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By Les Scammell, August 30, 2008 10:00 pm

• My Account Got Deleted by the Facebook Police!
  I am not promoting spamming social networking websites but Facebook needs put in place some much more tasteful strategies for monitoring its members.
  (tags: facebook)

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By Les Scammell, August 30, 2008 8:30 am

• First Birthday – Baby Review For The Past 12 Months
  the best articles on babies from the last 12 months
  (tags: baby babies)

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By Les Scammell, August 25, 2008 10:32 am

According to the 2008 Inc.500 list, Pepperjam is the fastest growing affiliate network. Not only that, its growth has been reported at over 2400%. That is rapid growth. Of the 500, Pepperjam comes in at number 70. Most companies wouldn’t brag about being number 70, however considering they were outside the top 100 last year, the rise has been fantastic.

If you visit their site and look at the list of companies associated with Pepperjam you will see why they are growing so quickly. There current promotion to encourage web site owners and bloggers to join as publishers is an indication of why they are growing. Every new publisher sign up received a $10 bonus payment (you must sign up via the promotional banner). I have come across affiliate marketing companies that want to charge you to join – with Pepperjam you get paid to join.

From my personal experience, Pepperjam stand way above all other forms of advertising on my sites. That includes Adsense ad units. Let’s face it, with Google ads you are not allowed to promote or encourage any clicks. With any affiliate marketing program, the more you can promote the products or services, the more income you are likely to generate.

Pepperjam have probably the one essential component that makes dealing with them easy – their service. If you have a problem or a question, you will get a quick response. If advertisers get the same service then it’s no wonder they are growing so quick.

Advertisers have their own promotions which are forwarded on to you so can promote those specials. Many have had back-to-school promotions which included good discounts and free delivery. By promoting these special offers you can increase their sales, and of course, your income.

If you haven’t signed up to Pepperjam yet, I suggest you pay them a visit and check them out. If you like what you see, sign up and start earning. Click on any one of the $10 promotional banners and grab your free $10 bonus for joining.

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By Les Scammell, August 20, 2008 2:03 pm

Our latest addition

The latest addition to our family is growing – quickly. She already has that cheeky look in her eye. Thanks for all your good wishes. I was very remiss in not including her name. We have named her Aralia Dawn.

While I am here and you are reading, if you haven’t signed up to the PepperJam affiliate program and you are interested in running ads on your site, jump now. If you click on the PepperJam banners here you will earn yourself $10 just for signing up and placing a banner on your site. This promo ends at the end of this month so don’t miss out.

You have many options to earn through PepperJam. You can receive $7 per signup yourselves – come on, I have another hungry mouth to feed – oh hang on, mums feeding her. Oh well, you can earn more by writing about PepperJam, and of course there are the affiliate ads. And they have affiliates to cover just about every niche. There is one thing that I think makes Pepperjam pretty darn good, that is their customer service. It is spot on and very helpful. The affiliates are good as well and you can often negotiate banners and banner sizes, colors and anything else.  I suggest you check them out and see for yourself, even if you don’t join.

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By Les Scammell, August 12, 2008 1:36 am

I would just like to take this opportunity to announce the arrival of our fifth daughter in the home. As usual, my other half doesn’t waste time.

She went into labour a little after 11pm and bubs was born 40 minutes later. Mother and daughter are doing fine. With five daughters, father is investing in a large stock of whiskey to get him through the teen years.

It may be our fifth, but as you can tell, I am just as excited as if it was my first – thanks for letting me have this brag. 

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By Les Scammell, August 11, 2008 12:32 pm

Time for a rant again. The Olympic Games are great and the sportsmanship so far has been pretty good. The performances have been even better. When you start getting world records in heats and semi-finals you know you are going to be in for some great action in the finals.

Unfortunately, one of the things that irks me about big events such as this is the quality of the television coverage. I get really p**sed of when these same coverages then win awards at the end of the season. I can understand that, with so many events happening at the one time, that coverage can be difficult.

However, if I want to sit down and watch the gymnastics, or the equestrian, or perhaps even the swimming, then that is what I want to watch. At present we get snippets. A little bit of this and little bit of that. It can be very frustrating.

I don’t know how much of the Olympics the rest of the world are watching, or in what format. Here in Australia we are very backward when it comes to television broadcasting. Often you need to subscribe to pay tv if you want to watch anything decent.

The Olympic broadcaster for Australia is the Seven Network. I am not sure about the rest of Oz, and I would love to hear from others, but I receive five different ‘channel 7’s’. We get the standard local channel 7 along with channel 7 HD. We also receive the new channel Seven-1, Seven-2 and Seven-3.  Now to my rant. If Channel Seven can split into three broadcasts, why is they are not using this facility to deliver a much fuller coverage of the games.

One channel could deliver their snippet broadcast (as it does now) whilst the other two could be used to deliver extended broadcast of individual sports. Thankfully a second broadcaster is able to pick up some of the sporting events and does broadcast them in full – they even provide a schedule of what is going to be broadcast and at what time – the Seven Network seems to find that a little difficult as well.

The games are about the athletes and that is what I would love to see more of them. To all the athletes – all I can say good luck to them – Ozzie Ozzie Ozzie – oy oy oy – Go for Gold!

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By Les Scammell, August 4, 2008 12:16 pm

It seems that McDonalds, the famous (or infamous) family restaurant that prided itself on staff training and customer service has now joined the ranks of most other corporations and put profit ahead of customer service.

I am in Australia so I don’t know how they operate in other countries. In the past the burgers were basically massed produced. You ordered and you had your burger immediately. They have now changed to making the burgers while-u-wait. I don’t have a problem with that. Service is a little slower but the burgers are fresher, you know they haven’t been sitting there for ten minutes and for McDonalds, it cuts down on waste.

That is fine, like I said I do not have a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is the lack of coordination and the frequency of ‘getting orders wrong’. I have a largish family. When we order Macca’s its for six people. Over the last six months I have not had an order given to me that has been right. There is always something missing. If your getting take out it can be a problem to arrive home and unpack and find components missing.

Is this a problem with the staff, the training or the system? On the last few occasions I have paid particular attention to what is happening, trying to follow my order and catch any problems before I walk away. It isn’t easy. I have to say it is the system that is wrong.

In our local store, the service area where they collect the burgers for packing is about two feet square. You have four or five operators all trying to access this area and build their orders, at the same time you have drive-thru barging in taking priority for their orders. It is absolute chaos. There is no system for checking orders as they are put together. Once you complain, they are very polite and apologetic and the next time I order they will replace the missing items for free (free – I have paid for them!!!).

McDonalds at one stage had the reputation for having the very best in customer service standards. Today, at least in my eyes, they have lost that reputation. It was once suggested I use drive-thru – my experience there was even worse. Getting order right should be the number one area of customer service – for that you need a system – and McDonalds, the king of systems, have let their customers, and themselves down in that department. Good thing Hungry Jacks (Burger King) have now opened up in town.