Tag Archive for 'AffinityClick'

AffinityClick WordPress Plug-In

Published
by
admin
on May 17, 2011
in Product Info
. 1 Comment

Started in 2003, WordPress has grown to become the world’s largest self-hosted blogging tool.  Used by millions of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day, it was only a matter of time before we sunk our AffinityClick claws into this juggernaut.  WordPress has been the ‘bloggers’ main choice for many years and it makes perfect sense due to all the diversity, flexibility and custom plug-ins that it provides to all publishers.

We look at WordPress plug-ins as if an ‘app’ would look to a mobile smartphone.  It simply enhances the overall product and makes life easier for the user.

With our custom ad widgets being installed by hundreds of WordPress users, we knew that it was time for us to bring our AffinityClick plug-in to all these publishers.  We are proud to announce that you can now download our custom plug-in, and install it into your WordPress blog within seconds.  Installing the AffinityClick plug-in will allow publishers to control all their custom ad widgets and overall site maintenance in the WordPress user interface, and it also prevents them from having to install the code manually.  Once you have the plug-in installed you can control your AffinityClick UI and widget controls from within the WordPress back end as seen below.

Once you have built the custom widget and setup the filters in the AffinityClick screen, you can go to the ‘Widgets’ section within WordPress and deploy.  As seen below, it’s a matter of click and dragging the widget box over to the right side navigation and dropping it into place.  That’s all there is to it!

 

Basecamp Bait and Switch?

Published
by
David Hicks
on October 28, 2010
in News, Startup and Tools
. 6 Comments
Basecamps New Plans

Basecamp nixes their $24 per month Basic Plan.

Like many startups, AffinityClick has built itself using a number of cloud-based applications. Many of these services are free (e.g. Google Apps) and a number of them are subscription-based following the no-popular Software as a Service (SaaS) model.

SaaS has numerous advantages: no large outlay to acquire software licenses, the service is managed for you, no additional hardware resources to run it, no license management, simplified technical support, easier integration with 3rd party applications, easy access to data (provided you have network connectivity), and you should always the most recent version of software running. Salesforce CRM is probably the most famous SaaS tool (which we also use) but there are many others out there that fulfill all sorts of business needs.

This brings us to Basecamp, 37signals‘ flagship project management tool. We’ve been using Basecamp for a while now, and although it isn’t perfect (I find it to be more a glorified group To-do list than genuine PM tool) it is easy-to-use and the price fit the bill. For a mere $24 per month for the Basic plan, we could maintain up to 15 projects here in the office which was more than adequate for our purposes. We were happy to pay the subscription after the initial 30-day free trial.

Yesterday I was surprised to see this tweet from Adam McNamara (@adammacnamara): Wow. Basecamp silently nuked their Basic Plan. http://basecamphq.com/signup vs the cached version http://cl.ly/2zTH. Bear in mind that Adam isn’t any old online pundit: his company,Select Start Studios, develops mobile apps, not the least of which is Headquarters, an iPhone application that provides mobile access to your Basecamp projects.

As you can see, 37signals has discontinued the $24/month Basic plan. The new entry tier is the Plus plan at $49/month—more than double the price! So far 37 Signals hasn’t said what will happen to people using the ‘old’ Basic plan, but I certainly hope they grandfather us in: we simply don’t need the Plus package and frankly, hadn’t signed up to the service for such.

Other than the poor communication practice, 37signals’ move highlights one of the drawbacks of SaaS (and cloud computing too): if you don’t ‘own’ (and I’m simplifying the vagaries of software licensing here) a product, and the application and your data exists somewhere outside of your control, you are completely at the whim of the companies that provide you with service. Price increases, service outages, business changes, and bankruptcies could take away business-critical applications. Which is why I’m looking for a good, lightweight project management tool for Macs today. Any suggestions?

Internet advertising down 5.3 percent

Published
by
marie@affinityclick.com
on October 6, 2009
in Marketing and News
. 0 Comments

Internet advertising totaled $10.9 billion for the first half of 2009, down 5.3 percent compared with the same period in 2008, according to a report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.

Search and display-related advertising continue to represent the largest percentages of overall interactive advertising spending, with search at more than $5.1 billion for the first six months of 2009, up slightly from that same period in 2008.

Display-related advertising, including display ads and digital video, totaled nearly $3.8 billion in the first six months of 2009, a 1.1 percent drop from the same period in 2008. Digital video by itself, however, continued to grow fast, with a 38 percent increase from the first half of 2008.

Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO of the IAB, attributed the declines to the recession, and said in a statement that online interactive advertising has been one of the advertising sectors that has been least affected.