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!!!!!