly Profitistic) have achieved impressive growth with a host of new advertisers signing up and attracting a rapidly increasing base of affiliates.

We asked Managing Director Dave Bird to give us an insight into a typical day at the Monetise offices in Derby in the East Midlands.

7.15am: I wake up to the excited tones of Alfie, our two year old boy, who has a laser-targeted body clock. He is quite amazing in that he wakes up at almost exactly the same time every day, ready for his morning fix of cow-juice, ‘strawbaderries’, and Mr Tumble (those with nippers will know exactly who he is). We get up, have a play, and he drinks his milk.

I quickly skim through my emails to make sure the world hasn’t ended (because I am sure that somebody would email me if it had) and also check my text messages hoping there isn’t one of the dreaded ‘your website is down’ notifications from Pingdom – the life-saving website monitoring service.

7.45: Grabbing some tea and toast, I read through my Twitter feed and daily blog list using the iPad Flipboard app to see what’s new and exciting. I love this app, because it feels a bit like reading a newspaper without the need to spend time staring at advertisements for horoscope lines, non-slip bath mats and Stannah Stairlifts.

I also check the overnight website stats for Monetise to make sure everything is as it should be. Today, I notice a very sharp upturn in leads from an affiliate that I don’t recognise and fire a quick email to our affiliate manager Ricky, asking him to investigate. He’s already beaten me to it – he spotted the spike last night and has already checked things out.

I end up giving my toast to our two miniature wire-haired dachshunds before heading out the door.

8.30: In an attempt to lose some of my office-belly, I cycle the two miles to work. The route takes me down an old canal path that runs through Derby. Its a chilly day and I arrive at the office feeling suitably invigorated (half-frozen).

I briefly stop to admire the new internal door that has appeared less than 10 feet from my desk. We’re expanding into the office next door this week.

8.50: Having survived the draw to see who makes the coffee (using the Tea Round iPhone app) I check Google Calendar to refresh myself on the plans for the day and then get stuck into my first batch of emails.

Ignas, one of our two programmers, has kindly bought in some Lithuanian shortbread for us all to try so I set about undoing the good work of my cycling efforts earlier.

9.30: Meeting with James, our network manager, to go through a new image-hosting tool that Ignas and Adam (our other coding guru) have created which will help us to quickly build html email creatives for our advertisers and make them available to affiliates. The tool is really impressive and will save bucket-loads of time.

10.20: I call a short meeting with James, Joe and Ricky to catch up on the status of new advertisers coming onto the network and the new offers that are due to launch. James mentions a new US-based advertiser who is looking to drive traffic to their portfolio of UK dating websites. This sounds promising as Monetise already has some successful dating offers which perform very well.

10.50: Go through some financial bits with Sara, our accounts person. She reminds me for the umpteenth time that tickets are still available for her am-dram production of Hello Dolly. I politely remind her that I would rather eat my own head than listen to her sing. I feel that I may have been a tad harsh so I offer her one of her own chocolate biscuits.

11.15: Decide to tackle the second wave of emails clogging up my inbox including another message from a Nigerian gentleman saying that he has $25m stashed away in a Dutch bank account just waiting to be claimed. This is the third one this week and it makes me realise why Nigeria is struggling so much. I mean, constantly leaving money around like that is just careless.

12.05: SEO time! I meet with our internal SEO team members Alex, Nisha and Muz who give me an update on the status of client projects and link-building targets.

We also look through recent client proposals and chat about the need for a new tool that will help us to manage links in a more coherent way. I ask Ignas to come over and he listens to our very vague brief before stating, with a surprising degree of certainty, that the project will take 2-3 days to complete.

The meeting took a whole load longer than expected so, I grab a chilli-chicken sandwich for lunch and devour it in about 14 seconds. Unfortunately, it’s also a Thursday which means that I have to pay for everybody else’s lunch. I regret mentioning ‘Free-Food-Thursdays’ all those years ago when there were just three of us!

That concludes the ‘morning’ part of our Day in the Life of Dave Bird feature. Subscribe now to be notified when part two is published later this week and read about how Dave’s manic afternoon pans out!

Interested in trying the Monetise network for yourself? Click here to join as an affiliate or contact the Monetise team by email if you have any questions about signing-up as either an advertiser or affiliate: info [at] monetise.co.uk

14 Dec

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Network Solutions® is renowned for pioneering the service for creating and acquiring specific “web addresses” (domain name registration) and even received a name check in the film ‘The Social Network’ as the domain registrar for the social media phenomenon that is Facebook!

 

Having been in the technology space for over 30 years, Network Solutions helps both new and experienced customers to build and host custom websites. The combination of competitive pricing and an extensive range of domain name and hosting services makes Network Solutions the first choice for successful small businesses, website designers and individuals.

Following the huge success of its US affiliate program, Network Solutions launched its UK affiliate program in February this year, with Azam Marketing taking over the management of the program in June.

 

Since then we have been pleased to see an increase in UK affiliates actively promoting the offers and promotions that Network Solutions has specifically produced for its British customer base including:

• Domain Names from £4.99
• Web Hosting from £2.99 per month
• Save 25% off New Orders of £50 or more
• 75% Off Domain Names
• Websites from £2.99 per month

Not only has Network Solutions focused on developing UK-specific customer incentives, they have also implemented some very generous performance bonuses for affiliates joined to their UK program such as:

• Commissions of up to £300.00 per Sale
• FOUR Tier Monthly Performance Bonus Scheme – earn between £100.00 & £1,000.00 monthly bonus EVERY month when you generate over £500.00 sales revenue
• New Publisher Bonus Payment – Any publisher who generates their first two sales for the program within one month will earn a one off £25.00 bonus

If you’d like to find out more maximising your revenues from the affiliate program, read the information pack here.

Research shows that Network Solutions performs well on both web hosting specific and B2B sites as well as B2C and voucher code websites.

Network Solutions runs a successful blog for small businesses from which Azam Marketing has been featuring useful articles for Azam.info readers over recent months including Tools to Tame the Social Beast, Five Great Social Media Infographics To Help Guide Your Business and Build Forward.

The Network Solutions brand is growing from strength to strength in the UK and is receiving positive feedback from affiliates. Azam Marketing is looking forward to working with Network Solutions in 2012 as there are many exciting things planned.

If you are interested in earning serious money by selling domains and web hosting, then make sure you sign up to the Network Solutions UK affiliate program on Commission Junction.

07 Dec

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