Hello. Remember Me? Kirsty? Yeah, I know there’s been the odd bit of tumbleweed floating around this blog recently but as the title suggests I’ve been taking a wee step back and having a bit of a break.

See, what a lot of people tend to forget once they really get into the cut and thrust of affiliate marketing, is how this really is a wonderfully flexible way to make a living. Remember when you first heard about affiliate marketing? “Oh man… that’d be brilliant. No more working for the man. No more of the 9 to 5 grind, I could do anything…” Scroll on a year or 3 and….

How many full timers d’you reckon actually find that time to have a break, kick back, and let things take care of themselves for 3 or 4 weeks? Not many! There’s too much of an obsession with being a “super” affiliate and not enough on being “just good enough”

Right now, I’m feeling like all the effort I’ve put in during the last 4 months has been just that. “Just good enough”. In the last 6 weeks I’ve earned what used to be 12 months salary, selling just short of £400,000 worth of holidays to Brits desperate to know they have something to look forward to once the winter doom and gloom has receeded. I’d fully intended to keep up the pressure during this bit of my trip… working a few hours a day and keeping things rolling. However, after all the stress of leaving the UK I’ve pretty much flopped out and decided to enjoy a bit of the sun here in Auckland. Right now, we are at Duncan’s home having a jolly nice time meeting all my future in-laws and generally touristing about the joint.

Unfortunately, this has meant I’ve neglected the old blog. For this, I apologise unreservedly. Even now when the guilt has gotten too much I can’t think of much affiliate related stuff to be pontificating about. Except how I feel. Right now my feeling about affiliate marketing is that “it’s time to kick back and enjoy waiting to be paid!”.

Normal service will be resumed shortly. In the meantime, why not take my Affiliate Quiz and see if you need to kick back as well? While you’re doing that, I’ll be spending a lot of time here in New Zealand doing stuff like this….

*That’s the back of my future mummy in law’s head on the right!

It’s a great old feeling when you can relax and enjoy the fruits of your labours.

PS. If anyone has any Ask Kirsty questions now would be a great time to get them answered… I’m not really doing much else! Contact Me via my form if you’ve got a question you just can’t get around!

Well, I’m sitting in my office here at Affiliate Stuff towers gazing out of the window at 12.20pm on an absolutely miserable Scottish day. The heating is up full pelt, and I am sat in my favourite pair of pyjamas (the blue ones with yellow stars on) and my big fluffy red dressing gown (yep, you’ve guessed it… there are stars on it!).

There really is no finer feeling than watching all the normal folks struggle on past the window in the cold on a day like this. People with “real” jobs, not ones living in affiliate fantasyland like I seem to be!

I think the only thing that could make me feel better would be if I were able to buy some nice personalised affiliate jim jams. I’ve been keeping an eye out for personalised adult pyjamas for years. I’d dearly love a set of flannel jim jams for winter and a cotton set for summer emblazoned with this…

In my opinion, there’s no better way to spend a day than in your jim jams. The fact that I also get to make a topping income and travel (alas not in my jim jams), makes my days spent in my favourite mode of attire just perfect!!

Well, here I am sat sitting here in my affiliate jimmy jams contemplating yet another year that has simply flown past. Kieron , Ray and Nadeem (in Two Parts) have already published fine overviews of their year. I could reflect in the same organised way they have… but to be honest 2007 was an absolute blur and much of it involved me visiting some of the most exciting places in the world.

So I can encapsulate my year thus. I ran my affiliate business at the same time as travelling the world. During my 2007 tax year I achieved a 400% increase in turnover working 3 days a week and visited Thailand, Australia, and New Zealand for a total of 10 and-a-half glorious months before heading home on a 6 week jolly via Fiji, Hawaii, San Francisco, Las Vegas, The Grand Canyon, and finally New York.

My highlights from the trip would have to be: -
Railey Beach in Thailand, a spookily beautiful place with towering limestone cliffs surrounding it. I also met up with an old friend from uni there and we spent a quality week with him. It was just like when we were young and irresponsible again!

Wai U Tapu Thermal Park - Rotorua NZ - I’ve always been fascinated by volcanoes and their wily ways. I felt just like David Attenborough!

Spending my 30th birthday drinking Bollinger in a spa bath looking out over a tropical rain forest in Australia… Nuff said

Seeing a piece of art with a hefty price tag that absolutely took my breath away in Katherine, Australia and being able to say “What the hell, I’m having that!” without thinking of it. Actually, I wish I’d taken a picture of the gallery owners face when two scabby looking young backpacker types wandered in and spent $4,300 without blinking. Now THAT was a work of art folks!

Sailing around the islands of Fiji on a beautiful old boat, visiting all the famous film locations where they filmed movies such as “Castaway” and “Blue Lagoon”, sipping Fijian beer and generally making remarks such as “wow” and “this is the life, isn’t it?”

That’s me in the green dress!

Driving out to the Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon when we were visiting Vegas. Truly amazing places I never thought in a million years that a wee lassie fae Colmonell in Ayrshire would ever get to visit!

Is this a God Dam?

Visting the Empire State Building in New York… and also getting to be very rude to New Yorkers. Those people really know how to let you know their feelings on any issue (which generally seems to be that you’re an idiot and must do things their way). However, they forget they learnt it all from their Scottish / Irish roots so I had a great time abusing everyone right back… from casual street hustlers to tour guides, bellhops, taxi drivers, and finally innocent passers by, everyone in New York caught it in the neck from a short, irate Scottish girl. I think they secretly enjoyed it

I’ve no idea how Duncan managed to take this picture… there were about 2,000 other people in that foyer!

Finally, the best bit of this year has been getting home and doing 3 months solid work at the job I truly love. I have had so many ideas when we have been away and so little time to develop them. It’s a real pleasure to now be able to work on them and really strengthen my revenue streams. I already know what I’m doing in 2008… I hope y’all have made your plans to make the best of what is likely to be a challenging year for the industry.

Bring it on I say. My resolution? To be innovative, keep ahead of the game, and to represent the affiliate industry as a good example of professionalism and ethics. I hope we can all do the same this year.

Thanks to everyone who’s subscribed and read my blog this year. It’s always a real pleasure talking to you all!

Happy New Year!!!

Oh, I’ve also realised I’m getting married this year. AARRGGGHHH!!!!!!!

Phew!! Well, that was the Christmas rush and what a silly season it has been for me. I’ve spent so much time watching other people buy their Christmas pressies I’m very nearly sick of them!

I’m sure many of you will have been frustrated this year trying to work out exactly where all this Christmas money everyone has been screaming about was being spent. I’ve chatted to a fair few people recently who seem to be at a bit of a loss. It’s not easy to work this stuff out when you are “out in the affiliate cold”. If you’ve no idea, the best bit of advice I can give you for next year is to try out lots of direct to merchant PPC using their feeds to generate the search terms during the early part of the season.

I used this technique this year and found many surprising items that the punters just loved. I can now use this information going forward into 2008 for all the remaining gift seasons and feed the data into my strategy for next years campaigns.

Also, check out what is being advertised a lot on television, and pay attention to what the press are raving on about. This publicity will feed back into internet searches (but can be disasterous if you pick an item merchants can’t keep in stock!!).

Finally, my best bit of advice has to be not to copy what you see others doing or have them talking about. A certain someone who may or may not be reading this article right now has lifted a niche I spoke about wholesale. I can see from looking at his site that he’s basically read my work and re-hashed it into a new format. The similarities are blinding.

OK, I knew that would happen guys (hoped it would not out of respect for the free information I give) but the reason I give away the urls of my sites is so you can see how the affiliate mindset works… not so you can copy what I am doing.

Don’t worry though, I won’t stop sharing this kind of info. However, I do reserve the right to bankrupt the next person I see doing this by inflating their CPCs to a ridiculous amount. In fact, I might still do this to the current offender just to create a valuable lesson about the dangers of pissing off affiliates with deeper pockets than you… You know who you are, and you’ve been warned!!

I previously talked about how copying someone does not automatically mean you can duplicate their success and become a super affiliate. I’d like to re-iterate that now. Make your new years resolution to come up with something unique that you can build on and make your own. That really is the hallmark of a successful affiliate.

Merry Christmas Everyone, I’m off to roast chestnuts on the fire and drink the 18 bottles of really posh booze I treated myself to. Hurahh!!!!!

Well, things have been quiet on this blog recently.. mainly because it’s Christmas and I’m working furiously either checking my campaigns or quickly creating new bits and pieces for areas that are performing well. I’m also well into my prep for the January travel season. I’m feeling a bit lost for inspiration as I’m writing loads of unique content for a new lingerie site… I’ve been working for about 16 hours most days (and loving it) but it does mean the time I usually spend chatting to my blog readers is taken up with either working or collapsing on the sofa with a massive glass of wine.

With that in mind, I thought I’d go off looking for all the various inspirational tales of how much money your hard work can create in this game. Part of my reason for looking for these stories is to motivate myself on to greater things in 2008. I wanted to find verifiable stories of success. After all, anyone can SAY they earn a squillion quid a month!

All Aboard For The Affiliate Inspiration Train!

First stop has to be Kieron’s Sitepoint Forum post which gained him notoriety on both sides of the pond. A while back, he posted a single page of his bank statement and showed off an extremely healthy affiliate business!

(Click For Bigger Image)

Naturally, we also have to make a quick stop at ShoeMoney Central and salivate over his massive bloody Google Adense cheque…
(Click For Bigger Image)

Next Up, something less about capitalism and more about lifestyle. The chap who runs Alex’s Coupons is supporting his entire family and paying for medical bills for his daughter’s fight against Leukaemia. Inspired by an increasingly frightening level of debt as a result of his daughter’s need for treatment, and the near collapse of his business after 9/11, he created a coupon site that has gotten the family out of debt and continues to pay for his beautiful daughter’s medical treatment.

There’s a news item about this affiliate success story below…

There’s also my erstwhile affiliate drinking chum Ray, who posted a while back about having gone from £25k in debt to having £50k in the bank within just one year. And he was working on his web business PART TIME!

Finally, if you’ve got an affiliate inspiration story (regardless of size), why not send it on over to me. I’m thinking of setting up an “inspiration” category where I’ll post a good story about someone’s affiliate marketing journey every now and again and give their blog / affiliate site a little bit of link love. Contact Me with your story if you want to share it with other affiliates!

Well I must say that Ray at Befuddled was right. Mega / Cyber Monday was great! However, I actually had an even better “Topping Tuesday” and “Wicked Wednesday” beat the pair of them hands down. I’m not going to bore you with stats because my Duncan’s made me promise not to constantly count up how much I’m earning and what the profit margins are . This is my best Christmas ever. A great feeling for me in view of the fact I’d done no preparation before we got home at the end of September.

The 90,000 keyword campaign I was chatting about just after I got home is a big part of this success, so I’m extremely happy all our wrestling with Google Adwords Editor has now paid brilliant dividends.

Alright, so I’m knocking on about the brilliance of Christmas. But what next? How am I going to build on my best ever Christmas to make sure it carrys on throughout 2008 to make sure this is my best ever year? Well, I’ve been formulating a plan in my mind of which sectors I’m going to promote this coming year. So I thought I might as well share it with you guys. After all, you might tell me if I’ve missed something!!

So here it is ladies and gents…..

My Affiliate Marketing Calendar 2008!!

January

- Everyone is freezing cold and depressed. Therefore they want to do 2 things. Know they will eventually get a break in the sun, and make indoors look nice and inviting. They will also buy themselves what they really wanted for Christmas in the January sales. Once they have done that, and after the over-spending of Christmas they tend to poop their pants about their debt. So my targeted areas for January will be: -
Gifts (people really do buy themselves things they really wanted), Fashion (January Sales!), Holidays, DIY, Furniture, and Credit Report Related Services.

n.b. - I could also target consolidation loans and 0% interest credit cards. However, it’s wickedly competitive and I’ve not had a chance to think through my traffic strategy properly. So perhaps January 2009 for this!!

February

Well, this is easy. ‘Tis the season of love and slushyness. Valentines day will be upon us and the spending shall commence once more. So targeted areas this month will be:-
All things gift related, flowers, chocolates, perfumes, lingerie, any old crap people buy in a panic so they don’t have to sleep on the sofa for a year!

March / April

Mothers day and Easter are upon us, and Spring has sprung. It’s back out to the gift shopping again and dashing outside to the garden to make sure it’s still there. Also, lots of schools will be going on their half term holidays. So there will be a few last minute holiday bookings on the go. Gift shopping is coming to a sad end for another year at this point. Awwww…. Another round of: -
gifts, flowers, chocolates, perfumes, garden maintenance tools and plants, with a tiny bit of travel promotion in there too.

May / June

Gah. No more wild shopping for gifts. But Wait!! It’s Father’s Day in the UK, so a last gasp for the gifts in the week running up to the 15th. But fear not?! What light through yonder window doth break? That’s right!! It’s British Summer! Time for us all to rush outside and get sunburnt / soaked to the skin in our gardens.
So now we add to the mix: -
Outdoor furniture, Barbecues, Garden Lighting, Parasols, Plants, and if I’m very enthusiastic about the weather… Wine and Food merchants.

July / August

Theoretically when BBQ and outdoor season is in full swing. Will it happen? Hmmmm. Won’t be my problem cos I’ll be in Australia!
However, these months are when people really go mad for their Summer holidays over here. They’re going to Marbella and they want to look their best.
So I will be targeting: -
Last minute holiday bookings, Fashion and swimwear, Cosmetics and Skincare, Hair products like GHD’s and all the above mentioned outdoor stuff (possibly sandbags if last years summer was any indicator of what to expect!)

September

Gah, what a depressing month September usually is. Everyone’s been spending their bahookies off for 8 months and they start saving up for Christmas. I usually batten down the hatches and panic in case the money is never coming back. However, this is also a good month to furiously get some last minute Christmas preparations done.

October to December

It’s silly season again!! Hurahhh!!! So We Target: -
Anything at all!! Toys, Games, Clothes, Makeup, Cosmetics, Perfumes, Gifts in All Shapes and Sizes, Hampers, Christmas Decorations, Flowers. ANYTHING!!

Phew. I think I need to go back to bed now, I’ve just lived an entire year of my life in 40 minutes. Ideally speaking, you should be preparing for each of the affiliate seasons a good few weeks in advance. Hence, myself and Duncan are now just monitoring all our Christmas things and have already started preparing our January campaigns. I will also be doing an SEO site for Valentines day this month in the hope of some traffic. Come the start of January we will be in Valentines mode… and so on.

I know there’s loads of sectors I’ve missed out on there, but that’s what I’ll be doing this year. If you are doing something exciting this year and want to add it in the comments, it would be interesting to see what other chaps are up to!

Well, I’ve only just gotten back up the road from Newcastle after staying on for the weekend. I have to say that I’m absolutely knackered after a huge night on Thursday followed by a weekend of drinking with some family members I hadn’t seen for 4 years.

I must say, I had an absolutely wonderful evening. The only downside was that I had a little accident involving Duncan’s expensive camera he usually takes diving and the chocolate fountain. Umm.. lets just say I really do wish I’d left the underwater housing on it. He’s not a happy camper as they don’t make the cameras any more, and the underwater housing cost a bloody packet!! Fortunately, Ray of Befuddled Fame had his camera and lent it to me a couple of times.

There were many highlights to the great evening, but my very favourite bits were…

Being robbed of the last Buy.at Christmas cracker in the building by the above mentioned Ray, who then proceeded to spend an inordinate amount of time flashing around the free fiver that was in there.

Cheers Ray!!

Letting my fellow affiates know just how much I really love them…

*ahem* I’ll be issuing John Lamerton with his written apology for that one later

Learning what I’ve decided to call “The Scouse Shimmy” from my new dancing partner in crime, Chris Frost. For anyone not familiar with this little number that beats the pants off a Paso Doble any day… it basically involves manically jiving around the dancefloor with a hysterical Scottish girl in tow, and jumping right into the middle of as many bewildered revellers as possible. During this, you have to maintain a big scary Scouse grin at all times. I thought it was hilarious, but you’d be amazed how many locals thought that there’d clearly been a breakout from a nearby secure hospital.

Duncan and I having to scab money for nightclub entry from Mark Russell of Existem AM after we got to the front of the line and discovered neither of us had actually brought money with us. Thanks Mark!

Here’s some more magical moments from the evening…

“My” Duncan and Keith Bond have a beer.

Ray and I finally kiss and make up… is it me, or am I looking pissed?

Lee, Me, Duncan, Keith!

Elaine and I having a bit of girl talk (weddings, babies, anything really!!)

Kieron explores the joys of free Peroni with Elaine…

That crazy funkster Ray struts his stuff

I discover an early casualty and decide the kindest thing to do is take pictures of him at his most vunerable. Then…

…Try to crowd everyone else in for a pic only for him to wake up. In case anyone’s wondering, that’s my attempt at a nonchalant escape!

Chris Frost practising his manic grins for our dancing debut.

Duncan finally forgives me for breaking his camera in the Chocolate fountain!

The last picture Duncan’s camera ever took… Dan and the Evil Fountain of Chocolatey Doom!!

I’ve been fiddling around with Wordpress for quite some time now. I’ve had a few months to really have a good play around with it. Having recently completed a truly impressive Google compliant Adwords landing page with a Wordpress blog skin, I think it’s time to provide a one-stop guide to getting up off your affiliate bums and launching yourself into the world of Wordpress!!

The beauty of Wordpress is that its totally free, comes with a great and easy to use content management system, and has plugins that can do just about anything you can think of at the touch of a button.

Well, that’s easy for you to say Kirsts but it’s all been sounding complicated to me, so where the buggery do we start?

Well, let’s try the beginning shall we chaps? First off… you will need….

A Proper Domain
No fiddling around with Wordpress hosted efforts. Lets invest a tiny bit of time and money in buying a proper domain. A .co.uk costs about a fiver. When you are looking for a domain registrar make sure that they allow you to change name servers without any hassles. Personally speaking, I’ve always used Fasthosts for my domain registration but I’m not linking to them here because sometimes they are the most frustrating shower of arses to deal with (that’ll teach ‘em!).

A Web Host That Provides SQL Databases
Kinda got a bit technical all of a sudden? Now don’t you panic boys and girls, it’s nice and easy to set up a SQL database with a host and once you’ve pressed a few buttons within your hosting control panel, Wordpress does the rest.

Unclear? Don’t worry. There are incredibly Detailed Instructions On How To Install Wordpress Here. The chaps behind this platform really have worked very hard to make it as simple as possible.

OK, so you’ve got your site all ready to go. What now?

A Decent Looking Wordpress Theme Design
It’s really amazing just how many really cool free Wordpress Themes there are knocking about at the moment. You can create a really, really professional looking site without having to have a shred of design ability.

You can search through loads of free themes at themes.wordpress.net/, however James Little kindly uploaded a really neat Wordpress Pack to his blog a while back which included loads of great themes and some essential plugins. A great time saver.

If you’ve something particular in mind it’s really easy to search for great free themes in Google. Just search for “wordpress theme + site type” I’ve found some total crackers recently by searching on terms such as: -

Wordpress Beauty Theme
Wordpress Magazine Theme (these are great for creating sites with static home pages and a magazine or news site feel.)
Wordpress Fashion Theme

I just love the way you can change the look of your whole Wordpress site just by logging into the admin section and selecting another site from your “Presentation” menu.

OK, so you’ve got your site looking smashing, what next?

Right. First off, you’ll be needing a few of the plugins that make Wordpress sites a lot more effective in search engine terms. Chris Frost wrote a really interesting post about this on his blog a few days ago, so you don’t just have to take my word for it!

In no particular order, here are a few of the plugins I make use of regularly: -

Akismet - Helps keep those nasty, nasty comment spammers away.

SEO Title Tag - Lets you define the title content for every blog post and category. Hugely powerful as good titles make a huge difference to your SEO efforts.

Comment Relish -For adding feed subscription buttons to your blog.

Google Sitemaps - Adds a Google compliant sitemap of your blog.

Related Posts - Lists a a few related posts.

Some Good Posts About Wordpress Plugins

Christ Frost came up trumps again with his Blogging Necessities list. Some great plugins here.

Also, I found this one at The Blog Joint.

Finally…. Some Content!

Cover your topic thoroughly. Write a couple of posts each day on individual products or niche… it doesn’t have to be much, just a couple of hundred words or so.

I recently started this blog: - Natural Beauty Tips. It very quickly started getting traffic from long tail search terms. I still have a lot to do on this one, but it should give you a bit of an idea.

Also, Rob at Monetise This recently posted about a merchant he liked and gave an example of a Personalised Gifts Site he’s created using a Wordpress theme. As you’ll see, Rob has been able to create a nice Xmas feel using a suitably festive blog skin which he’ll be able to change at the touch of a button once Santa has returned to Lapland.

Finally Finally….

What more can I say? Give Wordpress a go. It’s a delightfully easy way to create affiliate content. I absolutely love it!!

Well, if you can’t beat the Christmas countdowns, join them… that’s my motto!

Tomorrow Duncan and I are off to yet another great UK affiliate event sponsored by those lovely people at Buy.at (I always think people are lovely when they buy me drinks - try it and see )

This is going to be an absolute, well, cracker of an event and will take place at Apartment in Newcastle at 7pm tomorrow night. We’ve booked a hotel just a short stagger away, and we can’t wait to see everyone for what may be the last time before we leave the country again *sniff*

Apart from my perennial favourite, the free bar, there’s a whole host of fab prizes up for grabs. Existem AM are going to be giving away a 60GB Ipod Video,

Euroffice are giving away an Xbox 360,

and Thorntons will be giving away a YEARS SUPPLY OF CHOCOLATE to a lucky attendee.

I can’t wait to get down there tomorrow and indulge in some festive fun.. although I am on a diet so I might have to try really hard to be good!

Another thing that’s been running through my mind of recent times is the preoccupation with “Super Affiliates”. Why is it that the majority of folks who take any more than a passing interest in our industry suddenly leap into the air like people posessed and proclaim in loud and confident voices: -

“That’s it! I’m sick of working for the man!! I’m going to be a SUPER affiliate!!!!” **Cue superhero type music, and imagine our proud and happy protagonist in a pair of red underpants and his mum’s best turquoise tights**

So look, being serious here, I do understand why people find out about chaps such as Amit Mehta of Titanium Amex card fame, Jeremy Shoemaker with his adsense check for $132,994.97, and our very own Kieron Donoghue who spends the debt of a small African country on PPC every month. Of course they’re hugely inspirational…

But ask yourself these two things If you’re an aspiring affiliate, or are just starting out along the long and weary road to the turqouise tights…

1 ) Is affiliate success necessarily going to be achieved by emulating other people?

No.

The reason all these guys earn money faster than they can spend it is because they are unique and can see money making opportunities where others don’t. If you seek to emulate them, it won’t make you as successful as them. Merely a second rate copy… and you still won’t have a clue how YOU can make money, only what other people are up to.

2 ) Honestly, what’s wrong with being merely “Pretty Good”? Have a good think about how you’d define success in real terms. Doubling your salary? Working 2 days a week for the same money and having time to spend with your family?

Personally speaking, I’m not a super affiliate in terms of turning over millions of pounds a month (and that’s what I reckon a real super affiliate is)… and I’ve no desire to be. What’s the point of the affiliate lifestyle if you can’t take them 5 or 6 holidays a year? Furthermore, my Duncan intimated to me last night that (my) preoccupation with money bothers him a little bit sometimes.

Have you thought about whether your current partner wants to wake up next to Sir Alan Sugar instead of you tomorrow morning?

Pretty Good Affiliate is an A-OK job description too in my book!

(n.b. anyone who knows me really well will no doubt be aware there’s bound to be another word in that job description. But in the interests of decency, I’ve left it out! )