This is exactly why I wanted to start this section, to celebrate people like James and let people know how vital someone like he is in the success of an affiliate programme. James will not win any awards at A4U, nor does he sit on the forum all day, but he should be celebrated for his contribution to affiliate marketing. His ideas and knowledge of, not just affiliate programmes, but technology and online as a whole, is second to none. He is always on hand to help affiliates with the more technical aspect of affiliate marketing that us lowly account manager often struggle with, I have never seen him stuck for an answer yet. If he is not getting beaten at Fifa by me or developing feed manipulation tools for affiliates, he can be reached on the following email address james@ro-eye.co.uk  Despite his terrible taste in music (no really) and his lack of tea making he is a great guy. Someone pass me a tissue I think I am going to cry………..

Tell us a little bit about yourself. Who are you and what do you do?

I’m James Skelland, and I’m the technical solutions manager at R.O.EYE. I’ve been at the company for just under 2 years now. When I’m not technical solutioning, I play hockey, drink real ale, and come up with million pound affiliate ideas, which I can never be bothered to get started.

What is your day to day role?

I look after all of the technical aspects of the company. So this typically involves the fun stuff such as working with large publishers to help them integrate some funky implementations through the eBay API, the not so fun stuff such as “James, my internet is slow”, and everything in between.

What was your previous job and was it related to affiliate marketing?

Previously I was an IT system and network administrator for an independent insurance broker, as well as building and maintaining the website and ecommerce platform for a toy distribution company. Two very different industries to be in, but my boss at the time had many fingers in many pies.

What do you love about affiliate marketing?

I love the (still) relative infancy of the industry. Because of this, there’s so much scope to be innovative and stretch the boundaries of the CPA model. You’ll always have your staple PPC, content, incentive sites etc, but someone could come along tomorrow with a completely new way of promoting a merchant which blows everything out of the water.

What do you hate about affiliate marketing and what would you change if you could?

Hate is such a strong word, but I don’t really like the reliance on incentive and voucher code sites. As well as the usual last click cookie stealing type of arguments we all know of, you can also end up with some rather lazy AM’s who will sit there and say to their boss “look, the affiliate channel generated £xxxxx in sales this month”, without looking at the bigger picture of incrementality. EBay have taken a bold step in the right direction by telling cashback sites that if they want to promote eBay, they have to prove that they’re adding value to the channel. But they’ve also provided the cashback sites with some exclusive offers to help them to achieve this. It’s a two way street. Erm what was the question again…?

List your top 5 resources that help you with your day to day job?

Firebug with the Firecookie extension for Firefox is a definite must, along with Live HTTP Headers.

A syntax highlighting text editor – I’m a nerd and deal a fair bit in source code! GWD text editor is my preferred choice.

The almighty oracle and el presidente of all things internet – Google – Email, webmaster and keyword tools, calendar, maps, chrome etc etc. Next on my list is a Nexus One.

A good team of execs to work with and bounce ideas off!

A brew. Milk no sugar. Thanks.

If you were an affiliate how would you help someone in your role?

I guess affiliates sometimes forget that we’re here to help them. We’ve dealt with tons of affiliates over many many years now, so we’ve picked up a thing or two. We’re not offended if an affiliate turns around and says “Leave me alone”, however some of our best performing affiliates were little obscure guys not so long ago, but they were the ones who were receptive to, and keen to implement some of our ideas.

In your opinion what is the future of affiliate marketing and how can affiliates take advantage of this?

Well if I knew the answer to that then this questionnaire would be in the “Affiliate Millionaires” section of your site. But I think we’re currently seeing a shift in the attitudes of merchants. As attitudes to the channel change, more savvy online/affiliate managers are in place, and with that comes a better understanding about the quality of the traffic affiliates are driving. EBay is the biggest example and have made a significant leap in this direction; however more traditional merchants are now asking us how they can implement a similar value reward based payment model to their affiliates.

What is on your Ipod?

Is this a loaded question? My music tastes are famed far and wide, but I like Bon Jovi at a very geeky level.

How can people get in touch with you?

Email or MSN me: JamesS@ro-eye.co.uk
Twitter: @jamesskelland
Linkedin: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/jamesskelland

Well worth a read and if you have any questions or problems regarding the technical side of the eBay affiliate programme then get in touch with James here.

A few of  Skimlinks awards:

New Media Age – Best new Business – Winner

New Media Age – Technical Innovator – Winner

Best New Entrant – A4U Awards – Winner

Best Use Of Technology In Affiliate Marketing – A4U Awards – Winner

Innovative Affiliate Of The Year – A4U Awards – Winner

Best new Publisher – Linkshare Golden Links Award – Runner Up

Technology Genius Awards – Linkshare Golden Links Award – Runner Up

I have been watching Skimlinks with extreme interest over the last six months or so and I can safely say this is a fantastic affiliate tool.

To learn more check out the Skimlinks site or get in touch with one of the team.

How do I get my site on the first page of Google? Good content? Lots or relevant backlinks? Good site structure? The answer is yes to all of them but truth be told no one really knows how much of each you need to apply to your site to ensure good natural results. It’s safe to safe a combination of all three will set you in good stead.  There was once a time when webmasters would simply tell you that all you need is a few relevant keywords in your keyword meta tag and bingo,  you are away. Not so it seems.

Google’s own head of webspam Matt Cutts has confirmed that Google completely discounts the keyword meta tag for its main core search results. That’s not to say that other search engines don’t take this into account.

Google does however take into consideration other meta tags, including the description meta tag for example. A good useful meta description will ensure Google returns a snippet of that meta tag in its search results.

Now I don’t pretend to be an SEO expert so I would get it straight from the horses mouth and Matt Cutts blog is well worth reading.

As the keyword meta tag doesn’t seem to harm search engine rankings I wouldn’t leave it out all together, consider it meta tag insurance.

Feel free to comment with any experience you have had.