*gasp* Shock horror murder polis!  Yes folks it’s time for one of my rare negative posts!  However, as the title suggests it does lend itself to a follow up post with 10 things I love about this industry so never fear, balance will be achieved in due course

1. Affiliate managers who contact me dead keen to “work more closely with you and build a great relationship” and immediately ask “is there anything we can do to help you?” Upon taking delivery of my modest request for bestsellers info and regular contact re: new products I promptly never, ever hear from them again!

2. People who are rude / sarcastic to newbie affiliates on forums in situations where they really don’t need to be.  What gives with that?

3. Merchants who re-jig their databases putting in place new cutting edge technology which will not only revolutionise your conversions but will break every single image and link you’ve ever previously created for them. They are then mysteriously unable to implement URL redirects and contact you wondering why your conversions have turned to poop and asking you to pull your jolly well socks up.

4. When you have to complete an online assault course and answer 5 fiendishly difficult riddles that’d make a sphinx go cross eyed and head on back home – just to get a deep link from a network (OK, I exaggerate but you know what I mean!)

5. Affiliate managers who schedule a conference call with you and then don’t listen to a word you are saying, constantly interrupting you to get their point over.  Look, if you mean you want to schedule a monologue call with me – just send a tape recording and I’ll swear at it at a more convenient time for me!

6. People from outside the industry thinking I’m a pornographer when I say I market things online.  I dread that knowing look and the “Ahh… I SEE.”

7. Still not being able to switch off from work sometimes.  For all that I harp on about how fab it is only working 4 days a week, I often make up most of that time when I “nip on” to the PC for a wee while “just to check things out” on evenings and weekends and leave Dunc sitting wondering where the hell I’ve gotten to.

8. Little known fact: – Affiliate Marketing causes time dilation.  Why else can I plan enough work in a single hour to last Duncan and I a bloody year?

9. The “I’ll make you rich if you buy my course for just $4,000″ brigade.  What a bunch of arseholes – they make us all look dishonest, rip off people who can least afford to lose money, and I for one sincerely wish painful bowel complaints and a host of embarrassing and smelly illnesses on the lot of them.

10. Meeting people at networking events who think I work for an agency.  Because I own a pair of boobs.

11. Being so far away from all my affiliate pals

Yeah OK, I know that’s 11 but the last one is just a moan not a real “hate”.

Anyone got some other affiliate marketing grudges they might like to air?

Hey there guys and gals, and greetings from your newly rejuvenated affiliate blogger.  On the weekends I usually spend a bit of time working out a couple of things that might be kinda fun to write about on here.  This weekend it didn’t happen and I thought I’d explain why!

You See Doctor, I’ve Been Feeling Kind of Rotten…

After developing no less than 4 sites recently and then having the flu, or “death lurgey” as I called it, I was feeling like my affiliate mojo had sort of deserted me.  I have 2 more new projects I need to start as well as keeping all of my sites fresh and updated and I just couldn’t get going properly.

So I Decided What I Needed Was… something diametrically opposed to the virtual world of affiliate marketing.  Yes, it is a creative discipline but in the end I was left feeling it was just nebulous and that perhaps there wasn’t much point to it all.  At this stage Duncan suggested an ambulance as I’d clearly lost my mind  – but I had a better idea.

Doing Something “Real”

I decided to spend 4 days with minimal internet time (one of my issues is I never take a break from long internet sessions – regardless of whether its my “day off” or not).

Without banging on too much about it, if you feel jaded I suggest taking a total break from the online world. Go and do something real to get it all in perspective.  My solution was to spend 4 days procuring and then distributing 8 cubic metres (half a tonne) of bark mulch on my front garden.

I started work again today and feel totally revitalised.  I was able to pick things right up and tie off loads of niggly loose ends. Tomorrow I start the next two projects and I feel great about it.  All it took was 4 days backbreaking garden labour, ha ha ha!

Try it

P.S.

Here Are Some Piccies Of My Endeavours… Welcome To Affiliate Gardening World

Before

After

Bit of a new segment from me this week.  I have always found that I learn an awful lot when I take on the role of a consumer and put in an order with the merchants I work with or am thinking of working with.  As a regular online shopper generally I thought it might be useful to me to attempt to share some of the things I discover about the merchants I put in orders with, and review the good things and bad things about their sites that I think might affect us affiliates!

What I think I’ll do is pretend that I am going to be looking at promoting whatever I’m shopping for and just try to show some of the things I think about when making my way around a site.

First Up This Week…. Prezzybox.com

What I went looking for: As my Mum and Dad are flying a very long way to visit me here in Australia for the first time I decided it would be jolly nice of me to send them some lovely travel slankets to keep them comfortable on their 24 hour flight.

Browsing…

Because I knew exactly what I was looking for I jumped right in and had a bit of a go at the Prezzybox search functionality. I started to type “travel slanket” into their search box and was delighted to discover some intuitive functionality on the go. This was a fusion of top search data and a really beautiful visual element featuring popular products.

What This Told Me: -

As a customer: Ooh, look. They have many more travel items for my parents trip. I note there is a travel pillow also, how useful.  I must take a look at that later and I’ll know exactly how to find it, I just need to pop “travel” back in that handy dandy wee box!

As an affiliate: This merchant has great potential for add on sales giving me a chance of enhanced commissions.  Bonus.  Hmmm… would you look at that?  If the “ruby wine slanket” is significantly more popular than the others then people might search on “slanket + colour” term variations. Must bear that in mind when I’m doing my PPC campaign later.  Clearly these are specific terms the manufacturer has applied to their colours, but I wonder if people might forget this and search for other colour variations like “red slanket” and “blue slanket”? How about the way the thing makes them feel?  It must be very cosy.  “warm slanket”? What about who it’s for? “Slanket for Dad”? Event – “Christmas slanket” Hmmm…..

On The Landing Page…

click here to view a travel slanket page in a new window…

Again I was very impressed.  Loved the product images, detailed product description, and also the “Like this? Then you will love these” product links towards the bottom of the page.  As a consumer I was reassured I was on a site with plenty to interest me and as an affiliate, I felt reassured I’d be sending my visitors to a page with plenty to interest them which increases chances of conversion and reduces chances of a bounce.

Adding To Basket…

Was lovely and simple and you could choose your different colour variations from any slanket page.  Loved the message. As an affiliate I realise the importance of customers knowing exactly what’s going on with their purchase progress – not everyone is as internet savvy as us and confusion leads to abandoned baskets!

Checking Out

Again, a great checkout page. As a consumer I could instantly see that my purchase was going to be secure and that I had a range of payment and delivery options.

The rest of the checkout process was quick and painless, 2 screens and I was done!

After The Sale

As a Customer…

I instantly got an invoice which meant as a customer I knew my order had definately gone through properly.

I made my order at 04.11 on Monday 27th July.  At 09.45 the same day I got a mail informing me the order had been dispatched. It arrived at my Mothers house the very next day!

As a customer this leaves me seriously impressed and I will most definately return as a repeat customer.  If my affiliate chum is very lucky it will be within their 60 day cookie period and it’ll give her the chance of another commission.

As An Affiliate…

My sale tracked on POR very quickly and all was as I expected with commission levels.  You’d be surprised how often this isn’t the case which immediately sets alarm bells ringing about whether or not I’m being properly rewarded for my sales efforts!

I also know that a merchant who ships their goods quickly has a lower reversal rate.  Buyer’s remorse?  Not when these guys are on watch!!

In Conclusion

Prezzybox is a great site for both affiliates and consumers.  No surprises there – We all know that Zak invests a lot of effort into making his site affiliate-centric.  That’s why he’ll soon be needing a new trophy shelf to store all his affiliate gongs!

As an affiliate I’m now completely sold on their great site functionality and am totally reassured that any traffic I send to them will have the best chance of converting.

Of course, not all of my reviews will be as glowing as this… but as Prezzybox were the inspiration for my new “Affiliate Mystery Shopper” section I felt it was appropriate to let them kick it off and show the others how its done

It might be the last of my fever wearing off after yet another dose of the lurgey, but i’m feeling incredibly generous and helpful today.  Yes, that’s right folks I’m going to reveal to all you loyal readers the stunning cutting edge technology I use to design my rather nice (if I do say so myself) affiliate landing pages.

Regular readers will remember that I showcased a design I’d come up with in a previous blog post.  For irregular readers here’s a refresher (and remember to visit more often in future – I’m not always going to be this kind with my catch up information!)

*Click image to visit the page this is situated on, my apologies for the distorted image I don’t have that much space to play with here!

Get Ready For A Massive Revelation – Here’s The Tool I Used To Create This Design…

Click Here To Reveal >>

Whaddya mean “What the f**k is that?”  That’s my patented mystery landing page construction method! Ahh, come on you guys know me by now.  Cutting edge technology? Pfft!  Pen and paper rules!

The point I’ve somewhat laboriously been making in this little bit of affiliate prose is that it doesn’t take a high tech solution to put out something that looks really good in WordPress, or any other platform for that matter.  Once you have a page structure drawn out, it genuinely takes very little HTML knowhow to create a framework that you can use again and again to create beautifully structured pages to display your carefully crafted content in.

It Really Isn’t Rocket Science

The above design really only requires a very basic bit of HTML which I think most people new to HTML could learn in a few hours. All you need to do is just draw out the boxes you need to create on a page and use it to work out what table elements you need to create the perfect page structure. Once I have a template set up I save it in a text file, I then utilise high tech cut and paste skills to pop in the appropriate image URL and written content.

The beauty of the above example is that the vast majority of it never changes.  Instead of a quick product post I can easily create a lovely optimised landing page that gives users a good range of choices that’s relevant to the product they’re looking for.

You can too… now get your pen and paper out!

P.S. I made this post because I found the original drawing for the page in amongst some paperwork and thought some people might find it interesting.  I hope it helps

Greetings Affiliate Stuff readers!  How are you all?  Are you well?  As you’ll note I’m now back from holiday where I was unfortunate enough to contract a lovely dose of the flu from my Father in Law.  This has left me moderately grumpy and sleep deprived so I thought I’d treat you all to a wee moan-ette / cautionary tale about merchants who don’t respond to their mail!

Setting The Scene

OK, so before I headed off on my jollies it sort of occurred to me that I don’t often Take My Own Advice and ask merchants for an enhanced commission structure.  It further occurred to me that considering the amount of work I’ve been putting in recently that this was extremely stupid of me.

With that in mind I duly wrote to two merchants I think I can do much better for on one of my sites and asked for their thoughts.  Now, in the above linked treatise I said the worst you could get was “a polite no”.  Oh how foolish and naive I was – it is now clearly apparent that the worst that can happen is that you get no response at all.

What’s happened in this case is that one merchant whom I’ve only recently started working with has opened a dialogue with me and the other, whom I’ve been working with for almost a year, has chosen not to respond.

But Isn’t It Obvious What Will Happen?

Merchants be warned.  For should an affiliate of yours mail you with a query you may well think “No chance.  We’re not doing that, away with them!  I shan’t even dignify that with a response!!”

But what if one of your competitors with very similar nay almost identical product lines DID respond?  Furthermore, what if they said “Sure.  We’ll look into this.  We’d love to work with you more.  What can we do for ya?”

Merchants who don’t communicate or respond to their affiliates risk losing their loyalty.

Me personally, I am a very loyal affiliate.  I value a decent relationship above all else and I will frequently opt to send traffic to merchants whom I’ll make a lesser return from in terms of EPC but will ultimately profit more with in the long term from the benefits of a close working relationship.

If You Run a UK Based Affiliate Programme And…

There’s a hole in your stats where £5,000 of monthly sales I was sending to you used to be in the next few weeks then you can reasonably assume that this article was about you

Yep, its that time again.  We don’t seem to be able to let more than 10 weeks or so go by without hopping on a plane somewhere!  We’re leaving tomorrow morning to spend 10 days in New Zealand.  It’s mainly going to be a family visit and we will be travelling North to spread Duncans Grandmothers ashes on Monday.

Before anyone gets at all jealous, I should really let you know that it’s winter in NZ and we’re likely to be faced with beautiful weather conditions such as these: -

We’re not doing any serious touristing and will be spending time with family, celebrating Duncan’s Birthday on the 8th, and generally relaxing. I will try to post on here whilst we’re away but much will depend on whether or not I end up too cold to think, LOL.

Needless to say my case is filled to bursting with all the winter woolies I could gather (and 3 pairs of flanelette jim jams) and I have already double checked with my Mother in Law that a hot water bottle will be available for my use 24 / 7.

Isn’t it amazing how quickly you get soft about cold weather? You can see the Auckland weather forecast here!

11 degrees? I’ll freeze!  I’m off to look out my hip flask

See y’all on the 15th of July if I don’t manage to post before then.

I had a question from Dave this week.  I’ve helped him before getting started doing some PPC campaigns and he now has a steady flow of sales.  Unfortunately he’s not so crash hot on his profit margins!

Ok, at the moment im battling with increasing my profit. I know I can make this work now, its all about increasing my profit. Now I know its not what it should be proably because of my mismanagement of keywords. I know you should wait 100 clicks/1000 imp before you delete if you dont have a sale, but when youve got hundreds of keywords going on at once each costing the 7 – 12 p each, then it adds up doesnt it. So instead of only deleting after 100 clicks has been reached or so, do you go by how long they’ve been going?

I’m averaging about £40 – £60 commsion rate now per day, which is good, im happy about that, but my £20 or so profit can dwindle to as little as £3 or £4 by midnight that same day..So what is it i need to start considering when managing my account?

You definitely need to look at making sure your profit margins are better.  First of all, what is costing you the most money for the least return?  Are there any keywords in your account that have never brought in any money?  It might be an idea to consider weeding those out.  If there’s not a lot that you can discern in your campaign as being “dead wood” or “star performers” that can be worked on, then you may need to take a formulaic approach.

If a campaign is only breaking even or even losing you a bit, work out how much you earn per every click you send to the merchant.  Say you send 100 clicks and earn £15, this means you earn 15p for each click you sent them.  If you’re spending 20p to get these clicks then you need to reduce that.

There are a couple of ways you could approach this.  1. you could work out a reasonably desirable profit margin and reduce your max CPC to reflect this.  i.e. Just knock your bids down to 10p and take whatever traffic you can get. 2. Work out ways to get cheaper traffic to offset your more expensive traffic and bring down your average costs into a profit.

Re: not deleting keywords until you’ve reached X amount of clicks. I think you have to apply common sense to this as you suspect.   If keywords that are closely related aren’t working then you should definitely have a clear out.

Yesterday Adam from Dead Good Undies alerted me to a handy dandy wee tool that I didn’t even know existed.  I’ve not seen too much about it myself, so my apologies to those of you for whom this is old news.

LinkedTube is an almost painfully clever tool that will allow you to create links from YouTube videos.  You can add a button with the URL of your choice plus 3 different bits of unique selling text to any YouTube video.  Adam let me know about it as he’s aware I quite often use videos related to products to create content for my site.  I think this is amazing as it gives me the ability to have more of a crack at monetising those pages with appropriate affiliate links and calls to action.

Allow Me To Demonstrate…

I’ve selected a beautiful video from the annals of the Affiliate Future trip to Barbados last year.  Here you will see Jlil grooving away like the funkster he really is and entertaining his hordes of late night Karaoke buddies with his rendition of American Pie.  As you can see, I’ve realised that his singing talents will inspire other would-be rock stars to buy some of their very own home equipment and created a nice link to the Argos site on there.

The only issue I had using this is that their HTML generator seemed to produce code twice which mucked up the page on the blog and I had to strip out the excess. Not sure why that’s happening! However, it is a very very interesting little tool and I can forsee it being of great use to me when I write video related content.

Whats that?  Yes… you can all see quite clearly I was very jealous of all those who have just returned from Barbados! Pass the rum

Hello once more Ask Kirsty fans!  I had a question that I thought a lot of people might find interesting from Peter earlier this month…

I have a site which has been growing for some time now and I am thinking of negotiating for more commission. I was wondering if you have ever done that and if you have any tips?  Like do you negotiate with the affiliate network or the merchant itself?  Also, I know this might be quite relative but what is a good indicator that you are driving enough sales to warrant asking for more commission?

I think a lot of people make the mistake of thinking they have to be earning a certain amount to actually ask for more money. The thing is, if you wait until you’re doing really well with a merchant what you might find is that they then want you to do even more before they’re prepared to give you an increase. The approach can be either made via network or direct to merchant.

There are two scenarios in which I ask a merchant for more money.

1. If I think I could drive decent volume to them (it’s a really good motivator too) and 2. If I am already driving volume to a competitor of theirs and already know their conversion rates are similar (and wish to switch allegiance!).

I think the best thing to do is approach a merchant as soon as you believe you will be able to work well and generate some decent volume with them. Simply ask if they might be open to offering enhanced commission rates for agreed performance targets.

If you have some idea of how much in the way of sales you might be able to push to them that might be a good negotiating tool. If not, just ask what it would take for them to give you an enhanced tier structure or some kind of bonus system.

It might surprise you how many merchants are open to this kind of proactive approach from an affiliate.

Apart from anything else, the worst thing that can happen is you’ll get a polite no!

Well actually, we’re more than half way through 2009 but I didn’t start work properly until almost the end of January because I was in NZ so it’s only now I’ve really done 6 months hard work!  The year so far has been tough to say the least.  I’ve put in shedloads of work and I’m still not any further forward than I was this time last year so I’m feeling a bit demotivated.

Of course, what I forget is that this time last year the recession wasn’t biting and I was selling circa £45k per month of stock for a large merchant of mine, Figleaves.  Which err… I’m definately not any more!  It’s part of my personality to be a bit too demanding of myself meaning that instead of celebrating the fact I was able to replace that income, I’m punishing myself for not doing better (and you all wonder why I like a glass or ten of vino!!).

So In An Attempt To Get My Head Straight…

I’ve decided to check out my progress with the affiliate new years resolutions I made in early January.  Lets hope this exercise doesn’t backfire cos I didn’t read them before I started this post!

• I will focus my marketing activities with networks who have taken the time to know who I am. Yep, I have done this and continue to do so.  In fact, all of my new revenue streams in 2009 have been with “friendly networks”.
• I will use my time more effectively- I’ve definately achieved this.  My new working system means procrastination has not been a big feature in my working day this year.  It’s still going strong and has meant a LOT of progress in my organic traffic endeavours.
• I will get better at not working on my days off. I have also done this, still not perfect but lots of progress.
• I will focus my activities in areas I know I can make money. Check.  It’s been going really well too, particularly my mens underwear offering which has turned into a nice earner with plenty of scope for improvement!
• I will get better at asking for enhanced commission rates. Yep, I’ve done this a couple of times with good results… but should still bear it in mind a bit more!
• I will outsource some activities rather than trying to do everything myself. Yes, although to my shame the link building activity I mentioned previously is only just getting started!  I have also taken someone on to do a bit of content here and there for me.  This has been particularly good recently when I’ve not been too well, takes pressure off.
• I will take my own advice and start some mini sites about new areas that interest me.
  Only one…. and solar panels site didn’t get far. It gets good traffic but not many conversions.  Conclusion: interest is all very good but profit is also interesting!!
• I will venture into new countries to make me less vunerable to changes in the exchange rate. Fail.  Still not done anything more on this beyond fiddling with an existing Aussie site.  I bought MaleFashion.com.au recently so will be doing something with that. Eventually!
• I’ll try and encourage Duncan to feel the same passion I do for affiliate marketing I’m trying, but alas my dear hubby just isn’t quite there yet He is keen to try to get more involved in the business though, so we will try a new angle just as soon as I’ve worked out what it is.

Personal Resolutions

• Finally learn to cook something beyond my one-pot specials from my student days. To My Surprise – success!!  Cakes and ummm… things in one pot.  But they’re new and more complicated things!
• Introduce myself to all of my new neighbours.  Then invite them over for a drink! Fail.  I eventually resorted to leaping out on one of my neighbours after I detected him doing maintenance to the boundaries between our properties a few days ago and then making him think HE had to invite ME for a drink.  hah!!
• Employ a gardener so Duncan doesn’t spend every weekend mowing and weeding. Much to my own (and my mum’s) surprise the new gardener is… me!
• Get better at sending birthday cards to my friends children. Check.
• Offset the carbon from all the flying I do. Hmmm…. well I got a compost bin?
• Compost things rather than sending them to the landfill. See above!
• Plant a vegetable garden. It died
• Not shoot the local Bush Turkeys when they dig the above up. It died because they dug it up
• Be less afraid of spiders. Success!  Aversion therapy is the key I now realise. Not difficult in these parts.
• Get better at saying “NO” to people.  Even if it upsets them a bit. (If you see me in 2009 and you think I’m smiling too much, ask me the reason for this one. I can guarantee you’ll soon be telling me to “turn that frown upside down” or, in extreme cases, passing me a box of tissues.) Progress, but I’m still too nice.
• Buy myself a new car.  It won’t be a BMW or a Porsche so don’t expect a “look at my new bling” post.  I don’t drive enough to justify a “super affiliate car”! Yes, it’s white, its big, and its a V6 (thanks to fellow affiliates Rich & Sue for selling me their beloved Pathfinder!)
• Take some time out every week to do a bit of art and craft. Fail.  I garden lots though and am making a new fern and succulents garden outside the office window.
• Count to ten more often To Duncan’s relief, success!
• Eventually get around to changing my name to “Mrs McKenzie” on bank accounts and similar. Partial success, because Duncan marched me round to the bank with marriage certificate, lol.
• Pay off 20% of my mortgage. Pfft!  Once the pound rebounds I’ll give that one a shot.

Anyone else make resolutions?  How are they going?  I’m actually quite pleased with my progress.  I’m not perfect but my strike rate is pleasingly low and this post has put my aims back into my mind again.

Onwards and upwards (but I’m still annoyed I’ve not improved on last years profit!).