Yeah, you didn’t really think I was going to settle down over here in Australia and not come up with some more ridiculously outlandish travel ideas, did you? Tsk, tsk, tsk you really should have known better!

Actually, these plans are not imminent but seeing as we have to get on a plane to go to the UK for our wedding… It’d be a shame not to go and visit a few places while we’re out and about, wouldn’t it?

OK, so here it is… my travel plan so far…

Obviously we are sticking around after the wedding to attend the most excellent A4UExpo - hope to see you all there for a chat and to toast our nuptuals! Before that, we’ll have been on a short honeymoon-ette somewhere Eupropean and warm.

Right after the Expo we’re getting our bahookies on a plane and heading for….

Singapore!

We’ll be jumping off the plane here and rampaging round one of the worlds cleanest and tidiest cities, not forgetting to visit the Raffles Hotel and have one of their fine Singpore Slings. Given our newlywed status I very, very nearly booked us into the Raffles. However the girl inside me who was brought up in a 2 bedroom council house just couldn’t let me do it. I can afford it, I just can’t bring myself to spend that much cash on a hotel room!!

After the hangovers have worn off (come on, I’m not only going to have one - look at the money I saved on the hotel room!) its back in a taxi to the airport where we will fly to Phuket and then jump a ferry to…

Railey Beach!!

Wooo hoo!! I’m absolutely delighted to be revisiting this isolated and chilled out beach. You have to catch a water taxi (aka a Thai man in a dodgy longtail boat) to get there as it’s not reachable by road.

However, we will not be slumming it fear ye not. We will be yumming up a bit of luxury in our hotel room complete with private outdoor spa at Railay Village Resort. Its going to be hard, but I’m going to tough my way through it.

Following on from that we will grab another boat and head for….

Koh Lanta!

We didn’t make it here on our last trip to Thailand, so we have decided to have a bit of a look at it and chill out for a few days. After that, we’ll be getting a ferry to….

Langkawi, Malaysia!

“What the hell” We thought. “Malaysia is right next door to Thailand… we’d be mad to miss the opportunity to sample what it has to offer!”

After this we head on back to Singapore and fly back to Queensland. The end of our fun? Nah! About ten minutes after we get back…

Chris Frost Arrives For His Holidays!!

For anyone who doesn’t know, Chris Frost is the jaded fellow on the far right. As you can see, he doesn’t mind a gin fizz or ten (so we all get along just great!) and we will be spending 2 to 3 weeks showing off the very best of Australia’s East Coast to Chris. We will probably take in Fraser Island and some other tropical gems as well as a trip round every bar in Brisbane! As Chris is a keen diver, himself and Duncan will be making like Charlie’s Angels and getting into their wetsuits for some underwater fun.

Once Chris has headed back to the UK, we will be working for 3 entire weeks. Then we’re off to…

Auckland, New Zealand!!

We will be spending a couple of weeks in this beautiful city catching up with Duncan’s family and swapping travel stories (our wedding has meant an awful lot of European trips for his parents and sisters!). We will be spending Christmas and New Year here before heading for…

New Zealand’s South Island!

We thought we’d better round things off with a bit of a tour of the South Island seeing as we missed it the last time. I’m desperate to see sights such as Milford Sound and the Glaciers.

Then…
It probably will be time to go home, because we will have spent 3 and a half months travelling here and there. We will probably have bought a house just before we leave so it’ll most likely be time to put away the backpacks again and do a bit of DIY.

Until….
2 months later when we get them back out again and go to a wedding in Ireland! Given my extreme talent for turning a simple journey somewhere into an outlandish travel extravaganza… anything could happen here, lol.

Phew… I’m not sure how all this happened, but I reckon its going to be a great start to our married life and of course will produce some rather amazing pictures to show off here.

Hurahh!!

Well, once again I’m delighted to have been put on the shortlist for the Affiliate Blog award at the 2008 Affiliate Marketing Awards.

It’s really fantastic to have had people pay me the huge compliment of giving this blog the nod because they’ve enjoyed reading my random outpourings on here. I am made up, so thanks all!

Affiliate Cinderella Has to Stay At Home…
The only injustice here is that I’m not going to be able to attend the Awards Ceremony on June 5th at the Park Lane Hotel, London. Anyone who knows me well will know that it has long been an ambition of mine to don a designer frock and attend just such a glittering occasion. *sigh* This wannabe glammed up affiliate dolly bird will just have to wait for another time

The other esteemed blog nominees are: -

• Jason Dale (www.onelittleduck.co.uk)
• Kieron Donoghue (www.here.org.uk)
• Lee McCoy (www.leemccoy.co.uk)
• Paul Wheatley (www.mooseontheloose.co.uk)

I read all of these blogs regularly and am delighted to see them up for the big prize. Particularly Jason, who’s often hilarious take on the world of the affiliate (and a fair bit of affiliate politics), is an extremely refreshing read. You got my vote Jason!

You Can Vote For Your Best Affiliate Blog Choice Here (and all the other awards also!). I’m not sure it’s entirely fair that Kieron only gets to hold last years title for 8 months - but hey, there’s every chance that won’t matter if he wins again!

Good Luck To All Nominees!

P.S. - Might I point out that once again Duncan hasn’t bothered his bahookie voting for me, despite being an A4U member. Still, not to worry. He can think about that when he’s sleeping on the couch this evening

Oh, you gotta love affiliate marketing sometimes. So the new Adwords rules went live on Monday and I was on alert for the search landscape to change. Nothing happened. Spin forward 24 hours, and as the new ads begin to show on big name brands such as Next and Currys… I give my Adwords account repeated checks for unexpected clicks from long forgotten adgroups. It was all fine.

“Phew.” I thought. “My long-term bad habit of always deleting the contents of old adgroups but leaving the ads up in case I later decide to promote the merchant another way is OK - I’ve not missed anything!”

With a happy heart and secure that all was well, I wandered off and spent a rare night having quality time with Duncan (as opposed to obsessing over affiliate-world).

Happy Happy Joy Joy…
Imagine my sheer delight at the whimsical nature of Adwords when I awoke from my repose this morning and logged into my “A-OK” Adwords account and saw these two beautiful lines in a campaign that only usually has a spend of around £35 a day in total.

Yep. That’s right, a couple of old ads from before the dawn of time which had been prohibited due to trademark issues, suddenly lept into life, and buggered right off with my cash. The top one doesn’t even have an effing affiliate programme any more.

Of course, this is my own fault for being incautious, I had absolutely no idea those ads were there. I can’t even remember putting them into my account. I bet I wasn’t the only one getting a shock when I logged into my PPC account today!

My only consolation is that my adgroup budget saved me from losing any more than a couple of hundred quid… but it did put a wee bit of a hole in yesterdays profits.

Its a bit like Christmas in reverse is this. Google coming down your account chimney and leaving you a present to find in the morning. Except Father Google Christmas doesn’t leave you a nice present, he leaves you a big bill for something you didn’t want.

AARRGGGHHH!!!!!!!

Just as a follow up to my last post, after I’d went on and on about how you should write copy for SEO a few people came back to me and said “But I can’t write at all? What’ll I Do? Should I Give Up on Affiliate Marketing If SEO Copy Is So Important?”

There Is Another Way…
For the last week I’ve been getting Duncan to help me out with copy. He has never been able to express himself in the written format as he has some quite serious issues with managing to get it all to “make sense” on paper. However, Duncan is a very articulate person in terms of being able to discuss things verbally. Given that I’m currently completely stacked out with mountains of copy waiting to be written, and don’t need much in terms of the technical work and graphics Dunc usually does for me, we decided something had to be done!

We’d heard mixed reports about speaking software (the stuff that writes down what you say), but decided… “what the hell, we’ll give it a go!”

So We Took The Plunge And…

We tried Dragon Naturally Speaking - And although it’s far from perfect (I was going to do a tally of how many times Duncan has said the word “F*ck” as a result of trying to train it to understand him but totally lost count!). It has given him the ability to come up with articles that are nicely structured and only need a small amount of editing to remove a small number of “funnies” that the software seems to put in there.

It has gotten better all the time mind you, so we’re expecting that he will get quicker and quicker using it as the software “gets used” to the way he speaks.

Phew…
It’s a huge relief to have him contributing in this way as the need for content surrounding every new brand and merchant was becoming a bit of a bottleneck in our operation, despite us having the help of one or two people with some copy. It’s one of the reasons I’m not able to blog as much at the moment, and I’m really, really missing writing in this blog as it helps me wind down in the evenings. Hopefully Dunc’s new role as a copywriter will help me get back to posting more often.

The Verdict - It’s Worth A Go If You’re Having Bother…
All in all, I have to say if you can talk about something but you have bother writing about it, you can probably use this software as a way to create your own copy. At £110, it’s not cheap but then you’d use that amount for 2 or 3 articles from a copywriter.

We bought our copy from Amazon.co.uk for £110 which was £40 off the RRP (nb, that’s not an affiliate link!)

Duncan Says….
That he feels the system resources the product description says you require are actually underestimated. This software is quite resource heavy and we had to upgrade the RAM in his computer to make it work properly. Therefore he thinks you’d need at least a 2 GHZ processor and at least 1000MB RAM to actually make the software function as it was intended.

If you use this software, let us know how you get on. Like I say, it’s not perfect but its really helped us out!

… but it’s not actually all that easy either! I’ve been thinking about this subject for a while now. After almost 9 years working online, writing content for SEO has become second nature.

It was only recently when I’ve been trying to show a couple of people how I do this that I’ve realised it’s not all that easy, or obvious. So whilst everyone in the know is banging on about content being king, lots of people have been saying “Yeah, alright but what kind of content does the king bloody well want to see?!”

So with that in mind… here is Kirsty’s basic guide to creating compelling content that will help drive relevant traffic to your site!

OK. So lets look at this in two parts. Firstly, how you should go about writing content for your site in general, and Secondly how to come up with ideas for creating additional, relevant content around your chosen niche.

1. How To Write Your Site Copy
Lets assume you’ve sorted out your merchant. Lets further assume that your shiny and new site is sitting there resplendent with exciting products for your potential customers. All you have to do now is learn the ins and outs of SEO in order that you may have a chance of anyone ever seeing them!

Now, simply copying whatever the merchant has on their site (or having nothing at all in there) just ain’t gonna cut it. The King of content has outlawed the copy and paste marketing method, so it’s time for y’all to get creative. What I’d recommend you do is something a little bit more than simply re-wording your merchant’s product or product group blurb.

Oh, and obviously I’m writing this guide with no idea of your site structure or how / where your products are situated, so its quite general. Swap “product section” for “product” in the below if you will - it’s still relevant! Don’t worry, I’ll be answering questions at the end as usual!

So for each of your product sections, do the following: -

- Sit down with notepad and pen and have a really good brainstorming session. Try to imagine you want to buy the products you are trying to push.

- Write down all the search terms you’d personally use if you wanted to buy something from each of your product sections. Get REALLY detailed with this. Think of every possible different way you can to describe the group of products you’re trying to sell.

- Check your search phrases out on your local friendly keyword tool such as the Google Keyword Sandbox, and work out which of your search phrases is likely to be most popular. Also, you may find some additional search term variations. Add these to your master list for each of your product pages.

- Now it’s time to write a product section description! To avoid accidental plagarism I suggest you read over the merchant copy, then read your own list of keywords which is talking about all the different ways you could search for your products. Then try to write something in your own words (WITHOUT looking at your keyword list or the merchant site) that talks about all the benefits of the product, and try to weave in as many of the search terms from the list you’ve compiled as possible. If you want to include specific information, you can go back and get the details after you’ve written the main copy.

NB I’m not telling you to stuff in as many keywords as possible here, its really important to have a completely natural style of writing. Just keep your search terms in the back of your mind and when you get the opportunity - mention them!

OK, so hopefully by now you have an original and keyword rich product section description.

- To put the icing on the cake, make sure you include a really relevant page title. I see so many sites with poor titles, and it’s a shame because it really, really, helps with your search engine positions. Make sure you use your page titles to their very best advantage. Don’t just settle for “Product Name”. Really make the most of the opportunity to mention as many of your keword variations as possible.

i.e. Buy Cheap Product Name UK : General Site Topic Term : Product Name

OK, now repeat the above until you’ve written original content for all of your site sections. Now it’s time for step…

2. Writing Content Around Your Product Sections
I thoroughly recommend that you do more than simply write a bit of content for each of your site sections. There’s no way you’ve been able to cover all those wonderful search terms in your list from earlier. What a waste of an opportunity for some good traffic!

So…

- Get that list back out! Now, identify the search term areas you weren’t able to include in your site section descriptions. I’d recommend looking at terms that are looking for specific product features that match those you are trying to promote.

i.e. if your page is about acne look out search terms such as “solutions to teen acne” “natural acne treatment”

- You can now create some really genuinely helpful articles designed to capture searches from people looking for solutions to questions, or a specific product feature. Link to your product section from each of them, or direct to merchant… the choice is yours. And guess what? It’ll bring in traffic that converts like mad!

It will be so much more relevant than general terms to do with your product area, getting people to your site who really know what they want but don’t know where to find it. It’s simply up to you to show them the way by creating good SEO content to capture their search.

Integrate your articles into the main navigation of your site, and even link to them from the relevant product section. Trust me, this simple system will create a site with great SEO and will increase your chances to rank for lots of different search terms.

If you want an example of where I’ve done this successfuly, you may refer to the Lingerie Brands site I’m always talking about here. In particular, check out one of my Lingerie Brand Sections and see how I’ve written my content. No, I don’t always follow the steps I’ve outlined above - but I find content and SEO intuitive and really love writing it.

I really hope this general guide has helped. I’ve now realised just how difficult it is to write good SEO copy for many affiliate marketers. I’m luck enough to be able to push it out without thinking about it, and can generally write 1,000 unique words per hour. Gives me numb fingers though!

For further reading in this area, check out Kieron’s guide to getting traffic to your new site. He mentions some areas I’ve not touched on in this article which I think a lot of people will find very helpful.

I had a bit of an interesting e-mail from Mike recently asking for some guidance on whether his affiliate income aims were realistic or not!

Here’s his question…

Kirsty,

Thanks!

I think aiming to earn $100 a day is a good aim to have BUT (and lord you must have known there was a but coming). If you’re still at the stage of trying to refine your niche ideas and really work out where you will make this money from, you may be getting a little bit ahead of yourself. Don’t get me wrong here it’s absolutely correct to set yourself financial aims, something which has been a huge motivator for me. I don’t want to put you off, but you have to consider that lots of affiliates have been trying to make money online for a year or even two and still haven’t reached the goal you’re talking about. The thing with affiliate marketing is that it is all very much down to the individual. One persons ability to make $100 a day is very much different to another person with the same aim. So you might get $100 a day in your first month, it might also take 2 years.

Some of the reason for potentially taking a while (or never) to make affiliate cash is EXACTLY what you are facing right now… Where the hell do you actually make this money?! The other part is the really important bit of what I’m going to tell you – people set themselves these kinds of aims, fail to meet them because they can’t find their “affiliate mojo” and they get disheartened. However, in my opinion it can be overcome and your earning power speeded up if you deal with things in the right way.

So keep your $100 a day in your mind, but don’t focus on it. First of all….

Find Your Affiliate Mojo!

LOL. The first thing you need to do is find that product that’ll make you go “Yeah Baby, Yeah!” I always tell new affiliates its SO important to find an area that you are passionate about and try to find something in that area you think you can make work. If you try to do something you don’t give a toss about just because you’ve been told you’ll make a killing, you’ll get bored and most likely fail. It’s basically because you can’t identify with your buyer (something you get better at as you go).

A couple of things I’ve written about that might help you: -

How To Find Your First Affiliate Niche
http://www.affiliatestuff.co.uk/getting-started-as-an-affiliate/ask-kirsty-how-do-i-find-my-first-affiliate-niche/

There’s a fair bit in there that will try to give you insight into how you should think to find that first place to make yourself a bit of cash.

Top tips from Super Affiliates – I went to the Meet the Super Affiliates Panel at the A4UExpo last year and took a note of the success tips the 4 panelists were handing out.
http://www.affiliatestuff.co.uk/general/top-success-tips-from-super-affiliates/

Then…

Start Small And Build It Up From There…

One of the most pertinent points in the articles above was that you should start small and build your expertise around a small area. I agree wholeheartedly. Once you’ve perfected your technique in your small niche you will be able to re-use the same method to build traffic and drive sales in other areas – and scale up your income. Find one thing that has really worked for you and then use that to find lots of other little things that’ll line your pockets.

So, this has been an incredibly long winded way of saying this to you – Don’t focus on getting $100 a day. Focus on getting your first sale, then focus on how to get another one, and another, another, etc. Compartmentalise your aims. First of all aim for a sale a week, a sale per day, 3 sales per day, 13… and the $100 will take care of itself. The main thing is that you should always be setting yourself small goals and working towards them constantly. They work so much better than one big aim which is designed to achieve all your aspirations. Forgetting to take account of the small achievements can really drag you down.

Its really important to get your mindset right to do affiliate marketing. I know a LOT of people who could make bags of cash as affiliates and they know too. But they just don’t… because their mindset is wrong. They can’t motivate themselves to get to where they need to be with things.

So yeah, that’s how all the above can be summarised. “Yeah, $100 is no bother at all. BUT you need to make sure you motivate yourself to get it!”

We’ve got a new resident in the office here at Affiliate Stuff Towers, and I thought y’all might like to meet him. He’s been a valuable addition to the team, and he’s fitting in so well we wanted to introduce you to him. This is Dave, he turned up 2 days ago and has been hanging out with us ever since!

Isn’t he a beauty?! His appearance is all the more cool when you consider we’re in a first floor apartment. He’s come up to see what we’re about, and almost completely eradicated the ants nest that has been plaguing our kitchen since we moved in. He even headbutts the window to try and get the ants he can see wandering along our windowsill. They’re clearly worried. They’ve moved their main street from the outside of the window and into the “safe zone” with us. They can run… but they can’t hide from Dave! Other than pest control, Dave’s main duties are keeping us entertained when we get fed up with work. Whenever it gets too much we wander over to the window and shoot the breeze with him for a while. He looks suitably interested in our affiliate woes, and its a social arrangement we hope lasts a long time!

In Other News…
We’re settling in fine here in our little corner of Australia. The walk to the beach is a very taxing 45 seconds from our apartment, so Duncan has bought a surfboard and is currently attempting to procure as many bumps and bruises as possible in his attempts to become a better surfer. I wouldn’t mind, but I only sent him out to buy a waterjug? Clearly he got confused!

The Only Downside To Australia Is….
The telly is totally bloody awful. All they seem to have on is American crime shows. It’s depressing. Every night’s the same… “Shock Horror Murder Disaster!! Tune in again next week to see who gets disembowelled!”

The only shining light in the TV schedule for me is Bondi Rescue. As the name implies its a show about the lifeguards at Bondi Beach going about their daily business and pulling the incautious from Bondi’s amazingly treacherous waters. I gotta say the prospect of one of these fine specimens giving me CPR is almost enough to make me consider giving drowning a go. Phew!!

Check Out The Bondi Rescue Photo Gallery Here

Every Tuesday at 8pm I’m there front and centre waiting for my weekly dose of lovely lifeguards.

Hmmm…. Perhaps it’s time I got out a little more again eh? Panic ye not folks, my normal travelling service will be resumed shortly, lol!!

So you want to get in on some of this exciting travel paid for by affiliate marketing? Then this is a great opportunity to get into it!

It’s not often that I’m impressed enough to spontaneously advertise a merchant’s new programme and incentives, but those genius lads at Sunshine.co.uk have come up with a total beauty. Their new incentive means even total beginners are in with a chance of a free week’s holiday. And it’s Sooooo simple it’s almost painful.

For the last wee while Sunshine have been running a really simple series of “missions” designed to entice people who have never worked in the travel sector before into promoting them. Two of my friends have already won holidays just for setting up a site and popping up a couple of pages of content! I like them odds

Interested? OK here’s what you have to do!
First of all you need a site related to an area of Sunshine.co.uk. It can be about one of their resorts, holiday region, or based on a country.

Second, add two pages of content about their hotels or resorts. Then e-mail Chris, the friendly Sunshine.co.uk affiliate manager and tell him you want to be in on his holiday promo. More details on this and some other things you’ll need to tell Chris here.

Don’t Know How To Set Up A Site?
Don’t forget to read my Wordpress 101 Guide. It has everything you need to get your first site up there and fighting.

You don’t have an excuse not to try this, and I can assure you that the feeling of travel through the powers of affiliate marketing is one of the most deeply satisfying experiences you’ll ever have!

Greetings! Just a short post to see if there might be any Sunshine Coast residents I don’t know about lurking around in my subscribers?

I’m trying to organise a small and friendly Sunshine Coast affiliate meet on a weekend afternoon quite soon. I’ve already drummed up a handful of people, and thought I’d do a wee blog post just in case there were any affiliates or wannabe affiliates reading on here.

It’ll be very friendly (because I will be there, lol) so if you’re interested, don’t be shy and do drop me a line via my Contact Form or even leave me a wee message in the comments field below. It would be great to see anyone from the local area!

All together now!

“Happy Birthday To Me….”

Hurahh!! I have just realised that it is exactly one year to the very day since I started writing this blog. It only seems like five minutes ago since I wrote my first ever blog post about Google Checkout Not Tracking. A couple of weeks later I realised people might actually be interested in what I had to say about matters affiliate related when I wrote about my passion for this business and how I thought AM was The Greatest Job In The Universe.

Since then I’ve gathered over 400 subscribers (thanks guys) and have really enjoyed exploring my own love of the business. I have enjoyed helping other people understand the mechanics of affiliate marketing and attempting to infect them with my enthusiasm even more, and hope to continue doing so for a very long time to come!

To celebrate the blog’s first birthday I’ve commissioned a brand new custom blog theme, as the current one is looking a bit past it and old.

I’d also like to throw the floor open and see if anyone has any areas they’d like to see their roving affiliate reporter talking about. I’ve got lots of ideas for some great posts, and now that we are settled into our new home in Australia… I should have lots more time to get into a bit of blogging. So if you want to know more about anything not already covered, or if you’ve ever sent me an Ask Kirsty I didn’t get around to replying to… now is your big chance! Contact Me Here, don’t be shy!

We are celebrating here tonight with wine and fine food… all in the name of Affiliate Marketing.

Cheers Everyone!!