Awww… love is in the air!  Thanks very much to Jim from Gone Digging, a brand new personalised gifts site, for sending Duncan and I a beautiful romantic personalised calendar.

We particularly liked the month of March, as it bore a very striking similarity to the bed decorations we had in one of the honeymoon hotels we stayed in.

We thought the calendar was really great quality and it’ll be gracing the kitchen wall for the whole of 2009 and reminding us to think romantic thoughts about each other (don’t want the post-wedding rot setting in, hey?).

You can check out the “Love and Romance” calendars on the Gone Digging site.

Gone Digging launched quite recently and is to be found on the Webgains network.  More info on their affiliate programme here.

All Duncan and I need now is a few more merchants to send us some romantic gifts, and we’ll be set for the rest of next year.  Course, who knows what’ll happen after that… we might actually have to make the effort on our own or something.  *gasp*

Greetings “Ask Kirsty” fans!  The following is a question I got about a month ago from Chuck.  I thought it was a good  ‘un so I made a mental note to reply when I got back home and got me feet clear.  Here’s what’s getting under his affiliate skin: -

Hi Kirsty,

I have an excruciating headache. Have been reading everything I can find about Google SEO, rankings, indexing, penalties, etc, etc.

My problem is that my main keyword results from Google appear on page 12. Yahoo returns page one results for the same keyphrase. My domain name is my main keyphrase. “VW TDI For Sale” www.vw-tdi-for-sale.com My goal is to rank number one on Google for the key phrase “vw tdi for sale” and of course rank high for as many associated keywords and phrases as possible.

I may have a problem in the way I set up my site. I created categories to get the Revolution Magazine main page to look the way I wanted. The categories are used only for that main page. The site is an ebay site based on the PHPBay plugin.  I used posts for everything. Maybe should have used pages instead of posts. Is it better to use pages rather than posts? I have about 50 keywords so far. Each keyword is presented as a separate post consisting of a .jpg image and a couple sentences describing the keyword. Then each post has a link button to the appropriate ebay sales page. So each keyword is like a very simple landing page with a pushbutton that links to the ebay sales listing appropriate to that keyword phrase.

Google doesn’t like my website. What is very irritating is that a website called http://www.mauigreenenergy.org/dieselsforsale.htm
ranks in the number 1 spot on Google for my keyphrase. That website is about renewable energy. Has nothing to do with selling Volkswagen TDIs except that they have a link to a car dealership. This site has my ranking spot for my main keyword phrase and I want that spot.

As far as I can determine, Google has indexed 3 of my pages and none of them are my keyword posts. I believe my site is invisible to Google. Suggestions appreciated. I am to the point that I’m ready and willing to pay to get this sorted out.

Hey Chuck,

Well, I should start off with some praise of what you have done so far.  Well done on effectively identifying a niche that you can work in and creating a decent looking site to host it.  I know you’re feeling like there’s a bit of a dead end for you, but really you’ve done a lot of the work already.  Things just need a little bit of fine tuning.

So Sit Back, Relax, And Enjoy Kirsty’s Guide To Gettin’ Y’all Some Google Love!!

• Your Posts – You’ve done the right thing creating pages around search terms.  However, you’ve probably done a few too many of them.  For example, Your Diesel TDI and VW Diesel TDI pages could actually form a single post.  The terms are similar enough that one page will cover both.  I suggest you go through and see which of your pages you can “aggregate”.
• Your Internal Link Structure – is quite weak.  I assume the intention is that the posts mentioned above are where you intend the real revenue generation to be at.  You need to make your posts appear pivotal to the site content so that Google knows they are relevant.  I suggest you make sure these posts are linked to from every page.
• Cross Linkage Generally – is weak over the whole site.  You might want to consider using a plugin that will stop your pages being buried a few levels deep because of WordPress’ weak cross linkage between posts.
• You Need Way More Content – as you already know your pages built around those search terms are very weak.  You need to write more useful content about the car models.  I wrote a general article about coming up with content ideas a while back, perhaps reading it will help give you some ideas. More specifically in your case, look at writing 300 words on each of your post pages.  Talk about specifications, fuel consumption, colours available, interiors, anything you think someone looking to buy one of these cars might possibly want to know.
• Optimise Your Selling Pages Around Buying Terms - Well jeez, that’s an obvious one Kirsts!  But to really monetise your site you’re gonna want to be attracting the type of traffic that might just be in danger of registering on e-bay with a view to putting in a bit of a bid!  With that in mind, i’d put my efforts into “Buying search terms” “buy volkswagen”  “tdi for sale” etc.
• Be Careful Not To Over Optimise - Looking at your home page, I’d say you’ve gone way overboard with mentions of VW search terms. The popular searches list down the side does verge towards keyword stuffing.  Adopt a natural writing style, and don’t labour to get mentions of search terms in there.  Just let them happen naturally. If in any doubt, read your copy aloud to yourself.  If it sounds repetitive you probably need to pare back a little on the search term count!!
• Get Yourself a Little Link Love - Although I can see your indexing has improved since your original question, your rankings will improve if you can get some relevant sites to link to you.  If you provide some decent, useful content this shouldn’t be an impossible task.
• Keep On Churning Out The Content – I can see you’ve already written a few articles of Vee Dub interest.  Keep at it.  The more ways you find to talk about your subject, the more chances there are to rank for some niche terms and get some traffic in.  Why not consider expanding and covering VW TDI Spares or maintenance tips?  There’s bound to be bags of potential content there!

I think I’ve covered some good basics there… I could say more, but I’ve just given you one hell of a “to do” list.  The main thing about creating any site is that there are no shortcuts.  If you work to make a site useful and relevant and have a reasonably SEO friendly structure… you should get that traffic.

Good luck Chuck!!

Bit of a new feature in the blog.  I’ve been meaning to do something about all the various wee tips and tricks that help me manage all my day to day tasks more quickly.  Every time I’ve thought about it, I couldn’t quite work out how to structure the post – it’d be mahoosive.

I’ve solved this issue by deciding to split it into a series of mini posts.  First up is the saviour of all affiliates…

The Concatenation Feature in Excel

For those of you who do not know, Excel has a feature that allows you to take the content of cells within any row, stick them together in any order, and pop them in a single cell all nice and stuck together. I personally use this feature to create large keyword lists around set search term variations, to create urls, and also for tasks such as creating large lists of links to be pasted into websites.

To help out, I’ve popped some screenshots below to illustrate what I’m talking about!!

OK, so we start with the contents of some adjacent cells we’d like to have all living in a single cell together to form a phrase: -

To make this happen, all I have to do is create a very simple formula in excel in an adjacent cell:-

Popping in =concatenate( will automatically cue Excel to allow you to use your cursor to select which cells you want included. These can be anywhere on your spreadsheet and in any order.  Simply use the arrow keys to select your cells, placing a comma between them.

To create the appropriate spaces between words or even to add in additional words and symbols you need to place the following between each field selection:-

You can put just about any text or symbol in between those commas, except “-” which does rather confuse the formula function!

The finished formula looks like this: -

Simply press enter and….

All your cells are magically put together!

At this stage, the formula will still be there if you copy the cell content rather than the information you are looking to compile.  To paste the info you want into the spreadsheet, simply copy the contents of the column in which your formula is contained, right click, and select “Paste Special” then “Values”.  This will remove the formula and leave you with your key phrase.

And That’s It!!

You can use this great function to create all sorts of lists of just about every kind. For me personally, it is one of my biggest time saving devices in the often repetitive world of affiliate marketing.

Recently, I’ve had an unfortunate reminder that misbalance (dare I say unfairness?) in our industry is still alive and kicking. Merchants, networks, and agencies still hold all the cards and can simply renege on a contract with no consequences.

I’m not going to name names or bleat on about how unfortunate I am to have been treated unfairly… so I’ll just give you a bulleted list of events below!

• A year or two back I was doing rather well for a particular merchant.  As a new agency had come on board, they decided to change the rules on the programme and create a closed group of PPC bidders.
• I was invited to submit an application to be included, and did so.
• I was successful and was made to sign an eyewatering legal document detailing what the scope of my involvement was, and the required time period for me to respond to any of their requests (12 hours).
• I got all set up, and off we went.  I always complied with all the contract terms and did everything they asked of me.
• Whilst on honeymoon, I got a communication from the network asking me exactly what I thought I was up to bidding on the terms that had been laid out in my contract.  I responded telling them I was in the closed group.
• 23 hours later I was removed from the programme and all my commissions were reversed.
• Naturally, I was somewhat perplexed. (yes, this was on my honeymoon you can imagine how thrilled my husband was).  It took me a week to discover the issue.
• “Oh, the agency said they’d previously allowed you to do this, but it had ended.  To be honest, the agency didn’t tell us the arrangement had ended either… but there you go.”

So I was made to sign an iron clad contract.  The agency didn’t even bother to tell me they’d decided to end the arrangement despite being in posession of my e-mail address, postal address, phone number, fax number, and an undertaking from me that I’d surrender my first born child should I dare to step outwith the boundaries of their agreement.

So This Got Me To Thinking….

Looking back, the contract I signed was completely one-sided.  There was all sorts of Ts & Cs to protect the interests of merchant and agency.  This is absolutely right and necessary as it lets everyone involved know where their boundaries lie. But where were the conditions to protect my interests as a business parter?  I’ve now fallen into a situation where I’ve lost money because they simply could not be bothered to make sure I was informed of what their marketing strategy was.

So Who’s It Gonna Be?

When are all of our networks going to start protecting both parties in a contract of this nature?  Frankly, when merchants or agencies behave like this and the network basically says “Sorry, they can sort of do whatever they like to you.” it damages their standing.

In my view, networks standing there with an innocent look on their face saying “It wasn’t our fault.” simply won’t cut it as this industry moves forward.  They have a responsibility to both their merchants and affiliates.  .

So is anyone going to be brave enough to come up with a *gasp* TWO SIDED contract for their closed bidding groups?  I don’t want much.  I just want a level playing field.  Events like this simply make me lose respect for the rules of the game.  Its not at all good for our industry.

Finally…

How many industries treat their valued business partners like this?  How many could?

OK, so I recently had a bit of an e-mail from Dave who has been working really hard at affiliate marketing for around nine months.  He’s put in a huge effort, but he’s still not really earning that much.

I’ve had to alter his question a little as he doesn’t want to publish his sites, so I’ll add in some descriptive info to give you the rough idea of what he’s been up to!

Dear Kirsty,

I’ve done 50 sites up to now, i get a couple of hundred quid a month, which is nice, don’t get me wrong.
But as you well know this is something I want to do full time, SO i’ve got up the game a bit. I think its down to be not hitting the right products.

All of my sites are based around a price comparison model. They do bring in a trickle of money, but its consistency Im after, because Im trying to do this as a full time career. I can go days without anything then, maybe I’ll pull in 10 or 20 pound in. Its nice but with the amount of sites I have I would have thought I’d be close to matching my current salary so I can quite my day job. I started these in January, so I am fully aware its only been a few months for some of these sites, maybe i’m being too impatient?

**Kirsty’s note.  Dave has created a series of sites based around product groups with domains such as Brand-Name-Product-Group.co.uk.  They’re all decent looking sites, and he has put in a mammoth effort creating unique content.  He has also spent a bit of time building links to some of his sites and has a small but promising inbound link count.  All of this work has resulted in very low traffic and not a lot of sales!

Well, Dave… this is a most odd happenstance but it is one which I am sure many affiliates can identify with. So I’m going to try and take you through where I think things may have gone a wee bit wrong. I’m thinking that somewhere along the line you’ve missed out a fundamental step in understanding exactly how the revenue generation process in affiliate marketing really works.  If you’d really gotten a grasp on how to identify revenue bearing niches and followed a solid process, you should really be doing very well at the moment.

I’m inclined to think that what is happening is you are using a scattergun approach. I don’t really think this is a terribly good idea for someone trying to learn how to make money.  I can see why you’ve done this mind you, as just about every wealthy and successful affiliate you read about speaks of their many hundreds or thousands of affiliate sites.  However, every one of those sites will be about a product or group of products they already either knew or had a very good idea would bring in money. I think it is very important for an affiliate to make sure they have learned the revenue generation process through completely before they start to replicate their site and revenue generation technique.

I’d say that is probably the fundamental issue that is hampering your own efforts in this case.  Rather than working out how to identify a good product, structure a landing page that will work, and effectively hone your revenue generation process, you are simply creating site after site in the hope the money will come in.

It is clear you are prepared to put in the hard yards getting your affiliate empire set up your sites and content are a testament to that, so perhaps it would be a good idea to get back to some affiliate basics. Here’s a handy dandy guide to honing your affiliate craft!

Identify Your Affiliate Niche Effectively
Now, I can see you’ve identified several (50 actually!).  But how have you done this?  What was your research process, and how did you determine that here was a product which is popular, and which would convert at a good rate.  A fundamental misconception that many new affiliates fall into is that a product or product group has to be high value to make a profit on.  This isn’t really the case.  Often cheaper product areas have  much, much higher conversion rates… particularly if you have taken the time to research and identify a very strong merchant in this sector.

I’ve written a few niche identification guides, perhaps they will help: -

How to Find Your First Affiliate Niche

Use Your Passions To Find A Niche

How To Brainstorm Interests To Find Your Affiliate Niche

I think the best single bit of advice I can give you in this scenario is to perhaps have a better idea of where the money is before you put considerable effort into building a site.  An ideal way to do this is to try a bit of direct to merchant PPC within areas and on products you think can work.  Loads of people seem to think that this isn’t allowed any more since Google changed those display URL rules – but it is!  Sure, some merchants don’t want you to use it, and you will have to compete against other affiliates and the merchant themselves.  However, I often find that niche terms at the product level are easy to get enough traffic for to let you see if your hunches about a red hot affiliate niche are on the money or not!

Build Your Site
I know that you already have a site building method in mind, but have you considered that darling of all affiliates, WordPress?  This has the added benefit of being blog based, a medium which Google seems to love. It also gives you the ability to create a very smooth, professional look for an extremely low cost.  Check out my guide to building a WordPress site and applying effective SEO to it: -

WordPress 101
Monitor Your Stats
It’s really important to ensure that your site is working as you think before you write it off as a dud.  Grab yourself a Google analytics account and make sure that your site is in fact ranking for search terms that are really relevant to the product you are pushing.  If you’re getting loads of traffic and it just ain’t converting… it might not be the fault of your site, product, or merchant. It could in fact be that the terms your ranking for are a little off target – and this can really impact your ability to make those visitors convert to affiliate cash.

What to Look for in Your Stats

Check out where your traffic is coming from.  What search terms have people used to arrive on your site?  If your site is selling apples, and you’ve somehow contrived to rank number one for “citrus fruit” but are nowhere to be found for “apples” it might explain why your site is not performing.  In this case you’ll need to…

Work At Your SEO
I suspect something you may be doing is not following a traffic generation process that is actually effective before moving on to your next site.  This might explain why you’ve created so many sites and so little traffic and sales.

Don’t get me wrong, I know you have been trying hard. A strong SEO site can generate good traffic, but it takes time.  Up to 6 months sometimes.  This might seem like an awful lot of effort, but if you have effectively identified your niche you should be pretty darned sure that your effort will pay you handsomely!

In Conclusion…

• Use a solid process to work out which niche is worthy of your sterling efforts.
• Create a site, and use it to create your iron clad revenue generation method.
• Work out how to effectively drive traffic to that site, and really use it to hone your SEO skills.
• Once you have done this, you can repeat your winning formula as much as you like, and your income will grow.

I think what this “Ask Kirsty” illustrates is that affiliate success is really about understanding every step of the revenue generating process fully before you move on and replicate a business model. Getting a solid basis upon which to build your effort is the key to the often mysterious affiliate world.

Good luck Dave!

Ahhh…. well, a few days ago loves young dream arrived back in Australia all jetlagged and grumpy.

The new Mrs Mckenzie apologises for a month long silence.  Unfortunately for you guys my new husband implemented a “no work on honeymoon or I am divorcing you” policy.  So them’s the breaks I’m afraid… no blogging was allowed.

Upon our return, we discovered what 10 weeks away does to a quarter acre of rainforest garden and house roof – covers it in an inch of leafy debris!    Consequently we’ve just spent 4 very sweaty days variously clearing roofs, guttering, footpaths, ponds, and flower beds of a surprising volume of rubbish. We’re not even half finished yet. Oh, and lets not forget the small matter of catching up on my Christmas promotions!

The Honeymoon….

Was fabulous and relaxing though, here’s a few wee piccies of the part of our trip that was beautiful Railay Beach, Thailand.

I really, really have to learn how to fold up my towels like this… how impressed would visitors be if you did this to their beds?!

This is me visiting a local shrine, and yes those are what you think they are.  As you can see, I was scared to touch anything in case they were fertility symbols. Apparently though, they bring fishermen home safe from the sea.  Quite how they do this is still a mystery to me, perhaps if all else fails they use them as life rafts?!

Ahhhh……. my favourite beach!

It really was a very beautiful time of things!

Now…

We’re back home and I’m working away furiously again trying to create a bit of extra Christmas fiscal joy to help replenish the old bank account again after all our recent adventures.  Things are starting to get back on an even (ish) keel so I hope to be chatting to you all regularly once more.

It feels a little odd to be married, but I’m sure I’m not unique in that sentiment.  For the record, I will very much be remaining “Kirsty McCubbin” within the affiliate sphere / world of work… Mrs McKenzie will only be my name on evenings, weekends, and special holidays

Finally…

If you have sent me an “Ask Kirsty” in the last ten weeks I’ve probably not replied. It has been a frantic time for me to say the least, and I just couldn’t concentrate well enough to respond.  Aplologies to all of you who have asked questions and not gotten help.  Please do re-send if you’ve not found an answer elsewhere!