People let this phrase roll off their tongue without really meaning it, but I can honestly say ‘time has flown by…’

Before even starting my new job, I was given the opportunity to meet my London-based colleagues. We had, what was to be my first of two Christmas meals! A couple of my colleagues were on a high as they had just returned from visiting the Emirates stadium courtesy of Affiliate Future. As huge Arsenal fans, they took great pleasure from learning that I support Liverpool. Say no more!

A lovely meal later, I was left feeling pretty pleased with my decision to join Azam Marketing and looking forward to working with, and I quote, ’superstars’ at the company.

My first day and I was back in Brick Lane, home of my previous employer, LBi. I’d only left the agency a week or so before and didn’t think I’d be back in the area so quickly. But there I was, bright and early at Liverpool Street station, heading straight to a nearby cafe for a quick hot chocolate (not being much of a tea or coffee person…) and a chat with Nadeem, before setting off to meet one of our new clients, UK2.Net.

A couple of hours later we were meeting another one of our clients, Signature Gifts. Six hours in, and two client meetings under my belt – not bad going! The day was far from over though. That evening, we were kindly invited to a Christmas dinner by another of our clients, Purple Parking. The venue was ‘Da Remo’, an Italian restaurant in a lovely little rural village west of Heathrow called Denham (i.e. a million miles from Seven Kings, my home town).

We were wined, dined and entertained, and even treated to a rendition of the Purple Parking team song, set to the tune of Walking on Sunshine by Katrina and the Waves. Just replace the words ‘walking on sunshine woah oh’ with ‘parking at purple woah oh’ – er yes, you had to hear it to believe it! I can’t remember what time my head hit the pillow that night, but I certainly remember thinking I’d never had such an eventful, memorable first day at any job before…

The following week I was up in Leeds for five days meeting and getting to know my colleagues, Karen, Sinead and James. There was a lot to learn and catch up on, so it was great to have the opportunity to do it face to face. Not only that, but I was treated to another Christmas dinner, this time with the Northern team in Leeds. I also had the pleasure of meeting the team at V A C Media in the beautiful setting of Riddlesden, which is a picturesque village on the outskirts of Bradford.

I had never been further north than Birmingham before, so it was a real treat to see the cities of Leeds and Manchester as well as the surrounding, scenic countryside.

Back down in London just before Christmas, the real work began. Intensive training sessions helped me to swiftly learn more about Azam’s clients and the background to our business. Meeting potential clients and nailing new contracts since then has been hugely satisfying and I’ve really enjoyed helping my colleagues with existing campaigns and building on what we’ve already hugely achieved as a company.

It’s going to an interesting 2010 as we continue bringing Azam Marketing to the forefront of people’s minds, educating advertisers as well as learning from our surroundings. Another year of striving to make Affiliate Marketing an even more innovative form of marketing a merchant’s products.

If you’re interested in learning more about us the services we offer, visit Azam.net or contact us here. If you would like to contact me directly, you can do so at pam [at] azam.net.

Although the terrible weather in the UK contributed towards making it the most buoyant online retail market I have seen in any summer, to the extent that I was called upon by the Beeb to surmise why online retail sales had shot through the roof, the forthcoming autumn promises even more lucre. Whenever possible I urge consumers to cut back on their expenditure because many are drowning in debt, but as sure as night follows day, people will go on their usual spending splurge from next month until 24 December to ostensibly mark the birth of somebody born circa 2013 years ago.

Anyhow, here goes this month’s round up…

Purple Parking

A while back I shot a five minute video with AffiliateFuture to educate publishers about Purple Parking and help them make more money from the affiliate program. I’m pleased to make it available here:

Purple Parking’s affiliate program is on AffiliateFuture and Tradedoubler.

We’d like to emphasise once again affiliates are not permitted to use PP voucher codes on their sites and link to PP through an affiliate URL. This means the company loses money on transactions. We regularly monitor affiliate websites and should anybody be found to violate this widely-publicised rule we will have no option but to deactivate them from the affiliate program and revoke all commissions. PP will also not pay commissions for customer purchases made using voucher codes that are prohibited to the general public and only for specific categories of members (e.g. BA staff), no matter from where the codes are picked up from.

In some breaking news, we are delighted to reveal PP’s growth continues, with the operator acquiring Q-Park’s Heathrow operations. You can read the press release here: Q-Park and Purple Parking form an alliance.

Affiliate Programs Presentation Pack

We are pleased to have released a PDF presentation with information for publishers about our Affiliate Management clients: High Paying Advertisers – Azam Marketing.

Should you wish to promote any of the advertisers and have a query, do not hesitate to email us at results [at] azam.net or ring +44 (0) 20 7 436 4496 anytime. We will also be able to assist you in any way we can at this month’s industry events including Tradedoubler Summit, Affiliate Future’s retail gathering, and ad:Tech London.

This Blog

Hey ho, so many plans and never enough time. We finally got around to adding a poll to the blog and you can vote your favourite UK affiliate network(s) on the right-hand side.

We are currently busy pimping a blog for a company we consult for and then our designers will be busy on three client websites, but after their backlog of work is out of the way they will be shifting their attention to yours truly and customising Azam.info.

As part of the revamp, we’ll be having a quotations section with your and our favourite proverbs, sayings and mottos. To kick-start our quotation section, I’m pleased to announce we’ll be launching a competition with the first prize being the business software bundle to beat all others, Microsoft Office Ultimate Edition for the PC which is worth £610.99 / $1093.00. It’s simple to enter: all you’ll have to do is send in your favourite quotation(s). Come back on Friday for full details.

If you have a quality blog or website on online marketing and would like to exchange links with or advertise on Azam.info, get in touch with us at results [at] azam.info.

InkFactory

• Thrilling competitions – affiliates will be offered the chance to win fantastic prizes such as a brand new Epson Stylus DX9400F Printer
• Regularly updated creatives and text links
• Plenty of buy one get one free offers on selected Ink Factory products including special offers on ‘green’ and recycled ink cartridges and paper

 

Coming Tomorrow: a wrap-up of Internet World 2008 and Acorn Domains’ London Meet-up.

But we are now improving the commission structure again…

New Purple Parking Commission Tier

Purple Parking is proud to announce a new commission tier for it’s affiliate program.

We now have a third tier that allows our affiliates to earn even more.

Purple Parking are now offering an extra 2.5% commission on our base rate. This gives a massive 12.5% commission for reaching just 100 sales a month. Plus we are keeping our 15% commission tier for when you reach 200 sales within one month.

Find out more about the UK’s leading airport parking affiliate program here.

First Prize
Projector Keyboard
Second Prize
Micro Battling Tanks
Runners-up Prizes (two of these)
Mini Helicopters
 
The first prize winner is a delighted Jon Ashe from East Sussex, whose instant response was: “I never win anything! So this is nice.” He will receive the Projector Keyboard.
 
Jon told us: “I’m delighted to have won the main prize in the PurpleParking affiliate competition. PurpleParking has been a profitable source of revenue for me, largely because it is a strong brand that offers a very convenient, safe and cheap service to parkers everywhere.”

The second prize, of the Micro Battling Tanks, goes to Peter Gibbs of e-Byss Ltd. He is based in Cheshine and sites includes TaxiNumber.com.

There are two third prize winners of the Mini Helicopters. The first is the team from Voucherheaven.com in Essex.

Richard from Brierley Hill who owns GreedyMoose.co.uk is the other third prize winner. He is currently in Australia and says he is “Over the the moon – I never win anything and it’s a real suprise to finally win one of the affiliate comps”. You can see Richard here:

Airport car parking might be about the unsexiest product in affiliate marketing, but our top affiliates know lucrative it can be. Whereas airlines typically pay 1%-1.5% commission, you can earn between 10-15% with Purple Parking.

The commission higher than any other airport parking provider on any network. And, to top it all, we have managed to arrange yet another commission increase which will be announced in the next few days!

You can see a preview of the new PP website, which is in beta-testing stage, here on Purple Parking TV. A significant amount of effort has been put into enhancing the user-experience and booking procedure. Conversion rates have been higher than the ‘old’ site in our tests.

Find out more about the PP affiliate program on this webpage and feel free to email me on nadeem.azam AT purpleparking.com should you require any assistance whatsoever in getting going with PP.