Wandering around the internet late of an evening is a well documented affiliate malaise. On many an occasion we are struck by a blinding bit of inspiration in the wee small hours. Unfortunately, in my case this inspiration is sometimes driven on by a bottle of wine and ten large whiskies.

Sometimes I find domains in my account I don’t remember putting there! A quick spot of private detectoring usually reveals that the registration date took place the night before I suffered an inexplicably terrible hangover.

I’m going to list some of these mystery domains here, as well as the reasons and inspiration I can either remember or pieced together afterwards after thoroughly questioning witnesses who were present at the time I lept up off the sofa and crashed off in the direction of my home office at 2am.

bikinitrimmers.co.uk - This was as a result of a frank conversation with one of my best friends regarding personal grooming and how women like ordering these kind of products anonymously. It’s probably not a bad domain, I’ve just never gotten round to developing it. I can actually remember registering this one.

boyfiends.co.uk and girlfiends.co.uk - Another girls night in. I believe the theme of the evening was “all men are bastards”. My idea was one of them grass your ex in type affairs. The female domain was registered after a grudging consensus was reached in the room that some girls could be total bastards as well.

diyhell.co.uk and diyhell.com - Drinks were taken by myself and the other half after a particularly protracted bout of DIY which involved him stripping 57 layers of highly toxic paint off the hall and livingroom in my Victorian flat. Apparently I burst into our (by then well appointed) livingroom after a somewhat lengthy trip to the toilet and announced my great new site idea plus domain names.

howtoluciddream.net - I wasn’t drunk when I bought this one, I couldn’t sleep! Tantamount to the same thing as it transpires, as I “found” this domain name some weeks later. I used to be plagued with the most awful nightmares so I now remember that I decided to write an online blog type thing documenting my attempts to get the bad men in my dreams under control.

leglove.co.uk - Another great post-chardonnay idea. This was actually for a site about hosiery until my friends sniggeringly pointed out that it looked more like the name of a fetish site. I’m not quite ready to explore that world, so it will be idling in my account for some time to come!

Pashpoints.com - my very favourite half-cocked idea. A sex toy reward points site. Buy all your naughty stuff though us toys, lingerie, adult dating, etc… and get points towards naughty prizes. I decline to comment on the topic of conversation in my livingroom that evening, but I vaguely remember it all being very funny at the time.

I bet others have registered worse than I, and to be frank the above does not represent full disclosure. There are one or two I fear might ruin my reputation for life, lol!

Anyone else care to share some 3am domain examples?

I had an e-mail from Steve the other day. He like many others wanting to get a start into affiliate marketing was wondering how you got your site approved for a merchant without actually having a merchant to build site content around. Here’s his question: -

Hi Kirsty.

Ah, yes! The age old internet marketing conundrum. How does one create a website without anything to put on it?

Well, I guess you have to make your own egg and take it from there, lol. Being serious, you really do just have to get into things and make your first site about the niche you think is going to help you earn your first affiliate commission.

I know it’s difficult to create a site without merchants whose products you will promote. However, I’m usually inclined just to pick out the merchants I will be hoping to promote and then proceed as if they had already accepted me. OK, in some networks that means you cant get creatives, but there’s nothing to stop you copying a merchant’s banner image without affiliate code behind it just so you can demonstrate to the merchant how their brand will be featured on their site.

Honestly, 4.5 out of 5 merchants would accept your site if you’d done a tidy job putting it all together and weren’t doing anything naughty on the site, like putting their name beside pictures of nude women.

One alternative to building a whole site that often works for me is to create one mock-up landing page showing the site look and feel, and demonstrating its basic structure and content. That way, the affiliate manager should be able to make a judgement about the suitability of your site.

Merchants really want to accept as many affiliates as possible and take advantage of the exposure they can bring. Putting in an application to a merchant for the first time can be a bit daunting, but it really doesn’t have to be. Even if you get declined, most merchants will be happy to tell you why and what they need you to do to bring the site up to speed. I’ve reviewed many affiliate sites during my time as an affiliate programme manager, and I declined very few for the reasons I’ve talked about above.

Seriously, just jump on in and get cracking on the site front. Once you have some form of site the next one will be 1000% easier to get up and running. If you want an opinion on a site, please do feel free to ask me to look at it. I’ll give you my opinion on how merchants would view it.

Hope this helps you along a bit, and don’t forget to link to your favourite blog when you get your first site finished! I’ll give your first site a link from the post too and get the spidering of your site kicked off.

After all my moaning and general gnashing of teeth recently regarding the often awful treatment of affiliates, it is finally time to share an actual bonafide decent experience.

I’m currently in the process of setting up a bit of a site devoted to womens car insurance. It’s a while since I’ve done anything in the finance or insurance sector, so I’m painstakingly watching what I’m doing lest the FSA come along and demand my first born son because of a poorly-worded description of a policy.

I noticed that most women’s insurance companies such as Sheilas Wheels, Diamond, and Diva Female Car Insurance were with Online Media Group. I decided to apply to the network as soon as I had enough of the site together to show them how I was going to be presenting all their insurance merchants to all my budding female readers. I had heard a few folk saying nice things about how responsive OMG were, so I was hoping for prompt action on my application.

Within 24 hours they let me know I’d been declined. Puzzled, I sent a support e-mail asking why and discovered from their prompt reply I’d accidently mis-typed my own URL (I must have been having one of my regular blonde moments). So once that was cleared up, I immediately got an e-mail welcoming me to the network from an account manager who will be dealing with my account. Nice touch. This was then followed by another e-mail from aforementioned lovely account lady asking a bit more about what I was looking to promote and what other sites I had. Goodness. Two good things in one day. “Can they better that?” I thought.

“Yes, they can.” Was the answer this morning when I discovered three e-mails in my inbox informing me OMG have helpfully signed me up to six womens car insurance related retailers giving me a nice head start on a bit of admin.

It’s such a small thing, it’s quite ridiculous I’m that pleased about this that I have written a nice blog post about it. It just goes to show what a point of differentiation you can achieve by doing some relatively minor, helpful tasks for all your new affiliates.

What a great start to my womens car insurance affiliate career!

Keep it up OMG…. and please… don’t disappoint me, I don’t think I’ve the strength for any more Network related outbursts this week. My other half’s sick of walking on eggshells the whole time. Don’t do it for me, do it for Duncan!

http://www.omguk.com/

A huge amount of negative publicity and indignation was generated throughout the affiliate community when Nick Robertson of ASOS referred to his programmes former affiliates as “grubby little people” and inferred that many affiliates really did not add value to his business, ostensibly because they were engaged in dubious practises. A comment Mr Robertson remains unabashed about.

From the general furore about this in the Blogosphere at the time, one would assume that his was an outdated opinion of the affiliate sphere. But is it?

Over the last couple of weeks, I seem to have read the same story over and over in blogs detailing situations where affiliate networks or merchants assume guilt first and ask questions later. There is also a lack of protection of affiliates by networks in scenarios where merchants move the goalposts on programme terms with no notice period and summarily remove affiliate commissions as a result.

My gut instinct on the reasons behind this continuing issue of affiliates being unequal partners in the business arrangement is what I’d like to name “Grubby Affiliate Syndrome”. We are still viewed as non professionals who are not valued as the professionals we are by a staggering number of merchants.

A small selection I’ve found….

Chris Frost falls foul of Broadmatch issues twice and discovers complete lack of knowledge eminating from the affiliate network: -

Affilinet Accuses Again

Breaking Merchants PPC Rules

Paul Wheatley falls foul of CJ’s network quality department, where it appears they have solved their staffing problems and the overcrowding in the baboon house at the local zoo in one fell swoop: -

Network Quality At Commission Junction Needs Taking Down A Peg Or Two

A thread over at Abestweb highlights the issues involved in networks not protecting the interests of affiliates against merchant reversals where they change T’s and C’s without warning and retrospectively remove commissions

http://forum.abestweb.com/showthread.php?t=90874

Jessica Luthi has some very interesting thoughts on this issue over at her blog also.

http://www.affiliateprogramadvice.com/blog/

From the Affiliate Stuff crime files: -

Primary Insurance change the brand name bidding goalposts and get my account payments stopped.

Primary Insurance - Clueless and Uncommunicative

And finally my ode to CJ bemoaning my $4300 clawback. This isn’t entirely relevant to this post as it did involve bankruptcy, but I’m pretty damned upset about it and CJ’s handling of the matter was, well… “Pish” as we say in Scotland!

Ode To CJ

So what’s all this about? There is a nasty smell in the air IMHO. It is not the grubby odour of grubby little affiliates, but the smell of affiliates being poked with the poopy end of the stick. We definitely have a problem with the way we are perceived as marketing professionals, which I must confess is no doubt partially engendered by frustration at the undesirable presence of a small minority of affiliates who still insist on habitually breaking programme rules or engaging in outright fraud.

However I do feel I have to stand up here and now on behalf of all honest affiliates and point out that there are a great deal of highly skilled pros amongst our number. It’s painfully obvious we often have much more knowledge and experience than the merchants themselves. Why are we not treated as the professionals we are? I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been forced to educate a programme manager (or even members of network staff) who are managing affiliates based on flawed principles.

The most memorable of these was when I was working as an affiliate manager. I informed a well known UK network of fraudulent affiliate activity and described exactly how it was being perpetrated. The fraud involved affiliates registering multiple accounts under false names with sites the did not own listed. The sites in question were big name sites such as Telewest or Virgin Mobile. They would then put through large value cheque orders for which no payment would arrive. The hope was that merchants would not validate their orders and that erroneous commissions would be paid out on.

I discovered a huge number of these accounts, and passed them on to the network. The response I got was staggering. “This is not affiliate fraud”, was the smug and condescending reply. “These are ‘PPC’ affiliates who drive traffic from search engines. There is nothing untoward going on here, don’t worry about it.”

I will not record the words I said out loud when I read this response from an allegedly well-trained member of network staff. What if I hadn’t had the knowledge to contact his superior and politely suggest some retraining? I should have won a medal for self-restriant that day!

On another occasion I had £400 of valid sales removed from an affiliate account because the merchant had gone “overbudget” on their campaign. The network did nothing, presumably in the hope the merchant would allocate more budget in the future.

Yet another time I was removed from a programme for which I generated £14,000 sales a month for with no notice. The reason given by the manager who had started just that week? “Affiliates are affecting our in-house PPC”. When I pointed out 30 days notice was standard practise I was told that the e-mail I’d just been sent was all the notice I’d be getting. I then pointed out he could not possibly have analysed the effect of affiliates on in-house PPC. No reply. 6 weeks later the network quietly announced that affiliates were once more allowed to participate in PPC activity.

What I’m trying to point out in recounting these sorry tales, is that within networks and programmes there is still a woeful misunderstanding (dare I say mistreatment?) of affiliate marketing and the people who make their living from it.

Now, I would like to point out there are a huge number of programmes and network employees who are absolutely exemplary and hugely knowledgable. This post is not designed to mindlessly slag off these guys en-masse or suggest that they are uniformly running roughshod over affiliates. I am merely trying to point out that as things stand, the playing field is not even.

However, affiliates are too often considered the enemy, and I do not know of any other industry where a business partner is so often treated as a second-class individual or where contractual obligations only protect one half of the business partnership.

As things stand, affiliates often suffer from removal of earnings without notice, and the networks who are so happy to collect a third of their earnings do not stand up and protect their contractual rights (I’m all too aware we just don’t have any). As the industry has matured, affiliates have been required to jump through increasingly complex hoops to be allowed to promote merchants and to deal with ever-more exacting requirements from search engines such as Google. In essence, we have lifted our game considerably.

On the other side of the fence, merchants can still reverse commissions for any reason. Merchants can still change terms of promotion with no notice and remove earnings RETROSPECTIVELY. Merchants can do all of this FOR ANY REASON. In what other area of marketing can you treat suppliers like this? I’d love to see what happened if you tried that with the Times advertising department. “Sorry, despite the fact that the ad you ran for us on Sunday generated 3,000 orders we can’t pay you for the advert. Our budget’s run out. You’ll just have to lump it guys”. Yeah right.

So, here’s a challenge to the networks. Who’s going to be the first to stand up and protect your affiliate workforce?

I wait with baited breath.

I was having a chat with an online buddy a couple of weeks back regarding monetising your affiliate blog. My own blog has damned little in the way of money making schemes on it. I want my blog to be seen as a source of information, not a way of lining my own pockets. Affiliate Marketers are wise to monetisation schemes in all shapes and forms, so a cynical money making exploit on my part would soon have all my dear readers departing in droves.

However, sometimes I think it would be good to find a way to create a small revenue stream to help motivate my posting whilst still providing good information for my blog readers and without filling the place with irritating text links and other distracting advertising methods.

Today I’ve just heard about Workcircle’s new blog widget which allows you to display affiliate marketing jobs of relevance to your readership. Much like the Bumpzee and MyBlogLog widgets, all you have to do is paste a small bit of HTML code into an appropriate location on your blog.

This is what their widget looks like in-situ: -

Jobs from Workcircle.com

Workcircle’s affiliate programme is paying for every click through to their job site. This cracking new tool is not just for Affiliate-related sites such as my own. You could pop this widget on a site covering just about anything (with a few choice exceptions!), and have decent quality information of relevance to your visitors which will earn you money. Workcircle have over 400,000 vacancies displayed on their site at any one time.

I’m always pontificating about the importance of covering niches, and I reckon WorkCircle’s new widget could be a great way to help monetise a lot of niche sites.

If anyone is using this programme I’d really like to hear how they are finding it. Please Contact me with any feedback and I will publish it to provide a balanced account.

Well, it seems that contrary to my speculation in my previous post, E-bay’s move to stop affiliates using Adwords paid search advertising had absolutely nothing to do with the auction giant looking to reduce costs on its in-house PPC by removing affiliates from the Adwords arena.

The two online giants are apparently having a bit of a lover’s tiff over E-bay’s refusal to discuss providing Google Checkout as a payment option for E-bay’s online buyers and sellers. Google checkout is a direct competitor to E-bay’s own in-house payment system - Paypal.

In response to this, Google planned a party named “Let Freedom Ring” to promote Google Checkout on the same day as Ebay’s own event, E-Bay Live. The aim was to bypass E-bay and promote Google Checkout amongst the seller community in order to create some support for the adoption of their own payment system. E-bay sellers can be an influential bunch, and have successfully campaigned for change in the past.

As soon as E-bay caught wind of this, they were naturally quite perturbed, with a spokeswoman commenting, “We don’t view that kind of activity as an appropriate activity for one partner to do to another.” Ebay then switched off all of their Adwords US advertising. Ouch. In response, Google have now cancelled their party but there is still a wide ranging outbreak of “petted lips” amongst various executives at E-bay and Google towers.

It’ll be interesting to see how this one pans out! Thanks to Rob At MarketingDrome for dropping me a wee e-mail about this one.

Read more here: -

ZD Net
Searchengine Land
Discussion at Webmaster World

Not too long ago I visited Uluru (or Ayres Rock to all you rampaging colonialists). It’s a truly, truly inspirational place… despite how well-worn it is in terms of being a familiar image associated with Australia. As soon as the rock came into view I was completely struck by a feeling of power and immensity.

How does this relate to affiliate marketing? Bear with me! As soon as we arrived, my partner Duncan felt totally let down. We crowded into a camp site with thousands of caravanners, set in a bland resort purpose built for the hundreds of thousands of people who visit the rock each year. Duncan felt his expectations of getting to grips with the huge cultural importance attached to the rock by the ancient aboriginal culture, were melting away.

However, I was unperturbed. I knew that we could still “commune with the rock” despite the thousands of other tourists thronging around the Uluru scene. As always in an apparently crowded marketplace, the road less travelled is the key to a truly great experience. So in accordance with the wishes of the traditional owners of Uluru, we walked around the great rock instead of over it. 10 kilometers of completely deserted, stunning views of the rock. We discovered aboriginal rock paintings, hidden waterholes, and beautiful solitude with the iconic rock. We saw 4 other people in 3 hours. We got the rock to ourselves by avoiding the cattle-like instincts of every other tourist in the place.

… and this is exactly what I find with affiliate marketing. So often I find a profitable wee gem in an apparently hugely overcrowded market. As with the request not to climb the rock, the indicators of an untapped niche are often staring you in the face, you just have to be prepared to find your own road less travelled. Do not follow the crowd. Do not do the glaringly obvious.

In short, often doing things even marginally differently from what you see staring you in the face is they key to finding your own little bit of affiliate paradise!

We made the effort to find the Uluru you don’t see in the media or popular images…

… and boy did it ever pay off big time!

There’s much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the American side of the pond this morning as several horrified Adwords advertisers wake up to discover they’ve been hit with a huge hike in their minimum bids. I’m not sure as yet if the UK has been similarly affected, cos noboby there has got up yet! *Update* - Yep the UK is affected too! Check out the A4UForum thread on this.

There’s a couple of threads running over at DigitalPoint and WebMasterWorld with the usual (understandable) emotional outpourings that accompany Google’s decisions of an affiliate-crushing nature.

Having read the threads, I was actually quite surprised this was new news to the chaps affected. Us UK types vented our spleens on this one last November in a thread over at A4UForum (this is worth a read if you have been affected and are looking for some workarounds). Could it be that only changes affecting Arbitrage pages have been actioned stateside? I’m unsure. *edit* It seems that this must be an “improvement” to the last algo update to mop up some activity they didn’t wipe out with the last update.

This time I’m viewing this episode from the outside. What I really find interesting about the way people react to these kind of updates is the feverish hysteria that can actually lead to you missing the point when someone in the know tells you exactly what has gone on and why. Good old Keiron Of UKOffer fame (gosh, I must have a crush on him this week). Has jumped right into the fray and told them straight what’s happening. Very few people have paid any attention to him so far…. they’re far too intent on their distress at their situation, and their irritation at what they see as yet another pointless and possibly flawed Google Adwords algo change.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticising these poor blighters. I know I’ve done exactly the same and worse in the past when good old Google has chucked me one of life’s curve balls. Ask my other half. He’s the poor sod who’s got to deal with me in my moments of stress. He deserves a bravery medal just for remaining in the house with me some days . Having feverishly checked my account this morning, I’m totally unaffected. Phew! For the first time ever, this has left me in a situation where I can calmly appraise the situation rather than my usual attempt to reach orbit without the aid of a space vessel.

The main lesson I personally take from this new-found perspective is that it’s important to approach these seemingly disastrous changes calmly and with a bit of a “C’est La Vie” attitude. Easy for me to say I hear you cry? Well yes, it is. But I’ve been hit right in the guts by a seemingly career-ending Google decision more times than I care to recall. Each and every time I’ve managed to recoup at least 60% of my losses within 6 to 8 weeks. Terror is a great motivator for me personally. If only I was that focussed all the time!

After my various experiences I can honestly say the best reaction to this has to be “Right. It’s happened. Lets get past the annoyance and work out what to do about it.” The clues are always easy to find. It’s just a question of being calm enough to see them.

Good luck to everyone affected… I know exactly how you feel right now.

So will I be able to take my own good advice next time Google surgically removes 50% of my income? Will I F*ck as like!!

Keiron has now kindly written an article on his blog about how to create adwords landing pages that won’t get banned. Nice one!

I read about this first on James Omdahl’s blog. Thanks James

Alrighty. Another one for the internet marketing newbies.

One of the most frequently asked questions I see from people looking to get into the industry is “How much can I earn from affiliate marketing?” or “What are the average earnings from affiliate marketing?”.

Now, here’s the thing. In affiliate marketing your earnings are determined by your knowledge, natural abilities, and most importantly: - the amount of work you are prepared to put in. Every affiliate marketer is an individual approaching the medium from a different direction, and with a different idea of what they are going to promote. Your earnings are determined by your own efforts, not an industry standard.

So What Does Kirsty Earn?
Well, there’s little point in me telling you what I personally earn. Why? Firstly, I don’t want to talk about it. Secondly, and more importantly, an exact figure won’t automatically mean that’s what you can earn. You’re not me!

However, I do know that an idea of income levels is a great motivator for many people. With that in mind I can tell you I’ve earned enough to buy two houses, and go on two year-long travel experiences. Not good enough? Well. I’ll give you a phenomenal example of affiliate earnings I know for a fact to be entirely accurate.

Kieron of UK Offer made a hugely inspirational forum post over at sitepoint a while ago. His earnings are quite literally unbelievable, and his success is a standard huge numbers of affiliates aspire to. If I reckon I eat, sleep, and breathe the industry this talented chap IS affiliate marketing personified! Wow. I haven’t seen so many zeros since the launch of Big Brother 8! His post should show any budding affiliateer that there is literally no limit to what you can do if you put the time, energy and flair into this game.

However, none of this helps you work out how much you personally can earn.

So…..

How Do I Reach My Target?

Righto. Simple answer to this question. How much DO YOU WANT / NEED TO EARN?

That’s what affiliate marketing is. You can earn as much as you want to if you put the time in. First off, a decent income is not a distant ivory tower. If you treat it as such, that’s what it will be. Unreachable.

The best advice I can give to you on this is to compartmentalise your target. It works beautifully for me. £1000 a month can seem a lot to aim for if you have never earned a penny at affiliate marketing. So… break it down into manageable amounts over a set period. Lets say you have 6 months in which to bring your moolah up to £1000.

- £1000 a month requires an average of £32 profit per day in a 31 day month.

- So over 6 months that equates to you finding or doing something every day that will earn you £5.33 every day on an ongoing basis.

That may seem a big ask, and not everyone can pull something that will sell out of thin air. But if you break your targets down in this fashion they will no longer seem as daunting or unattainable. Have a target. Have a timescale. Do one thing each day to reach it, and you WILL succeed. Don’t waste time on fantasing about what you could do “if only…”. A decent income is within reach. But YOU have to stand up and grab it. You won’t get it by reading this or any other article.

Your success is inside, so pull it out and get on with it!

Thanks to Keith Bond for getting me involved in the latest blog tagging train. This one is aimed at spreading a bit of link love to charitable organisations… without the use of affiliate links! Very worthwhile IMHO.

My supported charities are as follows: -

Breast Cancer Care
Alzheimers Society
World Land Trust
Terrence Higgins Trust
The Gibbon Rehabilitation Project - I visited the project in Thailand. Hugely worthwhile work.

Okie dokie… now to indulge in a bit of tagging. Here we go… Come on down Steven Marwick.. and update your bloody affiliate blog! Big shout outs also to Chris Frost, David Fiske, and finally Rob at MonetiseThis!