Elaines Space

Although Children’s Rooms is still doing extremely well despite the credit crunch and we are (very) excited about the future and the improvements that are in the pipeline, which could, hopefully, enable us to take on extra staff in the Spring/Summer months, we are still very aware how difficult it could get out there and the need to be ever vigilant concerning our revenue paths. Since Christmas we have  kept a close eye on our competitors and rivals in the children’s bedding and bedroom accessories arena - as they do us - and have found it to be a very illuminating ...

I’ve been promising various Merchants and Networks a brand new, all singing and dancing, much improved Allkids website since the middle of summer. I had been working furiously away for weeks on transferring all the products and deep links over to their new home, with it’s lovely new interface and delightfully easy back-end, not to mention the smooth way it has been trained to take relevant discount codes and special offers and drop them invitingly into their respective deep links and cascade them throughout the site - courtesy of the lovely Becky, DaveN (SEO guru & Leeds United Supporter) and their ...

I’ve been following the whole  brand bidding debate with interest and this is the conclusion I’ve arrived at and it seems remarkably simple …. Every merchant has the indisputable right to pay for placement in the paid search arena for their own name/trademark - if somebody simply types Next, Argos, John Lewis into a search box, being too lazy to input the full url into the address bar, then it’s only right and proper in these circumstances that the merhant shouldn’t have to pay affiliate fees.   (whether they found the product previously on an affiliate site is another argument - but ...

I’ve decided twice not to write this - but it’s just crazy that any affiliate would promote low paying, low converting toy websites - which are also more expensive than Amazon, Littlewoods Direct, The Toy Shop, John Lewis - shall I go on ….. You could argue that they have the brand name and this could figure in the conversion rate (I capitulated over Next - but they are the exception to the rule) but if someone is willing to pay a premium price just to shop at Hamleys, then they are going to Google Hamleys. If they’ve landed ...

I’m shouting at myself here – not you! I’ve spent so much time this past year, especially with the arrival of Twitter, reading, perusing, digesting the writings and blogs of numerous SEO gurus and wannabes, that I’ve not actually done much work. Not only do I spend an inordinate amount of time reading these worthy blogs etc, but I then spend a disproportionate amount of time worrying which, or any, of the excellent tips and advice I should implement. Should I search the ethernet for PR4+ blog posts, which don’t implement the ‘no follow’ and then try and figure out how to, sneakily, ...

I’ve given Graham a bit of stick over the years because of the bias towards BoysToys Christmas incentive and, I know, that this years is Monaco – Playboy Weekend – but you know what – I quite fancy this one. I’m sure I could tailor this to my own requirements ;) 3 nights at a 4 star hotel in Monte Carlo – yep Helicoptor transfer – I might have to wear a scarf and big designer glasses , but – yep Karting Grand Prix – possibly, I’m quite happy to watch though Full Day Offshore in a Powerboat – I’m sure I can drape ...