Thanks to Keiron for including me in the latest blog tagging outburst. From his blog, I discern that I have to post the rules for this wee bit of fun, and then share 8 things about myself nobody knows. I’m a pretty odd girl, so I’ll have to think up things that won’t require my readers to have therapy once they find out about them!

OK, so here are “da rulez”.

“Each person posts the rules before their list, then they list 8 things about themselves. At the end of the post, that person tags and links to 8 other people and then visits those peoples’ sites and comments letting them know that they have been tagged, and to come read the post, so they know what they have to do.”

1 ) I’m really, really, really scared of the dark. Sometimes, if I have to go somewhere at night alone, I’ll be in a state of terror by the time I get there. This includes midnight trips to the toilet. I’ve no idea why.

2 ) I once went to a strip club in Kings Cross, Syndey, with 10 sailors I met in a bar. I believe the club was called “Showgirls”. Eye witnesses tell me that it was actually all my idea. I bought all the lucky sailors drinks till they were paid at midnight, in return for which they agreed to fund the rest of myself and my pals night out. Concerned I might not get my moneys worth, I apparently decided to take them somewhere I thought the drinks would be outrageously expensive. I’ve no idea what went on there beyond vague outlines of mammary glands. Thankfully my brain censored the whole experience beneath a fog of alcohol. I didn’t remember getting home. But everyone else in my room in the backpackers did. Funny that.

3 ) I almost did a PHD in history. I wanted desperately all though my teen years and University to work in a museum, or in historical research. I thought this right up till my final year when my head of department proclaimed me to be a good candiate for a doctorate. Then I realised how much all these jobs paid, how much debt I was in and instantly became a capitalist. One quick post-grad year at business school later, I became an SEO with a marketing agency!

4 ) My other half decided to move half way round the world and give up his job as a dive instructor after we had a 48 hour relationship (I was only in town for a few days). 500 texts and half a dozen phone calls later, we somehow decided to move in together. That was 3 years ago, and we’re getting married next year.

5 ) Much to my own surprise, I recently spent $3500 AUD on a painting by an Aboriginal artist called Vicki Ladd. I was fairly convinced I wouldn’t spend that much money on a painting, but her work is just so beautiful I couldn’t help it. Here’s another couple of her paintings which are being sold by the same lovely chap I bought mine from.

6 ) My father has been a model for Vogue magazine, aged 45. He was also in an advertising campaign for Toyota, France. Truth be told, he was included as a bit of a scenic Scottish backdrop after some people doing a photo shoot at a local big house discovered he was a piper with full regalia. But hey… you can’t take it away from him - he’s been in the glossies!

7 ) My family name is quite a distinguished one. A McCubbin shot down Max Immelman, better known as “The Blue Max“. One of my direct ancestors is one of Australia’s most famous artists. Fred McCubbin was born in Australia after his parents moved there from Old Dailly, Ayrshire. For some reason there are a lot of Physicists called “McCubbin”

8 ) Despite making a living from PPC, I can’t count. I don’t know my times tables, I can’t mentally add and subtract, nor can I apply any mathematical logic to everyday life. I passed Standard Grade maths by the skin of my teeth (Two exams, one D grade one C grade). Strangely, I got 97% for business related maths during my postgrad. This confirmed my suspicions that it wasn’t a learning disability I had… it was a selective learning attitude problem (if you can’t show me how to apply it to real life - I can’t learn it!).

Well, I missed the controversial ones out. You’ll have to buy me some whiskies to find those out!

OK, who am I tagging? Here’s Kirsty’s 8 bloggers!

Keith Bond
Rob Powell
Lee McCoy
Paul Wheatley
David Fiske
John Lamerton
Fraser Edwards
Steven Marwick - in the hope he’ll post more often!

Steve, who sent me a query about affiliate chicken and egg syndrome a while back
has come back with a follow up question about blogging from an SEO point of view. I thought it was a pretty good question, so Steve’s agreed that everyone should get the benefit of my answer.

Here’s what Steve asked :-

“Just wanted to take you up on the offer of helping me with ideas for blog posts from an SEO point of view. I was going to do one for Jackpot Joy if you remember, but I’ve just posted the following article reviewing a brand new affiliate program that I’m heavily involved with called uVme.biz.

Any suggestions on the style of writing or improvements that could be made for SEO purposes?”

Hello Steve!

Your post is good in writing style, but it isn’t so strong on the SEO front. It’s very general in nature, and probably won’t capture much in the way of niche search terms. You have to think a certain may (well, I do anyhow!!) to write a post specifically for the search engines. Of course, there are many other ways to generate blog traffic.. but I shall get to that later on. In the meantime, here is my mini guide to getting your head round the SEO part of the gig!

Ok, to write a good blog post for the search engines you have to sort of start backwards. First, get your subject areas. Then you have to place yourself in the position of your target market and try to work out how they think. Finally, you work out how they would behave within a search engine if they wanted to find out information about the product or service you’re trying to push.

I am going to assume that you are looking to target and recruit affiliates for this programme. OK, so you are looking to attract people who are affiliates, people who are interested in making money online, and possibly bloggers looking for a source of monetisation. I usually try to work out how I could target an article to appeal to one (or more unusually) all of these groups, or a small area of interest within one of those groups that would be easy to rank for.

So off the top of my head, I’d then come up with some post titles that would capture the search terms I think these groups of people might use. For example: -

Make Money Online With New Social Networking Site
Monetise Your Blog - Paid Signups On New Social Networking Site
Social Networking Affiliate Programme - UVMe’s New Opportunity

You might also try to cash in on some searches for competing sites: -

Make Money Online With New Facebook Competitor
Bloggers Monetise The FaceBook Generation

I then write a post which I think contains the information these groups would be looking for if they were searching for this information. I also keep in mind that I should include the search terms, plus related terms (Pseudonyms) throughout the text. However, you shouldn’t load the text with unnatural looking search terms. It puts the reader off and Google also actively looks out for pages engaging in keyword stuffing, and can impose penalties on sites naughty enough to be doing it.

So long as you keep it natural looking, and basically make sure every paragraph is relevant to your title subject, you’re doing the right thing.

I would also usually recommend you do a bit of search term research to determine what kind of information within your subject area is being searched for. However, as I’ve never heard of this kind of affiliate programme before, I checked search terms and found little or no clues as to how I might structure a post based on current search behaviour.

Blogs always tend to attract a lot of “long tail” search terms from people looking for very specific information anyway. A lack of search terms does not necessarily mean a lack of traffic, so don’t be put off by that.

As for other traffic generators, you can get quite a fair bit of traffic out of these various blog syndication sites if you write a reasonable title and include genuinely useful information. Services such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Bumpzee etc can provide good traffic. I’ve had the odd really good day or two on my blog when I write something folks really do like! Also, signing up to blog directories can be a source of incoming links and a wee bit of traffic.

I hope this post was helpful to a few people. I must say it was actually quite hard for me to write down how I think when it comes to SEO. I have been working in SEO for so long much of it happens without me thinking about it, so it’s hard to set out my process exactly.

If you’ve got any kind of question you’d like to ask of an experienced affiliate marketer that you don’t mind being published, please drop me a wee line. I think it’s really useful to all the newbie readers and would love to answer some more to provide a good resource for people just starting out.

If you’ve found my information useful, do please consider giving the blog a bit of link love… you’ll feel better for it!

Hurrayy!!

We’ve just signed up for the affiliate marketing conference event of the year!

Hmmm… now that I’ve written that title I can’t get that old Venga Boys tune out of my head. Hey! We’re going to A4U Expo, doo bee doo be doo doo doo, oh! At London Excel to see… umm…. OK. It’s been long day in affiliate land. Ahem (back to the post).

Venga Boys aside, I’ve just signed up to go to the 2 day affiliate marketing conference being run by Existem, the handy dandy affiliate marketing team who have brought pleasure to the affiliate masses with their great online forum for us internerd types.

I’m very, very excited about rounding off my world travels with a quick trip down to the London conference to fully immerse myself in the wonderful world of affiliate marketing once again. There’s also the matter of the perennial free bar which usually materialises at these events… but that’s not the main reason I’m going.

On the 25th & 26th of October, there’s an action packed 2 days of great affiliate conference sessions as well as an exhibition hall jammed full of exciting affiliate marketing people with whom you can book appointments in advance.

Have I mentioned the Free Bar and buffet at the affiliate after show party?

And another excuse for affiliates to get glammed up and roll out the red carpet? Yes folks, we’ve created our own Golden Globes….it’s the first ever affiliate awards ceremony! There are sure to be loads of shiny prizes for those wonderful folk who contribute so much to our great industry. I imagine they are dreaming up an appropriate category for yours truly as I write this. Most off the wall affiliate? Best incidence of network skulduggery related sarcasm on a blog? Best long distance affiliate? Most bizzare affiliate? The last one is my personal favourite.

I’m particularly looking forward to the free bar at the after conference party. Or did I mention that?

Finally, to help us all meet up with the people we need / want to the affiliate conference will be running several structured networking sessions. There’s no word as yet regarding whether these will be of a free bar nature, but I live in hope.

So if you live anywhere near London (or even if you don’t). It’s definately time to register for this years must-attend affiliate conference. Why? I hear you cry? Well. Aside from any of the other great features, you can come and have a drink and a chat with me and listen to me pontificate away about affiliate marketing and how smashing it is.

You can register online at A4UExpo.com. Its £179 ex VAT till the end of this month (July) for early birds like me. From then on, its £279 ex VAT.

Affiliate Conferences Are The New Black - Get Into One Today!!

So I get up this morning over here in Australia, full of the usual joys of spring at the prospect of my early morning stats check. There’s nothing better than a cup of tea and some stats in bed (and no, I have nothing better to do in there in the mornings before some smart alec asks. I’m just that sad).

Soo…. with it being a strong holiday booking season in the UK I was quite excited to find out how yesterday had gone. It was the first day of what is known as the “Glasgow Fair” in Scotland. The start of the two weeks that many Glasgow workers still get off each year. “Some scope for a few wee last minute bookings” I thought, mentally rubbing my hands in anticipatory glee.

So I log into my first network (I check them in the same order each day). And…… Nothing. Zip, Nada, Hee Haw in the way of any holiday revenue. In fact, my overall revenue with them was down by about 60%.

You already know what happened from the title… but I only found out after I checked the A4UForum and discovered that Fasthosts had suffered a huge outage across many client sites (and even it’s own homepage) right at the time when affiliate sales tend to peak.

Here’s the e-mail they sent out some time later: -


16:24 - 21:00

We realise that many of our customers depend on our services for their own businesses and that all of our customers expect and deserve a reliable and robust service from us. We sincerely regret that we were unable to prevent this issue and that some services were unavailable. Please be assured that we will thoroughly investigate the reasons behind this service interruption to ensure that the likelihood of similar problems in the future is minimised.

I find it hard to believe that a company the size of Fasthosts could have an outage of this nature… and in the e-mail they sent out was typically non committal in case any of their customers had the audacity to expect some form of compensation. Of course I know trying that one would be like trying to get blood out of a stone. I further know that the only way to guarantee uptime is to sign up with a more expensive host offering a 99.9% uptime guarantee.

But 4 Hours? Come on Fasthosts, its 2007 not 1999.

My day was saved because my strongest performing sites with the biggest PPC spend on them are with Clook, but all my profit margins were totally humped. Its not the end of the world, but I think I lost a good chunk of revenue yesterday (I’m thinking maybe 30% of turnover) and I’d be interested to know how much affiliate commission went down the pan over all the sites affected. So Fasthosts, on behalf of all the other affiliates I’d just like to say….

“Thanks for pissing all of our valuable traffic up against the wall!”

OK, so today I got a couple of really odd referrals in my search logs from the following domain: -

http://65.54.226.171/hrsv3/Judging.aspx?UrlIndex=0&QueryID=323149&

The other referral was from the same URL with a different query ID. The links both lead to some kind of interface looking for a username and password.

I’m guessing that this is some kind of MSN human review system to check the relevance of sites manually. They bloody well should be too, I get the oddest search engine rankings for some of the posts I’ve created on here. I keep on getting referrals from people looking for “adult pictures”, I’m ranking in the top ten for “e-bay”, and even better… I get regular traffic who have a burning need to find or see “bums”.

Having just had a quick Google, this SEO Roundtable article from January 2006 was about all I could find out about it online. The post links to a couple of forum discussion threads about it.

I’m assuming they look at the relevance of your site as regards to different search terms, with the query ID’s representing particular search terms. Just a guess mind you. Who am I to presume know what goes on in the hallowed halls of the MSN search service, and the activities of their human marketing drones?

They musta have thought I was relevant mind you. I’m still ranking for E-Bay, Bums, and Adult Pictures.

Is someone trying to tell me something I wonder? Should I post that picture my other half took of me in the bath on my birthday? Hmmm…….

As an affiliate, I have always been interested in patterns of behaviour and influences upon online consumers (well, I’d be mad if I wasn’t!). A couple of things have happened in the last month which have gotten me to thinking about how vunerable affiliate marketing business owners are to the influences affecting offline retail trends.

There’s no doubt that this time last year sales were affected in affiliate-land as our football mad nation ground to a halt with millions of football fans being too frightened to be any more than ten paces from a TV on any given day.

Last month, the UK was affected by terrible flooding during a month which should have been the start of our summer. Many people were flooded out of their homes, and millions of pounds worth of damage was done in what turned out to be the wettest June since records began.

It’s been reported that the retail sector came out of the month of terrible weather largely unscathed with an overall increase in sales of over 5%. However the figures are generalised over the entire retail sector, and are based on growth against last year’s World Cup month of June. It’s also reported that offline retailers were often engaging in heavy discounting, and that some retailers struggled dreadfully during this month.

Retail areas which were most adversely affected were Clothing, Footwear, and DIY type goods (although I did speculate that dehumidifiers might see a surge in demand). On the other side of the retail see saw, homewares and other goods from department stores saw a surge in sales after people abandoned the unkind outdoors for a bit of indoor retail therapy to cheer themselves up.

So Did All This Affect The Affiliate Sector?
The graph below shows my own affiliate sales patterns during June. The actual daily sums involved are obscured, and the sectors making up the mainstay of my activity during June were lingerie, swimwear, gifts, cosmetics, skincare, and UK Holidays.

The blue line represents my profits after sales costs on a day to day basis, and the pink line is the average daily sales value up to the point it was plotted. i.e. on day ten of the month the point at which the pink line is plotted represents total sales for the month divided by ten. I’ve removed the information regarding my profit levels, y’all don’t need to know that

As you can see, things were extremely unstable for the entire month of June and my average sales saw a steady decline after mid-month when the flooding happened. However, Father’s day was also in mid-June, so I have to assume that some of the peaks early in the month are attributable to that. I didn’t do any Father’s Day specific campaigns though, so I don’t think the peak early in the month (and therefore the decline in the latter part of the month) is entirely Father’s day based.

I’m not entirely sure that all of the decline is entirely attributable to the floods, other factors were quite clearly at play.

Will This Month’s UK Interest Rate Rise Affect Affiliate Sales?

Our recent interest rate rise is certainly designed to cool off our high spending ways, and with another one predicted to be on the way before the end of the year, there’s no doubt that a retail slowdown will result.

I’m not yet seeing any early effects of this in my campaigns for the sectors I mentioned above this month.

As you can see, I’m having a much more pleasant month as sales slope gently upward (UK holiday bookings are partly responsible) and huge peaks and troughs are not so evident.

Clearly, any effect on affiliates will depend on the sectors they are operating within. An interesting comment by SimonB (who works for a mortgage and loan lead broker) on this A4UForum Thread notes that “We’ve had our 2 biggest weeks ever in the past 2 weeks”. So it seems that debt consolidation affiliates are going to have a nice strong increase in business over the coming months! Not a negative in sight for them as people start to struggle to meet the costs of their monthly debt repayments.

We can also speculate that luxury items will see a decrease in sales online, but might people also turn increasingly to online retailers to get things at cheaper prices as the interest rates squeeze disposable incomes? It’s also likely that sectors targeting consumers who buy essentials such as pharmacy and other medical items online will remain steady.

Although I’ve not been able to find any figures to back up the effect of interest rate changes on online spending, it does seem clear that only certain online sectors would be affected if there was to be a retail spending slowdown. The good news for us affiliates, is that we have the ability to diversify the sectors we are promoting to offset any alteration in income.

In light of the interest rate hikes that have happened since I left the UK, this is something that I am certainly going to think about now rather than waiting for parts of my income to potentially drop through the floor!

Ok, so I’ve now left the warm bosom of my other half’s family in Perth after ten days of tourist fun. I always have trouble getting back down into a work routine after a few days off. I jokingly said at the end of my last post that I’d be posting about affiliate procrastination syndrome next. However, I have a lot of problems concentrating and find it too easy to skive off after a holiday. I also know other affiliates do too!

I’m not sure if anyone takes it to quite the level I do… I had some learning difficulties when I was a wee tot, and I still have similar symptoms. I’ve just learned how to deal with my lack of organisation as an adult!

I usually find that for at least a week, I seem to be able to while away the majority of the day just bumbling around the internet THINKING about work and kidding myself on I am being productive.

I don’t have a week to waste right now, I’ve got 5 weeks to do a block of work so I can do nothing for 6 weeks in Fiji, Hawaii, and the United States. so there are a number of steps I usually take to get my concentration levels back up and get right back into work in a productive way.

1 ) The night before I am going to go back to work, I sit down and identify what I was working on before I went away and write a list of those tasks in priority order.

2 ) I set myself 5 key tasks that are easily achievable for each day of my first week back in the saddle. That way, when I set off on one of my regular internet wanders I can snap out of my haze easily by referring to my wee list on my desk.

3 ) I have a good look at what has been performing well when I have been having my time off. An easy first post-holiday step is to have a good look at my campaigns and see if anything has seen a surge in sales that I can build on. It’s usually a quick and easy way to do something productive without it taking too much complex work to achieve.

4 ) I give my PPC spend a good old spring clean and make sure that everything I have running is still paying for itself. It’s amazing how those small campaigns that are costing below a fiver a day can eat up my beloved profit margin if I lose sight of the intricacies of my advertising spend. This is a great way to feel as if I’ve really achieved something positive early on.

Well, hopefully I will follow my own advice this week and get things pushed back on a bit. We are borrowing the other half’s uncles holiday home in Margaret River so I have an indoor toilet and everything!

Well hello! It occurs to me I haven’t done much blogging recently. So what’s happened? Well, a few things.

1 ) We have arrived in Perth, and the weather is rubbish and I am freezing all of a sudden. This has resulted in me achieving affiliate hibernation mode. This little known condition prevents you from doing much in the way of work, and lots in the way of procrastination.

2 ) We arrived here for a family party. It’s my other half’s stepfather’s sister’s 50th birthday at the moment and so we have been drunk for 5 days. I tried really, really, hard to sober up after the third day but unfortunately our kind host here in Perth (another of the Stepfather’s siblings) has a wine cellar I could quite happily move into. He used to own a vinyard and he’s one of them blokes who seems to deliver drinks to your glass using guerilla skills the SAS could learn a lot from. It’s been great spending time getting to know my future step in-laws. Yes, this family is very complex as I am discovering. Don’t even get me started on all the half brother and sister in-laws I am about to obtain from other areas of my new family! Particularly don’t ask me about my new nephews and nieces to be. The youngest is 16, and the eldest is a BMW driving 24 year old. This is making me feel horribly elderly, despite only just having turned 30 recently.

3 ) I’ve done a lot of explaining to people I’ve been meeting for the first time about what affiliate marketing is. As usual lots of people nod, look a bit vague and then say “Gosh, I have to learn to do that!” and ask lots more questions. As a result, I’ve been feeling a little bit “affiliate marketing-ed out!”

4 ) It’s the other half’s birthday soon, so we are spending quality time together and I am taking him on lots of shopping trips to see if I can spot him admiring a potential present. This has not yet worked, and as it’s 3 days till his birthday, I am getting a mite concerned. Ideas on a postcard.

I think the next article I am going to write is about how to shake off affiliate procrastination syndrome which strikes us all at some time or another. Unfortunately, I just haven’t gotten around to it yet….