Hi Kirsty

I’ve been reading your blog pretty much since the start of 2009 when, encouraged by Smingle’s a4u posts, I started my first affiliate sites. One of my sites, which I started before the summer, is the one entered above, for 8 ft trampolines with enclosures. I did my research, found it gets a reasonable amount of exact searches, it’s a fairly large item making delivery a sensible option, the .co.uk domain was available and the competition weak.

It started well, and climbed to near the top of page 1 for the main search term in Google. It generated a few sales through Amazon until about 4 weeks after launch it suddenly dropped. It now ranks about page 4 or 5 for its main term, yet ranks better for some of the secondary pages.

Would you be able to have a look and see what you think please?

I have my concerns that it is over-optimised and Google has penalised me for being a thin affiliate site. I didn’t intend updating it really, as the market for trampoline is just for a few months over the summer. It still ranks #1 in Yahoo, and it gets 10-20 UVs a day from which I get the occasional sale, but more than anything I want to learn what I have done wrong so I don’t make the same mistake again!

Thanks

Tom

Website: http://www.8fttrampolinewithenclosure.co.uk

I don’t think you have over optimised this site at all, I reckon you need to put a bit of time into some link building for this site. I also think you need to add a small amount of content on a regular basis.

You do usually see a site getting an initial boost in the rankings when it is first launched. It then “Settles” into the index. Sometimes in a less competitive area it’ll gradually bubble its way back to the top. I’ve had domains do this and take anything from a few months to a year. Clearly though, its desirable to get some results quicker than that!

If you do a little work on getting some links in you should see an improvement. Also, sites that are updated regularly will often be able to achieve better rankings not to mention the all important benefit of some additional organic traffic. It would take you ten minutes a day just to add a quick post of a couple hundred words. I don’t think that’s too much of an additional drain on time to get the site you worked so hard to prepare into the SERPS and doing what you wanted it to do!

I know you said it is a limited market, but I think it is important for me to highlight that very few affiliate sites created on a “chuck it up and leave it” basis will reach their full potential.

I believe that by not putting the time and effort into a little “follow up” promotion lots of affiliates are effectively penalising themselves.  Google doesn’t want to rank sites that people put up and then leave to do their thing, they want fresh relevant content.  If we as affiliates don’t provide it our sites will often fail to reach their full potential.

Greetings Australian wildlife fans!  As some of you will know, our lovely Aussie home is a bit of a haven for wildlife and I’ve posted a few pictures up here and there for your entertainment and delectation.  Most have been scary and poisonous spiders in some shape form or fashion, so by way of balance I’ve finally managed to grab me some pics of the kangaroos that live around these parts.

I ended up tearing down the wire fences on 2 sides of our property about a week ago as I didn’t see any need for closing out the beautiful bush environnment here  and this was what I was rewarded with at 6am this morning….

This is The Lady Roo From The Family Group….

And Here is Her Cute Little Joey!

Awww… aren’t they gorgeous?  It’s just so special to have wildlife like this around us and yet only be living ten minutes from the beach at Mooloolaba, in the midst of a relatively dense population.  I really do love living here and feel so incredibly lucky to have found this house.  We also see Possums, King Parrots, Green Catbirds, Eastern Water Dragons, Blue Headed Honeyeaters, Lorikeets, Whip Birds, Green Tree Snakes, and lots of other interesting wee critters.

See?  Its not all about me and scary spiders is it?  I’m always being accused of being a mono maniac when it comes to arachnids.   Mind you, I got a cracking picture the other day.  I’ll be publishing it soon as I simply can’t resist sharing it with all of you. I reckon I’ll have to put up a health warning first though. This one is that good that those of you suffering a nervous disposition might develop heart problems if you see it without first reading a disclaimer

An interesting and very to the point question from Dave who is struggling with his new affiliate site!!

As in the title, I’m really pap at affiliate marketing, I just don’t get it.

I’m obviously doing something seriously wrong since I have a few sites that just don’t seem to generate any sales at all, so I wondered if you might be able to tell me where I’m going wrong.

The Insurance Groups site is a good example – it’s now 4th/5th in Google for the main term, commissions are great, but I make zero sales, just a few adsense clicks.

What should I do to make it work better?

Many Thanks!

Website: www.insurancegroups.org.uk

Well, there are a number of thing that probably aren’t helping your cause much!

1. The niche you’ve chosen – You have clearly worked hard on creating lots of content and pages for this site. I don’t want to belittle your effort there, the way you have approached it and created all the different site sections for different types of insurance is absolutely dead on, so well done there. BUT (and you totally knew that was coming, didn’t ya?!) this is an extremely competitive area.

Your pages targeting things like “Motor Cycle Insurance” simply have no chance of ranking for their search terms, you’re up against too many other sites. Taking that as our example, you have no less than 27,100,000 competitors. Given that people very rarely go past the top 10 results – 20 if you are lucky, perhaps the issue here is that you’ve set the bar a wee bit too high for yourself?

2. Your page structure / calls to action – is very poor. Although you’ve jammed the pages with good content, I just can’t see anything there that would compel your visitors to click on a link. Looking at your page, the strongest call to action on there is most definitely provided by those Adwords links. I see you have 4 insurance company choices on your motorbike pages, but those just fade into the background with all the other links you have placed on the page.

If you want to continue with insurance I suggest you take a good look around at how successful sites structure their sales pages. This might perhaps help you come up with an alternative design.

However, I would also strongly suggest that you dip a toe into some other niche waters to help you learn about affiliate marketing. Of course I am biased because I don’t do insurance, but I think if you go for a smaller niche you might find traffic and sales much easier to get which will keep you motivated and help you learn about what works.

This is a guest post by Ran Nir, Affiliate Manager of Photo Paper Direct

Two months ago we decided, despite the gloomy economic outlook (it has improved a bit! since then), that the Affiliate channel was a good fit for our products, pricing and customer base. As a UK based online retailer with big ambitions, we know that in order to achieve maximum market penetration and to reach as many customers as possible, a multi channel sales strategy is vital and it must include Affiliate marketing. Since going live two months ago we’ve had our fair share of successes and stumbling blocks, some because we were a bit ‘green’ and some because we had the wrong Affiliates. I’d like to think that since then and together with our Affiliate partners, we have improved our act which leads me to write my personal view of 10 ways in which both Merchants and Affiliates can work closer together for better results.

What could we as Merchants do better?

1. Put on our Affiliate hats and think about ‘what’s in it for me?’ – It’s very important to always ask yourself what’s in it for your Affiliates and why would they sign up with you, sometimes even at the expense of a similar Merchant. If you have low conversion rates or take your sweet time to approve sales and your commission structure isn’t competitive then don’t expect the programme to succeed. As Merchants, it is our job to first conduct extensive research and with our Affiliate hats on, make sure the ‘what’s in it for me’ is answered by high sales and attractive payouts.
2. Communicate more frequently and communicate everything – Many Merchants, especially those who have been selling online for years have extremely useful information, which, when communicated to their Affiliates can really turn the programme around. Data such as historical and seasonal trends, for example, can help Affiliates invest resources on products which are more likely to convert. As a Merchant, our responsibility is to communicate as much relevant information and as often as possible.
3. Offer product feeds, custom landing pages and other goodies – The days of running an Affiliate programme with only a set of banners are probably nearing their end. As Merchants we have to cater for as many Affiliates as possible, meaning that having the ability to create up-to-date product feeds, promotional codes, product bundles and Affiliate custom landing pages are a must to cover as many Affiliates as possible.
4. Incentives, incentives and more incentives -  Targeting and rewarding Affiliates on a regular basis should hopefully increase sales but also inspire confidence in the offer or product. As Merchants, we should set targets and incentives on an ongoing basis to get the most out the channel, because leaving the Affiliate channel with no real aim or goal is a receipt for failure.
5. Manage the programme – Having in house or external resources to manage the programme is crucial. As Merchants, we need to offer direct and open communication  with the Affiliates in the shape of a dedicated resource, phone number and even on the very basic level  like having dedicated Affiliates@ email address which gets priority over other company emails will go a long way.

What could you as an Affiliate do better:

1. Ask and you shall receive – Making an Affiliate programme work requires work from both sides and although us Merchants think we offer enough tools, creative and product information, Affiliates should demand more from Merchants.  As an Affiliate if ,for example, you are sending a newsletter featuring the Merchant to hundreds of thousands of people, why not ask for help with creatives or increased commission for that week?
2. Take risks and funnel back your feedback – If you continue to offer the same products, from the same Merchants your options to increase revenue will depend on increasing traffic to your site or increased conversion rates on the Merchant’s site. On the other hand, by taking small risks and trying new products or offers from new Merchants you might just discover another gem. If the new programme doesn’t meet your expectations don’t be too quick to judge, try and contact the Merchant and funnel back your feedback.
3. Use all your marketing channels to promote the programme – If you take the plunge with the new programme, don’t walk into it half-halfhearted. Put your entire resources behind it. As an Affiliate, look to promote the new Merchant on your blog, place it on the homepage for a few days and use all your marketing vehicles such as the newsletter, paid search (in accordance with the Merchant’s policy) and SEO to really give the programme a chance.
4. Don’t promise anything WE can’t deliver on – Driving traffic to the Merchant site is one thing, while driving converting traffic is another. As an Affiliate, make sure you are not promising offers or products which the Merchant does not have e.g don’t promote a 10% promotional code if the Merchant only has 5% promotional code, don’t promote expired offers and make sure even the smallest details such as delivery cost match.
5. Stay current and update your creatives frequently – Following on from not showing expired offers, make sure creative and other promotional aids are up to date. If ,for example, the Merchant has special creatives for Christmas, update your site in time to make the Merchant’s offer as relevant as possible.

What would you like to see Affiliates / Merchants do better?

- – -
Guest post by Ran, marketing manager of Photo Paper Direct. For more information on Photo Paper’s Direct Affiliate Programme head to our affiliate page.

I’m a little distracted this month as my parents and Duncan’s parents are here on the Sunshine Coast visiting with us for the entirety of October.

I do have 4 blog posts all written up to entertain you whilst I’m “on holiday”.  They’re all Ask Kirsty’s as I was trying to catch up with all my correspondence before my folks arrived and it seemed like a good way to multi task (very important for us busy affiliates!)

We’ve been having a great old time so far and it’s been brilliant showing my parents around the beautiful place where we live.  Here’s a few pics of our days out so far, just so Y’all know what we’ve been up to.

Chilling out with my parents in Buderim Forest Park

Duncan takes in the view near Point Cartwright

My Dad entertains us and the neighbours (even the ones several miles away!)

Family picnic at Happy Valley, Caloundra

Duncan and his Mum get sand between their toes.

Celebrating 38 years since my parents got married on our deck!

Definately packed to the rafters at Chez Kirsty & Duncan this month, and loving every minute!

Amazon’s recent commission changes have somewhat crushed Greg’s affiliate plans!

I started off in AM with a website running through the Amazon Associates programme, I was able to build an income from this one site upto a peak of £2,200 profit in May & £2,300 in June of this year, solely using PPC for traffic. All was going really well and I was improving my PPC knowledge and optimising the site well. Then Amazon decided to cut it’s % referral rates and drop their direct link bonus (2.5%). This effectively wiped out my profit margin on my PPC campaigns, and has left me struggling to gain an income from the site. I was very aware that ‘all my eggs were in one basket’ and was working hard to branch out to other sites in the Summer.

So far my new sites have failed to bring in any profits, they are based around PPC traffic again, as I felt utilizing my skills in this area would be the best bet. The sites convert traffic well, but it’s the high CPC that’s preventing me from creating any kind of profits. The markets I have entered are very competitive, and I’m struggling to find any profitable long tail search terms, so my question is, how do you find profitable long tail keywords in an already competitive market?

Or would I be better off forgetting these sites and focusing on a smaller niche?
Did I just hit beginners luck with my first site?!

Thanks,
Greg

Well, I think the first thing I need to tell you is that making that kind of money isn’t really to do with beginners luck. You clearly found a group of products that really worked for you and fell victim to the eggs in one basket syndrome that’s bitten most affiliates on the bahookie at one stage or another.

You’ve obviously been working hard on that site, and one answer to the issue you’ve had with Amazon cutting their commissions and effectively wiping out your profit margins is to introduce some nice free SEO traffic into your promotional mix. Your site looks really great, so you clearly know how to put a decent offering together. I think it’s worth giving the site due diligence, adding some nice content, and seeing what can be done with it. It’s certainly a great domain.

Again with your other sites, if they are converting well but you can’t get the traffic cheaply enough I do believe the answer to making them work is to add in some organic traffic to help that PPC budget go a little further. Read this recent article by Nadeem Azam to see just how effective SEO traffic can be in revolutionising your affiliate campaigns: -

http://www.azam.info/combine-seo-ppc-marketing-dominate-search-engine-rankings/

That all said, SEO is not the entire solution to your revenue stream woes. I have loads of landing page sites that do great from PPC traffic alone. One thing you might do is have a think about what might be selling well this Christmas and give some of those things a push using some landing pages. Keep an eye out in the press for “buzz products” you see being spoken about and keep an eye on GMTV and This Morning. If they mention a product as being ace, it can pay you nice dividends to get a PPC landing page up as quickly as possible. I recently saw a massive sales spike on a site of mine because a product had been featured on a Channel 4 show about embarrassing illnesses. I’ve also capitalised on TV shows such as Gok Wan’s How to Look Good Naked in the past.

I can’t really give you more specific niche advice than that (sorry!), finding and making money from new areas can seem like a near impossible Zen art at times… but spending time keeping on chipping away and trying new things is so worthwhile.

A while back I made a post about a new technique I was using to bulk post shop-like pages to my Mens Underwear Site.  You can refresh your memories here.

I promised then to come back and do a follow up re: how the pages have performed.  I think the results can safely be described as “mixed”.   I’m really happy to report that Google seems to consider them adequately unique to keep in the index and rank them well.  As with all site pages some seem to be performing better than others in terms of rankings which I’ve put down to: -

1. Competitiveness of search terms / cleverness with which I identified groups in the merchant feed niche enough to rank and popular enough to actually get me a bit of traffic!

2. The bloody mindedness of Google which often behaves oddly when ranking site pages / determining relevance.  Particularly with newer sites such as mine.  Old posts often start performing months after they have been put up for reasons best known to the G-meister.

3. The fact that they were probably not targeted in the same way as they might have been had I used my instinct / market info about what styles and collections would sell well.

Conclusions?

I think the most interesting thing to have come out of that particular exercise for me was less about creating blog posts en-mass and more about landing page structure.  Having monitored the performance of those pages I now realise they are far more likely to convert traffic to a sale and are also good enough to send PPC to – great if there’s a hot product that’s had media coverage or is simply selling well. That is a real positive and has resulted in me starting to use a more refined template based upon the one I used in my test for any blog content that goes up for the site.  It takes a little longer to create the pages by hand, but they are way more effective.

Will I be using bulk posting going forward?  At this stage, no.  Not because it wasn’t great at creating nice looking pages in bulk, but because I felt I was putting my effort into something that ended up being very “hit and miss” in nature.  I think my quest to find ways to improve my user experience and get lots of useful content up there in the SERPS without the “long and laborious” manual process of posting up content will have to focus elsewhere.

The other issue is that I’m in a quandry about the effectiveness of churning out blog post after blog post generally. I’m increasingly finding that the posts are very hit and miss to get rankings for (probably due to the blog structure). Although I’m sure writing lots of blog content is beneficial because it keeps the site fresh, I’m currently having a good think about whether or not I should divert this time into some other activities that might have the same effect with less effort.  Currently I spend 2 hours most days engaged in this, which seems like an awful big chunk of time.

As always, my quest to make sure my time is spent most effectively for best results goes on!

A quick trawl through my inbound search terms has revealed that lots of people come here with questions.  Not a surprise given the nature of the blog but I thought it might be nice if I answered a few questions here that started with a frustrated search for greater affiliate knowledge on Google and ended on my blog which may or may not have provided an answer!

Now given that I’m a normally lovely girl, I don’t like to be too blunt with all the nice people who e-mail me questions. However this format gives me the opportunity to do some of the plain talking I’m known for at times…

site:http://www.affiliatestuff.co.uk “i earn” – how many times do I have to say I’m not bloody well telling youse!  Lets define it as “plenty”

affiliate how to find a christmas niche – Hmmm… maybe try just about anything that’s a gift?  Christmas is one of the only times of the year where you seriously should not struggle for a niche.  If a merchant doesn’t perform then, it is very likely they never will (unless travel related!)

a4u expo 2009 win a ticket – Enter Kierons comp right here>> Entries close 28th September so get yer damned well skates on!

how to calculate potential affiliate earnings? *sigh* I know lots of people really want to know this but the answer genuinely is between £0 and £1,000,000,000,000 – it all depends on your ability and how much work you’ll end up putting in.  End of story.

affiliate niche guns – I think you should remove caffeine from your diet.  And possibly seek counselling.

affiliate marketing is it a rip off? Well, it does sound too good to be true sometimes   But it is a real and bonafide way to make money.  However if someone is saying “Make $$$$ via affiliate marketing by giving me $$” then yeah, that is a scam 99% of the time!

google affiliate slap seo? Google doesn’t slap affiliate sites just for being affiliate sites.  Saying your site has been slapped for being an affiliate offering is merely an excuse for a lack of unique content, poor seo techniques, and use of blackhat tactics that would get any site slapped (unwitting or otherwise).  Google doesn’t hate affiliates – it hates sites that don’t add value!  It  of irritates me that this seems to often be aired as an excuse for a site not working out. If your site doesn’t work out the only person you should be looking at as the reason is yourself.

why doesn’t google like affiliate marketers? It’s only the ones who don’t try hard enough Google doesn’t like.  See above.

can i use free wordpress blog to do affiliate marketing? You sure can, that’s the beauty of WordPress.

can you do ppc for affilate sites? Yes, but for the love of God make sure you know what you are doing first!

have you been paid by tradedoubler september 2009? Yes, I was.  It was even on time this month.  They didn’t feel like answering my important support query re: future payments now that I’m moving my company to Australia though so next month might be a different kettle of fish.

how long into google penalty do you ditch a domain name Not until you understand exactly what it was you got penalised for in the first place.  Else it’ll happen again, see?

i hate online marketing - We don’t like you either, now bugger right off!

kirsty’s undies – Oi!!  What have I said about these kind of queries you disgusting rotter?!?!

max bramwell single – I dunno, why don’t you look it up on Facebook you scary internet stalker, LOL.

why is my ppc not converting – either you are rubbish, or the merchant is rubbish. Or both.

website dropped 200 places in google – That’s looking pretty ominous matey… Maybe think back to any content stuffing or naughty link tactics from recent weeks.

how do i know if i’ve triggered a google filter? See above.

google penalty recovery time – about as long as it takes you to work out exactly what you did wrong, fix it to Google’s satisfaction, plus anything from a few days to a few weeks.  Oh, and you have to do all that without anyone really being able to tell you what you did wrong in the first place.  Good eh?

what can i buy kirsty? Awww…. a new set of gardening gloves would be awesome.  Wouldn’t mind a Mercedes SLK either.

Well, I feel much better for that!  I may even be able to attempt assisting Duncan at re-oiling our back deck in a little while.  Work though?  I’ll answer that with another question: -

will working less help me relieve my stress?

YES - now I’m off to tend my garden and get all thoughts of affiliate marketing out of my head for a few hours

I’m about a month behind the times with this I know, but I’ve just seen my first ever example of Google sitelinks in an Adwords ad: -

Seems they are beta testing this at the moment.  That is one massive chunk of online real estate at the top of the SERPS there.  Wonder if it’s just going to be for brand names or if other search terms might be included?

How much would you have to pay for “Mortgage” etc I wonder?  I’d love an ad like that for some of my key terms, it would be really interesting to see what a difference it made in terms of CTRs.

This is a guest post from Jason Dodd from the Affiliate Marketing Training Portal Affilorama.com

Boost your sales with data feeds

Getting a lot of click-through but few sales? The secret to improving your conversion ratio could lie in using data feeds. Data feeds are particularly important for affiliates selling a lot of product from the same merchant. But before you can start using data feeds you need to know what they are, where to get them and how to use them.

Now I know talking about a data feed sounds a bit geeky but don’t let that put you off. When you learn what a data feed can do for you, you’ll embrace its glorious geekiness with open arms.

So let’s spend a few minutes trying to get to the bottom of this and figure out how you can take advantage of data feeds to boost conversions, sales and improve your search engine ranking.

What is a data feed?

A data feed is basically a file that can be imported into a database and contains information that matches fields in the database. When supplied by a merchant the data feed may include information such as product names, product description, image links and prices.

The file is usually tab or pipe delimited and can easily be viewed in most spreadsheet programs.

Why use a data feed?

Increase sales conversions – Data feeds have been proven, in many cases, to double the number of sales conversions. Often this is because it saves customer clicks. Rather than your affiliate link simply connecting the customer to the merchant’s homepage and risking losing the sale, they find exactly what they want on your site and click directly through to the product order page.

Faster site building – Imagine having to manually create a page for every single product you promoted? If you promote a lot of products, that adds up to a lot of work. Now imagine you only have to create one product template page, and the data feed automatically, and dynamically, creates all the product pages.

More search engine love – With a data feed building hundreds of product pages, you’ll get indexed more often and more thoroughly, ranking for lots of product-specific keywords. Long tail product keywords are also known to be an excellent source of sales, since searchers are usually much closer to actually making a purchase.

Up-to-date product information – Say goodbye to dead product pages or incorrect detail. By regularly updating your site using the merchant’s data feed you know that what is on your site is current.

What does an affiliate need?

If you think your affiliate site would benefit from using a data feed, there are a few things you need to do.

Does your merchant supply a data feed? – Firstly, contact your merchant and ask them if they offer a data feed service, and if so how much it is. Most data feeds are free but it’s better to ask upfront just in case. If they don’t offer a data feed there’s no point proceeding any further other than approaching a new merchant.

Request a sample data feed file – It’s good to know what you’re dealing with and exactly what information (data fields) the data feed will give you before you start designing your product page. A merchant may even provide a link to a demonstration site to illustrate how the data feed file can be used.

Build your site – To build a site that uses a data feed requires knowledge of a script language such as Perl, CGI or PHP that can interface with a web database. If you don’t feel up to the challenge, employ a PHP programmer or web designer experienced in PHP, or other database languages. There are also pre-written data feed pages which you could install and customize for your own site.

What does a data feed site look like?

While the same data feed will be provided to all affiliates, this doesn’t mean all the sites need to look identical. The data can be presented in hundreds of different ways. An example of a data feed site is http://www.buy-here-and-save.com/, which makes use of a data feed from Amazon.com.

The example below shows how the data feed file is used to create a web page.

The data called from the database for each product record may include information such as an image link (1), product name (2), product description (3), logo (4) and a product order link (5).

Other information that can be provided includes a product category and keywords.

There are lots of different ways a data feed can be used to create web pages. You could choose to just show all the merchant’s products, perhaps with a search option. Or, using a data filter, only show products that relate to an article on your site.

For example, you might have a site that offers advice to parents and have an article discussing tips on buying shoes for children. On that page you could display just kid’s shoes from the merchant’s data feed.

The great thing about data feeds is that you have complete control over how and where you display specific products. This allows you to maximize your sales opportunities.

Keep it current

Lastly, once you’ve created your site with your data feed product pages don’t forget about keeping it up-to-date. You’ll quickly lose customers if your products are stale or prices are wrong.

Unless your merchant automatically FTPs their data feed to your site and you have created a scheduled import routine, you’ll need to manually update your database whenever your merchant alerts you to an update. Depending on how many products your merchant offers, this may mean transferring some large files so make sure you have a good internet connection.

And remember, updating your product pages regular not only keeps your customers happy but is great for your site’s search engine optimization as the search engines love new and fresh content– just one of the many reasons to use data feeds to build your next affiliate site.