So for the final time here is our plea, Kelly is running to raise money for the Cardiomyopathy Association. Cardiomyopathy, which literally means “heart muscle disease,” is the deterioration of the function of the myocardium (i.e., the actual heart muscle) for any reason. People with cardiomyopathy are often at risk of arrhythmia or sudden cardiac death or both.

Kelly has currently run 20 miles in training, and besides worrying about where the extra 6.5 miles is going to come from on the day, is all but ready to complete the run. We have in the past offered the opportunity to purchase t-shirt advertising on Kelly’s and all of our team’s (who will be there supporting Kelly) t-shirts, we are getting these printed on Saturday 17th April so you still have time to get your logo on her shirt if you wish.

All we are asking is that you sponsor Kelly Frew for her run, any amount you wish, and you claim your space. I’ll also chuck you a fair few links back from this blog as a way of saying thanks. T-shirt advertising and links! What more could you want?

If you are interested please sponsor Kelly here: http://www.justgiving.com/Kelly-Frew and then email me your logo and site details: paul@ozido.com

Again a huge thanks to everybody who has already sponsored Kelly, I’ll report back how the run goes afterwards.

It’s not been a bad year for the GGUK site. We built the site in late November 2008 and have left it virtually untouched until October 2009 when I added a bit of content and built a few links for it to see if it had aged well enough within the mighty G. Some of the content we added got some good results so I decided to push the site further over the last couple of months and have achieved some pretty decent results.

The site generated about £60k revenue for merchants across all networks with an AdWords bill of exactly £82,06 for the last quarter of 2009. Nothing to write home about in comparison with the big players in the industry but for little me, that’s a healthy profit margin.

So with an eye on the natural SERP’s where most of its traffic is generated I can see the site is on the verge of some decent generic rankings, and this is enough to spur me on and make the site one of our main projects for 2010.

Things to come will be personalised gifts category or mini site, we need to firm up the experience days section and get some real content on there and we recently added the gifting community which is starting to take some shape. I’ve a couple of ideas which I’ll reveal more about once we’ve developed them, but all in all, I’m happy with the results for this final quarter given the effort. I predict if we work on the search rankings for most of 2010, this time next year I’ll be reporting 10 times this figure, that’s the aim I’ve set the guys anyway.

If I don’t post again beforehand, Merry Christmas all and a Happy New Year!

The Premier League will now put the rights to the 46 live matches for the 2009/2010 season out to auction with Sky expected to pick up the majority, after Setanta missed Today’s payment deadline.

There has been a lot of talk over the last couple of weeks about a possible takeover of the channel however none have come to fruition.

Access Industries, controlled by the US investor Len Blavatnik, tabled a £20m bid for a 51% share in Setanta. However they have now said it was unable to proceed with a deal with Setanta. Talk of Endemaol, the maker of channel 4′s Big Brother flittered away into nothing and Sky simply said “we’re not a bank”.

Unfortunately it looks like the writing is on the wall for the broadcaster as the loss of the premier league matches is going to hit their subscriber base hard.

I’m a Setanta subscriber and shall be canceling the membership with them forthwith. Not because i want them to fail but merely because I only subscribed to watch the Premier League matches it managed to pick up. With no premier league matches and me not being a fan of golf or Scottish football, the channel has little else to offer me.

Sadly I won’t be the only person to take this view and I fear this may well be the beginning of the end…

This speaks volumes!

I take no credit for the above image, if you know the copyright owner give me a shout and I’ll give credit where it’s due.

Setanta last week failed to make a payment of £3million to the Scottish Premier League in the final installment of this seasons TV deal. With the English Premier League chiefs expecting a payment of £35million for the rights to screen Premier League matches, Setanta isn’t looking in great shape at all.

If Setanta go into administration it will lead to a firesale or the rights to screen Premier League matches and England qualifiers with Sky Sports expected to sweep up and reclaim it’s dominance in the domestic and international football rights. Sky reportedly turned down a £50million lifeline plea from Setanta saying quite clearly “we’re a broadcaster,  not a bank”.

The English FA is said to have rebuffed attempts by Setanta to reduce its £150m share of the £425m four-year deal meaning Setanta are in last ditrch attempts to raise finance.

I’m a Setanta subscriber and quite frankly I’m not overly surprised by this at all. Setanta came in with a very small subscriber base and offered a lot of money for big games in the hope that they would reclaim the outgoings by increasing it’s subscriber base. It’s a shaky business model at best and your always playing 50/50 odds in situations like these.

Setanta are well off their required subscriber base in order to break even and whats more they are likely to suffer further now as affiliates will undoubtedly abandon the programme given there’s no guarantee of them getting paid if the company goes into administration.

I hope Setanta pull through, but my gut instinct says other businesses would rather claim the TV rights Setanta owns at a cut price rather than help pull the struggling broadcaster through giving themselves more competition. Who else is going to step in to help?

I’ll shut up now…