Mr Newton - Unproclaimed Affiliate Genius

Much excitement here at Affiliate Stuff HQ -  I’ve uncovered the original version of Isaac Newton’s three laws of motion.  Must understand stuff for physicists and science types everywhere,  but did you know he originally wrote them about affiliate marketing??

“This’ll be a smash hit” Issac said, and was all up for releasing it to the scientific community until his wife pointed out ” affiliate marketing hasn’t been invented yet Issac, you’ll probably get burned at the stake for being a nut job. You were only just lucky the last time after that business with the apple!”

“Bugger!” Issac proclaimed. “I was really on a roll there. Ah, to hell with it. I’ll make it about motion and change a few of the words around. Nobody’ll notice”

So here’s the original script, recently found by your roving affiliate investigator stuffed down the back of a venerable sofa in the British Library…

Newtons First Law Of Affiliate Marketing

An affiliate at rest will remain at rest unless they act upon a motivational notion.

An affiliate in motion will stay in motion with the same speed and with direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.

Or…

Affiliates have a natural tendency to keep on doing what they are doing. If you’re sitting thinking about getting started in affiliate marketing, or have a great new idea that you just keep failing to act upon, you’re likely to keep doing that unless you give yourself a bit of a kick up the jacksie. However, once you get moving on it… you’ll be hard to stop!

Newtons Second Law Of Affiliate Marketing

Acceleration of wealth is produced when an affiliate acts on an idea. The greater the idea, the greater the amount of ingenuity needed to increase the acceleration of wealth.

Or…
Well, we all know that in the “real” world, the more brute force you chuck at something – the quicker you can make it go. However, affiliate marketing is a more subtle beast and is powered by smart thinking and downright ingenuity.  The bigger your idea for success, the more clever you’ll have to be to get it building momentum.  Affiliate marketing is fueled by a combustible mixture of ideas combined with clever execution.

Newtons Third Law of Affiliate Marketing

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Or…

You know what a rocket does when it takes off, right?? It piles an enormous amount of power out of its rear end and the ground pushes back with an equal force sending it soaring in a skywards direction.

Well, the ground is your idea and the rocket is the effort you put in.  The trajectory you achieve?  That’s all down to what you packed the rocket with, innit?

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been going through an exercise to outsource tasks that take up a large amount of my time but could be done cost effectively by someone else.  The process itself began falteringly about a year ago and has recently come to full fruition.

As things have gathered pace with project “Just Let It Go Kirsty” I’ve recently read, digested, and implemented some of the principles in…

Four Hour Work Week – The Outsourcer’s Bible

The Four Hour Work Week was written by the inspirational (and hilarious) Tim Ferriss.  The sections of his book about outsourcing life were very pertinent and helped me realise that outsourcing should be about ridding myself of just about anything I don’t really enjoy doing if I can afford to do it.  The biggest benefit for me in reading this book was realising that my time has a value, and that I should not treat it as a “free” resource.

I loved the mindset I found in this book – there were so many “oh my god, he’s so right I just never thought of it that way before” moments.

From protecting your personal time, to focusing on the 20% of your work that brings in 80% of your income – the book was jammed with inspiration.  I know lots of my affiliate colleagues have read this book – but if you haven’t yet taken a look at it I do recommend it.  Tim has a highly entertaining and easy to read writing style, so not your average hard to digest business book.

What A Difference A Year Makes..

Since I last posted on this topic a month ago, I’ve spent a lot of time putting the systems in place I spoke about in my last post.    The result on my workload has been absolutely transformational.  I’ve gone from struggling to progress to knowing things are zipping along with me only being involved a supervisory capacity.  In the last 3 weeks this has been particularly valuable as I’ve not felt able to do anything more than give affiliate marketing a cursory glance after the recent loss of my grandmother.

The situation, although very sad for me, has really shown the benefit of the process.  It’s meant I’ve been able to take as much time out as I’ve wanted without worrying about the business losing momentum. That concern is often a huge source of stress for me generally for various different reasons – and the knowledge that I’ve finally kicked it to the kerb is very rewarding.

Kirsty’s Outsourcing Honour Roll

I’m really feeling good about all the things I no longer have to worry about and spend time on. So here’s my “Things I Don’t Have To Do Any More Honour Roll”

Personal

• Household cleaning – this may well be my favourite I’ve always hated domestic chores. Time saved – 12 hours per month. Plus another 3 or 4 moaning about it / not looking forward to doing it
• “Boring” gardening – getting out into the wilds of my QLD bush block is one of my pleasures, but  the boring stuff such as lawn mowing, lopping, pruning, and carting palm fronds to the tip… I hate doing it, and I hate nagging Duncan to help me to do it. Time saved – 2 hours per month, and Duncan doesn’t get berated for letting our front lawn get embarrassingly long any more so a real benefit to our marriage!

Total Personal Time Saved: 14 Hours

That’s enough time for Duncan and I to have two fun days out together instead of doing tedious chores as soon as our leisure time swings around each week.

Business

• Content Writing – Time Saved 35 hours per month
• Content Posting – Time saved 40 hours per month
• Link Building – Time saved 8 hours per month

Total Business Time Saved: 83 hours

Time saved is one factor, but I’ve not considered the concept of time gained before now.  Content Now do way more work on link building than I or anyone else could achieve in the 8 hours or so a month I previously spent struggling away – so the net benefit to the business is actually greater than before.  Similarly, I’ve ramped up the amount of content being written by engaging two different writers to work for me. Writer number two (who also happens to be my mother!!!!) is adding a further 20 hours or so of writing time to the business that wasn’t there before.

And This Means…

Duncan and I have a standard working week of 4 x 6 hour days equating to 104 hours work in the average month.  Recent efforts have removed 41.5 hours from that total for each of us.

Our new working week to get the same amount done? (more actually!)  2.5 days

At the moment we are still going to work 4 days a week and use the extra time to sort out all the things that we had fallen behind with and want to get sorted.  For example, Lingerie Brands has been long overdue a re-design and is now sporting an improved look, and has had a lot of the inefficiencies it’s suffered from for ages weeded from it’s structure.  The result is that already we’re seeing increased indexing and traffic thanks to us finally sorting out an issue with permalinks that was stopping pagination plugins from working.

But Don’t Worry Tim… The Mini Retirement’s Still On

We will indeed be cutting back our working hours to 2.5 days a week, or most likely 2 days one week and 3 the next, as soon as we have caught up with all of the tasks we need to perform to get our sites ship shape once more.

We will then be taking a series of Mini Retirements just like Mr Ferriss suggests (I’d always called these breaks we take skiving but that’s definately a more glam description!).

First up, we are taking 2.5 months off from September to Mid November.  We will be exploring our area of the Australian East Coast with some visitors during September, followed by a 6 week jolly to Europe (with South East Asian hols on the way there and back). After 2 entire weeks of work we will once more abandon our computers for another month of Australian R&R with some friends, culminating in a Sydney new year spectacular.

And you guys thought I’d got boring recently, didn’t ya?  

Today I realised it has been just over a year since I cut my working hours and implemented a new work structure.  It has been a pleasing success and it has been a massive help in me pushing on my business to new heights and really forging ahead with a series of new sites which I’ve launched over the last 12 months.  Taking a structured approach has really been hugely beneficial for me. Until Now.

Scale and Replicate? Well, Up To A Point…

The issue I’m currently having is that a formulaic approach lacks imagination.  I have my daily set tasks but I’m starting to lose faith at the moment that they are actually the right ones, or even a good use of time relative to the results that they are producing now I’m entering a “maintenance phase”. By that I mean I’ve set up lots of sites and am now concentrating upon building up the income I get from them.

The truth is, my scheduled 2 hours per day of content writing has started to bore me dreadfully.  And so dreadfully that once I’ve done my allocated slog I’ve lost the passion and imagination to do very much else. I think it was workable before because I could focus on the end result – a series of sites to diversify my income. However, now I think I need to step back and take a look at the bigger picture.

Much Like Breaking Up… Letting Go is Never Easy

It’s a bit like splitting up with someone. You get that uneasy feeling that being with them just isn’t working out as well any more. Writing all those blog posts myself enabled me to really boost up the content and traffic on my sites as well as keeping an eye on longtail traffic opportunities.  However I’m increasingly not getting all the content I have scheduled for myself done. Because I simply don’t want to write it.  Even worse, my avoidance strategy (busying myself with some largely irrelevant bit of analysis or research) then extends beyond the blogging and starts to drag the rest of the day down.

It’s Not You, It’s Me

The thing is I’ve increasingly been realising recently that I need to take a dose of my own advice. Is that two hours every day being spent “working smarter” or am I just doing it because it’s permanently written into my daily action sheets? In the last couple of weeks I’ve realised the following: -

• My many daily blog posts contribute to site traffic, but are less likely to generate sales than other more highly targeted pages.
• It probably doesn’t matter any more whether its me writing the posts or someone else. Despite knowing hee haw about affiliate marketing my mother is managing to do a beautiful job of writing content for my sites. She’s even posting it up into HTML templates with extreme ease despite having no web design skills whatsoever. It takes me about 30 mins a week to create a work list for her detailing which articles I want done.
• Continuing to write my own content of this nature is probably not the most efficient application of my skills.
• If I outsource some or all of my daily blogging I will instantly have 2 hours free each day to use in other ways.

In Other Words… It’s Just Not Worth Me Doing It Any More!

I’ve already got some fledgling ideas about how I’m going to free myself from this task. Getting bestseller lists from merchants to create the areas to write posts about, creating structured spreadsheets for content writers to work from. However I shall consider them more carefully and perhaps do another post when I have it all worked out.

My aim now is to reduce my time spent writing from around 30 hours per month, to just 3 or 4 hours spent managing the writing process whilst I get other people to do it for me.  If I can concentrate for long enough in the building site that is laughingly known as my home at the moment I may just be able to come up with something.

I’m off to the mountains today for 2 nights to celebrate my birthday. Perhaps it’ll all become clear then

Just a quickie to say thanks very much to everyone who nominated me for the Best Affiliate Blog category at the A4U Awards.

It’s a real honour and pleasure that my thoughts and general affiliate meanderings are continuing to amuse and inform enough people that I’ve made the shortlist once again.  The entire list of nominees is as follows: -

AffiliateStuff.co.uk (that’s me – yayy!!)

DavidFiske.com

eBay Partner Network Blog

Here.org.uk

Lammo.net

OneLittleDuck.co.uk

Good to see so many of my affiliate friends nominated!  You can register your votes for the awards from today on.

Alas…

Once again I will not be able to attend the awards.  I had to make a choice between the awards and the A4U Expo in October.  I eventually decided that the Expo was probably going to be more beneficial as well as coinciding with an excellent time of year for a holiday in Thailand on the way home. Needless to say I shall be very depressed on the evening of the awards at the thought of missing out on such a great night with all my affiliate friends.

You can book a table here, and book me a business class flight from Australia to London here if you need a date. I can promise witty affiliate conversation at the start of the evening and a load of old nonsense and giggles by about midnight

Enjoy the shindig everyone!

Gosh darn it’s frustrating isn’t it?  You’ve been working soooo hard on your affiliate sites, often staying up till 2am on a work night to try and make your big break into affiliate marketing or push your affiliate business on to new heights.

Or have you?

Here’s my top 8 reasons why those hours spent industriously in front of your computer screen might not be as industrious as you thought.

1. Twitter and Facebook. Great places to network with other affiliates and get all important industry contacts.  However, Mafia Wars and Farmville do not count as networking, and nor does spending hours pointlessly retweeting articles you’ve never read in the hope of ingratiating yourself to Jeremy Schoemaker and Shawn Collins so they will DM you everything you need to know about dominating the affiliate world in 140 characters or less.

2. Online Forums. Yes,  A4U is spiffing in every way and is jam packed with useful information (alternatively insert forum name of your choice).  However if you’re spending all your time on there starting (or answering) threads about just about every possible problem you might come up against in affiliate marketing over the span of your career you’re going to start to notice that your business has completely failed to grow despite you asking questions about it till you’re blue in the face.

3. Spending Hours Working Out What Other People Are Doing Isn’t Work! Every single day I have searches to all of my sites from people searching on my company name having a good nosey.  Completely understandable of course, everyone has a wee internet nosey every now and again… but looking at what other people do isn’t going to help you work out what you need to do for yourself to make you some cash.  Take a look around, say “my that’s cool”, and then get on with creating some genius ideas to revolutionise your own business.  Oh, and whilst I’m on don’t use the CTRL+C button to do this.  Particularly if you’ve been looking at one of my sites

4. Does This Sound Familiar? “I was up till 5am last night looking at super affiliates.  I reckon that Amit Mehta must be on at least $30,000 per second or part thereof. Did I tell you he has an American Express Black Card?  It’s so cool.  Oh, oh!  and I read on Twitter that John Chow went out for dinner and had made $9,000 by the time he got back.  Oh man!”  If you have found yourself in possession of lots of facts and figures of this nature recently I have some ill tidings about your career.  You’ve been titting about and not working!!!

5. You Have a Portfolio of 743 Red Hot Niche Domains. How Many Websites? If the number is between zero and none, or you have 7 half finished designs lurking around the internet looking sorry for themselves, guess what?  You haven’t been working at all.  If you’ve been an “affiliate marketer” for 6 months or more and think that’s a good achievement I have some bad news.  You’re not an affiliate marketer, you’re Walter Mitty.

6. Similarly, You Have 10 Websites but every time you start one you get bored after two weeks and start another one before you’ve even given it a chance to work.  You’re always seeking the pot of gold at the end of the affiliate rainbow but you’re not looking at your own two feet which is often where the rainbow starts. Dig for the pot of gold in what you’ve already achieved. You might be surprised at what you find there. The money in this game is in consistency and measured application of your skills.  Put that scattergun away!

7. You’re Not Doing Anything At All… Despite knowing that you should be.  Now this may be obvious but it’s more common than you think.   Suddenly your affiliate mojo has deserted you, shot the craw as we say in Scotland.  It often happens to people who have worked long and hard to go full time.  They achieve their goal and suddenly discover that David Dickenson is their idol and they can’t rip eyes off him on his many daytime TV shows. Solution?  Personally, I usually stop staring at the computer screen blankly alternately stressing  and contemplating my navel, step back for a day or three, have a think about it all, and take another run up to see if I can get back on the work train.  Works about 7 times out of 10.

8. The People Around You Don’t Think AM is a “Real” Job (one for the full timers here) You will therefore be more than happy to be volunteered for all duties at your kids’ school.  Furthermore you don’t mind at all when people call round for coffee unannounced or ring you up to help them solve the trivial emergency of the day.  I’m not sure why people do this.  I’m assuming they think that because it involves computers the process of making money is fully automated and requires no human intervention. Solving this requires assertiveness and in some cases downright rudeness.  This can be fun if you’re not particularly fond of the offender.

And Finally…

I’ve devoted lots of words to describing the many ways you can waste your time as an affiliate and I’m sure there are many more I could have used.  However the solution is way more succinct. Honesty.  Be honest with yourself  about what you’re supposed to be doing  and what constitutes a good day of progress – you’ll be amazed how much more productive you can be.

I’m sure you’ll all have noted that Affiliate Stuff has remained sponsor free up until now.  However, I’ve decided it was high time this blog started paying its way as I figure all it’s helpful content needs to be monetised to help me feel that it is worthwhile.

So with that in mind, I have decided the blog needs a sponsor.

Introducing… YOU
The thing is, I don’t need any additional money and nor does the blog. I write this blog for pleasure and quite some time ago I decided that getting the blog sponsored was going to be the same as getting paid to do this, which would take the fun out of it!  However, I do happen to know of a few people who are very similar to lots of my readers in that they would like help starting their own business. I like to think I’ve helped a few readers on here with similar aspirations, so in a pay it forward sorta way I’d like to ask you to help them, and have a bit of fun at the same time.

Kiva.org

Through this organisation I’ve been sponsoring entrepreneurs in some of the most deprived parts of the world to help alleviate poverty.  The system is not one of donating but rather of loaning someone money to help them get their business off the ground or expand an existing enterprise. You can loan as little as $25US, and when the loan is repaid you can either take the money back or loan it to another entrepreneur.

If I Have Helped You or Entertained You Even A Little Bit Since This Blog Was Started…

Please join the Affiliate Lending Team on Kiva which was set up by Chris Frost.  So far 32 affiliates have made 172 loans totalling $4850.00 to entrepreneurs in 3rd world countries. It’s great to be able to see our collective efforts doing a bit of good, so do please join our lending team and help us to redistrubute some of our good fortune to people who really need it.  If just a few people join because of this post I’ll be thrilled.

Not Restricted To Affiliates…

I’d really like to see a network or two joining the lending team – come on guys, you sponsor enough of us affiliate idiots to chuck drink down our necks at various events. I think a network logo or two on there would be good PR, show that you’re not all just about the override and branding   At a starting price of just $25 you’d be mad if you didn’t.  Agencies & Merchants too…. come on, get involved – it’ll make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside!

If Nobody Joins The Lending Team…

I might just have to go on strike – you have been warned

(hope the above statement isn’t counter productive!)

Come On!! Join The Kiva Affiliate Lending Team >>

P.S. Anyone good at Photoshop want to do me an Affiliate Lending Team banner for my sponsors section?

Happy Birthday Lingerie Brands!  Well, it’s not the site’s birthday actually I just couldn’t think of any other way to describe the milestone it’s just reached.   Lingerie Brands, a site which I often talk about, broke through the 50,000 monthly visitors mark for the first time ever last month.

I’ve been excitedly anticipating reaching this significant number for the last 10 days and have been continually footering about in my Analytics account trying to work out if I was going to make it or not during one calendar month instead of in the last “31″ days, which isn’t quite as satisfying for some reason.

In the end, good old LB came through on the very last day of the month and this mornings stat check was a very happy one.

The Most Satisfying Thing…

Is that this site was my first real foray into the world of WordPress and I think it does demonstrate that you don’t need a big design and development budget to create a site which can ultimately have a good healthy traffic stream.  Lingerie Brands only cost me £132.50 to build and although I’m the first to admit its now sorely in need of an update, it works very well as an affiliate site and is now contributing a good wedge towards our monthly profits.

The Only Way Is Up Baby!

This site has not even skimmed the surface of it’s long term potential.  I’ve been paying a lot of attention toit in the last 6 months (after getting a bit disheartened when Figleaves started mucking about with their programme at the back end of 2008) and it’s become clear to me that LB can and will grow a hell of a lot further with the right input from me.  My only regret right now is not working harder on it earlier. That said, despite me sometimes having neglected it, traffic has grown 40% since January last year – a VERY motivational result for me.

What Next?

There’s a few things I’m going to do to ensure the site keeps pushing on and fulfils its potential: -

• Redesign the feel of the site a little, and modernise the theme.  I’m not going to dick around too much mind you, if it ain’t broke etc but there’s quite a few frustrations with the current theme. For example, I can’t get any of the pagination plugins for WordPress to work on the darned thing which I know will be affecting my traffic.
• Do some restructuring of categories to try and rank for general lingerie terms, in the same way as I have done with my mens underwear site. I have to solve a rather frustrating issue to do with sub categories creating 404 errors before I can do so though but I think I have found something that’ll do the trick there.
• Redesign the shop section and look at creating a better and more compelling shopping resource.
• Make the homepage have more of a “shop” feel.  The site is getting increasing numbers of people hitting that page first, and it needs serious improvement.
• Stay motivated!

I’ll be having a celebratory glass of wine this evening, and dreaming of my next self-congratulatory post (I learned my humility from Roger Federer).  See you all again at LB’s 100,000th birthday bash

P.S – Disappointed that Andy Murray didn’t win? Me?  I don’t know what you’re talking about!

I was having a chat with my MSN pal Dan (hello Dan!) the other morning, and our conversation made me realise that although new affiliates very quickly get the “target the long tail” message, this is often not matched by a rapid understanding of 1) what one of those is and 2) WHY they should be used.  Although Dan has been involved in the wonderful world of affiliate marketing for 2 years, he confessed that his understanding of the concept has only recently crystalised.

When I realised this, a bit of a light came on in my head about this being one of those “buzz words” that a lot of people use, and only a percentage of them understand.  It got me wondering….

What Exactly Might Someone Visualise The First Time They Hear About Long Tail Keywords?

Some kind of exotic reptile?  Perchance a magic fairy who deposits cash in your affiliate account?  I think the latter of those two is probably how I’d see it, for the long tail is often presented as a sort of holy grail of making money online and effectively channelling relevant traffic to your site.

So What is a Long Tail?

Well, the officially correct definition of a Long Tail keyword would be  that it is a keyword phrase made up of 3 or more words that are more specific than a one word search term.

How Do We Use Them?

Well, the first way I think we should use them is to disregard any rigid definition about  them.

For me the key part of the definition is “more specific”.  Getting the targeting of your words right will define whether or not your site sinks or swims so targeting outranks Long Tail in the Kirsty McCubbin book of affiliate priorities.

In conclusion – I think “target the long tail” is a bit of red herring and I apologise to everyone I’ve used it on.  I think “Highly Targeted” keywords is what I should have been talking about.

Some Examples…

Here are some examples of pairs of non targeted and targeted keywords (I’ve made them seasonally relevant): -

Valentines Keepsake > Silver Last Rolo

Sexy Lingerie > Agent Provocateur Lingerie

Romantic Night Out > Thames Dinner Cruise

Naughty Game > Nookii

Romantic Weekend > Champneys Spa Weekend

As you can see, most are indeed 3 words but I’ve also used one that is a single word and also highly specific.

Why Target Them?

All of the above keyword pairs have one thing in common.  I would never, ever target the non specific ones at the start of a new venture. Why?  Because as an affiliate I want to put all of my energy into grabbing people when they are as far along the sales journey as possible.  I’m not interested in visitors when they’re still researching which valentines keepsake they want to buy their significant other. It’s a waste of my energy and resources.  However, once they’ve narrowed down the field to a very specific choice I really want to grab them and get them through to a merchant – I have a much higher chance of grabbing a conversion and the traffic is much easier and cheaper for me to get.

That’s not to say that more general keywords don’t have a space in my marketing mix, they do!  However, by starting highly specific and then working my way backwards towards more general keywords I will be able to get a feel for when the more general stuff is not worth my effort.  With PPC, I’ll also be able to use the highly targeted keywords that generate better revenue to help subsidise my more generic terms which might just get me onto a higher commission tier.

Keywords Are Well…. Key Really

There is absolutely no point at all to being top of the search engine or PPC pops for terms unless they actually earn you money.  It’s vitally important to put yourself in the shoes of the buyer when coming up with your niche keywords and getting them as close to the end of their purchasing journey as possible.

What’s your favourite 3 letter word? I know what mine has been this past year, yep that’s right SEO!  Although 2009 was a bit gnarly for me in places, the little thorns in the usually sweet-smelling affiliate ointment galvanised my determination to insulate myself from margins that were on the wibble.  This is a process I first began just over 2 years ago when I was a 100% PPC affiliate.  The first year saw some small progress and I managed to get myself to 80% PPC and 20% SEO.

However, once the dust from our nuptuals had settled and the credit crunch had really bit, I applied myself to the business of garnering organic traffic like a woman posessed. The results?  An absolutely brilliant increase in my profit margin and turnover.  I will leave the explaination of why combining PPC and SEO can be so powerful to Nadeem Azam – he did a great post on that a while back.

Now I’m Not Letting Any Numbers Slip But…

I can show you how the impact on my bottom line looked!  I keep monthly stats on all of my sites and do love a good graph.  So here’s my monthly income and expenditure graph (numbers removed!!)

The distance between my profit and expenditure (green and red lines) which you can see in January is a pretty accurate reflection of how it had been for the whole of the previous year.  As you can see, throughout the year the amount I’ve been spending on PPC has not increased that much whilst the green and blue lines (profit and turnover) have adopted a pleasing upward trend, followed by a terribly exciting spike around the festive season.

In 2009….

Investing time into writing content and building quality sites reduced the percentage of my turnover I was spending on PPC from 49% to 25%.  Given that a good chunk of my new income has come from sites which are only a few months old I’m incredibly optimistic about consolidating my success further in 2010 and reducing my reliance upon Google Adwords (because I’m starting to get alarmed about how they view affiliate landing pages).

How Will I Capitalise On My SEO Success?

I think I’m going to play the same numbers game I did in 2009 to keep myself motivated.  Every day I set myself a target to get 8 new pages written and live.  I give myself 2 hours to do this.  I set aside a few hours a month to link build for my sites and am using the Content Now Link Building service to garner links for my lingerie site.  I’m seeing some rather pleasing results from that and my rankings are improving all the time.

Where Will My Little Green Line End Up At The End Of This Year?

Well, after a rather sad drop in January I’m hoping it will resume its gentle upwards climb. It’s taken me 2 years to get to this point, and I feel I really know what to do this year to really secure my various sites in the SERPS and insulate Duncan and I from any more recession-esque income fluctuations.

I’ll let you know how I went in January 2011

Happy New Year Guys!

Well, 2009 can best be described as having been an “interesting” year for me and my affiliate business.  The recession and some issues with key merchants took quite the gouge out of my bottom line in the early part of the year – but I managed to work through that and I feel I’m finishing the year with my business in pretty good shape and in a great position to reach new heights in 2010.  Before the shit really hit the recession fan I made a few resolutions about what I hoped to get out of this year – you can see them here.

How Did I do in 2009?

Well, all in all I managed to meet most of my resolutions. I’d estimate my success rate at 80% to 90%.  My failures were as follows: -

• I didn’t manage to create much in the way of revenue with Affiliate Future and Linkshare. Of the two networks I think Linkshare has the most merchants that are a good fit with my sites, so I hope to correct my omission in 2010 and will keep an eagle eye on Affiliate Future for inspiration!
• My vegetable garden hasn’t really eventuated. However, I have 6 tomato plants in the garden. These are still alive and seem to be fruiting.  Baby steps!
• I didn’t change my name to McKenzie! I had planned to be Mrs McKenzie in my personal life, however I got unaccountably agressive when the bank said I couldn’t have one name on my personal accounts and another on my business accounts.  Who is Kirsty McKenzie anyway?  She didn’t make that money, and I was buggered if her name was going on it.  I got a name plate for the front door in the name of “Mr & Mrs McKenzie” – that almost counts
• I didn’t pay off 20% of my mortgage – 2009 was a year of  stupidly big bills.  Not a month went by without someone sending Duncs and I a comedy bill of gargantan proportions.  Oh, and the GBP nosedived against the dollar. I’ve got the equivalent of 10% sitting in a Sterling account though, and with a following wind I hope the value of that will increase to 13% (if the exchange rate improves eventually).  Not a runaway success, but given the challenges we’ve had this year I still think that’s pretty good.

My 2010 Resolutions

• I will consolidate the success I’ve created in 2009 – I created several new sites last year and these have been pleasingly successful.  In particular I’m happy with my Mens Underwear site. It was only started in February last year and has created some impressive fledgling results.  I have loads of ideas in new areas I know will work. However, a trap it is all too easy to fall into is to always be starting new projects and not doing your existing sites justice.  My current sites have the potential to really create a significant turnover boost this year if I devote a block of time to developing them further.
• I will increase my organic traffic and decrease my reliance upon PPC. I’ve already made vast inroads in this area, in fact the results are so impressive I’m going to do a separate post showing the effect of organic traffic on my bottom line in 2009.  Also, given recent “mass banning” outbreaks over at Adwords HQ I’m keen to insulate myself from such an eventuality. Paranoid?  Maybe.  But always preparing for worst case scenario isn’t a bad thing!
• I will keep investing into the growth of my business – it’s too easy to just grab all that lovely affiliate cash and get it spent.  However, it is well worth setting aside a good proportion to invest into promotion, content, and site development.  I see lots of people who make a small amount of affiliate cash, and just keep on spending it. This can lead to turnover stagnation.  It’s so important to nurture the vehicle of your success.  In 2009 I invested heavily in content and it has paid off big time. I wish I’d done it ages ago!
• Add 20% to my profits. I’ve crunched my numbers based on a 5% monthly traffic increase to key sites and it seems this is achiveable.  In fact, my calculations suggested I might well manage to add significantly more than that – but as affiliate number crunching is nebulous given all the variables outwith your control I’ve decided to try to “keep it real”.  Time will tell and I’m not counting any chickens, but its good to have something to aim at!
• I won’t spend too much time affiliate number crunching. It’s all fantasy till you actually get the work done and its too easy to spend time you could be working setting out yet another growth forecast.
• I will pester my merchants more. Goddammit Kirsty but you don’t ask merchants to do enough. Particularly the ones you are driving strong volume to. Get it sorted girl.
• I’ll definately go to the A4U Expo in London this year. I can’t go 2 years running without seeing all my affiliate pals I might even bring my Mum for y’all to meet if she’s up for it.

Personal Resolutions

• More effort at NOT working. Harder than you’d think.
• Plenty of weekends away. We live in a tropical paradise. More sightseeing effort required.
• I’ll spend a chunk of cash getting the house ship shape. Despite the shit exchange rate, it’s time to unleash the moths as this house in its current state is starting to drive me bonkers.
• I will get better at spending my money on myself. Funny thing I have.  I find it really hard to spend cash on myself.  Any purchase over $50 and I get “the guilt” in the pit of my stomach.  I think nothing of spending money on nice things for Duncan, or the house, holidays etc.  But stuff only for me?  I can’t do it.  Whats the bloody point of all this work if I can’t get some goodies for myself? LOL.

OK, I think that’s enough resolutions for one year.  What are your resolutions? Personal or affiliate it doesn’t matter. Record them below so that I can see how mine compare!