Thanks to Keiron for including me in the latest blog tagging outburst. From his blog, I discern that I have to post the rules for this wee bit of fun, and then share 8 things about myself nobody knows. I’m a pretty odd girl, so I’ll have to think up things that won’t require my readers to have therapy once they find out about them!

OK, so here are “da rulez”.

“Each person posts the rules before their list, then they list 8 things about themselves. At the end of the post, that person tags and links to 8 other people and then visits those peoples’ sites and comments letting them know that they have been tagged, and to come read the post, so they know what they have to do.”

1 ) I’m really, really, really scared of the dark. Sometimes, if I have to go somewhere at night alone, I’ll be in a state of terror by the time I get there. This includes midnight trips to the toilet. I’ve no idea why.

2 ) I once went to a strip club in Kings Cross, Syndey, with 10 sailors I met in a bar. I believe the club was called “Showgirls”. Eye witnesses tell me that it was actually all my idea. I bought all the lucky sailors drinks till they were paid at midnight, in return for which they agreed to fund the rest of myself and my pals night out. Concerned I might not get my moneys worth, I apparently decided to take them somewhere I thought the drinks would be outrageously expensive. I’ve no idea what went on there beyond vague outlines of mammary glands. Thankfully my brain censored the whole experience beneath a fog of alcohol. I didn’t remember getting home. But everyone else in my room in the backpackers did. Funny that.

3 ) I almost did a PHD in history. I wanted desperately all though my teen years and University to work in a museum, or in historical research. I thought this right up till my final year when my head of department proclaimed me to be a good candiate for a doctorate. Then I realised how much all these jobs paid, how much debt I was in and instantly became a capitalist. One quick post-grad year at business school later, I became an SEO with a marketing agency!

4 ) My other half decided to move half way round the world and give up his job as a dive instructor after we had a 48 hour relationship (I was only in town for a few days). 500 texts and half a dozen phone calls later, we somehow decided to move in together. That was 3 years ago, and we’re getting married next year.

5 ) Much to my own surprise, I recently spent $3500 AUD on a painting by an Aboriginal artist called Vicki Ladd. I was fairly convinced I wouldn’t spend that much money on a painting, but her work is just so beautiful I couldn’t help it. Here’s another couple of her paintings which are being sold by the same lovely chap I bought mine from.

6 ) My father has been a model for Vogue magazine, aged 45. He was also in an advertising campaign for Toyota, France. Truth be told, he was included as a bit of a scenic Scottish backdrop after some people doing a photo shoot at a local big house discovered he was a piper with full regalia. But hey… you can’t take it away from him – he’s been in the glossies!

7 ) My family name is quite a distinguished one. A McCubbin shot down Max Immelman, better known as “The Blue Max“. One of my direct ancestors is one of Australia’s most famous artists. Fred McCubbin was born in Australia after his parents moved there from Old Dailly, Ayrshire. For some reason there are a lot of Physicists called “McCubbin”

8 ) Despite making a living from PPC, I can’t count. I don’t know my times tables, I can’t mentally add and subtract, nor can I apply any mathematical logic to everyday life. I passed Standard Grade maths by the skin of my teeth (Two exams, one D grade one C grade). Strangely, I got 97% for business related maths during my postgrad. This confirmed my suspicions that it wasn’t a learning disability I had… it was a selective learning attitude problem (if you can’t show me how to apply it to real life – I can’t learn it!).

Well, I missed the controversial ones out. You’ll have to buy me some whiskies to find those out!

OK, who am I tagging? Here’s Kirsty’s 8 bloggers!

Keith Bond
Rob Powell
Lee McCoy
Paul Wheatley
David Fiske
John Lamerton
Fraser Edwards
Steven Marwick – in the hope he’ll post more often!

Hurrayy!!

We’ve just signed up for the affiliate marketing conference event of the year!

Hmmm… now that I’ve written that title I can’t get that old Venga Boys tune out of my head. Hey! We’re going to A4U Expo, doo bee doo be doo doo doo, oh! At London Excel to see… umm…. OK. It’s been long day in affiliate land. Ahem (back to the post).

Venga Boys aside, I’ve just signed up to go to the 2 day affiliate marketing conference being run by Existem, the handy dandy affiliate marketing team who have brought pleasure to the affiliate masses with their great online forum for us internerd types.

I’m very, very excited about rounding off my world travels with a quick trip down to the London conference to fully immerse myself in the wonderful world of affiliate marketing once again. There’s also the matter of the perennial free bar which usually materialises at these events… but that’s not the main reason I’m going.

On the 25th & 26th of October, there’s an action packed 2 days of great affiliate conference sessions as well as an exhibition hall jammed full of exciting affiliate marketing people with whom you can book appointments in advance.

Have I mentioned the Free Bar and buffet at the affiliate after show party?

And another excuse for affiliates to get glammed up and roll out the red carpet? Yes folks, we’ve created our own Golden Globes….it’s the first ever affiliate awards ceremony! There are sure to be loads of shiny prizes for those wonderful folk who contribute so much to our great industry. I imagine they are dreaming up an appropriate category for yours truly as I write this. Most off the wall affiliate? Best incidence of network skulduggery related sarcasm on a blog? Best long distance affiliate? Most bizzare affiliate? The last one is my personal favourite.

I’m particularly looking forward to the free bar at the after conference party. Or did I mention that?

Finally, to help us all meet up with the people we need / want to the affiliate conference will be running several structured networking sessions. There’s no word as yet regarding whether these will be of a free bar nature, but I live in hope.

So if you live anywhere near London (or even if you don’t). It’s definately time to register for this years must-attend affiliate conference. Why? I hear you cry? Well. Aside from any of the other great features, you can come and have a drink and a chat with me and listen to me pontificate away about affiliate marketing and how smashing it is.

You can register online at A4UExpo.com. Its £179 ex VAT till the end of this month (July) for early birds like me. From then on, its £279 ex VAT.

Affiliate Conferences Are The New Black – Get Into One Today!!

OK, so today I got a couple of really odd referrals in my search logs from the following domain: –

http://65.54.226.171/hrsv3/Judging.aspx?UrlIndex=0&QueryID=323149&

The other referral was from the same URL with a different query ID. The links both lead to some kind of interface looking for a username and password.

I’m guessing that this is some kind of MSN human review system to check the relevance of sites manually. They bloody well should be too, I get the oddest search engine rankings for some of the posts I’ve created on here. I keep on getting referrals from people looking for “adult pictures”, I’m ranking in the top ten for “e-bay”, and even better… I get regular traffic who have a burning need to find or see “bums”.

Having just had a quick Google, this SEO Roundtable article from January 2006 was about all I could find out about it online. The post links to a couple of forum discussion threads about it.

I’m assuming they look at the relevance of your site as regards to different search terms, with the query ID’s representing particular search terms. Just a guess mind you. Who am I to presume know what goes on in the hallowed halls of the MSN search service, and the activities of their human marketing drones?

They musta have thought I was relevant mind you. I’m still ranking for E-Bay, Bums, and Adult Pictures.

Is someone trying to tell me something I wonder? Should I post that picture my other half took of me in the bath on my birthday? Hmmm…….

As an affiliate, I have always been interested in patterns of behaviour and influences upon online consumers (well, I’d be mad if I wasn’t!). A couple of things have happened in the last month which have gotten me to thinking about how vunerable affiliate marketing business owners are to the influences affecting offline retail trends.

There’s no doubt that this time last year sales were affected in affiliate-land as our football mad nation ground to a halt with millions of football fans being too frightened to be any more than ten paces from a TV on any given day.

Last month, the UK was affected by terrible flooding during a month which should have been the start of our summer. Many people were flooded out of their homes, and millions of pounds worth of damage was done in what turned out to be the wettest June since records began.

It’s been reported that the retail sector came out of the month of terrible weather largely unscathed with an overall increase in sales of over 5%. However the figures are generalised over the entire retail sector, and are based on growth against last year’s World Cup month of June. It’s also reported that offline retailers were often engaging in heavy discounting, and that some retailers struggled dreadfully during this month.

Retail areas which were most adversely affected were Clothing, Footwear, and DIY type goods (although I did speculate that dehumidifiers might see a surge in demand). On the other side of the retail see saw, homewares and other goods from department stores saw a surge in sales after people abandoned the unkind outdoors for a bit of indoor retail therapy to cheer themselves up.

So Did All This Affect The Affiliate Sector?
The graph below shows my own affiliate sales patterns during June. The actual daily sums involved are obscured, and the sectors making up the mainstay of my activity during June were lingerie, swimwear, gifts, cosmetics, skincare, and UK Holidays.

The blue line represents my profits after sales costs on a day to day basis, and the pink line is the average daily sales value up to the point it was plotted. i.e. on day ten of the month the point at which the pink line is plotted represents total sales for the month divided by ten. I’ve removed the information regarding my profit levels, y’all don’t need to know that

As you can see, things were extremely unstable for the entire month of June and my average sales saw a steady decline after mid-month when the flooding happened. However, Father’s day was also in mid-June, so I have to assume that some of the peaks early in the month are attributable to that. I didn’t do any Father’s Day specific campaigns though, so I don’t think the peak early in the month (and therefore the decline in the latter part of the month) is entirely Father’s day based.

I’m not entirely sure that all of the decline is entirely attributable to the floods, other factors were quite clearly at play.

Will This Month’s UK Interest Rate Rise Affect Affiliate Sales?

Our recent interest rate rise is certainly designed to cool off our high spending ways, and with another one predicted to be on the way before the end of the year, there’s no doubt that a retail slowdown will result.

I’m not yet seeing any early effects of this in my campaigns for the sectors I mentioned above this month.

As you can see, I’m having a much more pleasant month as sales slope gently upward (UK holiday bookings are partly responsible) and huge peaks and troughs are not so evident.

Clearly, any effect on affiliates will depend on the sectors they are operating within. An interesting comment by SimonB (who works for a mortgage and loan lead broker) on this A4UForum Thread notes that “We’ve had our 2 biggest weeks ever in the past 2 weeks”. So it seems that debt consolidation affiliates are going to have a nice strong increase in business over the coming months! Not a negative in sight for them as people start to struggle to meet the costs of their monthly debt repayments.

We can also speculate that luxury items will see a decrease in sales online, but might people also turn increasingly to online retailers to get things at cheaper prices as the interest rates squeeze disposable incomes? It’s also likely that sectors targeting consumers who buy essentials such as pharmacy and other medical items online will remain steady.

Although I’ve not been able to find any figures to back up the effect of interest rate changes on online spending, it does seem clear that only certain online sectors would be affected if there was to be a retail spending slowdown. The good news for us affiliates, is that we have the ability to diversify the sectors we are promoting to offset any alteration in income.

In light of the interest rate hikes that have happened since I left the UK, this is something that I am certainly going to think about now rather than waiting for parts of my income to potentially drop through the floor!

Ok, so I’ve now left the warm bosom of my other half’s family in Perth after ten days of tourist fun. I always have trouble getting back down into a work routine after a few days off. I jokingly said at the end of my last post that I’d be posting about affiliate procrastination syndrome next. However, I have a lot of problems concentrating and find it too easy to skive off after a holiday. I also know other affiliates do too!

I’m not sure if anyone takes it to quite the level I do… I had some learning difficulties when I was a wee tot, and I still have similar symptoms. I’ve just learned how to deal with my lack of organisation as an adult!

I usually find that for at least a week, I seem to be able to while away the majority of the day just bumbling around the internet THINKING about work and kidding myself on I am being productive.

I don’t have a week to waste right now, I’ve got 5 weeks to do a block of work so I can do nothing for 6 weeks in Fiji, Hawaii, and the United States. so there are a number of steps I usually take to get my concentration levels back up and get right back into work in a productive way.

1 ) The night before I am going to go back to work, I sit down and identify what I was working on before I went away and write a list of those tasks in priority order.

2 ) I set myself 5 key tasks that are easily achievable for each day of my first week back in the saddle. That way, when I set off on one of my regular internet wanders I can snap out of my haze easily by referring to my wee list on my desk.

3 ) I have a good look at what has been performing well when I have been having my time off. An easy first post-holiday step is to have a good look at my campaigns and see if anything has seen a surge in sales that I can build on. It’s usually a quick and easy way to do something productive without it taking too much complex work to achieve.

4 ) I give my PPC spend a good old spring clean and make sure that everything I have running is still paying for itself. It’s amazing how those small campaigns that are costing below a fiver a day can eat up my beloved profit margin if I lose sight of the intricacies of my advertising spend. This is a great way to feel as if I’ve really achieved something positive early on.

Well, hopefully I will follow my own advice this week and get things pushed back on a bit. We are borrowing the other half’s uncles holiday home in Margaret River so I have an indoor toilet and everything!

Not too long ago I visited Uluru (or Ayres Rock to all you rampaging colonialists). It’s a truly, truly inspirational place… despite how well-worn it is in terms of being a familiar image associated with Australia. As soon as the rock came into view I was completely struck by a feeling of power and immensity.

How does this relate to affiliate marketing? Bear with me! As soon as we arrived, my partner Duncan felt totally let down. We crowded into a camp site with thousands of caravanners, set in a bland resort purpose built for the hundreds of thousands of people who visit the rock each year. Duncan felt his expectations of getting to grips with the huge cultural importance attached to the rock by the ancient aboriginal culture, were melting away.

However, I was unperturbed. I knew that we could still “commune with the rock” despite the thousands of other tourists thronging around the Uluru scene. As always in an apparently crowded marketplace, the road less travelled is the key to a truly great experience. So in accordance with the wishes of the traditional owners of Uluru, we walked around the great rock instead of over it. 10 kilometers of completely deserted, stunning views of the rock. We discovered aboriginal rock paintings, hidden waterholes, and beautiful solitude with the iconic rock. We saw 4 other people in 3 hours. We got the rock to ourselves by avoiding the cattle-like instincts of every other tourist in the place.

… and this is exactly what I find with affiliate marketing. So often I find a profitable wee gem in an apparently hugely overcrowded market. As with the request not to climb the rock, the indicators of an untapped niche are often staring you in the face, you just have to be prepared to find your own road less travelled. Do not follow the crowd. Do not do the glaringly obvious.

In short, often doing things even marginally differently from what you see staring you in the face is they key to finding your own little bit of affiliate paradise!

We made the effort to find the Uluru you don’t see in the media or popular images…

… and boy did it ever pay off big time!

Thanks to Keith Bond for getting me involved in the latest blog tagging train. This one is aimed at spreading a bit of link love to charitable organisations… without the use of affiliate links! Very worthwhile IMHO.

My supported charities are as follows: -

Breast Cancer Care
Alzheimers Society
World Land Trust
Terrence Higgins Trust
The Gibbon Rehabilitation Project – I visited the project in Thailand. Hugely worthwhile work.

Okie dokie… now to indulge in a bit of tagging. Here we go… Come on down Steven Marwick.. and update your bloody affiliate blog! Big shout outs also to Chris Frost, David Fiske, and finally Rob at MonetiseThis!

I’ve just read an interesting snippet on ShoeMoney’s blog.

Apparently The Rich Jerk’s infallible money making system has gone so well for him he’s having to sell his business to dig himself out of a massive debt and a looming bankruptcy. He cranked up the debt buying TV advertising, and on places like the Howard Stern show that (obviously) didn’t work well enough for him.

The good news is that it wasn’t his own money he pissed up against the proverbial advertising wall, it was investors money. Well, that’s alright then isn’t it?

You can read the listing to sell his alleged business here. I know a lot of people have met Kelly and said what a plausible guy and clever marketer he was, but I guess in the end he simply couldn’t live up to his own hype.

Guess its time for one jerk to go back to his day job?

Update: Apparently the Rich Jerk Has Read Shoemoney’s post and is not happy! He’s threatening legal action, and in typical style ShoeMoney cares not a jot. I think Jeremy’s “Jerking” you around Kelly, lol.

Does nobody ever learn that sending abusive e-mails to ShoeMoney only ever results in him publishing them immediately?

A great search engine institution may soon come to an end after ebay has changed its policy regarding how US affiliates can drive traffic to their affiliate programme.

From June 1st, the US ebay programme will no longer allow affiliates to drive traffic direct to the online auction site via paid search on Google, Yahoo, or MSN. There is no news yet as to when / if these changes will be rolled out to the UK affiliate programme. At the same time, they are also changing the payment structure of the programme to create higher performance tiers.

More information at ebay.com

Yes, you’ve guessed it… no more of those ads we all know and love promoting such highly sought after items as “Blue Bums” or “Fanny Magnets”, which according to ebay affiliates are for sale on the famous auction site.

Joking aside, there will be some fairly big earning affiliates feeling a bit of anguish over this one. It’s well known in the affiliate industry that ebay has some affiliates earning huge amounts of cash from the traffic they drive. Its the old don’t put all your eggs in one basket adage, so here’s hoping these affiliates have another string or two to their bow or their mansions may well be reposessed come July!

There’s a fair bit of speculation around regarding ebays reasoning over this change. Perhaps the Google display url changes which took place a while ago has driven ebay to examine whether their PPC costs have been driven up by affiliates competing for the display URL. In addition to this, ebay then had to renumerate affiliates for the leads and sales they created.

This is the kind of decision that many merchants are increasingly taking as they seek to protect themselves from paying commission on traffic they feel they could have generated themselves at a much cheaper rate. I wonder if ebay will keep up the fine blue bum and fanny magnet tradition of its affiliates? If nothing else, its sometimes good for a laugh as I wind my way round the affiliate highways and byways of the internet.

I have saved these images for posterity lest they become a thing of the past!

Update: Rob Of MarketingDrome sent over these images he has collected of similar weird e-bay searches. Thanks Rob!

Want to find out what kind of affiliate you are? Find out by taking my affiliate personality test!

It’s only designed to be a bit of fun, there’ll be no need to consult a psychiatrist if you don’t like what you find out

Take The Test Now!