Apologies for radio silence readers – I have been completely preoccupied with Christmas related affiliate stuff and the rising mercury here in Queensland isn’t leaving me with much energy at the end of the working day which is usually when I talk to you guys.

Anyhoo… Christmas trade is over for another year, and as the dust settles most affiliates will be taking stock of what worked for them, what didn’t, and what information they have gathered that they can use either next year or to help them identify new niches in 2010.  Christmas reveals a lot about peoples buying habits and popular products, so I’ve been making feverish notes and analysing everything to within an inch of its life recently. Time consuming, but incredibly revealing!  If this is your first affiliate Christmas, or the first one where you’ve done well it will definately pay you to take a few hours to reflect upon your stats!

Merry Christmas!

Hope you all have a great Christmas Day and that all you UK people aren’t too fed up with all that snow and ice.  For the record, it’s 33 here today and I am not feeling in the slightest bit festive.  I’m looking forward to my pressie from Duncan tomorrow and a taste of the giant cheesecake he’s just made though, so that at least is a start!

If you didn’t read it then, here is last Christmas’ festive poem.  I’m too hot to write anything creative this year so in true eco friendly style I’m recycling!

Have a great Christmas, and I’ll see you all in the SERPS for the January Sales.

Festive love and hugs,

Kirsty xxx

P.S. I’ve just re-read a post I wrote on December 12th last year about how un-festive I was feeling and how I was having my best Christmas ever (it came up as a related post when I previewed this one!).  Clearly doing much better this year as I’m not displaying any of the scroogy symptoms as per last year.

Well, its that time of year again – Mega Monday is upon us and todays papers are full of tales of seasonal spending excess.  Apparently £4,000 a second has been forecast as the golden sum that will be spent on interweb shopping today.  John Lewis has had a record breaking week, selling £102.4 million in the week to 5th December, beating their previous 2007 record by over a million quid.

Online forums, Twitter, Facebook and every other electronic communication medium will be filled with the shouts of thrilled affiliates seeing those shopping pennies whizzing into their network accounts.

But at this time of year there is a bit of a danger.  Introducing…

Commission Envy?

I think if Sigmund Freud was still around he’d definately be adding commission envy to his list of ills.  The theory of the Phallus would be revised, and  he’d be chatting on about how all of us deal with the absence of Shoemoney-esque commission cheques from our lives and the devastating effect of that missing symbol of power.

The trouble with this time of year is that we’re surrounded by tales of people making insane amounts of cash.  It can often only take the reading of one tale of thousands of pounds earned in a single afternoon  to turn a feeling of elation at a good innings in Christmas trade into a deep and nagging feeling of inadequacy.

Being “Pretty Good” is Also Acceptable

I say this often, but today I reckon should say it again.  It’s absolutely fine to be a “Pretty Good” affiliate.  Although all those huge commission cheques, the fast cars, mansions, and impossibly glam lifestyles are great motivation I think they can be counter productive at times.  Who doesn’t compare themselves with their peers?  And with money being the measure of success in this industry, a lot of people can start to feel a little bit inadequate when there’s really no need.

Although I have always gone on about not needing to be “super”, I’ve definately fallen into the trap a few times.  (I can see the headlines now: “Scandal, Shock Horror, Kirsty’s Not As Perfect As She Lets On!!!!”)  Sometimes I find myself grumbling about a month or day that’s really been below my expectations before I remember that in terms of my hopes and aspirations when I started out in this industry, I’ve outperformed my early imaginings about my potential earnings by a huge margin.

What Do YOU Think is Good?

In affiliate marketing success is a self defined thing.  If its an amount you are pleased with, you are doing great. Getting caught up with how other people are doing is a completely counter productive process.  Remember this: -

The roots of true achievement lie in the will to become the best that you can become.  (Harold Taylor)

Something that never fails to amaze me is the amount of outright and blatant shit that is spoken by the “Make Instant Money Online Today!!!!!!” fraternity.  My near terminal bewilderment at the outrageous nature of their claims is only matched by my disbelief at the amount of people who fall for their spurious claims about lacklustre and / or completely useless products each and every day. (Sadly it’s usually the latter).

As a public service I’ve created a translation of the sorts of claims people make versus what they really mean.  That way, if you must search for things like “make money online” and “make money fast” you might have a chance of telling the bullshit from genuinely useful information (hint, searching for those terms rarely produces useful info).

Visit OurSpammySite.com and make enough money to quit your job next month! Free System!

We will send you a (useless) video on how to make money.  By the time we tell you the way to make the REAL money even QUICKER you’ll be too excited not to give us your credit card details.  Subsquently you may discover that the initial $849.95 wasn’t for the entire system and that you will need to give us $200 per month so that we may drive 85,000,000 visitors to your site.  Per second. When those visitors don’t turn up, this will be your fault.  But don’t worry!  We can fix that RIGHT up for just another $500 – you dolt!

Our simple system will create you a website with no knowledge of coding required.  Cowboy Dave’s system is a simple little method that has made many of his happy customers thousands of pounds!

For a simple one off payment you too can own a website about a product you know nothing about which is exactly the same as the other 24,000 we’ve sold to gullable fools here at Cowboy Dave Inc.  Once you get your site you’ll have no clue what to do with it, nor will you posess any of the marketing skills required to make a single bean.  However, worry ye not.  We’ll have your money by then and will be only too happy to draw your attention to the “No Refunds will be issued and all claims are for illustrative purposes only” clause in our terms and conditions.  We will think its great we totally blew smoke up your ass and took your money – and you can’t do a damned thing about it!

I make £10,000 a day doing almost nothing, sign up to my exclusive members club for full and FREE proof of my income.  All you have to do is exactly copy my system and you’ll be quids in.

I make lots of money every day by being a complete and utter scumbag.  My system consists of nothing more than lots of vague instructions, bland platitudes, outrageous promises, and absolutely no useful information whatsoever.  By the time you realise my red hot system gives you an ice cube’s chance in hell of ever making a penny, I’ll have spent your hard earned cash on something nice for myself.  Aren’t I wonderful?

Make £35,000 a month with my completely automated online system. Absolutely no work involved, no website, no building lists, no advertising spend.

Seriously, I can’t believe people fall for my bullshit sometimes.  Myself and my mate Cowboy Dave spend all our time competing to see who can make the most outrageous claim – and you guys still sign up.  To make things even more hilarious, I’m going to hook you into a monthy subscription and bombard you with advertising filled with increasinly ridiculous claims – and the odd request for cash to keep my Porsche 911 in petrol – those cars don’t run themselves you know (I’ve got 5,000 mug punters doing that for me).

Finally, my guide to the deep meanings in commonly used punctuation, words and symbols.

!!!!

We said absolutely nothing worth listening to in that sentence, and there was absolutely no information about what it is we’re trying to sell, but we’ve put these exclaimation marks in to show you just how dashed exciting our mystery product is.

Guaranteed

It’s guaranteed we’ll make money.  You didn’t think we were taking about you did you?!  *guffaw*

UNDERLINED and IN RED and UNDERLINED IN RED

We don’t want you to read the words in between these because you might work out our product is about as substantial as a puff of air.  Hopefully you’ll be that desperate you’ll only see words such as MILLIONAIRE and also EFFORTLESS SYSTEM that is FREE TO RUN except for our $200 a month admin charge, and your first born son’s lifetime earnings but this bit is not in red or underlined so its invisible.  Sneaky eh?

$$$$

Yep, you can earn $$$$ simply by joining our monthly club where we will slowly reveal absolutely hee haw of use to you.  We’ll keep you hanging on for as long as possible by repeatedly promising the really good stuff will turn up next month.  Eventually you will discover that you really can earn $$$$.  Of course, we didn’t put any figure in front of that so your earnings will be the multiple of zero of your choice.

Got Another Example?

Add your make money online translation to the comments section!