Imagine if you will, a 70′s style gameshow complete with host in spangly Gold Lame jacket, permatan, and gleaming white teeth….

“Hello ladies and gents, boys and girls and welcome to another fascinating episode of… “What’s my Google Penalty!!”

“This week’s contestant is a familiar face here on What’s My Penalty and she’s really wondering how the hell she got here again.  Please welcome… KIRSTY MCCUBBIN!!”

*Crowd goes wild, insert Hammond organ medly, Cue Google Robot Dancing Girls…*

Yep, It’s Happened Again!

Over the past few days my brand new site Blokes Undies has been on a bit of a downward spiral in the organic traffic stakes.  Over the weekend it stopped ranking for its own name, which is usually a strong penalty indicator.

So What Is It THIS Time Kirsty?

Well, at first I found THIS when I searched for D&G Maxi Logo Boxer Shorts (opens in new window) and was fairly convinced that these nasty scrapers had gotten me a Duplicate Content Penalty with their scurrilous spamming activity.

After a quick consult with the kind people over at the A4UForums I filed various Spam reports, shortened my feed content to stop people nicking content that could knock me from the SERPS, and generally stewed in my own juice.

But Was it That?

See, one thing you have to remember about trying to work out a Google penalty is that the first thing you find, compelling as it may be…. isn’t necessarily your issue!

I had also found another funny little issue with my indexing, where content on the site seemed to be attributed to lots of different pages by Google, despite only appearing on one. Example Here (opens in new window)   but as it had been present for a while I’d put it down to “a bit of a Google glitch” and a couple of people said they’d had similar in the past.

“Can’t be that then.”  I thought.

And I Reckon That’s The Nasty Little Game Show Type Trap These Situations Can Pull on You!

I’ve seen lots of “Google Penalty Checklist” type posts, and in not one of them does it say “NEVER rule out anything.”

Fortunately, the indexing situation was nagging away at the back of my head.  I don’t like leaving issues and expecting them to fix themselves.  Earlier, I finally thought to view the source of one of my pages… just in case there was an outside chance there might be some odd thing on there.

And What Do I Find?

Arrghhh!! The featured content gallery plugin I posted about previously doesn’t only post nice pictures and titles… it features content excerpts from each post as well.  On my site, they were within the source code of each page, not visible to users, and indexable by Google.  Not good.

Having checked out some other sites using the plugin I think I must have gotten something wrong with the install as I’m not seeing the same issue on any of them!

Ho Hum…

Well, all I can do is wait and see how it all pans out now.  Honestly, how many penalties can one girl just trying to “get it right” actually create!  I think WordPress is great, but the amount of issues that can happen without you knowing about it because of how automated and brill it all is are many and varied.

It’s never dull is it?!

I held out as long as I could, I always do as I’m always resistant to trying the “latest thing” till I’m sure it really is that, and not a flash in the pan I’ve ended up wasting my time with.  However it does seem Twitter is huge and now entrenched in the online scene, so I’ve been and created myself an account.

“Jilly Come Lately” strikes again!

Want To Follow Me?

You can do so here: -

http://twitter.com/AffiliateStuff

An Affiliate-Focused Twitter Account!

I’ve decided to keep the affiliate stuff account as affiliate focused as possible.  I’m going to try and populate it with little nuggets about things that I’m doing, how I’m thinking about them, and interesting affiliate facts I’ve found on my internet travels.

The blog doesn’t always lend itself to that kind of thing, so I’m hoping it’ll actually provide another half decent glimpse into the mindset and day to day workings of a full time affiliate.

Tweets Coming To A Sidebar Near You!

I think it’ll add some value to my blog and to the readers popping by, so I have decided to add my tweets to the blog sidebar.  Sorry if it looks a bit basic at the moment I’m a bit short on time today… promise it’ll look more polished over the next few days!

Course, there’ll be the odd personal thing on there, but I’ll probably create another account should I get an overwhelming urge to “tweet” every time I visit the lavvy or its time to cook tea… etc etc etc.

All That Remains To Be Seen…

Is how much time I spend Twittering instead of working!!

Greetings, and welcome to the third, final, and long overdue installment in the “where are they now series”.  Today’s lovely interviewee is the legendary Chris Frost whose last chat you can take a gander at here.

As you will all no doubt know, Chris and I met up in Sydney and enjoyed 2 or 3 good nights out and himself and my Duncan braved the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb together.  We were supposed to do an interview there, but were having too good a time and had to do it via e-mail when he got home!

So without further ado, I’ll let the star do the talking

In our last chat, you said you’d increased the amount of time you’re spending on affiliate marketing from 4 hours to 10 hours a week. You were also predicting that’d rise as you were looking to develop some new niches. How’s your workload these days?

I’m still experiencing peaks and troughs on the amount of time I spend online, and expect this to continue. It’s more to do with me and my CGAS mentality when it comes to affiliate marketing.

Obviously the winter months usually results in longer hours, as there’s less inclination to get myself down to the gym when it’s blowing a gale outside even though I have another 10k run planned in London this year (running for Diabetes – http://www.justgiving.com/chrisefrost )

Has the recession affected your income at all? Have you found new opportunities from changed times?

I wouldn’t say the recession has affected my income but has certainly affected the programmes which generate my income. Previously great performers have generated less, where other merchants have picked up so it’s equalled out roughly. I’ve suffered a bit with the rubbish £ vs $ rate change over the past few months but that’s something that I can’t really control.

I know you’ve been having some issues with Google on one of your major sites which was slapped just before the busy Xmas season, and it seemed like you were feeling a mite frustrated with it all when we met up in Sydney. Have you any plans to try and recover from your “Google-itis”?

My main frustration in Sydney was turning 35!

Being slapped just before I was due to have a bumper Christmas wasn’t exactly great timing – had it happened in January I wouldn’t have cared too much. It was only the other day that the possible reason behind the slap was found (thanks to the Real McCoy). I’d checked and changed a lot of stuff but still hadn’t seen any change, and Lee found something that was blindingly obvious and one that’s a basic error but was an accident on my behalf. It was so stupid that I’m not going to divulge any more but have been reminded by Lee that if I make Barbados this year, then I owe him a few beers!

You predicted a £3m sales generation figure for your merchants in 2008. I know you more than succeeded with that with £4.8m being your closing figure for last year! What is it that you think makes you able to keep growing your affiliate business in this way and still not working at it full time?

Who said I can keep growing? Being honest I don’t expect to see any rise in 2009 mainly because I’m focusing on areas outside of the UK so my current websites are taking a bit of a back seat.

It helps by having niche sites that are seasonal based such as Christmas, Valentines and Mothers day and again, after following Lee – maybe tap into the easter egg market next year? At least that way my work load is spread out more evenly meaning currently I can cope… just…

Speaking of going full time as an affiliate… any plans to quit the day job on the horizon?

Not a chance!
The recent Google slap confirmed the risk and my respect I have for you full-timers. Unless you have shed loads of money to chuck at PPC campaigns, then I feel at times Google has too much of a strangle hold over a business. Something I plan to do this year is concentrate more on MSN and Yahoo positioning rather than having tunnel vision where only the Google logo can be seen.

If you could go back in time to our last chat and warn yourself about one thing that’s happened over the last 12 months, what would it be?

One thing? My god I have lots!

• Don’t let Kirsty go shopping with Jane while stuck up a bridge with Duncan (costs a fortune) (*Eds note – I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.  What happens on the shopping trip, stays on the shopping trip!!)

• Don’t offer a bouncer a mint! (Get knocked back)

• Don’t get drunk with Keith, Shane and Paul the night before your flight home from (you end up missing it)

• Don’t introduce affiliates to the world of Scuba Diving (I still laugh at the vision of James Avery strolling around a wreck on the sea floor, stood bolt up-right at times – classic!)

What’s been the best thing that happened to you over the last year?

It has to be packing in smoking

71 days to date (24 March 2009), 1215 cigs not smoked, saving over £500 and meaning I’ve now extended my life by a possible 4 days and 5 hours. Although this extra time may be spent in an old people’s home p’ing myself so it may not be a plus point after all!

Second on my list has to be popping over to Australia and hooking up with you guys and DGM, researching the Australian market. I think there’s great opportunity to move away from the UK yet not struggle too much with language barriers.

What will the rest of 2009 bring for you as an affiliate?

Hopefully more sites in different countries. I’ve found myself getting a bit tired of the UK and wanting to venture out into other countries. The difficulty is forgetting how Brits browse and search and learn how other countries do it along with their terminology.

Apparently credit cards in Oz is dead easy and very profitable

Greetings esteemed blog readers, and welcome to another thrilling installment in the K.McCubbin stream of consciousness series.  As you may have already gathered I’ve been thinking a lot about the way I work recently  As this occupies a lot of brain time I figure blogging about it will mean y’all don’t form the mistaken opinion I don’t love you any more as I don’t seem to be able to lucidly think about much else!

How Does Effort Convert To Cash In Affiliate Land?

Todays epistle has been brought to you courtesy of a new friend of mine, Kathrin, who has been asking  questions about my difficult to understand career!  She basically asked me why I didn’t work 5 days a week instead of 4 and thus make 20% more money.  I explained to her that with the world of affiliate marketing, that 20% more effort didn’t necessarily equate to 20% more money.  When I reflected on this, I realised I’d touched on a powerful and simple truth I needed to vocalise on here.

Thinking Smartly and Efficiently Is More Important Than Blindly Pushing “Onwards and Upwards”

And I reckon that’s where our old mate Del Boy went wrong with his “Onwards and upwards Rodney” frame of mind.  The “scale and replicate” principle has been a particular preoccupation of mine when considering the expansion of my very own minature empire and I have talked about it often.

“Scale And Replicate” Is Just So Last Week.  Lets Try “Maximum Revenue With Minimum Effort” On For Size!

However, I now realise its also important to also bring a considerable amount of smart thinking to this process.  Some of the affiliates I’ve met don’t always work all that hard.  In fact, many of them barely seem to lift a finger!  Why?  How?  They’re just lucky smartassed sods, reaping it in while we do the hard yards right?

Urr, nope.  They’re not lucky, and they could well be sods but they most definately are smart. When they can be assed Why?  Because they have perfected the fine art of smart thinking.  They are able to find lots of things that will create the maximum amount of revenue with the minimum effort.

I don’t do that dreadfully at this kind of thing myself, but I wouldn’t say I’ve the midas touch you’ll see from the likes of Jamie Harwood or Mr Affiliate bling himself, Kieron Donoghue, either.  I often suffer from not seeing the affiliate revenue wood for looking at the trees and thinking how much work it’ll be to cut them all down myself and then painstakingly craft them into revenue bearing masterpieces.  However, now I consider it, some of my biggest earners are things that took very little to put together. With an affiliate chainsaw and mass production sawmill. (if you will indulge my increasingly flamboyant use of analogies!)

For example, I have a single landing page I send painfully generic traffic to via Yahoo and MSN search.  It took 3 hours all up to build the page and compile a keyword list.  It makes me £15,000 a year, I never have to do a thing to the page, and I don’t even really know what gave me the idea to try it. Suddenly it was out there, and it was obvious despite my having struggled with generating consistent cash in that niche for almost two years.

The Moral Of The Story?

I’m not sure if there is one.  I can’t tell anyone how this happens.  Nor how they can acquire such a skill. For me personally it is a fleeting bit of magic I’m privelliged to experience every now and again.  I wish I could come up with one of those beauties every day I can tell you, cos I’d be sitting writing this on my own private island if I could!

Could I Come Up With A Midas-esque Idea Every Day?

Well, perhaps not every day.  But I have a feeling that the trick is to take a step back every now and again and simply stand on a mental hill observing the undulating nature of your revenue streams from afar.  By doing that you may well see the goldmine nestled in that half hidden valley beside something you already think you’re 100% on top of.  Recently my new intensive work system has given me the chance to take that step back in the form of my extra day a week off.  Since then, I’ve found that there are a lot of things I can multiply significantly with just a few hours work. I don’t know how I couldn’t see it before.

The Best and Most Lucid Advice I Can Give Is…

Work out grab yourself a vantage point to observe the fruits of your labours!  You’ll have to come up with your own way to allow those great ideas to reveal themselves to you.

And The Obvious Disclaimer That Has To Be Made?

The above may make it look like there’s an affiliate holy grail out there that allows you to work little and earn lots.  The truth is 99% of affiliates that make decent money work very hard at it. Nay, supernaturally hard. Do not read the above and delude yourself that this job does not require a lot of dedication, I merely wish to make the point that you can often make your hard work more productive… by being able to think clearly about where the work is directed.

I think this post is probably saying something that many people will find fairly obvious.  However, like many simple things to do it often gets overlooked during the quest to move ever onwards and upwards, and finding new revenue streams or pushing to get a little more out of an already tapped gem.

But Is There Something Easy Right Under Your Nose You’re Missing?

In these uncertain times it can be all too easy to miss the fact you should always be considering if you’re making best use of your traffic.  Yep, OK it might well be doing “fine” or even “great” but could it be doing better?

I spent a little bit of time on one of my sites today and realised that the main merchant I am using no longer performs as well in terms of EPCs.  So I took a look at all the merchants I use on the site and evaluated how many affiliate pennies per click they were earning me.

I was quite surprised to discover that: -

• I’m sending about 2,000 clicks per month to a merchant who is earning me 2p a click.  A quick squizz round and I discovered that there was another merchant with comparable products and prices earning me 8p per click on some similar traffic.
• There were loads of ways I could channel traffic usually destined for a merchant earning me a 7p per click to two merchants who often earn me as much as 28p.
• Once I’d got started, I then realised there was a whole traffic seam I’d previously not bothered to tap due to lacklustre performance that could also be sent to a merchant who currently has a cracking EPC and I suddenly realise will convert the traffic incredibly well.

Sorry I can’t give examples, I’d be mad if I did… but the point I’m trying to make is that quite often you have to take a step back and look before you can take a step forward!

Most of the above revelations came to me when I was on holiday in Sydney.  I think I’d been so focused on moving forward all the time with new content and my new high energy work system I couldn’t see the affiliate cash for the merchant trees (love that analogy I’m getting it framed!).

G’day from glorious Sydney!

We’ve been having a grand old time so far and yesterday we took up an invitation from DGM Australia and went on round to their offices for a bit of food and a few drinks on their rather fab rooftop terrace.

They were an incredibly friendly bunch and both myself and Chris Frost really enjoyed meeting the team, putting a few faces to names, and learning a bit more about what the network was all about.

Duncan, Chris, Jane (Chris’ lovely other half), Myself & Gavin of DGM fame enjoy a nice drinkie at DGM towers!

Retiring over the road to the pub for a few more jars…

Chris laden down and posing with his DGM goodie bags and Duncan lumbered with carrying a cocktail dress I’d bought on the way to the Do!

We had a really nice day, so thanks to DGM for putting on a right good do!

Interested In Finding Out More About The Australian Market?

I know that many affiliates in the UK are beginning to look at the Australian space and wonder if it is developed enough to create new income streams or have already started planning ways to enter the market.  Looking at the range of merchants on offer from DGM alone, I feel e-commerce sites are definately becoming more developed and are starting to look to affiliate marketing to help them develop their online revenues.  In particular, there are a very wide range of quality Australian finance merchants on the DGM network. Having had a quick gander I reckon that  Aussie organic results and PPC arena is fairly wide open and accessible in comparison to the often cutthroat conditions in the UK.  With recession not biting as deeply here in Australia, the industry has not seen the same issues with reluctance to issue credit (yet!).

Worth A Punt

I’m already working with DGM in Australia and have found the team to be incredibly friendly, helpful, and most importantly – responsive. With their help I’ve created the beginnings of a nice wee dollar revenue stream. If you’re considering working in this market you can sign up for the Australian network via the DgmPro site.

I must warn you that our Chris is already in posession of a full list of DGM merchants – so you’d better hurry up before he rushes in and dominates the Aussie affiliate marketing scene!

More about our affiliate related fun in Sydney when I’m back home later this week

I can’t quite believe how quickly this has come around, but I’m off tomorrow morning to catch up with one of my favourite affiliate pals, Chris Frost in Sydney.  I’ll be hanging out there for 5 nights and taking in the Mardi Gras whilst there.

Plans for a Saturday night bevvy after the parade type festivities are already in place and on Monday afternoon those very kind and lovely chaps at DGM Australia are having a bit of a BBQ which all affiliates are welcome to attend, so both Chris and myself are going to go say hello to everyone there.

Other than that, I’ve no idea what we’ll be up to – I’ve been too busy to think of touristing activities!  it’s been 4 years since I was last in Sydney and I hope not to get anything like as drunk this time as I did the last.

I’m not holding out much hope mind you… it’s Chris’ birthday while we are there and mine shortly afterwards. It’d just be rude if we didn’t have one sherry too many, wouldn’t it?!?!  I’ll try and post some pics whilst we are there.

Viva Las Sydney!

Oh, and Adtech is on as well when I’m there but I’m too tight to buy a ticket so unless someone gives me a free one don’t expect any conference type reporting

When I find a good plugin I do like to give the developers a bit of a heads up here on the blog.  My latest find is the Featured Content Gallery plugin by iePlexus.

If you have a blog which is based around promoting just about any type of product at all, I reckon you’ve just gotta love this brill plugin which once again demonstrates just how powerful and usable the WordPress platform really is.

So What Does It Do?

As you can see below, it creates a scrolling gallery of “featured content” from one of your site categories.  Simple and easy to use, all you have to do to create an attractive looking dynamic content unit displaying  as many of your most recent posts as you want to highlight is to pop the URL of the image you’ve used into the post into a custom field.

(click the image above to see the plugin in action on my blog)

The clever plugin does the rest, sizing your images appropriately to create a great and visually appealing display on your blog.  There are a whole host of easily customisable options for this plugin meaning you should be able to make it fit in with your theme and product areas quite readily.

I’ve been looking for a plugin that would do this for quite some time and I was extremely surprised at how easy it was to use.  Last time I tried to find something like this all sorts of complex manual resizing was required so I’m thrilled!

That’s right folks, we’ve been expanding our interests in Australia and today a job applicant came knocking at the office window.  He doesn’t say much I have to say, but he has spent most of today throwing some interesting shapes onto my office desk which has had a fairly huge impact on my productivity.

So without further ado, meet my new mate Sid who has been spending all of his time sitting not more than 2 feet in front of me today.  What a good looking Aussie!

Editors health warning…. *Ahem*  If your name is Chris Clarkson or if you’ve not enjoyed other posts about things that have scared the bejeesus out of me you might want to close your eyes now

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Sorry about the picture being blurry at the bottom, its just that Sid here is rather large, and didn’t have the decency to position himself at an easy to photograph angle.

Internet research has turned up the fact that he (or she) is in fact a Net Casting Spider – Deinopidae is his Sunday name.  Some of his fans also refer to him as the “Ogre Faced Spider”  the reasons for which I don’t know because I’m not up for inspecting him with a magnifying glass.  Not to worry though, the above link will graphically demonstrate why he’s not known for his handsome appearance.

In his favour I must say that unlike recent visitors he’s not poisonous nor will he try to perpetrate any bites upon me.

All I can say is thank the lord for flyscreen!

Greetings fans of affiliate quick tips!  This week I have been mostly fiddling around trying to reduce duplicate content on my blogs (again).  The reason i’ve been having to do this is that I have reorganised my increasingly out of control category structures on sites such as my new offering Blokes Undies.  I created lovely sub categories to help organise my content better.

To prevent any unfortunate duplicate content issues I decided it would be better if my categories didn’t contain full post content.  Instead of listing posts in full, there is now an excerpt and a list of post titles like this example here in my new hosiery department on Lingerie Brands.

How To Do This

In the file that controls your category, which will be called something like category.php or archive.php simply look for the following bit of code: -

<?php the_content(__(‘Read more’));?>

Simply swap it for: -

<?php the_excerpt(__(‘Read more’));?>

And you’re set!

I’m also experimenting with plugins that might give me an option to create thumbnails of images associated with individual posts and display them at the category level to make my new page structure more inviting to users.

If anyone has any clever excerpt related tricks, do please pop them in the comments field and help make this “quick tip” more useful!