I went to the “Meet The Super Affiliates” session at the A4U Expo last week. Unsurprisingly, it was one of the most popular sessions I attended.

Lots of good (but understandably general) advice was given out to the attendees. Again, these are just my notes frantically scribbled down on my conference programme to refer back to. If something doesn’t make sense - blame my shorthand!

The session was run by a panel of 4: - Kristopher Jones, Kieron Donoghue, Sri Sharma, and Duncan Jennings. I won’t do a bio on all of them, I’ll say only this: - Each one of them generates millions of pounds of revenue each year. Kieron in particular mentioned a monthly PPC spend I don’t think I’ve achieved in my entire career. That’s what a super affiliate is!

OK, so the session kicked off with a question to all panelists: “How Proprietory To Affiliate Marketing Success Is Technology V’s Strategy?” Here are some of the responses. Alas I can’t tell you who said what. But hey, it’s all wonderful advice!

- Technology helps but strategy is key to success was the overwhelming response from all.

So what strategy tips did we glean for our super affiliate panelists?

- Start small, and build your expertise around a simple strategy.

- Focus on a niche. Become the best within that niche. Create quality content.

- Find an angle to create your income stream.

- Understand the market before you even begin your strategy. Study market stats and buyer behaviour information to help you target your efforts effectively.

- If you lack an essential skillset, try to partner with someone who has those skills on a rev share basis.

- Pick a topic you are passionate about for your marketing efforts.

- Think about a different angle in order to direct relevant, converting traffic to merchants rather than taking on the big boys on generics. The example Kieron gave on this tip was based on promoting satellite TV signups. Rather than targeting people looking for straight satellite TV, look at targeting search terms relating to sporting events only available on pay per view. i.e. A Ricky Hatton fight on Sky.

- Don’t have the technical ability to develop a web site? Use Wordpress, Kieron is a huge fan of this excellent, free, and easy to use system. Here’s an example of a really, really basic Photo Developing Offers Blog I’ve recently added to one of my small niche sites. It took about 4 hours to set up, start to finish… including content!

- Want to know what this years top selling products will be? Ask. Next time you’re out shopping, keep your eyes open. Look for any products creating a buzz, ask retailers what they think will sell this year.

The overwhelming response from these guys was that you don’t need to be technical to be a success. Affiliate Marketing is, well, marketing after all. In my personal opinion it’s great if you’re technical or have technical resources at your disposal, but it’s FAR more important to be able to think creatively about new niches and how to target buyers.

Another question posed to the super affiliates was: -

Which Industry Sectors Do You Steer Clear Of?

Kieron: Travel, it’s a huge and competitve sector that involves a lot of work and very little return.
Sri: B2B products, which have a long sale time and where potential customers are likely to make a call rather than completing a purchase online.
Duncan: Web Hosting - Merchants make huge profits in the long term within this area, whilst the affiliate gets a one-off CPA. This makes for a situation where the lead rate is too low and the paid search costs are too high.
Kris: - Non branded products where there is a recognised brand within the same marketplace.

Finally, the panel was asked to give Two Top Tips for success:

Kris:
1 ) Find your strategy, replicate your strategy, and scale it up to build your business.
2 ) Respect the industry. Don’t be tempted to get rich quick, think long term.

Duncan:
1 ) Focus on quality. You’ll benefit far more from this approach.
2 ) Pick an area where merchants pay decent commissions.

Sri:
1 ) If a plan doesn’t make sense in one minute when you are talking about it. Drop it.
2 ) Put in 300%, but enjoy it or it simply won’t work!

Kieron:
1 ) WORDPRESS!
2 ) Don’t lose your shirt on PPC. Learn it first before you jump in with both feet. It’s way too easy to crash and burn!

Very, very simple and straightforward advice… but I really thought it would be very valuable for many of the readers of this blog and also serve as a good example of just how worthwhile it will be to attend A4U Expo 2008. And yes, I am angling for a free pass. Matt Wood, take note!

Ummm…. ok, this is actually starting to get a bit embarassing this week. Having not had a peep since my somewhat hilarious Lovehoney Freebie I’ve been on fire with this weeks Origins Gift Pack, and lets not forget my Wonderful Telly From POR.

So, imagine my delight yesterday afternoon just as I was coming down from the weekend of fab freebies, when a white van man turned up at the door bearing gifts from a Tradedoubler-like direction.

As you can see, they have bestowed upon me a bumper pack of Avon goodies which I completely adore! I’d like to thank Tradedoubler and Avon for sending me such a yummy gift. I’ll have to live in the bathroom for months on end to get through all my new gear… but that suits me right down to the ground!

I was furiously taking notes I thought might be of use to blog readers during some of the sessions at the A4UExpo last week. I attended “The Confluence Of Search And Affiliate Marketing” by Kristopher Jones on the first day of the conference and thought he had some really pertinent points to make. Obviously, the below are not his own words I’ve only noted down some key points which appealed to me and how I interpreted them.

For anyone who is not aware of Kristopher’s work, he is one of the world’s top internet marketing experts, President and CEO of Pepperjam, a full service internet marketing agency which is one of the top 500 privately owned business’ in the US. In other words, he’s a super affiliate and he really, really knows how to generate revenue!

There were lots of really compelling stats right at the start such as 60% of affiliate sales are driven by SEM affiliates, 95% of sales come from 5% of affiliates, and much about how affiliate marketing is a great vehicle for merchants to improve sales. But this is a blog for affiliates, so we don’t need much convincing.

Kristopher’s original strategy way back in the day was to find a way he could generate a small amount of revenue each and every month for every merchant on the scene (around 2,000 at that time). His aim was to find $50 of revenue for each one, and he achieved this in 2000 / 2001. For those of you with poor mental arithmetic skills, he managed to rake in $100,000 US per month by following a very simple strategy. He found a very small, simple way to make a bit of revenue for a single merchant and then scaled it up to apply to every merchant in sight.

I suspect that brand name bidding had a lot to do with this kind of success back then, but its a very, very, pertinent bit of advice. You only need to find a way to make £5 a day from something 20 times to make £100 a day. That’s a very strong part of my own strategy. I always aim to get something up and out there every day. Following this formula I grew my own affiliate business to a full time income within 3 months.

Look to the long term - Perhaps this might seem an obvious bit of advice when it’s written right in front of you. However, many conversations I had at the Expo focussed on a distinct group of affiliates who still don’t look beyond next month and towards the way affiliate marketing will change in the future. It’s important to build quality landing pages and content which will support your affiliate business through periods of change. The old saying quality is king is well worn for a good reason.

Make sure you have a strong PPC account structure - We’re all very much aware of the mystic (or is it mythical?!) Adwords Account Quality Score. Much of the cost you pay and the rankings you achieve is based on an overall quality score applied to your account by the great “G”. According to Kris, by bidding on fewer keywords and making them strongly related to each other you can improve the old quality score, reduce your click costs, and improve your rankings. Also, if you have a keyword within an adgroup which has a poor click through rate, you should consider weeding it out or removing it to another adgroup to give your other keywords the best chance for strong performance.

Some Recommended Resources

Kris mentioned a few url’s of some online marketing resources he makes use of…

Competitive Research Tools
GoogSpy - Adwords competitor research.
Hitwise - Search behaviour and interaction data (although I believe this has a rather hefty subscription fee. Perhaps only for people with thousands of sites!)
SEO Digger - Analyse competitor sites to determine which keywords they rank high enough for to be in the top 20. Looks intriguing…
Compete.com - Competitive metrics for every site on the web.

Keyword Tools
Key Compete - Download competitors keywords and adwords. (Dunno about this one personally, I do well from stuff my competitors haven’t thought of yet, but that’s just me!)
Rapid Keyword - Generate keywords and typos (although there are loads of free typo generation tools knocking about.

A Final, Random Hint
If you’re creating an adgroup to target a common mis-spelling of a product name or keyword, spell it wrong in the adcopy. I’d imagine this only works with search terms where people genuinely think they have entered the right spelling into their search engine, as opposed to missing out or interposing letters.

OK, so I was thrilled and delighted about my prize from R.O. Eye. I was just sitting with Ray of Befuddled fame, Dan Robins, and some others, as we enjoyed our rapidly deminishing collection of little blue drink tokens amassed from early departees (and some blatant hussling from me - thanks Jasper).

The chat was rapidly turning towards the nonsensical when Clarke from Paid On Results wandered over.

“Are You Kirsty?” He says.

“Yeah, that’s me!” I chirped.

“You’ve won the 37″ LCD TV in Our prize draw” He says.

“No Way !! AARRGGGHHH!!!!!!” I remarked.

Paid On Results - I Think I Love You

Now, I didn’t even know what the prize draw was actually for in terms of prizes, I’d also forgotten I’d entered. I’d not even intended to enter, it was only because Stuart from Paid On Results suggested it just as I was walking away from the stand.

So, I would like to say a massive thanks to POR for giving me the biggest and most wonderful surprise I’ve had in many years. The TV was donated by Miller Brothers, along with several other prizes.

Miller Brothers Shameless Programme Plug

Miller Brothers is currently offering 4% on sales of Electrical Goods. You can join their programme at Paid On Results.

Their sister site QED UK is also on POR and offers the same commission rate.

I’m absolutely made up, so I am… I only entered two draws and won something in both of them. Naturally, this will raise my future expectations ridiculously high at future events. The rush of winning actually got me through being delayed at Heathrow for 3 hours the next day with a heinous hangover and only 4 hours sleep!

Despite not having my business cards delivered in time (yes, they were waiting for me when I got home!), I managed to enter a couple of contests at the Expo.

Imagine my delighted surprise when the lovely chaps from R.O. Eye told me I’d won a rather luxurious Origins “Ginger All Round” bathtime gift pack. Origins is by Estee Lauder I’ve discovered, and all the products are completely organic, natural, and free of chemical contents which are bad for the environment.

It smells absolutely divine… I’d the whole house totally reeked out last night after trying out all my new lotions and potions at once. Ginger is meant to be a bit of an aphrodisiac, so I live in hope of some fringe benefits in that department as well

The only down side to this for me is that my mother (who is allergic to most products containing any kind of chemicals) has been eyeing up my new bit of bathroom kit, so I suspect I’ll have to check her handbag every time she leaves the house!

Origins Programme Plug

So for those of you not aware of it, the Origins programme was launched quite recently on Awin. It’s currently offering 8% commission, and with a single tub of ginger body souffle retailing for £20 there might be a few wee nice commissions knocking around during the Christmas period.

Thanks again to the chaps at R.O. Eye. I’ll be thinking about them in the bath, lol.

Well, what an event this has been so far. I’m so glad we made the effort to come as it’s the best conference I have ever attended (I went to a fair few boring SEO affairs back in the day).

Unfortunately, Duncan and I were hangover victims for the entire first day after one of the waitresses at the Buy.at pre-event networking party took a shine to Duncan. This resulted in us being somewhat replete with the rather nice free wine and staggering home at a rather disgraceful 2am. I can’t have been too bad mind you, I was free of mystery injuries and there was a notable lack of traffic cones in our room! You can take the girl out of uni…

However, this didn’t stop us from attending some great conference sessions yesterday. I’ve taken lots of notes with tips and resources from some top affiliate industry types and I will be doing some session by session posts where I think there’s something useful for you guys.

Highlights so far…

- Chatting to a Scottish guy for 40 minutes at the buy.at party. He asked me where I was from. When I said, “I’m from near Girvan in Ayrshire.”
He said, “No Way!!! What a coincidence, there’s this girl with a really great blog from down that area, you must live REALLY close to her”
“Umm, that’s me?”
“No WAY!!! I thought you were a bit of a heiffer” (Ayrshire term for someone of bovine appearance)

He really, really ruined that rather nice moment for me.

- The meet the super affiliates panel. Not only is it good to see these guys close up (although I saw Kieron for a quick chat the night before) But there was some good, insightful knowledge and it was jam packed with tips for newbies that made an awful lot of sense.

- Hero from Webgains winning the award for best account manager. I thought this was so well deserved, she works incredibly hard and is a pleasure to deal with. Congratulations Hero!

- Finally getting the fish and chips after the award ceremony. Myself and the lovely people from Figleaves were so hungry that we all ended up seperately ambushing unsuspecting waiting staff for boxes of food. The result? 8 boxes of fish and chips between the four of us! We ate them all too.

- Kieron winning the award for best blog of 2007. Another well deserved win. It must have been a very close call between him and Fraser. Even Kieron felt the night before that Fraser would win. I doubt Fraser will mind to much at the moment, he’s far too busy adoring his new baby.

- The Affiliate Window freebies. Gotta love the first aid kit and the medicine bottles full of Jelly Beans. All the guys were dressed in white coats too. “resolving your affiliate marketing ills” was the general theme, and I thought it was hilarious.

Well, I’m sat in my jim jams right now drinking tea and trying to wake up to go and enjoy another action packed day. I’m going to try and chat with some more people today… I was finding communication somewhat difficult at certain points yesterday!

Well, we’ve just completed online check in for our flight down to London 24 hours before the big event.

I have to say I’m very excited at the prospect of getting down there and seeing if the event lives up to the hype. I’m also hoping I get some really good nuggets to post about on the blog (not least some drunken pics of some top affiliates and network types).

My only regret is that I won’t actually have any bloody business cards with me because the printer has let me down

If you see me there, do come and say hello… I’ve been starved of affiliate chat for 12 months and I’m totally champing at the bit to get the low down on all the latest affiliate goss. I’ll probably even share the secret of which network has really been screwing me around recently because of problems with their automated commission tiers.

See you there

Hadi dropped me a wee line with a question that’s asked frequently on lots of forums.

Hi Kirsty

Thanks for a great blog btw.

Hey Hadi, You’ve heard of the first past the post system? In affiliate marketing the system is a little different! The affiliate who was the last referrer actually gets the sale.

i.e. Customer goes to Affiliate Site A, clicks on link to merchant site and affiliate site A’s cookie is set on their computer. They then leave without a purchase.

7 days go past, and the same customer then returns to the merchants site, but via another affiliates link on Affiliate Site B and makes a purchase.

This sale and its commission would be attributed to Affiliate Site B and the cookie from Affiliate Site A would be overwritten. Now there has been a lot of debate about this over the years. Some people feel that this is not fair to the original affiliate. However, the reasoning is that the second site may have gotten a visitor to return who might not have otherwise returned and made a purchase at all.

Hence, the second referrer wins!

I’ve been thinking about this one for a few days. Affiliate marketing these days is a seemingly endlessly complex corridor full of confusing information and allegedly killer schemes to make you a millionaire and hand you the affiliate holy grail within 3 microseconds.

Apart from all the outright lies and half-truths you have to wade through, you now need a thorough understanding of the Google Adwords Landing Page Algo and need to work out exactly how to build those killer Landing Pages Google won’t assign to Google-Slap oblivion as soon as your local friendly Adwords Robot pays your page a courtesy call.

Even more confusing… exactly what the hell is a robot? What in the name of all that’s holy is a spider doing on my web page? Why does someone try to sell me something every fizzing time I look for a plain and simple answer about any of these things?

Affiliate marketing these days seems to be a potentially wide and gaping chasm into which your valuable time and money, if you’re too quick to believe all those promises, will vanish without a trace as you struggle to understand what the bloody hell all these experts are talking about.

So let’s make like Margaret Thatcher and say LETS GET BACK TO BASICS

OK. For the sake of argument, lets say you’ve spent 12 months desperately trying to work out how to build a landing page that Google will think is A1 perfect. What now? Do you even know what to do with your landing page? Have you even built a landing page that you know contains something that will convert? The point I am trying to make is that there seems to be a preoccupation with getting a landing page sorted before moving on to promotion. That’s the way to do things though, right?

Wrong. You’ve heard of not being able to see the wood for the trees? I think too many would-be affiliates these days can’t see the sales for the landing pages. Too many people are worrying about the landing page first, and the actual commercial value of the work they have put in is an afterthought. They see the vast hurdle of landing page creation, and completely miss the glistening gold of the revenue stream that should be put in front of it.

So What Should We Be Doing Then, Oh Sarcastic PPC Lady?

“Good words are worth much and cost little.”
George Herbert

Everything else aside, Mr Herbert’s quote neatly encapsulates the very heart of what I perceive to be the secret of my affiliate marketing success. Your 12 month slog to create a killer landing page is totally useless if you can’t find the right words to throw at it.

I am, of course, talking about finding the right search terms for your campaign and even more importantly finding the merchant who will truly pay you the value of your words. You’ve got a landing page, OK. But your landing page is so much internet piss in the wind if you don’t use it to send the right traffic to the right merchant.

It is vital to make sure of this before you even put finger to keyboard to start creating the landing page that will see you on a beach in Barbados this time next year.

Well, That’s All Very Easy For You To Say Kirsty. How The Blazes Will We Do That?

Well. Another wee secret actually. One that many merchants (and even affiliate managers) seem to be unaware of. Certainly a lot of newbie affiliates don’t know it.

You ready? Lean in Now….

It’s still OK to send traffic direct to merchant.

Yes, Google has this single ad per display URL… but that doesn’t mean that Google has banned affiliates from doing this. Nor does it mean networks have outlawed it. Some merchants don’t want you to do it these days, but there are still a lot who are happy for affiliates to do send the traffic right up to the door.

No, you won’t get as much traffic as a landing page… but with direct to merchant all you need are those words the clever Mr Herbert saw as so valuable. By using your words cleverly, ferreting out things others have missed, and really placing yourself in your would-be customer’s shoes you can create a small traffic stream. What this will let you do is test your words, test a niche you are interested in, find your revenue stream.

THEN you can worry about creating a landing page. Your effort will be more productive. After all, you will already know where the money is. You will probably even have a better idea of what your prospective consumer expects to see in a landing page for your chosen niche.

The short version of this very long story?

Get the words right first.

I got a line the other day from Craig… who feels he’s done enough research to take his first exciting leap into an affiliate project. He’s wondering what tools he should use for this first project. Here’s his question : -

Hello Kirsty,

A fan of AffiliateStuff,

Well Craig, first off and software aside… for your first attempt I would
actually suggest that you find a niche area which you are interested in
and perhaps even go so far as to create a site purely focusing on one or
two products.

I’ve answered a question relating to this on the blog. Honestly, it is so
much better to hone your skills on a small project. That way, when you do
a big site and put a lot of work into it, you can be sure that it is
genuinely going to work for you. So many would-be affiliates jump in feet
first with a gargantuan project only to discover the concept / their
techniques are duff and they have wasted a disheartening amount of their
valuable time and effort.

http://www.affiliatestuff.co.uk/getting-started-as-an-affiliate/what-size-of-affiliate-site-effective-content-ask-kirsty/

http://www.affiliatestuff.co.uk/getting-started-as-an-affiliate/ask-kirsty-how-do-i-find-my-first-affiliate-niche/

In terms of what software to use.. well, I can only tell you what I use
personally! I create site templates in dreamweaver (although friends have
said great things about Joomla being easier), and for sites featuring lots
of products I get my dear old other half Duncan to do me a nice SQL
database.

I’ve not ventured into sites with price comparison functionality, but I
have heard a few good comments about Price Tapestry. I believe it could
be used quite adequately to make a small first site (although as I say,
not a forte of mine). Perhaps you could nip onto the A4U Forums and ask
about that as there are a whole lot of people on there deeply into price
comparison who could point you in the right direction if you told them
roughly what you were trying to do. If you’re not already on there (Not
sure if you are a UK bod or not), give it a go… they’re a friendly
bunch. Just tell them I sent ya!

A Wordpress blog might be a really easy way to set up your first site. There’s a huge number of free templates available, and many can be easily altered to create a good basis for a site. Then you have the added benefit of the many powerful and easy to install widgets that plug right into the back end, and a really easy to use content management system. I find this makes it really easy to add lots of valuable content and new pages at the touch of a button. This would be a really easy way to create a first site centred around a very small number of products. This blog is based on a free Wordpress template… it took me around 1 day to work out the system (I’d never used Wordpress before) and alter it to my requirements.

Hope this helps a bit. I know that finding your way in affiliate land can be an uphill struggle at times!

Craig also asked a follow-up question based on my response: -

Firstly thankyou for the reply and of course you can use it in your ask
kirsty series.

This is what im getting from your reply i think it’s helped me greatly, then
keep these websites small and targetted. Like i used halloween masks above,
then do halloween kids costumes ect..

You’re definately on the right lines there Craig. Pick a small niche area and work on that first then expand your activity to build your expertise.

In terms of datafeeds, the data you download from the affiliate network and then use to create your SQL feed will contain prices, images, and product names and descriptions. As you suggest, it’s really essential that you add your own unique content to this in order to create a decent chance for yourself to rank for some of your niche terms. It’s also a good idea to identify the terms you think you should be ranking for prior to creating this content so you can angle your carefully devised prose towards them.

Good luck!!