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!
December 8th, 2007 at 8:13 am
Wow! A year in the life of a Super Affiliate
How ever do you keep up with all of these promotions? Fascinating. Do you reuse a lot of the same sites from year to year or do you build new ones every year?
December 8th, 2007 at 9:26 am
Hey Tim, Its a slow build to get to the stage where you can promote as many things at once. Yep, some sites get wheeled out again, updated, and popped back up.
As for keeping up with them all… that can be hard. You really should go through all your merchants and campaigns every day to make sure they are all converting. There’s nothing more harrowing than realising that you’ve missed something that’s been pissing PPC spend into the wind for 2 weeks!
January 1st, 2008 at 2:05 pm
[...] 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 [...]
February 18th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Excellent post. Not long now until I get to promote that many things online. I am doing quite well for myself at the moment though.
March 18th, 2008 at 12:47 am
Great post. I often hear people talking about going deep in a niche instead of going wide as you have done with so many different campaigns. The going deep appraoch is often and argument for avoiding the complexity of so many campaigns but it seems you’ve got it figured out. One tool I’ve used to help me manage going wide is roboform. I highly recommend it not just for managing logins, but also managing other details of a campaign.
thanks for the post.
cheers,
todd