Internet Business Share Discussion Threads

[niggle] 23/11/2007 12:51

Hi LS, Thanks! long time.. and all that!, yeh looks like it was the right decision; we have just had far too many sleepless nights!

You still in these?

[liarspoker] 23/11/2007 11:41

niggle - glad to hear business is going well for you. :O)

( and hi to the old time IBGers too :O)

[coffeelito] 23/11/2007 11:10

Any ideas how long this share price might be in the toilet?? I'm getting very tempted to sell what's left of my holding and put it into growth and momentum plays like mdx.

[hirschnathan] 22/11/2007 15:20

Baheid

I agree its not as bad at it sounds, the mobile sector was getting trickier and trickier and cant imagine that it will loose af too much money.

The travel sector is at its quietest time now, but if they dont get the bugs fixed in time, it may cost af a bit in lost revenue. I am sure mytravel are sweating over the problem

[baheid101] 22/11/2007 14:41

Hirschnathan, I understand the problems have arisen from more people than forecast claiming cashback on deals and that the five that have been removed were all supplied by the same company (Dextra I think).

The mobile sector is still characterised by lots of churn and the internet channel is still growing at a decent lick, I suspect its just the aggressive cashback deals need to be reigned in. Issues I guess are

(a) IBG generally make merchants pre-fund their accounts to make sure everybody gets paid even if the merchant goes under - I read an employee post the other day that they have about 3 merchants a month going under and they have never once not honoured commissions. Will this be the case for the mobile merchants i.e. were the accounts fully funded and will IBG have stump up any cash out of their own reserves?

(b) Does IBG have a decent range of other mobile merchants so affiliates can simply swap their links and continue promoting mobile products, so other merchants benefit from the 5 going under.

(c) Hopefully the downtime in Mytravel is coinciding with a very quiet time for bookings

[hirschnathan] 22/11/2007 10:09

No just the change over has caused the mytravel portfolio mayhem

[renew] 22/11/2007 09:28

My Travel was taken over by Thomas Cook 3 weeks ago.
Does that effect the situation??

[hirschnathan] 21/11/2007 18:00

I think af uk is going to have a challenging half.

5 mobile sites have gone, 3 of them gone bankrupt the others for not paying (the mobile phone sector is going through tough times)

Mytravel sites have been down for about 2-3 weeks and still are down, I hope they get fixed soonish, but thats quite a whack all at once for af

[niggle] 20/11/2007 19:58

Google Adwords track sales when they are made through an affiliate which I didn't know.

This lowers the apparent CPC that we pay but is falacious. mmmmm

[niggle] 20/11/2007 13:00

I saw them thanks :O) Sebago still selling really well, but Fly and sugar are still number 1 and 2. Did you get the voucher code?

Cheers

[hirschnathan] 20/11/2007 09:09

I made 2 sales for you yesterday

[niggle] 20/11/2007 09:08

We are very busy, It's the cold weather.

[old boy returns] 19/11/2007 18:14

hn - having a website in place is simple enough but it is the marketing of the site and the fulfillment of sales generated and follow up customer service which cost the money. To be selling MP3 players they are presumably buying them in and stocking them, sending them out, dealing with returns, advertsing on Google Adwords etc. I have been running online retail businesses for nearly 10 years now and these days fierce competition means the margins are thin and the advertising is expensive and needs careful management and control which takes further resource and so expense. IBG make very little profit on their online retail division which I suspect is due to very slim margins which barely cover the advertising, sales and aftersales support and storage and logistic costs.

[coffeelito] 19/11/2007 15:41

xmas shopping underway, major holidays booking period just around the corner ... and ibg's share price continues to tick down ...!

[hirschnathan] 19/11/2007 10:56

OBR

Once the infrastructure is in place how complicated is it to have another website?

[old boy returns] 19/11/2007 10:02

hn - it has to be said that some of their online retail sites must be doing very little business and adding nothing to (or indeed reducing) earnings which has always made me wonder why they persevere with oddities like MP3playerdeals which does not even fit in with their bigger sports brand - sweatband.com.

[hirschnathan] 19/11/2007 06:25

mp3playerdeals, I just noticed has been closed by af as a merchant. Mp3playerdeals, is part of ibg plc. I wander why they closed it? If it has been sold, it wouldnt be closed, they would just transfer the account.

Maybe they are going to close down some of their unviable esites and focus on ther core bus?

[clond] 16/11/2007 22:14

nice to see a commitment to the future

[lord buffett] 16/11/2007 08:27

niggle

I think they're keeping fairly quiet about it to the masses at the moment as it's only at the beta stage.

If you give AF a ring I'm sure they'll be happy to let you trial it, it's just not been generally publicised to the affiliate/merchant base yet.

However, if not, I believe it's pencilled-in for general release in December from what I remember, so not long to wait now anyway.

[niggle] 16/11/2007 01:10

Well, I am a merchant and I don't know anything about it! which is worrying....

[baheid101] 15/11/2007 17:11

Hi niggle

Are they not releasing a beta version of the new Affliate Future platform to merchants and affiliates at the moment? they apparently previewed it at the recent A4uexpo

BH

[niggle] 15/11/2007 17:08

What toolset?

[stemis] 15/11/2007 13:30

I know. Profits up 18% despite heavy investment, with 50% forecast for next year.

The swines.

As an aside has any affiliate or merchant seen the new, substantially improved, toolset and, if so, what do they think?

[coffeelito] 15/11/2007 12:58

the horror the horror of owning a share with this chart, the directors have messed up big time and left us all in the sh!t

[omlaysause] 13/11/2007 14:48

Well looks like the share price will hibernate until March now, until we hear from Maz & Co on how well the new initiatives are going ...... night, night!!!