Swollen Pickles

A bad affiliate program is one that does everything in its power to make you feel like you've just paid a visit to an alcoholic, sausage fingered, proctologist.

In the good old days Commission Junction were quite good to me. I was doing reasonably well with them, largely on the back of their relationship with eBay. A couple of years ago, if you wanted to earn commission from eBay referrals, your only option was to go through Commission Junction.

While Commission Junction have a large number of partners, 99.9% of my revenue with them was generated via eBay. When eBay decided it was time to fly solo, and started there own publisher program, 99.9% of the money I would have made through Commission Junction was made via eBay directly instead. So, since eBay flew the Commission Junction coup, my Commission Junction earnings have been sporadic at best. Currently I'm only partnered with Musicians Friend, which generally offers high involvement, high value, products for sale. My last commission probably occurred earlier this year, and since then it's been quiet.

Last month I logged into my dashboard and noticed that my account balance had dropped from the previous month, and the month before that. Four months ago I had $47 in my account. Today I'm down to $7. Why? Here's what I found buried in the Contact Us >> Check FAQs section of the Commission Junction site.

If your account was charged a $10 fee it is because you have not generated any commissionable transactions for a six-month period. Publishers that have less than $10 in their account or a zero balance after six-months of activity automatically have their accounts deactivated. Because publishers can sign-up for a Commission Junction account for no charge, our system carries thousands of accounts that are either duplicates or never generate any activity. This makes it necessary to remove those accounts from the system so that it can work more efficiently for publishers and advertisers that are generating revenue.

So each month I'm being charged $10 for what exactly? Extra support? Help in turning around my poor performance? I'm not sure. All I do know is that I never received any correspondence from Commission Junction to tell me they were siphoning my account. Maybe it's there way of coping with the financial crisis? Whatever it is, it leaves me less than impressed.

Now, I may not be a big user of Commission Junction at the moment, but that is not to say I wont find something I want to promote in the future. With that said though, Commission Junction make it very difficult for me to want to continue on with them in the future. If I don't generate a commission this month, my account will finally reach zero, which will see my account deactivated. Surely I can do something to avoid deactivation? Lets check their FAQs some more...

How can I prevent my account from being closed for non-activity?

Commission Junction deactivates accounts for lack of performance (dormant account policy) if they have not generated any commissionable transactions for six consecutive months. To prevent your account from being deactivated, you can make a purchase from one of your advertisers to generate a commission.

So to avoid deactivation I should generate leads... from myself? Doesn't sound 100% kosher, and there's probably sub-clauses in the individual agreements you enter into with the actual advertisers that could end up seeing you booted from their programs?

Commission Junction is one of the larger affiliate programs around, which is why I guess they figure they can get away with such a dick move. For the big publishers I'm sure none of this really matters, but perhaps Commission Junction should consider that big publishers all need to start somewhere. By raising the middle finger to the minnows of today, they may pissing off the killer whales of tomorrow.

For those of us unable to make it to Germany for Oktoberfest I may have stumbled across the next best thing... Brewfest. One minor problem though, it's in Azeroth, so you're going to need a World of Warcraft account.

Once you've got that sorted, head to the beer garden outside the dwarven capital city Iron Forge. Then, drink up until your computer generated you cant walk straight anymore. Brewfest began on the 20th of September and will finish up on the 4th of October.

Besides the opportunity to get your geek drink on, Brewfest also opens up a heap of Brewfest related quests that will see you drawing your sword against the nefarious Coren Direbrew, leader of the Dark Iron dwarves. Defeat Direbrew and he drops a heaps of cool stuff at random, including some weapons and trinkets, as well as a couple of Brewfest mounts, the Great Brewfest Kodo or the Swift Brewfest Ram. Personally I'm after the Kodo, cause it looks cooler, but as of writing this, I've paid Direbrew five visits, for a total of 25 drops, and neither the Kodo or Ram have dropped once. With a couple of days left my luck might change.

I've also got four days left to complete two of the final achievements in order to take the title of Brewmaster. I have Drunken Stupor (basically getting sh!t faced and surviving a 65 yard fall) and Disturbing the Peace (While wearing 3 pieces of Brewfest clothing, get completely smashed and /dance in Dalaran) left to complete.

Not surprisingly the event has spawned a range of real world merchandise including the "Tankard O' Terror", that can hold close to 2 litres of your preferred beverage. Personally, I'm feeling more than a little include to pick up one of the groovy Brewfest t-shirts. I'm sure chicks dig dudes in World of Warcraft apparel.

The one thing I really love about looking after a website is checking out the visitors statistics. Since the dawn of the pickle, people have found many weird and unusual ways to make their way here, and to date, 2009 has proven to be no exception. Here are ten of the more bizarre search terms people have used to find SwollenPickles.com.

1. "why is mommy moaning book": I'm sure there are a number of potential answers to this question. Hopefully the 366 people that have arrived at Swollen Pickles as a result of typing it into a search engine have found the answer.

2. "tuna taco": I have to blame Paris Hilton for this one.

3. "screech sextape free": Ewwwww! So far I've disappointed 122 people this year. There's no Screech tape to be found here.

4. "my foot in your ass": Once again, ewwww!

5. "whale jizz": This term would be a result of this whale facts post, however, I'm not sure why any one, let alone 61 people, would be searching for this! Weird kink maybe.

6. "pickle porn": Ummm... different strokes for different blokes I guess.

7. "infected penis": Why??

8. "pimp goldfish shoes": These shoes are awesome.

9. "extinction of gingers": The impending ranga extinction is serious business, so I can understand why people where searching for this.

10. "stuff that makes you throw up": if you are looking for this stuff, please refer to search terms three through to seven.

It's common knowledge that World of Warcraft is crack for nerds, which is why this video is so LOL I think it caused me to LMAO. I actually think this scene may well have played out, somewhere out there in the real world. Pause for thought while I got AFK.

If you are in, or around, Melbourne this weekend you may want to head down to Federation Square for the global launch of the latest driving game for the iPhone. Unlike a lot of iPhone applications doing the rounds at the moment, the CityGT game is available for free.

In what is being billed as a world first, the creators are giving people the opportunity to play the game live on the big screen at Federation Square. Ever wondered what it's like to play a video game on a 40ft wide-screen? Here's your chance to find out.

It's not often you get something for nothing these days, so I'd suggest that you take full advantage!

Here are the details (from the press release) for those who may be interested in giving it a closer look

The game was created by Melbourne-based advertising agency, JWT, and offers the best driving graphics available on the Apple iPhone for free.

Join the driving fun at the global launch of CityGT at Melbourne’s Federation Square on September 6th between 11.00am-2.00pm. Have a go at CityGT on an iPhone and show off your driving prowess by playing on the big screen.

Go to the City GT website to find out more about the game before it goes live, and then go to www.apple.com/iphone/apps-for-iphone/ from the 6th September 2009 to download the CityGT game for free.

Edit: A video of the game testing at Fed Square is now on YouTube.

For some reason this afternoon I started singing "Cities of Gold", my own interpretation of the "Mysterious Cities of Gold" theme song. Raise your hand if you watched Cities of Gold as a kid... Cities of Gold was one of my favorite cartoons from the 80's. It was set in the 1500's and followed the adventures of a little Spanish kid called Esteban. Esteban hooked up with a little group and joined the search for one of the Seven Cities of Gold in the hope that he'd find his father there.

The show was a little like Indiana Jones with a few science fiction elements thrown in for good measure. The series was produced in 1982-83 and ran for a total of 39 episodes.

Check out the opening theme. Watching it causes me to regress to a five year old version of myself.

When I was looking up Cities of Gold I found out that a movie version is potentially in the works. Apparently Movie Plus Group acquired the rights to the story from NHK in 2007 and announced that they would be producing a full length feature film based on the original story. , with the intention of looking at a sequel if the film proved successful. The film was supposedly going to enter production in 2008, but I'm not sure whether or not that eventuated. Further details can probably be found here, although I can't confirm that, as I don't speak French.

Three new seasons of 26 episodes each are also rumored to be in progress, with production supposedly beginning in late 2009, with the first season set to hit the screen in 2011.

Something I didn't realise until yesterday was that the people behind Cities of Gold are the same people that brought the world Ulysses 31. Ulysses 31 was another cartoon from the very early 1980's. It borrowed heavily from Homer's Odysseus, or basically just supplanted that story into the 31st century. The post-it not version of the plot goes something like this. Ulysses angers the gods by killing the giant Cyclops, which he did to save some kids. As punishment, Zeus freezes the crew of Ulysses ship, the Odyssey. The only way that Ulysses can save his crew and return home to Earth is by finding the Kingdom of Hades.

Ulysses 31 only ran for 26 episodes, but they were all quality! :p

Check out the Ulysses 31 opening theme...

Thank you for joining me on this trip down memory lane. If you want to check out more theme songs, go read up my "Top 10 TV show theme songs that will change your life: Part 1" and "Top 10 TV show theme songs that will change your life: Part 2".

Raise your hand if you remember the 1980's cartoon Silverhawks... Even though it wasn't the longest running series in history, it still occupies a special place in my heart. As a young fella, I wanted to be able to sprout metal wings and fly. Amateur psychologists can make of that what they will.

For those unfamiliar with Silverhawks first hit TV screens in 1986, and developed by Rankin/Bass as a "space" equivalent of the mega-hit ThunderCats. The series focused on a small band of space police called... SilverHawks. The SilverHawks were a group of part bionic, part human heroes fighting crime and the evil forces of space crime boss MonStar and a whole bunch of far out crazy creatures and bad guys.

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