When links aren't allowed

One of the irritations of building links is affiliate based wholesalers.

There is a mini-blog for MyWishWand, the gift wishlist site with virtual shopping mall and gift ideas tool but we've been frustrated in our attempts for the wholesalers and retailers to provide a link to the website even though it is a portal to their products.

You will often find that these companies will have a one-way link policy so they benefit from all traffic driven to them by external affiliate partners without reciprocating.

MyWishWand on Squidoo

Squidoo allows users to create a 'lens' on a subject that is of interest and has become one of the top 300 US sites with over 700, 000 users.

There is an updateable entry on MyWishWand that provides a review of the services of the Gift Wishlist site. This is part of Callisti's ongoing provision of web 2.0 and review services.

Another journey by train

I'm visiting a client in Bristol today where extensive media processing and testing goes on for a music video and film download site. The train journey is a bit horrendous: 5 and a half hours from Dumfries and Galloway with 3 changes.

The first train carriage had plug sockets but no power and a dodgy tannoy. Helpfully the assistant informed me that I could try another carriage as sometimes the power didn't work all the way through the train. Virgin trains keeping standards high!

Crewe is somewhere I only know because of journey transfers; what happens there apart from travelers crossing paths?

Anyway more SEO article writing for gift wishlists this morning as part of the ongoing campaign for mywishwand - the trend of the google analytics should gradually show an increase in traffic but with the proportion on free search engine traffic growing from the current 3%. There are some referrals at the moment but most of the traffic has been as a result of the offline marketing at the launch of the site, e.g. press and media coverage in related magazines and programmes.

The internet connection from the XDA has been fine but the network for o2 is somewhat lacking in the lake district - I guess network coverage is as concentrated as the population for any given region.

The laptop keeps picking up 'Free Public WiFi' on the train and I can connect to it without additional security measures. However it doesn't give me internet access so it may be a feature of the rail service - CrossCountry now.