AffiliateBrand.com by Gene Kavner

AffiliateBrand.com is live again!

As you may have noticed, there has been a service interruption on AffiliateBrand.com over the last few days. I would like to explain this interruption and apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused you. The popularity of AffiliateBrand services such as the Amazon Associates Report Notification and the brand new Blog Window widget have caused an enormous load on the AffiliateBrand database which I was using. It's a great story of growing much faster than I anticipated! As Murphy's Law would have it, just before this problem developed, I left for an overseas trip where I had very limited Internet service. With the Internet connection that I had, I was able to make a post about these problems on my blog: Working through some technical issues with the AffiliateBrand.com site. Unfortunately, I did not have enough bandwidth to fix this problem right away. I just returned back to the US last night and have had the opportunity to not only make some key architectural changes to the AffiliateBrand site but also move to a more robust, much better loaded system which will withstand several orders of magnitude more load. If you have been a subscriber of my Amazon Associates Report Notification service, you should have received a notification of Amazon Associates report for yesterday. If you have been using the Blog Window widget, I know that you may have removed it during the service outage. It is ready to go live again. If you have tried it, you already know that it is a fabulous, 100%-customizable, widget which lets your readers know what posts are popular on your site. The widget has received excellent coverage in the blogosphere, so please feel free to place it back on your blog. I hope you continue to enjoy AffiliateBrand services and apologize for the down-time you may have experienced. Gene Kavner, Former World-Wide Director, Amazon Associates, 2005-2006

Working through some technical issues with the AffiliateBrand.com site

Well, as Murphy's laws have it, this one fits right up there with them. 

A few technical issues related to the load on the site (due to the enormous popularity -- something that all of us would want) has caused it to stop communicating with my SQL Server database which is holding all of the data related to the Blog Window widget at the Amazon Associates reports. 

The bad news is that I happened to be out of the country with all but bare-bones Internet service available to me to resolve this problem (which would normally take but an hour or two). 

I am working to resolve it as soon as possible but I fear that it may not be until early next week when I will be able to get it fully resolved.

If you have any specific questions, please drop me an email at Gene [at] AffiliateBrand.com and I will do my best to address them asap.  In the meantime, please be assured that I'm working to resolve this problem as quickly as possible.  I will notify via a post to this blog when all is resolved.

Thanks to all for your patience.

Gene Kavner

Great Feedback on the Blog Window Widget

Since I launched the Blog Window widget 3 days ago, it is getting excellent adoption among the bloggers with some very good feedback.

Here's some coverage it has received (with more coming daily):

	This widget allows you to display links to some of your most popular posts in an attractive, fully customizable widget. ... I can already see the value of such an addition to this blog. ... This widget will stay on Widgets Lab ! -- The Widgets Lab
	The Blog Window widget enables bloggers to display the titles of the most popular posts on your blog or pages of your site. Great to see these community building tools, and I look forward to whatever is next. -- Shawn Collins
	I just put [The Blog Window] up only now, but I'm already very impressed with it. It loads quickly and it's highly configurable: you can change a number of attributes at the AffiliateBrands site, and if you want to you can configure further using your own stylesheet. It's just downright elegant... -- Debra Hamel
	Over the last few months I’ve been seeing more and more widgets in the wild. You can check out my sidebar to see some of my favorites. My most recent edition was one from Gene at AffiliateBrand. It is helping me learn what my most popular posts/pages are. Oddly enough, my About Me page seems to be performing quite well. Apparently all of you are wondering who the heck I am! Perhaps I should monetize it -- Robyn Tippins

My "Blog Window" Widget is Ready - Easily Display Popular Posts

As many of you have noticed, I've been away from posting on my blog over the last couple of weeks.  I have focused on finishing the latest of my tools:  The Blog Window widget.  If you have been reading my blog for a while, you know that I am a great believer in widgets and I am planning on developing many more.  Here is my recent post about the future of widgets titled Widgets - The Future of Affiliate Marketing.  I have also discussed widgets in an interview with Shawn Collins.

I'm happy to say that the Blog Window widget is finally done.  It is a 100%-customizable widget that allows any blog or web site to display the most popular posts or pages of their site. 

I have seen some WordPress plug-ins that do the same job but they seem too complex and are limited to a single blogging platform.  Not the Blog Window widget.  It takes literally seconds to install and works on any site. 

The biggest value proposition from the Blog Window widget is that I have observed a 25% boost in page views, just from the widget.  It looks like when a reader is done with a page, Blog Window offers him/her a compelling next page to read on your site.  They would typically leave the site at that point.

Because the Blog Window widget is customizable, you can make it look exactly like your site and it is quick and easy to do this.  You can see my own Blog Window is customized in its look-and-feel to this blog.  My AffiliateBrand.com widget has the look-and-feel of my AffiliateBrand.com site:

I'd love to see your comments on how easy it was to integrate the Blog Window widget with your site. The widget is completely free.  In a few days I will do a post highlighting unique and interesting implementations of the Blog Window widget, so get yours today.

Discuss in BumpZee! community

Gene Kavner, Former World-Wide Director, Amazon Associates Affiliate Program, 2005-2006.