Wey hey! I’ve just realised the clock has just gone into single digits – it’s 9 weeks and 6 days till I’ll be at the A4U Expo in London. No pressure Matt & Team, but much like the 2008 re-organisation of my honeymoon to attend, I’ve ended up missing my Father’s 60th birthday so that I could tie in my visit to the UK with the conference. So don’t let me down.

Bigger & Hopefully Better!

The event has obviously grown considerably in my absence, the gig has had to switch locations to the larger ICC @ ExCel Capital Suite to accommodate all the affiliate type fun and games that the Existem team have in store for us.  I’ll be interested to see what conference sessions are included in the line up. The agenda has been released, I’ve just not read it properly yet! There’ll be no less than 36 sessions to choose from so this year I may actually have to plan in advance what I want to see rather than my usual routine of asking whoever I happen to be standing near “what are you seeing then?  Ooh, yeah. That does sound good!” five minutes before the next round of sessions is due to start.

I hear on the grapevine there’s to be a chance to grill / slag off the networks on key issues like closed groups, affiliate payments, preferential treatment of some affiliates and just about anything else us affiliate masses want to hear about from the horses mouth.  Sanjit Atwal of Tradedoubler and Daniel Powel of CJ will be in the stocks. BYO rotten fruit and tough questions!

And Of Course, I Can’t Wait For The Essential Affiliate Parties

I’ve been sitting here in Australia absolutely writhing with Jealousy at the two glittering A4U Awards ceremonies that I’ve missed. Hopefully I can make up for missing them with the 3 shindigs that are being lined up to keep all the thirsty attendees well oiled.  Free champagne has been mentioned, and I like the look of the venue for the middle evening party. My hot tip for dealing with all the free booze on tap is not to peak too early and get hammered on the first night. Jury’s out on whether I’ll take my own advice this year. I certainly didn’t last time!

I was also intrigued at the prospect of “Speed Networking” on the 12th – possibly of limited use when you work in such specific niches as I do but probably a great way to meet some new faces in a very short space of time and a good laugh as well. Specially if there’s free drink.

Did I mention that I’m looking forward to all the free drinks? Yes?  OK. Just making sure. Maybe I should drop Matt Wood a line and suggest they put a little bit extra behind the bar now that I’m definately attending!

And The Issue Of This Year’s Price?

The cost of the Expo has risen considerably this year which has prompted some discussion of whether or not it’s worth attending. Personally, not attending simply isn’t an option for me. It will be my only opportunity for quite some time to network, see some information sessions of direct relevance to the UK industry, and generally catch up with what’s going on in the industry at the moment.

At £395 for an affiliate ticket on the early bird rate it is a lot more expensive than before. However that is an “all inclusive” price.  I like the fact that once I’m there I don’t spend any more money (other than a taxi to the airport and a mega pack of panadol for the affiliate hangover).  It’s still a lot cheaper than other affiliate conferences, and most importantly I will not be subjected to any sales pitches whilst attending. I have a friend who paid a LOT more than that to go to a conference which simply turned out to be speaker after speaker trying to sell their fantastic make money online products.

Of course, I am going to sit down after the conference and really work out if the money I’ve spent is worth it. In the past I’ve always found the expense was more than covered by new contacts who’ve helped me out here and there over time, handy tips from loose lips thanks to the booze, and of course the information content in the seminars.

I hope to meet lots of people there, Duncan and I are both really excited about going and seeing our affiliate pals

P.S. When I was chatting with the guys at Existem about the new ticket prices they sent over a £25 off discount code. Nearly forgot to post it! AFFSTUFF25

Well, it’s taken me ages to get around to posting these… but I’ve done enough moaning about the stress and disruption on here so I should really show you guys the results of our home makeover.  I’ve got some of the real estate pictures (and a few others we took) from when we bought this house and have taken matching pictures of how it’s looking right now.  We still have a new floating floor and kitchen to install, but we needed a break so we’ll be doing that after Christmas trade is over!

Livingroom & Dining Area – Before

Livingroom & Dining Area – After

We’re still using some of the previous owner’s old furniture just for added authenticity – we’ll replace once we’ve chosen the flooring and kitchen finishes.  There was an awful lot of terribly under utilised space in our house. We could see it was big when we bought it, but somehow there was no room for anything. A few walls / railings in the skip and it’s looking lots better.

Livingroom – Before

Livingroom – After

One wall removed, some trimming of ceiling beams, and the true space of our living area is revealed. We did this to bring the bush backdrop further into the house. Still some new windows and blinds to be added.

Livingroom Towards Dining Area – Before

Livingroom Towards Dining Area – After

2 Walls and a bit of bulkhead left over from a previous extension have been culled. The “windows” you can see in the wall through to the kitchen will be filled with some custom slumped glass with RGB LED strips embedded around the edges. We will then be able to programme them to be whichever colour or series of colours we want. MMMM, mood lighting!

The Deck Outside The Livingroom – Before

The Deck “Outside” The Livingroom – After

Floor to ceiling louvres to catch them breezes. We had a daybed made by our next door neighbour (artist and general clever chappie) from some of the timbers that were pulled out of the house during the renovation. Duncan’s mother has just spent 10 days upholstering it and making us some cushions out of raw silk I sourced in Thailand.

Kitchen Area – Before

Kitchen Area – After
We quite literally raised the roof here – we discovered that a previous extension had created a false ceiling. The line between the kitchen and dining area was originally the outside wall of this house.  When it was extended, the old owners just left the internal roof in situ. We just thought it was too good a chance to waste  – but gosh darn it cost a few quid extra.  I can’t tell you how wonderful those 32 degree days were in this house with nothing but corrugated iron between us and the sun

Downstairs Lounge – Before

Downstairs Lounge – After
We robbed a few square metres from here, tacked it onto the dining area, and shifted the access to the back door (and the back door itself) up into the main part of the house to give a better flow.  The old back door location was on the deck off our bedroom so not great for privacy or ease of access to the back garden. This room is now a “snug” and the old back door is now a cupboard!

The New View from My Sofa (Couldn’t Find a Before!)

*Cough* So yeah… just a few small changes. Of course, being good techie type people we also installed a sexy C-Bus lighting system, had the entire place re-wired with new circuits installed, wires for sound and internet passed through various walls, ceilings and floors and hooked our TV into our computer network for optimal viewing pleasure.  Quite frankly after all that watching TV is about all we have been fit for.

So if you were wondering why my sites got a bit neglected and my blogging tailed off significantly I’m sure that the fact I was trying to work not 3 metres from all the execution of this resculpting will answer all your queries in this direction.  If you’re still not convinced of just what an effing mess we had to live and work in for 3 months, I’ve selected the 3 messiest, most destructive, horrid “progress” pics I could find below for your delectation.

I’m sure you’ll find it hard to feel sorry for me given the really lovely result, but I’d just like to close with a reminder that this took 3 long months to complete, and another 2 months for us to bring far enough up to scratch to be considered a semi-home again! We also painted it all ourselves. 3 coats.

Visuals of profits & costs are way more revealing than lists of numbers!

This post will probably be of most use to affiliates just starting out who haven’t yet given much thought to measuring their success!

Even if you have a very small affiliate business it’s really important to make sure you know exactly how it’s progressing.  I’ve found a few simple Excel spreadsheets to be invaluable in charting the progress of my business and planning how to move forward.

I decided to make available for anyone who wants to use them 3 spreadsheets (with graphs) that are altered versions of the ones I use to keep an eye on things.  Here’s a list of what they keep tabs on, I’ve populated them all with mock figures so you can see how they chart things.

1. Monthly Sales

This spreadsheet tots up: -

• Income from each network.
• Expenses.
• Expenses as a percentage of turnover so you can keep an eye on your margins.
• Breaks results down into average daily profit ( I like to know how much I earn a day!)

The spreadsheet outputs the turnover, profit, and spend into a nice graph so you can see business progress at a glance.

I’ve found it useful for seeing the seasonal trends in my business and planning to iron them out with other revenue streams, charting the ebb and flow of income with different networks, to plan / forecast annual growth, and just downright reassuring when I’m unsure exactly how things are going.

2.Profit Targets

Just a simple spreadsheet featuring: -

• Target V’s actual profit (with graph).
• Percentage above / below target.
• Tot up of progress, average monthly profit, projected profit & target v’s projected increase for the year.

Good to keep an eye on progress, and also good to stop yourself moving the goalposts mid year. I like to sit down and work out what I’m happy with over the next 12 months. Once its in the spreadsheet it’s set in stone!

Individual Site Profits

For monitoring the progress of individual sites.  This looks at: -

• Turnover broken down into individual merchants.
• Expenses.
• Monthly profit (and that average per day metric again!)
• Percentage of marketing spend of turnover (again to keep an eye on those margins)
• Monthly traffic.
• EPC per visitor to site.
• Visits through to merchant / CTR.

This one is probably the most useful of all. It’s really incredibly important to monitor which sites are contributing good profits and keep an eye on the ones that aren’t.  I find that working out my CTR is really important – it lets me see any issues and address them quickly. Also, the site EPC is a fantastic metric. I use it to motivate myself and also to forecast how much I can increase my earnings by going out and finding similar traffic. I usually know how much work it is to put out X pages that bring in £xxx, so this is a great way to plan and effectively move forward to increase that cashflow.

I hope these help and if you have any questions on them please post below. No doubt I’ll have left some silly bit of Kirsty-esque maths in them that make sense to nobody but me. What can I say? I’m unique!

File Is Here>>

Contains all 3 spreadsheets. Right Click & Save Target As should get you a copy.

Mr Newton - Unproclaimed Affiliate Genius

Much excitement here at Affiliate Stuff HQ -  I’ve uncovered the original version of Isaac Newton’s three laws of motion.  Must understand stuff for physicists and science types everywhere,  but did you know he originally wrote them about affiliate marketing??

“This’ll be a smash hit” Issac said, and was all up for releasing it to the scientific community until his wife pointed out ” affiliate marketing hasn’t been invented yet Issac, you’ll probably get burned at the stake for being a nut job. You were only just lucky the last time after that business with the apple!”

“Bugger!” Issac proclaimed. “I was really on a roll there. Ah, to hell with it. I’ll make it about motion and change a few of the words around. Nobody’ll notice”

So here’s the original script, recently found by your roving affiliate investigator stuffed down the back of a venerable sofa in the British Library…

Newtons First Law Of Affiliate Marketing

An affiliate at rest will remain at rest unless they act upon a motivational notion.

An affiliate in motion will stay in motion with the same speed and with direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.

Or…

Affiliates have a natural tendency to keep on doing what they are doing. If you’re sitting thinking about getting started in affiliate marketing, or have a great new idea that you just keep failing to act upon, you’re likely to keep doing that unless you give yourself a bit of a kick up the jacksie. However, once you get moving on it… you’ll be hard to stop!

Newtons Second Law Of Affiliate Marketing

Acceleration of wealth is produced when an affiliate acts on an idea. The greater the idea, the greater the amount of ingenuity needed to increase the acceleration of wealth.

Or…
Well, we all know that in the “real” world, the more brute force you chuck at something – the quicker you can make it go. However, affiliate marketing is a more subtle beast and is powered by smart thinking and downright ingenuity.  The bigger your idea for success, the more clever you’ll have to be to get it building momentum.  Affiliate marketing is fueled by a combustible mixture of ideas combined with clever execution.

Newtons Third Law of Affiliate Marketing

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Or…

You know what a rocket does when it takes off, right?? It piles an enormous amount of power out of its rear end and the ground pushes back with an equal force sending it soaring in a skywards direction.

Well, the ground is your idea and the rocket is the effort you put in.  The trajectory you achieve?  That’s all down to what you packed the rocket with, innit?

Hi folks, just a quickie post from me – I’m taking a break this week and I’m not meant to be doing any affiliating or even any internetting so SHHHH, you didn’t see me here – right?

I’ve just found this podcast featuring Matt Cutts chatting about WordPress and it’s wily ways. Some interesting hints and tips for would be users as well as useful chit chat about plugins, keeping Google happy with unique content, duplicate content, and more juicy info.

See you all next week for more affiliate thrills and spills

One of my readers brought this plugin to my attention recently (thanks Chris). Basically, there is a plugin that will override the function in WordPress that’ll strip out all but the most basic tags from your category descriptions. Allow HTML in Category Descriptions means you can add a nice content unit or similar and take advantage of and monetise any traffic your blog categories may be getting.

This Plugin Hasn’t Been Tested by Me!

Usually I’ll thoroughly test anything before I mention it on the blog, but I’m very short on time at the moment and it’ll likely take me several weeks to have a play with it.  I think this plugin could be a juicy one so I didn’t want to make y’all wait to hear about it.

But I Think I Can Put It To Very Good Use If It Works Well…

As you all might know, I add descriptions to my WordPress categories to get a chance at some additional search terms.  I also use the Thumbnails for Excerpts plugin to display nice product images at a category level so visitors hitting those pages have something to browse through.

It’s A Good Idea, But It Looks A Bit Pants!

You can see an example of this on my mens underwear site, here.  It’s not the smoothest looking solution in the world, but as I was putting out so many posts at the individual product or collection level for this site I thought it’d be a shame not to take the time to write a few hundred words and jam them into the category descriptions to try and get some extra traffic in. This has been very successful on Blokes Undies and I now rank very well for most terms around my categories.

The only issue is that the categories have a relatively high bounce rate. Previously I’ve always just figured it’s worth having the traffic going to those sections till I work out a solution. If this plugin does what it says on the tin I think I might have found it! I think it will create a very nice, integrated looking blog structure that’s very efficient with no page going to waste for either SEO purposes or traffic channelling.

I’ll probably try it out in the next few weeks. I’ll let you guys take a look when I’m done (I should really tidy those category images as well – I’m sure we can have them looking better than that!).

If you try this plugin please let me know how you get on

G’day folks and welcome back to my mammoth getting started post! You can catch up on part 1 here.

Building Your WordPress Affiliate Site

Now that you’ve identified your host, bought a domain, found a niche with good merchants, and worked out your content it’s time to build that site.  Well. Where do I begin.  An absolute age ago I wrote my WordPress 101 post, and its follow up – WordPress 102.  I think WordPress is the absolute dogs danglies where affiliates are concerned.  Both of those posts are fairly out of date, but most of the points about finding suitable themes and customising them to your needs still hold true.

I’ve noticed a lot of affiliates are using magazine style themes these days. These are great for creating static looking websites. What I tend to do is create a category structure that looks a lot like the menu structure of a standard retail site. I have found this works well in combination with adding a couple of hundred words of unique content to my category descriptions.  Do watch out for the themes that will use category descriptions as link titles though, not good!

Once my sites have a few posts up and running I then feature some of the posts from my key categories on the theme home page and voila! My site has a relevant and regularly updated home page with little to no input.

If you want to create nice looking landing pages check out this post to get all my trade secrets on laying out a landing page. It’s really not as hard as you’d think to create and customise your own affiliate landing pages. You just need to be handy with pen and paper plus a pinch of imagination and basic HTML. It’s very worthwhile and increases your click through rates to merchant. Your visitors like to see an attractive landing page when they arrive. It’s worth spending some time messing around with these even if you don’t implement them immediately.

Now Install Some Essential Plugins

Great plugins that are a must install for an affiliate site? This is the bit that’s probably out of date in my WordPress posts, so here goes!

1. Sitemap Generator Plugin – not the XML kind, one that’s actually part of your site.  Helps search engines find your content and index it. Kinda pivotal.
2. XML Sitemap – creates a lovely Google compliant XML sitemap of your site. (I’m not entirely convinced this helps you any, but it sure doesn’t hurt!).
3. Robots Meta – Absolutely essential. Helps you stop Google indexing uneccessary content and also eliminates some of the problems WordPress can throw up re: duplicate content.
4. RSS Footer – Ha ha!! Those naughty RSS content robbers will shoot themselves in the foot with this one (geddit?). If someone publishes your content from your sites RSS feed on their site, this neato little plugin will add a link back to your site making sure you get credit and they don’t – denied!
5. Search Meter – Find out what your blog visitors were a cravin’ when they came to visit your site. Handy dandy little tool that will give you additional information on how your visitors are thinking and searching. Great to use to create extra content and can reveal some search term gems that Google won’t.
6. Contact Form – When you set up your Contact Us page, you’ll need one of these. It’s handy to make sure people can contact you via your site… you never know what you’ll miss out on if you don’t!
7. Similar Posts Plugin – Great to help give your readers a view of some related products or information. I use this plugin because it’s very customisable.  I’ve added a thumbnail to all related posts on my sites which really creates an attractive looking page. I think it also gives my visitors a sense of “choice”. As soon as they arrive on one of my pages they immediately see lots of products and navigation options, giving them confidence this is going to be a good site to have a nice look round.
8. Thumbnail For Excerpts – I use this to create nice looking images on my category pages.  Because I started noticing visitors often landed on category pages as my sites got stronger in the SERPS I figured I might as well give them some nice images to look at as soon as they arrived rather than a boring page of text that might result in them clicking away.
9. Link Exchange Plugin – If you want to set up a link exchange page on your site, this handy dandy little plugin will help you manage the process and keep an eye on your link partners to make sure they’ve not pulled the old trick of removing your link back a few weeks after exchanging.  Sneaky eh?!
10. Pagination Plugin – Do not build a blog based site without one of these.  These will help keep your posts in the index by creating a good cross linkage structure in your site.  Google doesn’t like orphan pages and as time passes old blog posts look an awful lot like that.  This plugin convinces Google that your older content is still very much loved and part of the family!

And Your Shiny New Site is Complete!

All you need to do now is get some inbound links (OK, I know… not so easy but we’ll save that for another post I think!) and follow your ongoing content strategy to keep adding new and relevant pages for Google and other search engines to chew on.

At this stage, your journey to a profitable affiliate site is really just beginning.  From now on you’ll have to master the finer and more subtle points of SEO, learn to identify new ways to monetise your traffic, and find new and exciting merchants and products to promote to keep your affiliate business rolling. So not much then

Finally…

Good luck with your new site. Affiliate marketing is hard, hard work. There are no easy wins, but when you do get there it is incredibly satisfying.

If a “best of” montage episode is good enough for the Simpsons, it’s good enough for Affiliate Stuff. We’re now entering Season 3 of my career as a blogger so definately time to pull together a few good posts for the beginners and try to create a good reference point. I’m going to link to the various different guides I’ve written that are still relevant and fill in any gaps where things have changed or there’s an area I realise I haven’t covered properly.

I originally thought this would fit in one post, but it looks like it’s going to be a series… so stay tuned

First… Get Yourself A Good Domain Registrar and Host

There’s a surprising disparity between what lots of different people charge for domains and hosting so make sure you shop around and get a good deal. For the record I use Clook who I recommend and Fasthosts who I don’t.  If you plan on making use of WordPress to build your affiliate site, do make sure that your host supports the platform and makes it easy to use. Be aware of any additional charges for hosting the SQL databases WordPress runs from. Clook has a good wordpress setup that is easy to use. I’ve recommended you do the above for one good reason. So you feel like you’ve actually broken dirt on your new project.

Oh, make sure whatever domain name registrar you choose will actually allow you to change nameserver details via their interface.  Most do these days, but it’s best to double check.

Now Decide Upon Your Niche

The next bit is fun, but it is also very hard. Yep, it’s time to decide on that niche! I’ve written various posts on finding that first affiliate niche (post is quite old so things mentioned such as keyword tools etc may no longer be current), brainstorming, and using your own shopping interests to work out if a niche is worth pursuing. Identifying viable merchants at this stage in your research process is very, very important. Make sure there is someone out there who you feel can effectively convert the traffic you will ultimately send them. The only thing that is worse for an affiliate than a site not ranking is a site that ranks, gets traffic, and fails to sell anything. Very disheartening!!

The following are key points in your niche selection journey: -

• Make sure you are interested in what you are trying to sell. I can never, ever say this too often. I can’t work out why so many people don’t believe me and decide to do a bingo site, or car loans because “the commission is £50 a sale”.  Yeah righto. Do you REALLY think nobody else thought of that??  At the very core of your ability to create a site that really works should be a strong sense of empathy with the people you are trying to attract to your site and push through to merchant to make that sale. The best way to do this when you’re starting out is to make sure it’s something you can see yourself buying. This will better enable you to put yourself in the shoes of the buyer and work out what you’d want to see on a site devoted to it. More importantly, you won’t die of complete boredom trying to create and update your site content.
• Keep the product area you are targeting fairly tight.  Personally I’d go for something a little broader than a site looking to sell a single product as it’ll give you the chance to add additional content and experiment with growing the site further as you move down the affiliate marketing path.  It also gives you the chance to test the market within a highly targeted product area. When you do this you’ll see that some products convert, and others don’t. It will offer good practise in identifying what sells and taking steps to modify your traffic stream to better target your “hot products”. That’s not to say single product sites aren’t valid – they are. It’s just that they can be very hit and miss for the unseasoned affiliate.
• Don’t target something too broad either. Try to do a general site about fashion for example, or even dresses and you might find your site is a huge task to complete and subsequently ranks nowhere. It would in time, but I feel its very important for a first site attempt to get traffic early on to keep you encouraged and interested. Something like Maxi Dresses, or Bodycon Dresses would be far more appropriate.  Plenty of scope for quality content, and the site will attract traffic that is easier to convert thanks to its more precise and targeted nature.
• Once you’ve decided, I recommend you do some keyword research within your niche.

A good niche can often be staring you in the face amidst a seemingly crowded marketplace. Here’s a post I wrote when I was feeling all smug about beating the crowds at an iconic Aussie location. Just because an affiliate space looks crowded, doesn’t mean there aren’t things in there people have missed. Most people look at the obvious. I urge you to be different and think different

Now Register Your Domain

Feed your keyword research into registering a domain with the company you’ve identified in step 1.

A domain that has relevant keywords will really help you out in the search engines. It can also help if you find an available domain that is an exact match to a traffic bearing search phrase. This isn’t always a good thing though – I’ve seen lots of affiliate sites formatted like REALLYPOINTLESSLYLONGANDSILLY.CO.UK – just don’t do it to yourself, it looks ridiculous!

As an aside, a nice short domain name also helps you to create more compelling looking Adwords ads.  The shorter your domain, the more space their is to add a brand name or unique identifier to your display url i.e. LingerieBrands.co.uk/Calvin_Klein. At the very least make sure your domain meets the Adwords display URL maximum length of 35 characters to prevent complicating your life should you decide to give PPC a crack down the line.

Create a Site Structure Plan

There’s really nothing worse than trying to complete a site without a plan. Not only will it lack decent structure, it’ll probably be a bit of a pigs ear and overall waste of time. I suggest using the keyword research you’ve already completed above combined with a look at a few merchants in your chosen niche to sit down and rough out what your main site sections will be.  Choose up to 20 main site areas where you’ll showcase your wares. Any more than that and you may fall by the wayside because you’ve given yourself too large a site to put together.

One of the reasons I recommend you target a narrow product group is that in a well defined niche the main pages you define here will have a much better chance of ranking. Good for those motivation levels.

Now its Time to Get Busy With Some Content
And I mean actual, meaningful content.  Not slapping up a whole load of products and a two line intro that’s exactly the same as the one on every other page of your site bar two or three key words that have been changed, and then acting all surprised and bewildered when your masterpiece sinks without a trace.  The amount of thin affiliate sites I see along these lines is totally ridiculous. Well here’s a newsflash guys – it’s just not good enough!!  Without content your site just won’t have a chance to rank.  This is the point at which a huge number of would be affiliates fail, but never fear – it’s not rocket science.

I suggest at least a couple of hundred words on each page. I usually structure my own pages so that the first 50 to 100 words are at the top (depending on the template) and tuck the rest neatly away after what I’m actually trying to sell.

Forward Content Planning

When you’re sorting your content for the main sections of your site, write out a plan of what additional content you will add to your site once the initial structure is in place.  I feel I have to clear something up here. When you finish an affiliate site, it’s umm… generally speaking not finished!!  Unless you keep adding quality content to your site there’s a fairly good chance that Google will lose interest in your site and your traffic will drop off.  It’s important to keep adding to your site on an ongoing basis. Believe me it really will help you no end to build traffic and a quality site that converts well.

How Do I Decide What To Write About?

I hear you ask. Well, there’s a few tips in the article I’ve referenced above. Apart from that I’d base some articles around any search term areas you weren’t able to include in your main site structure.  Product review / highlight posts can work great for attracting the long tail.  Going back to my maxi dress example above, I might look at writing about maxi dresses featuring particular patterns i.e. geometric or floral, fabric types i.e. cotton or satin, particular shapes i.e. strapless, spaghetti strapped, colours, and finally particular brands or online stores i.e Motel or Miss Selfridge.  Product copy 101 is here, I’ve given a specific example of how I’d write a short article about a single product.  I followed that post up with an overview of the sort of traffic I got in from it.

Phew!

That was quite long, wasn’t it? Now you know why I had to split it up.  Tune in for next time’s exciting installment on getting that site built and marketed. Or just built if I keep on going back and adding stuff like I did with this post LOL.

Questions?

Please if you have any questions on this, pop them in the comments field below and I will do my best to answer them for you. If there’s any glaring gaps in the above I’d like to go back and fill them in. I will be linking to the finished result of this endeavour site wide so that when someone new to AM hits the site they can go straight off and read this.

Comments and discussion will also enhance the resource so please, please, please jump on in – it really does help!

Last month I finally got around to giving the Easy Content Units system a proper road test on one of my websites and wanted to share the results.

So What is Easy Content Units (or ECU)?

It does exactly what it says on the tin!  It makes it easy for you to create and customise attractive content units for your site.  You specify size, number of products, and you can apply all sorts of customisations to integrate it beautifully into your site.

Some examples of how ECU can be used: -

• Price Comparison
• Creating “Product Range” Info
• Monetising YouTube Videos

And many more!

Kirsty’s ECU Test

What I decided to do was see how much better a page with really basic images, text, and buttons did when I applied an integrated content unit into it.  I’ve recently started to find old blog posts on Lingerie Brands have started to rank well for generic search terms they were never designed to target.

The page I chose was one that I had written to promote a tankini sale at Brastop. It looked a lot like this.

You can see it in it’s new post ECU makeover form here.

For reasons best known to Google the page ranks very well for terms including DD+ swimwear, panache tankinis, and tankinis for big busts.  This meant it was one of the most viewed pages on my site with around 1,700 visits per month.  To my distress, those 1,700 visits only equated to 7 sales during a 31 day period during April & May this year.

ECU To The Rescue

Since taking a few minutes to apply some content units I’ve seen a healthy increase in sales being generated from that page over the last 31 days. Sales generated have risen from 7 to 23 – an increase of 229%

It’s not making me a fortune considering the traffic volume the page gets, but the general nature of the search terms it ranks for means it’s way more difficult to convert.

How I Implemented My ECU

As you’ll see on the page, I created content units around the 3 general traffic themes that the page was getting to maximise my chances of converting the traffic, and have tried to make the unit look as much as possible like it belongs there.

The only thing I haven’t done (which I was told I should!) is to go through and replaces any “odd” looking ones with bendy images either with images of my own or cropped versions of the merchant images.

Will I Use ECU Again?

Definately. It’s going to be a great tool for my business to help me make the most of old and outdated pages that are generating traffic and no revenue.  I loved the fact that you can alter your unit from within the ECU interface, and also that the system will mail me if any of my units happen to have old products on that are no longer in the merchant feeds.

I think in time I’ll be able to improve upon the sales levels as I go through and weed out products from merchants who aren’t converting as well.  I’ve also been delighted to discover that a side effect of using ECU has been that I’ve easily been able to test traffic streams with new merchants I’ve not worked with before.  So not only have I increased the profitability of my page, I’ve found a new merchant I will work with in the future (and at least one I’ll avoid like the plague!).

The units themselves are mind bendingly customisable and once you get used to the management interface they are incredibly easy to manipulate. You can do pretty much anything you can think of to make the units fit your site and content. Substitute your own images, alter descriptions, fonts, borders, and layouts. Definately powerful!

The Only Con To ECU

Is something that’s completely out of their hands. The quality of merchant feeds. When I was putting together my swimwear units I tried to find products from a merchant I regularly work with as I knew they had a great selection of cup sized swimwear.  Alas, try as I might I could not get the appropriate products to come up – even if I searched for them by name!

Come on merchants – is it really that hard to put a little thought into your feeds? Product descriptions even?

I Got Back To John With My Results And Asked For A Comment For My Readers…

“Without a doubt the best performing ECUs are those that are really well integrated into the affiliate’s site as Kirsty has done above. The units are totally customisable, and by taking the time to ensure that font colours and sizes match, using the correct layout for your site and perhaps creating a custom “shop now” button, it is possible to increase performance immensely.

If your ECU looks out of place or stands out (for the wrong reasons), then you’re losing sales. Take 5 minutes to customise it to fit your site, and maybe you could see a 300% increase in sales too! If you would like any help at all customising ECUs (or indeed help with ANY aspect of Easy Content Units), then please give me a shout at john@easycontentunits.com – That’s what we’re here for!”

Find out more about ECU and sign up for a free or pro account at: -EasyContentUnits.com

With the recently completed Caffeine update Google has once more clearly demonstrated it’s power to make or break a business to many affiliates.  The initial update at the start of May was followed by a final adjustment to the algo between June 4th and 2nd which hit many sites whose owners were breathing sighs of relief that they had escaped this latest shake up.  Those affected lost up to 60% of their site traffic – a huge blow.

There’s lots of chat about large e-commerce sites largely being the ones affected, but I know that a lot of affiliate sites have also been hit.  What I wanted to do in this post was show you guys different sites that I own which were affected in different ways and share with you some of my early feelings about what’s been going on here.  Anyone needing a refresher on the joy of Google Caffeine can read my previous post talking about it here.

My Winners and Losers…

The Winners

Blokes Undies – Traffic has increased by around 30% since the start of May.

Lingerie Brands – Up there and rocking with a lovely 25% boost.

The Losers

Personalised Gifts UK – 70% reduction

Fragrance Brands – As above.

Fortunately for me, the sites affected were not at all key to my business. That in itself is probably a bit of a clue – they’re all sites I probably haven’t really done “properly” for one reason or another.

What The Sites Have In Common

• All 4 have either exactly the same or similar basic structures.
• All have reasonable cross linking and no real issues with orphan pages.
• All have completely unique content.

Features of The Winners

• Both have had extensive work done on generating good quality links. This has either been through quality exchanges or spontaneous links to bits and pieces of my content from sources such as blogs, forums, and other online publications because people have found them useful or interesting.
• Both are relatively large sites.  One around 1,100 pages the other around 500.

Features of The Losers

• Some are long neglected sites I’ve been meaning to get back around to working on (there are more than listed above!).
• Some are niche sites which I took to a certain stage and then left alone, updating infrequently.
• Many had a low number of pages. The largest had around 280.
• None of them have had much time at all put into generating links beyond the usual round of mailing some friends with relevant sites and cadging links from them. Very few links go to internal pages (although there are some).
• All the affected sites were slapped in the second part of the algo adjustment at the start of June.

My Conclusions

• My traffic boosts have come from the shift in the SERPS caused by the downgrading of larger sites’ quality signals. Happy days
• My own quality and relevance signals for sites that benefitedwere a-ok with Google.
• Those signals were related to good unique content, decent cross linkage, very few orphan pages, and decent inbound links to many different parts of my sites.
• Ranking value of domain names remains strong, I didn’t lose any traffic within affected sites which was related directly to the domain.

What Does This Mean For Affiliates

Cutting through lots of algo related jargon about quality and relevance signals, it does come back to the type of frustratingly bland statements one always finds in Google’s webmaster guidelines.

Try to add value, create a site with unique and compelling content, and don’t make it all about earning money. I think the last one of those is probably key to affiliates.  Understandably we want to channel our time into creating traffic with the strongest possible chance of generating a sale for us. However, I think affiliates ignoring this latest warning shot from Google and not thinking about whether they need to change their strategy will be very ill advised indeed. Lets face it, this won’t be the last algo adjustment. How close were you to the cut off this time? Do you think you’d make it through the eye of Google’s algo needle next time??? Are you sure?

Incidentally, Matt Woods mentioned in an article on A4U that this update might see a mainstream return to the micro niche site in affiliate marketing.  He’s absolutely right that those sites will still work. I’ll certainly still be popping the odd one up here and there.  However, I’d say that anyone building a business on them is creating wealth propped up by a house of cards.  I predict their days will be numbered in the longer term. Looking at them from Google’s viewpoint they’re often thin on content, add little value, and are designed to funnel people straight through to another site. If you think sites like that aren’t already on the big G’s radar you’re deluding yourself.

My Own Next Steps

In an attempt to add a little more value than handing all those slapped affiliates a report card type statement reading “must do better” I’ve popped my own recently written “to do” list for all my sites. Some of it will never happen but it’ll all be thoroughly investigated and I will apply bits of this (and some other stuff I think of along the way) to all of my sites – not just the ones with problems.

• Perform an audit and decide which sites I’ll leave “as is” and which I will try to “rescue”
• Create more newsy articles of relevance to the industry I’m promoting.
• Investigate social networking angles so that Google can see me in lots of different places.
• Look at ways of helping my users more.  Maybe a section on some types of sites offering to help locate hard to find items or answer questions?
• Investigate creating some unique product browsing tools for my sites. The ipad generation really do love their visuals.
• Work consistently on all key sites on ethical link building (hopefully the above will generate a lot of this!!)
• Look at site speed (Google has warned us all!!).

Food For Thought?

I hope I’ve given you at least a tasty little nibble.  Whether you are affected or not, I think bearing in mind that Google can and does raise the quality bar for affiliates on a regular basis is a jolly good idea. Despite having no real impact on my income, this update has given me the proper willies and no doubt about it. I’ve been sitting still for too long and not innovating.  I can visualise all too clearly how easily I could have been on the other side of the fence with this update. The difference between my affected and unaffected sites is uncomfortably small.

Onwards, upwards, and always… Forward!!