First things first, Matt is one of the most friendly and helpful people I’ve come across.  Customer service is A1, and at every stage of the process, he pulls out all the stops to make sure you get what you want.  I had a quick chat with Matt about commissioning 11 doc caricatures (with a 20% discount – nice notch!), and then fired over the pics to Matt so that artist, Brian, could get to work straight away.

So how does it all work?

Well you can order a number of different formats from head and shoulder shots to full body artwork.  Simply visit the site, select your preferred artist and pay online.  You then send Matt a photo and he gets the artist to knock up a rough pencil sketch to give an idea of what the full colour version will look like, and then gives you an opportunity to request any changes.  The pencil sketch can look a bit thin, but don’t worry, this is just to give you an idea.  Once you’re happy, the artist completes the full colour caricature in a matter of days (we had 11 remember).  When you have the final caricature, Matt checks again that everything is as you expect.  If not, he can ‘make it so’.

Here’s an example of the process for Kieron’s caricature (click images to enlarge):

The price?

At the time of writing, a head and shoulders caricature will set you back just €28.00/$39.99 USD/$48.50 AUD (about £25) with up to 25% on bulk orders.  Matt also runs his own in house caricature king affiliate scheme paying 10% commission on an average sale price of $115 AUD.

Since Affiliate Doctors started, a number of other affiliate’s have also used Matt’s services, and you can see another example over at Ray Theakston’s blog Befuddled.  Feeling old?  Well Matt’s team are so good in fact, that some of the people at the last Expo commented on how the artist did a brilliant job of rejuvenating some of the docs

Fancy a Free Caricature?

As a thanks to all AffiliateDocs readers, if you would like to win a ‘head and shoulders’ caricature of your own, all you need to do is become a fan of Affiliate Doctors on Facebook or leave a comment on here telling us why and what you’d use your caricature for.  One winner will be drawn at random at the end of the month!

* affiliate link – any money will go to the The PACE Centre Charity for Children with Motor Disabilities and Kiva Team Affiliate.

Roll on 9 years and Chris now operates a number of businesses spanning gadgets, lingerie, seasonal gifts, the great outdoors and mobile phones, with his company generating around £3m in sales for a number of household brands.

What makes Chris unique is that he has managed to build up his affiliate businesses whilst holding down a very demanding job with Hewlett-Packard – a job that he still enjoys and successfully combines with his passion for affiliate marketing to this very day.

A stickler for detail, Chris was one of the harder Docs to please when it came to getting his caricature right.  This first attempt was promptly rejected when Chris confirmed that he now sports the smooth look:

A keen photographer, scuba diver and supporter of Tranmere Rovers, Chris also enjoys doing his bit for “charidee”. Often found competing in numerous 10k events around the country, Chris has managed to raise over £5,500 for UK charities and talks others into joining his Kiva team, lending $9,500 to businesses in third world countries (new members welcome http://www.kiva.org/team/affiliates).

An active member on the A4U forum, Chris is known to speak his mind, but enjoys helping other affiliates and sharing his knowledge. Not wishing to list any particular area of expertise, Chris has a wealth of experience across the board including PPC, SEO, advising new merchants, General AM stuff, yet is always open to, and often seeks, others suggestions and critique.

We look forward to hearing some insights from Chris over the coming months.

Welcome on board Frostie.

Frostie’s Bio

P.S. Cheers for the artwork Matt

Mark currently operates in a number of market sectors including gambling, finance and electronics, and has recently sold off a number of his original smaller sites to focus on some of his larger projects and final year at Uni (where he may snatch a first!).  His journey has certainly seen him tread an interesting path.  Last year when attending ex-Dragon Doug Richard’s ‘School for Startups’ seminar, a simple “thank you” to Doug at the end led to an unexpected chain of events that now sees Mark embroiled in a new venture with the Dragon and Sháá Wasmund of Smarta.com.

Outside of studies and business, Mark is a keen traveller and can’t wait for the summer holidays to celebrate his new found freedom with a spot of globe trotting.  He loves football and supports both Falkirk FC and Liverpool FC.  Friends say he is permanently attached to his laptop and is always harping on about new site ideas he has come up with – but they couldn’t care less!

Interesting fact about Mark – his ubiquitous pen name ‘hairycornflakes’ is not an eyebrow disorder, it came about when Mark planned to develop a T-shirt site and asked his mates for suggestions on what to call it!

It gives us great pleasure to welcome Mark to the panel of Affiliate Doctors and we look forward to hearing more from the Hairycornflake!

Welcome on board Mark.

Mark’s Bio

Clarke is “The Codfather of Affiliate Marketing” and one of the very first pioneers to embrace it many moons ago in 1997.  Based in Glasgow with his wife and children, Clarke has pretty much seen it, done it and bought the proverbial t-shirt many, many times over.  With extensive experience in all aspects of Affiliate Marketing, Clarke is a seasoned entrepreneur with a number of successful businesses to his name as both an Affiliate and an Affiliate Network Director.  Clarke is also an active member of Nominet UK and attends meetings where he tries to ensure that the voice of the Affiliate is heard.

His first venture into the world of the Internet began in 1996 when he set up a site for the pop band 911!  After a year of designing websites for other companies, his career saw the shift into Affiliate Marketing in 1997 where he cut his teeth marketing web hosting through the affiliate channel.  Three years later, Clarke teamed up with Graeme Sandwell to set up UK Internet Sites Ltd.  Together, they launched a large number of successful affiliate sites in market sectors as diverse as competitions and freebies to gadgets and swimwear to name but a few.  With a firm grasp on the affiliate channel, the dynamic duo went on to launch their very own Affiliate Network in 2003, Paid On Results, which to date boasts 149 merchants and 20,900+ affiliates spanning no less than 22+ different market sectors.

Clarke is widely regarded as one of the pioneers who inspired and mentored many of today’s successful affiliates.  When Mark Boyd interviewed the candidates shortlisted for the Affiliate Marketing Blog of 2009 in the A4U Awards, several of them credited Clarke as the most influential person to have helped them on their way.  To quote Affiliate Doc, Lammo, “if it hadn’t have been for Clarke Duncan, I would probably still be a Civil Servant today”.

Outside of work and Affiliate Marketing conferences (where he has a penchant for candle theft ), Clarke enjoys Photography, World of Warcraft and his beloved iPhone.  In fact, during his spare time he can often be found hanging around Glasgow Airport; he claims this is because his son likes to watch the planes take off, but we all know he’s really waiting for the next baggage handler/terrorist scuffle so he can sell the photos to the newspapers!

Interesting fact about Clarke: He is physically unable to smile in photographs without giving a “double thumbs up” gesture!

Anecdotes aside, it’s a great honour to have Clarke join the panel of Affiliate Doctors and we look forward to seeing some great insights.

Welcome on board Clarke.

Clarke’s Bio

Elaine kickstarted her move into the internet in 1999 (or “t’internet” as she likes to say), setting up Allkids.co.uk as a hobby site when she spotted a gap in the market for a comprehensive online resource for parents.  Three years later, Elaine discovered affiliate marketing, and the rest as they say, is history.  She now runs the business as a family concern and has managed to successfully bridge the gap between online and offline as a bricks and clicks empire.  As if that wasn’t enough, Elaine has also branched out as a merchant, running a successful affiliate program of her own through the Children’s Rooms website.

Away from the daily duties of a business woman, Elaine is a wife, mother, grandma and all round good egg.  Originally hailing from Leeds, she’s a Leeds United fan, despite their best days being well behind them (although Elaine tells us to “Watch This Space”).  She also has a penchant for tiaras and Corrie, and her favourite song is “There’s no one quite like Grandma” by St. Winifred’s School Choir (or Dom Hodgson & Jason Brockman if you’re at the A4U Expo closing night party!).

As an entrepreneur operating in such a diverse business environment, Elaine has wide ranging skillsets, but it’s this coupled with her straight talking and down-to-earth approach that have enabled her to succeed in the industry, and we’re delighted to welcome Elaine to the Affiliate Doctor’s panel joining fellow business ladies Kirsty and Joanna.

Welcome on board Elaine.

Elaine’s Bio

Joanna’s key strengths are in SEO, analytics and online marketing strategies.  A regular speaker at a number of key industry seminar and networking events, Joanna enjoys sharing her passion and knowledge as part of her mission to be an all round ‘online marketing evangelist’. 

When she’s not taming the Google beast, Joanna indulges her life long passion for horses and riding, and confesses that her ideal holiday would involve working on a ranch.  Partial to a good read of a programming book, she also enjoys reconstructing her PC and has recently started to flirt with Macs.  Taking inspiration from Danny Wallace’s “Yes Man”, Joanna’s move to London is fuelled by many a regular jaunt to explore what her new home town has to offer, indulging her other passion, photography. 

To read more about Joanna’s thoughts on SEO and all things online, pop on over to her blog at Search Engine Chocolate.  As an ‘SEO chick’ in an industry predominantly occupied by men, it gives us great pleasure in welcoming Joanna to the Affiliate Doctor panel. 

Welcome on board Joanna.

Joanna’s Bio

Dan is a multi-talented online marketer based in London where he manages ecommerce for 2 arts, craft & toy companies.

He has over 15 years experience on the web since achieving a first class degree in Software Engineering, and his career has seen him build upon this passion for all things net, working in the UK, Germany and the US.  He has set up PPC campaigns across 18 countries, managed web analytics & reporting for a couple of dozen sites, and once designed the first UK ecommerce site for one of the world’s biggest laptop manufacturers.

Dan’s main areas of expertise are analytics, PPC and site management, and he has worked in-house for online retailers for the last 7 years.

Splitting his time between London and Sheffield, Dan spends most of his time outside of work eating, sleeping and talking.  Once long ago, he ran one of the UK’s biggest skateboarding sites.  He has only 2 claims to fame: once making a sandwich for ‘Hairspray’ director John Waters, and once appearing in the distant background in an episode of Byker Grove.

Dan regularly helps and advises people in various forums and very much looks forward to helping you out with any questions.

Welcome on board Dan.

Dan’s Bio

Whilst this is nothing new for the masses that mosey on down for 2 days and 3 nights of outstanding seminars, networking and some serious partying, I wanted to put in my tuppence worth for anyone that has yet to go, or may be sitting on the fence trying to decide if it’s worth it …

Deciding whether to go

Last year was my first A4U Expo.  As someone relatively new to affiliate marketing, I first heard about it through the many other AM bloggers.  For anyone starting out, the cost may seem expensive (or even prohibitive) when you factor in travel, hotels, time off work etc..  However, I figured that if I’m really going to take AM seriously, I needed to get involved and find out first hand just how good it was.

Lammo did a great post last year on how you can attend A4U Expo on the cheap, so I decided to take the advice and entered 3 competitions, lost 2 and then managed to bag a ticket from the Sunshine.co.uk competition (promoted on Lammo’s blog) - thanks again Chris

Great … all I needed to do was book a hotel and job done. All in all I think it cost me around £250.  Whilst this is a fair amount, what you get in return is absolute value for money; I would have paid the full price for a ticket had I not won one of the competitions.  Time off work wasn’t a problem as I had lots of holiday left and decided to use a few days on my mini adventure … and travel? … well I’m lucky enough to be around 30 mins from London!

The Event

I opted for the full 2 day/3 night experience (and it is an experience!) which kicked off with the ice breaker evening before the first day of seminars.  I didn’t know a single person that was going to the Expo but figured, sod it, I’ll just go, say hello to a few people and see what happens.  What surprised me was how friendly most people were.  From the outside, affiliate marketing can seem quite an insular industry comprised of tight cliques that are not very receptive to new people, but that’s not what happened and couldn’t be any further from the truth.  Most people are more than happy to chat and welcome you.

Okay, it can be a little daunting going into a place full of people that you don’t know, but one thing’s for sure, there are always people in exactly the same boat and you’ll be surprised at just how easy it is to just unwind, chill and network.  By the end of the night I’d met some great people and was really pleased I’d decided to go for the whole event.

Next, the seminars.  A little worse for wear (okay, a lot!), I was glad that I decided to choose most of the seminars up front, so all I had to do was get up, shower and go straight to the first seminar of the day – Joost De Valk’s “Wordpress SEO and Optimisation Strategies”.  It was then that the penny dropped and I really appreciated just what value for money the A4U Expo was going to be.  People will weight the many facets of the Expo differently (be it networking, seminars, catching up with old friends etc.), but for me, this is where it really paid off. I sat there like a crazed lunatic scribbling down as many tips as I could to take back and put into practice.  As it transpired, the slides were made available after the event for most of the talks, but it was worth taking extra notes on any areas discussed outside of the slide content. After the first seminar, it was time for a short break outside and a game of “I spy someone who feels worse than I do”, and then straight onto the next one.

The highlight seminar of the two days for me was Al Carlton’s “Million Dollar Blogging Strategies for Affiliates”.  I’d spoken to Al the night before completely unaware that he was presenting one of the seminars I’d planned to see the next day (another example of how friendly most people are). Al’s seminar proved to be a very popular choice from the Expo, and for me it was his honest and frank account of how he built up a blog from nothing to the giddy heights of today, sharing tips and strategies in a light hearted way and really engaging with the audience. Al will be speaking again in October.

To top it all off, there are usually 3 main networking nights/parties.  Last year it was the ice breaker before the first day (as mentioned above), then there was a Luxury Thames Cruise the second night (more food this year please!), and the post event “Ice Party” celebrations at The Fox.

So what are you going to do this year?

This year I made sure I took advantage of the ‘super early bird’ discount for £179 – bargain! The hotel is booked and conference paid for, so now it’s just a matter of counting down the weeks until it all kicks off.  If you haven’t grabbed a ticket yet, the surefire way is to get in early and make use of the early bird discount.  Alternatively, keep your eyes peeled on your favourite blogs as there will undoubtedly be a number of competitions again, so make sure you enter as many as you can.

Tickets are currently priced at £249 plus VAT, but will be going up to £349 on August 31st.  Remember, everything is included in the price, seminars, lunch, networking and to top it all off, there’s usually a free bar; something I certainly haven’t been used to at any conference I’ve been to!

This first batch went out to the docs earlier this week, so it won’t be long until answers start to go up in the Clinic and Surgery sections of the site.  As this is the first round, please bare with us during the short time lag for answers to appear.

Some of the questions have been great; lots of background info and specifics, but we’ve also received a few vague ones such as:

“How much money should I invest in affiliate marketing?” …

This question is just too open ended and unlikely to elicit a useful answer.  The docs want to help, but it’s practically impossible to provide an answer to this question.  It could entail anything from outsourcing content and PPC, to setting up an affiliate program and reinvesting profits …  the list is endless.

It’s far better if you can be as specific as you can and provide as much background/supporting info to help the docs answer your questions as fully as possible.  You don’t have to provide a site url for the Clinic, but it’s a lot more useful if you do.  The site url can be anonymised in the post, but that’s up to you.  Surgery questions must be accompanied by the site url.

For further info, don’t forget to take a moment and look around the About and FAQ sections of the site.  If you have yet to submit any burning questions or sites for review, fire away and we’ll get them into the next round!

Publishers Choice Awards (voted for by the 20,000+ affiliates4u.com member base):

Kirsty McCubbin – Affiliate Marketing Blog of 2009

Kirsty managed to scoop what is considered by many to be one of the most coveted awards in the industry for her stirling efforts with www.affiliatestuff.co.uk. Unable to attend the event in person (Oz isn’t exactly up the road!), Kirsty sent the following message on the night:

“Wow, what can I say?  It’s a real honour to win the award; I’m completely blown away and thrilled.

It’s gutting not to be there to share the fun and revelry with you all on such a glittering evening, but on the plus side I’ve probably just spared myself a monster hangover.

Thanks to everyone who voted for the blog, and please do have a drink or four on my behalf tonight!”.

Chris Clarkson (Sunshine.co.uk) –  Affiliate Manager 2009

For the second year running, Chris picked up the award given to “an individual who has excelled by creating relationships, driving revenue opportunities, utilising effective communication channels and generally being a super star affiliate manager!”.

Chris said:

“Delighted to have won it again, although personally I’d have voted for Naomi Brown from Firebox!”.

Mark Russell and Existem AM – Affiliate Management Agency 2009

Existem Affiliate Management had a top night and managed to do the treble …

Talking about the night, Mark said, “We are delighted to have won the award for a third successive year and I am pleased that once again all the hard work and dedication from the team has been recognised by the affiliate community”.

In addition to the Affiliate Management Agency award, Hannah Swift of Existem AM also won the Publishers Choice of Account Manager 2009 for her outstanding contribution in going “beyond the norm in their role to maximise the merchant/affiliate relationship and the returns generated”.
 
Kier Marston and the Webgains Network – Innovative Affiliate Network of the Year 2009 (Highly Commended)

This award is given to a network that “has continued to introduce one or a combination of new innovations that enable publishers to drive sales, and internal innovation with tools, initiatives or campaigns”.

Webgains MD, Robert Glasgow said:

“Webgains won ‘Highly Commended’ for its affiliate matchmaking tool – iSense Site Seeker in the Innovative Affiliate Network of the Year award category. This is not the first time we have been short-listed in this category; our Voucher Management Tool was nominated at last year’s awards. This recognition bears testament to the all the hard work our in-house development team puts into creating applications and tools designed to support our clients.”… “ … we would like to congratulate all the winners and runner ups, as well as all those nominated, and thank all those who participated in the nomination and voting processes.”.

John Lamerton and Easy Content Units – Innovative Publisher of the Year 2009 (Highly Commended)

This award was given to the ECU team for developing a brand new service that “fully embraces the concepts behind the many facets of Affiliate Marketing”.

John said:

“I can’t take any of the credit for our Highly Commended award – ECU has been built from the ground up by our head techie Stu, and super-speedy affiliate support comes from my fellow director Jason Brockman. I’m just the guy who scribbles stuff down and says ‘how hard can it be to…’.

I’m really proud that ECU made it onto the shortlist to be honest, let alone finishing as runners-up in a category that contains some huge, huge names, millions of pounds worth of talent and some of the best ideas and brains in the industry. That our little 4-month old idea, built by three blokes in a pub using their own money was able to compete on a level playing field with the big-boys and their bottomless pits of cash bodes very well for the future of ECU I think”.

By all accounts it was a top night and we would like to extend congratulations to everyone else that was nominated for their respective categories on the night.

For a breakdown of the awards, check out the complete A4U Awards Winners List.

You can also see some pics from the evening here and here.