I am sure that every one of you are excited to hear about what has been going on behind the scenes at The Affordable Affiliates Network, especially with the anticipated September 15th deadline for our Inventory launch.
First, before we get into all of this, we understand that some of you are concerned about the lack of communication from us. We want to improve this, so we have come up with an idea: Expanded usage of our User Forums.
At this time, we see that there are only 933 people registered on our Forums.
Our goal is to see all of our Members registered there, primarily because there are lots of smaller, internal-focused updates done by Chris Bell on a frequent basis. At the "bee hive" (as Chris likes to call our primary office), everybody is working so hard on their daily tasks, that sometimes we forget that we need to tell everybody what's going on!
So please, register for our Forums here:
http://forums.affordableaffiliates.com
You can also access our Forums by logging into the Members area here:
http://affordableaffiliates.com/login.php
Member Flies In To Check AAN Team Out!
Jen Maxwell (A long time AAN Member) flew into Vancouver from Calgary, Alberta, and spent 3 days with the AAN team here at our offices. She has a true unbiased viewpoint, and has expressed it in her post listed above. For an interesting read, please check it out at your convenience.
http://forums.affordableaffiliates.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=426
You will also see a link to our Forums inside the Members area of our main site, inside the Navigation Panel on the left side of the screen. We only have our Forums advertised to Members logged into our site, although the URL for our Forums works for Members who are logged in or otherwise.
Onto the next topic;
Initially, We were unsure whether we were going to host the sales side of this business on another website, or integrate it with our opportunity here. However, you will now see we have 2 major traffic hubs that come to our site.
First, there is the Opportunity Page where your Affiliate Referrals are sent to. At this time, this page has been stripped down to the very basics. It allows people to watch a simple video describing our opportunity, and then create an account with us for free. This technique is called a "Squeeze Page", and the world's best Internet Marketers use this to introduce their concepts to potential business partners or customers. As we go live again, we will be split-testing various appearances of this page, and will eventually settle on the one that proves to work the best. Why is this important to our Members? We want to ensure that our Members who are actively referring our program have the best possible chance to attract as many referrals as possible.
Second, we have our Homepage:
http://www.affordableaffiliates.com
This is where our shopping, browsing, and buying customers will first come to view our website. We want to make their experience a positive one, as well as make it easy for everyone to shop with us. We are also having a new video made that will match the quality of our Opportunity Page video, to aid in our customers shopping experience.
By keeping both the Affiliate focus and the Retail business on the same site, operated through 2 different entry portals, we create a larger internet-wide focus on our website. The more traffic a website gets, the more Google, MSN, Yahoo, and other search engines will have them show up in broad search results.
With this, when we get into mass, frequent listings of our multitude of items, Google will come along and say "when it comes to sofas, AffordableAffiliates.com is the place to go". Replace "sofas" with "clocks", "jewelery", "collectibles" or other terms, and you should be able to understand why this is extremely positive for all of our users. The more people that buy from us, the more frequently our Affiliate Members will have profits in their pockets.
These "organic" search engine results will boost our sales immensely, and will be the starting point of us being able to compete with the likes of eBay, Amazon, and other Retail giants.
Now I would like to give you an update on the allocation process straight from the word of our CTO, Ted Walther.
Ted Walther's Notes
Hello Members!
We've upgraded our framework to a newer database system, allowing all of our data to be much more reliable. As with any data migration, there have been some minor hiccups, although the bulk of these matters have already been addressed.
Some preliminary allocation of items has been completed, even in the current state of our framework. The design has settled and the essential backbone of our code is in place, and in the next couple days it should be at a point where we can begin the permanent rollout of item allocation to our Members. In fact, the website administrators can even see some allocation done on a separate testing page at this time, although this information will not show up for our Members until we're comfortable with its bug-free completion.
One of the biggest delays in the allocation code has been designing it to handle real-world changes, such as shipping errors, or lost inventory. This has to be fairly and accurately reflected in Member's accounts, without them losing out on any progress. Allocating is easy; recovering is more challenging. This is part of the "secret sauce" that helps make Affordable Affiliates so unique.
Our strong programming foundation will allow us to make changes and updates "on-the-fly" to allow fixes for unseen "real-world" issues that may not have shown up yet. This is another testament to justify the wait for our Members; regardless of any issues that could potentially creep up over time, fixes can be created and implemented in shorter periods, and without affecting our entire Membership base.
Training of our new programmer James Slack is ongoing; upon his hiring, he "dove right in", and is fixing bugs while learning the day-to-day happenings of professional programming. James comes to us with a Masters of Science degree in Computer Science.
While we've gained the help of James, our Summer intern, Andrew Poelstra, has gone back to University after doing a massive rewrite of our website, and we wish him all the best.
Through several phases of development, several people have played integral roles in laying the foundation of the code that will enable us to move forward, and deal with any situations as they arise.
We are now days away,-- not weeks, or months --before the allocation code is ready to go.
David Cheyne's Notes
I've watched James Slack and Ted Walther work into the late evening hours in order to finish the tasks at hand. James' work ethic, and willingness to work beyond what has been expected of him show true character. Hired just a few weeks ago, James is already proving to be a very valuable team player, placing the needs of our Members and Staff ahead of his own.
Thank you James Slack, and Welcome to the AAN Team!
Right from the forefront of our technology, Ted Walther has said it. We are now days away from allocation. Not weeks, or months.
Brace yourself folks, this is getting really exciting.
Video to follow of what is happening in your back office for funded members!
In the past several weeks, several of our staff members have been cleaning up our item database. We have to find all of the required data for each item in order for the allocation process to work. Many of these items have partially completed fields, but not all of the information required to be attached to Member's accounts. We've knocked off hundreds upon hundreds of items that have all of their required data; the rest will be an ongoing process. This means that after the allocation code is completed and allocation is underway, there will always be inventory rolling into Member's accounts moving onwards.
This was what the automation process has always been about: Getting it to a point where whenever we add inventory to the site, and fill in all the required pieces of data, it becomes an Active item which our Members can then benefit from.
Yes, we are there, minus a few minor bugs in the master code. We will be addressing these minor caveats as they appear during real-world implementation of our site's processes, to a level where we anticipate that very few Members will even realize a small quirk or issue has taken place.
In conclusion, although we did not meet our roughly-anticipated September 15th "GO" date, the allocation is now within days of being ready. Past this, our website will always continue to remain in a state of improvement and feature implementation, to bring more to our Members as time progresses. If there happen to be any further delays, by being a Member of our Forums, our mini updates will keep you posted. We also have plans to improve our Forums as time goes on, but again we offer you to join now, in order to stay in the loop during these exciting times!
Our Forums link for you, one more time:
http://forums.affordableaffiliates.com/
To Your Success,
Chris Bell
President/CEO
David Cheyne
Vice President
PS. There will be a video made in the next couple of days showing you the allocation working IN YOUR OFFICE. Then sometime next week, we will inform you just as we "push the button"
PPS. To ensure you do not miss any of our updates, you can click on the join our mailing list and add as many email addresses to the list, so that you do not miss our updates. Additionally, you can click on the share this button below that, and share this email with your contacts, facebook, twitter, or a multitude of other options.
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