My first speculative niche site

[TheBoyMitchell]

Tweet

Heh - it may work or it may not. Lets see.

Ukraine versus England | Watch England vs Ukraine | England v Ukraine World Cup 2010 | Bet365 Free Football

[newyorkshopping]

hehehe I like the idea! Best of luck!

[TheBoyMitchell]

Thanks - having a competition with another aff.

1 Page site, no PPC - who gets the most type in traffic. I have the better domain name I think, but it will be interesting to compare SEO strategies etc against someone else to see what I can learn!

[smingle]

My type of site neil - good luck with it mate !! I done a similar experiment on my blog a little while back and it is solid at number 1 now in a competitive industry, and a 1 page site

Best of luck and I will be following this

[Keith]

good luck with it Neil :tup

[Smartphone]

Looks good mate. A really smart idea you had there...

[TheBoyMitchell]

I should have thought about it a couple of weeks ago, then I would have had more time to rank - but lets see what happens!

[suedeapple]

Ha love that site! and nicely presented too... I was almost enticed to click one of your links and sign up to watched the match...

[TheBoyMitchell]

Well a quick update.

I spent most of last night posting up on forums, twitter, facebook blah blah and went to bed quite excited and looking forward to seeing what has happened in the morning.

Nada.

Google Analytic say Yay, but bet365 affiliates say Nay.

I had a look at the source code, and whilst I am no code monkey, I noticed that the tracking code was full of 'amp;'.

Apparently this is caused by someone copying html into a GUI (ie:- dreamweaver) and the HTML editor changes the ;'s to the valid HTML equivalent. ie:- & meaning that the affiliate tracking software will look at your aff id as 25024&amp and not 25024

So, not the best start to the day.

But I guess its all part of lifes lessons innit! That wont happen again! Still - 4 days to go - I'll just have to ramp up my activity!!

[TheBoyMitchell]

Right thats all fixed

Ukraine versus England | Watch England vs Ukraine | England v Ukraine World Cup 2010 | Bet365 Free Football - now with proper links and stuff and analytics in

yay!

lets try again

[Netting87]

Quick thinking matey! Best of luck

[matthewk]

Interesting experiment! there shouldnt really be any problems with the & this is common practice to use in code and will actually keep your site XHTML compliant so should have no effect, on the other hand html editors can do all sorts of funny things to code. It's only a problem is the actual url appears in your browser location bar with the &

[TheBoyMitchell]

Interesting experiment! there shouldnt really be any problems with the & this is common practice to use in code and will actually keep your site XHTML compliant so should have no effect, on the other hand html editors can do all sorts of funny things to code. It's only a problem is the actual url appears in your browser location bar with the &

It was more the fact that it switched my referall code in the affiliate link from ID=123456&banner=blah, to ID=123456amp;&banner=blah, so when the tracking pixel fired back after someone signed up, it was looking for an id of 123456, when my code on the site had been amended to 123456amp;, so as it wasnt the same - no sales

I think I've explained how i wanted to!

[Dave@Profitistic]

Yeah, good luck with the site Neil.

Keep us updated on how you get on

[TheBoyMitchell]

Hello

As requested, an update

So, the competition was thus

A one page site, just SEO to see who got the most signups for Bet365 as they are showing the England vs Ukraine game.

My site went live on Weds.

Over 200 impressions a day resulting in a 20% signup conversion. Not all have deposited yet, but a lot have.

Faced with this potential, my competitor and I have moved the goalposts.

We agreed a PPC budget between today and 5.30 tomorrow. So lets see how much PPC increases the take up, and whether the takeup will outweigh the deposits (ie - has what we spent been less than how much we made)

We have until 5.30 tomorrow.

I will keep all informed. If I dont update at half 5 tomorrow its cos I am watching the game myself (not through my link - that would be cheating)

I have found this fascinating. 2 people. 2 sites. Each doing their own SEO etc. Its amazing how tiny little things affect ranking etc, and as a result we will be sharing best practices and working as a team together in the future.

This is how it should be - dont work alone and blind. Team up and learn best practice and share the skills you have.