I thought that I’d write this post mainly to see if it (the first half anyway!) will help any one. As always, if you have any questions, let me know!
Affiliate schemes are a way of providing a link to something online, with the potential to generate income. For every sale generated from a link, the affiliate will receive a small percentage (usually about 6-9%) of the selling price.

I use three main sites: Affiliate Window (which buy.at is a part of), Linkshare* and TradeDoubler. I have accounts with each, because each one has different stores on.

I’ve chosen to use affiliate linking on my site instead of more traditional revenue generators like advertising, purely because I dislike traditional advertising such as Google Ads. I know that I rarely click on ads, especially Google ones, so I don’t really see how a site like mine can generate any income this way.
Another reason is that if I’m making a list of items I like (such as with the “Hide the Credit Card” posts), then why not have the affiliate links on there – they don’t affect what I write about so its just a bit of a bonus. The links can be created to link to individual items on a website, or just the website in general – I like to have the “deep links” for each item, because it makes more sense to me if I’m having links next to an item!

I’ve noticed more and more people are using affiliate links, and it’s made me think about disclosures. In the US, bloggers are required to disclose if they regularly receive products with the hope that they’ll write about it. (If you’re that interested/bored, this is the release from the FCC about endorsements or Liberty London Girl did a much more readable version for it on Independent Fashion Bloggers)

Whilst in the UK, its not a requirement yet, I think its a good idea generally to mark that a link is an affiliate one. You may have noticed that some links in my blog posts will have a * (asterisk) next to them, and this is my quick way to show that its a form of advertising. Without it, and by using URL shorteners like bit.ly or the ones built into Skimlinks, it seems slightly…sneaky?…not to mention it. (I’ve not actually used Skimlinks before, so don’t actually know if the only URL they provide is the getth.at one) Also, if I’m reading a blog post and the only links provided are URL shorteners, I’m less likely to click on the links, because I don’t know which site they lead to. I like to know where I’m going!

I signed up to Skimlinks after writing the majority of this post, and…wow. Honestly, that is something I would not like to install onto my site. You have to “install” their Javascript into your page then post as usual with relevant retailer links (for example if you were linking to items in a OOTD). Their JS then changed the retailer links to their affiliate links, “hidden” inside a URL shortener – this is referred to as SkimLinks. Their JS will also turn certain product references into “unobtrusive” links, referred to as SkimWords.
I’m not an expert in Javascript, or any sort of coding like this, but this seems seriously dodgy to me – the blog owner can’t actually say for definite that the links that they post wont be pointing towards dodgy links. (Obviously you would hope not, but at least by providing the links yourself, you know what you’re leading people towards!)

I think the latter part of this post is definitely something thats bigger than these few little paragraphs, so I’d love to hear your opinion on it. Do you think things like affiliate links and sponsored posts should be indicated clearly so the reader can choose whether to read on/click through? Would you use affiliate links as an alternative or alongside traditional advertising?

Above is a screenshot of my email account showing the last month or so’s email newsletters from ASOS. You’ve probably noticed it as well, ASOS are offering a lot of special offers at the moment to try and entice you to spend spend spend with them. But is it harming them more than improving sales?

The recent Groupon deal sold 50,000 £20 vouchers for £9 each – so for each item that was sold, ASOS lost £11 that they would normally have received. (Assuming of course that Groupon didn’t take any money for running that deal – I’ve tried to find out how much of a cut they normally take on deals, and the most popular figure was 50% – assuming thats correct, for every £20 voucher spent on the site, ASOS received £4.50. Adding that up, they received £225,000 selling goods that would normally have earnt them £1,000,000. You don’t need to know anything about accounting to know that this is going to severely affect their accounts)

The amount of free delivery codes that are sent out every week (or even every day!) will also affect their profit. ASOS Premier is a subscription service where the customer can pay £25 (currently reduced to £15) and get free next day delivery for a year. Why bother subscribing though if you can hold out for a few days until the next free delivery email appears?

ASOS is still one of my favourite sites for clothes, but these emails are starting to sounding a little desperate.

It links back, I guess, to the quick post I made recently about the Diet Coke can which was inexplicably covered in pink leopard print (I love the comments I recieved on that post – mostly comparing the print to a skin disease)

As a woman, I am supposed to see these items that have been repackaged in a pink casing, and want it instantly. Except – I’m a woman who likes technology that does what its supposed to whilst looking good, being fairly priced…in other words, I want exactly the same from my technology purchases as most men do.

Why is gender an issue in this market anyway? For someone who wants to make an expensive purchase, then the colour of the item shouldn’t really come into it. It seems odd that we are still using the stereotype that pink is for girls, but usually the other option is either black or silver. Apple, using the iPod Nano as an example, have the right idea, by selling the Nano in every colour possible. Looking at the rest of the product range, items are only available in white, black or silver – a colour scheme that would fit in with most peoples lives.

Perhaps the colour differentiation relates to the market segment it is aiming for – by that I mean the more expensive an item is, the less likely it is to be a “novelty” colour. When buying a camera, you wouldn’t expect to see a fuchsia SLR offering from Canon or Nikon, but the cheaper brands such as Fuji or the supermarket own brands will usually have a pinky offering. Going back to the example of Apple, their laptops cost a minimum of £800. When PC World can sell laptops for £300, this places Apple into the mid price range. The cheap laptops from Advent, Toshiba, Acer, etc, need to find a way to differentiate themselves in the low end market, and what better than the colour (because creating a better spec’ed item would be a crazy idea!)

I was wasting time in the Carphone Warehouse last weekend (why did it take so long for them to sign the boy up to a new contract with a HTC Desire? Annoying!) and noticed this phone, the Samsung Diva.

Even the name alone annoys me. It was advertised with the following features:

• “a catwalk-ready mobile that can easily pop into your favourite handbag and be taken anywhere.
• “3D quilted panel, shimmering, pearl essence finish and diamond-shaped home key ensures that it is show stopping.”
• Fake phone call feature – get out of awkward situations
• Shopping list tool which “creates wish lists of your favourite fashion fixes”
• Beauty effect on photos – for “glam finishing touches”

Honestly, I was reading this list of items, and felt embarrassed that this sort of marketing works on anyone. Sorry Samsung, and all the other “lets shove some ‘fashion’ type stuff to get women to buy this” – I’ll never buy anything thats just had some pink plastic stuck on it.

That might seem like a dramatic sentence to say, but lets face it – most of us have some sort of debt. It could be your overdraft that you occasionally drift into, the credit card you have “for emergencies” (of course, an emergency varies from person to person – a new dress might be vitally important to some people) and with so many of us going to university these days, its quite likely you have a bit of a student loan.

Most of the time, debt is easy to control. OK, so you might not understand what APR means, or exactly how much you have outstanding on that credit card without checking your balance, but keeping on top of the payments is reasonably easy, right?

Well, no. The real problem is when you have various forms of debt, all due on different days, all with different rates, and suddenly it seems to be starting to build up. A payment is missed, and then you get more fees to remind you to pay next time.

This is the situation I find myself in at the moment. Before I moved to Bristol, I took out loans to help pay for things like furniture, and to cover the month or so I expected to be out of work. I expected that I would be back in work quite quickly, and could easily cover a slightly larger monthly payment.
Of course, it didn’t work out like that. I was out of work for 5 months, which as well as being incredibly boring, meant that my money soon dwindled down. I struggled to find even the lowest paid temping jobs (because of course, moving at the start of summer means that all those students are looking for work at the same time) I ended up with more credit cards, another overdraft, all getting eaten away with the cost of just being somewhere.

There are two things you can do at this point. You can sit down, figure out what your budget is, work out how to repay everything, and be happy. Or you can bury your head in the sand, and pay off debts in a “fire fighting” way – you pay the minimum payments, but don’t really begin to pay off the actual debt.

Guess which I did. I’m embarrassed to say it as a finance graduate, but I had no idea how to set my own budgets. Setting a budget for a company, yeah, I can do that. Costing up projects – let me at a spreadsheet and I’ll knock something together. Tell me to work out how much I need to be paying off my debts each week/month? Couldn’t do it. There isn’t really a class at school or uni where you’re sat down and told “Right, this is how it works, this is how to work out how much you have to spend”.

Things got to a point where I have been scared to open certain envelopes because of what I think it contains. But I had had enough of not knowing what to do, and admitted the situation to the Wife. After a bit of scolding (and if you know Louise, you know that “a bit” is not actually the right thing to say. A complete bollocking, yeah, thats closer) we had worked out exactly what I owed, and whilst its nowhere near starting to pay things off, I feel a lot more positive about the situation.

My main account at the moment is with Natwest who are currently advertising their personal finance reviews. I’d been a bit scared to go along to one, but after discussing things with Louise, I realised that it would be a good idea to see what someone who deals with this sort of thing would say. Seriously, what a help that was! We went through the figures, and was told that although its not a great situation I’m in at the moment, it could be a hell of a lot worse. (Also, did you know that as well as the usual credit ratings that all banks have, your own bank has its own judgement on you? I was surprised to find out that Natwest thought I wasn’t all bad!)

I hope that by admitting all of this to you guys that I will be able to become more financially stable in the upcoming months (by saying something publicly, I can’t really back down!) but also that some of you realise that you’re not alone. Money is not something we normally talk about openly, which can make the problem seem a lot worse than it is, but its true about the old saying – A problem shared is a problem halved.

The company in question has sent quite a few emails to me – all with the same standard template but with varying amounts of how any “credits” for their site they were prepared to tempt me to review them. That seemed a little odd to me – if you are emailing bloggers asking them if they would review you, wouldn’t you keep track of who had been contacted, and how much had been offered?

The reason I am writing about this is because I thought it would be a good idea to Google the company to see if anyone else had taken the bait. I found a few blogs who had written about the site, but none had mentioned that they had received (in some form) a payment for writing the review. If I were to review something I had received free, I would want to disclose that fact!

I guess in my round about way, I am saying that I am not sure what to do. Where do you stand on sponsored posts like this? Would you admit to receiving stuff for free that you had reviews? Would you feel pressured to give a positive review?

Watching some crappy quiz show on Sky at the weekend (“Don’t Forget The Lyrics”…I wasn’t watching it really, I was at my computer), they used the phrase “life changing amount of money” regarding their top prize of £250,000. I thought this was a strange phrase, because “life changing amount” can mean a lot to different people.

I asked my Twitter people what they would consider to be life changing, and here are their responses:

pmsumner: For me, enough to pay off debts and leave me able to do something I want to rather than have to for work. So maybe £75-£100k?
feebeestar: anything from 15000 upwards
thebuxt: 250,000? well I would say it could be life changing but i think it all depends on how much you have before & the life you live
spiky_simon: half a million to make a big difference, I guess. Though wouldn’t turn my nose up at less!
laurakalbag: a few grand. Enough to rent our own flat would be life-changing for me.
nickbrompton: to completely make me change the way I live would take 5 mil I reckon. Cos then I could give up working for money
adurbe: how much money is lifechanging depends what you spend it on
jlancashire: I think I would need a few mil, maybe 5?

For me, I think quarter of a million would be enough to clear all of my debts and buy a nice house. Pretty life changing, I’m sure you’ll agree.
But I would still have to think about bills, and still would have to work.
A more “life changing” amount would be closer to a million pounds (at least) – I wouldn’t have to worry about work, and bills could be paid straight away. I’d be able to pay off my dad’s mortgage, and give my sister some money towards a house. I could treat my friends without thinking about where the money for that would be coming from.

I guess I’d better start doing the lottery a bit more often then.

Hang on, theres something missing there. Its something dear to all of our hearts, and essential to be able to follow some of these items. Yes, I’m talking about finance. As many people know, I loved my degree in Business Finance, which was a straight split between economics, and accounting and finance. The A&F side of my degree allowed me to learn about the numbers that are important, and modules such as Auditing kept my Enron geek side happy. (When you write an essay on a company for a module, its pretty worrying when you know more than the lecturer does) The economics side of my degree introduced me to macroeconomical theories, ethics (and jet-pack flying lecturers), international economics and econometrics.

I enjoy reading about economical theories even now (I know, most people forget about their degree once they take that funny cap and gown off) and read things like The Economist, the Financial Times and BBC Business News on a daily basis. But if there was a site similar to PatC (you see what I did there?) with an finance slant to it, I would be an avid subscriber.

I agree that women should have more targeted news about politics, etc, but please don’t forget about women who care about whats going on in the economy!

However, sometimes the websites are just too specific. One website that is likely to have quite a bit of information on you is Facebook. Think that when you write what sort of music you like or whether you’re single or not is just going on your profile to let your friends know whats happening? Sorry, but no. You’re giving this information to Facebook and they are going to use it to sell more advertising space.
Interestingly, it seems this topic is quite popular at the moment – as I wrote this, an article from the Economist popped up in my feed reader; “Watching While You Surf”

Here are some good examples of good targeted advertisements

I have said quite a few times on my FB status that I love my new dress. So its a good guess to assume I want more. MORE I SAY (ahem)

Yep, my music preferences do include Elliott Smith.

Yep, I am 24, I am single. But there are times that this kind of advertising can be rubbish

This was taken from the Facebook Ad Page, and this is exactly how it appeared on the page. Because I want to be reminded that I’m still single apparently.

The above two ads can be linked together. Facebook asks if you are interested in men and/or women and what sex you are. I’ve marked that I like blokes and I am a girl, so I’m not sure why I’m getting ads for meeting girls and gay dating.

I’m all for targetted advertising (because I’ll be more likely to want to follow the link) but sometimes its just not quite right!

According to Sony Ericsson (and this article from the Telegraph) , women are now spending more per year on gadgets than they do on shoes. Oh, and that they don’t want things to be pink and sparkly.

Well, duh! I could have told them that! I am probably one of the worst offenders with shiny things (as my friends often refer to the things I carry around with me all the time) but I prefer them to be small, black and…well, shiny

Apparently, we like boys toys that are more “logically designed” (I’m not too sure what they mean by that – aren’t most things “logically designed”?) and that are more appealing (no, you can’t achieve this by painting it pink and putting a picture of a kitten on the front*) and useful.

As one of my favourite technology based (and yes, female orientated) blogs, Shiny Shiny suggests, perhaps the increase in products that are good looking and small (ooh, Macbook Air, you would fit *so* well in my handbags) is down, in part, to designers looking at the sort of things women carry around with them and designing similar products.

I agree that people (not just women, I would assume!) would prefer products to come with logical instructions and good technical support. The article from the Telegraph mentions that Apple is a company that does this rather well. Whilst I have been fortunate enough not to use the support for my iBook and iMac, I know that I will probably get the help I need from them and quite quickly. I chose my iBook because it was small, it would fit into my school bag, and the system it is based on is much more stable than Windows.
(Unfortunately I would have to disagree a little with the comments about the staff being accessible – the main stores owned by Apple are perfectly fine, but I have found in the past that with some resellers, I am less likely to be asked if I need any help.)

While I’m happy that the industry as a whole is beginning to realise that as a woman, I want products that are good looking and that just work, it would be nice if this attitude would trickle down into the retailers – I have had many occasions that I have felt patronised by the (both male and female, surprisingly) staff in certain high street stores who have basically said “Are you sure about that? After all, you are a girl”

I may be just a girl, but I probably know more about the products I want than the retailers do.

* However if you were giving a kittin away with every purchase, I would not say no.

A good example of this is the Anya Hindmarsh “I’m Not A Plastic Bag” sale last April. Normally, a similar sized canvas bag will currently cost you over £250, so the excitement of being able to purchase this bag for £5 was great. People were queuing outside Sainsburys (the sole retailer in this country) for hours waiting for their chance to purchase a cut price designer bag. In the weeks before the bag went on sale, various celebrities were seen carrying this bag, which added to the hype.

20,000 bags were made, and sold out within an hour. I had considered waiting myself for the chance to buy one of these bags (as Sainsburys is just a 5 minute walk from my old house) but I had work to get to and couldn’t be late.

The bag was designed for people to put their shopping in, and to (rather obviously) not use a carrier bag. Instead, there were reports of people asking for carrier bags to put this bag into so it didn’t get dirty.

An article that popped up on my feed reader last week made me think about this issue a little more – fashionista.com reported about Forever 21 (which seems to be similar to Primark) producing t-shirts asking about carbon footprints when the footprint of that very t-shirt was probably quite ridiculous. As the article says, “carbon footprints aren’t trendy” (although did we even consider them 2 years ago?)

A brand that are more ethical (and quite lovely I think!) is Howies. Based in Cardigan Bay (about 40 miles south of Aberystwyth where I went to Uni) their company ethos is to produce their items with “as low an environmental impact as possible, using organic products when they can but refusing to label themselves fair trade until they can be convinced of a trusted set of guidelines to follow.”

Even when sourcing shop fittings for their only store in London (why not one in Bristol?), they have tried to keep things local to their factory – Pembrokeshire oak in the fittings, curtains from a wool mill in Carmarthenshire and the shop designers were from Tenby.

I quite like some of the items, although I am unlikely to buy things like their jeans (damn these 35″ legs!) and may have to go to one of the shops in Bristol that they have some items in this week. (Luckily my friend Ruffle adores their clothes, so it shouldn’t be hard to convince him to come shopping with me)

I guess my point is that being able to say that a product doesn’t harm the environment in its manufacturing is a Good Thing, but I dislike that point being used by the consumer to say they are “better” than you for buying this item. Its better to buy the clothes and not promote this fact to everyone.

(p.s. I really like these two t-shirts, and may have to order them later…)

Edit (30/05): I ended up buying the above Helvetica t-shirt, and also am very excited to hear that Howies will be opening a Bristol store soon. (Actually, in time for my birthday, but who’s counting with Cabot Circus also opening at the end of September?)