This is a question I answered a while ago and then forgot to publish when my parents were here (note to self, use the Wordpress scheduling tool!). Someone needed help making their cake tin site a little more sweet and I was glad to help!

Hi Kirsty,

Am an avid follower of your blog and thought I would drop you a quick message to ask for some feedback on a website that we have. www.caketins.org.uk is the website and I’m looking for your feedback on how well you feel the site works?

We are getting a steady stream of visitors now the site has been live for around 5 months.

Most days we make a sale so I’m just looking for hints and tips on where you think we could improve, especially around increasing conversion?

That is a pretty nice looking site, so well done on putting it together. A sale a day is steady progress as well.

I think there are probably a few more things you could do to polish your offering and improve the performance of the visitors that you are getting as well as attracting in more. I’ll try to create a list here for you to action!

Overall structure of pages – I think this could be better. There’s an awful lot of text floating around and not enough in the way of images that will immediately show your visitors that you have some pretty darned attractive cake tins to sell them.

Calls to action – I think these could be improved dramatically. Get some nice looking graphic buttons or include a big bold link with Shop Now >> or More Info >> If you do use a link, make it bigger and bolder than the surrounding text. People don’t read internet pages properly so you really need to hold their hand when herding them through to the merchant.

Traffic Funnelling – When I clicked on your side menu (which is quite nicely done and visual) I expected to immediately see some more cake tins. However I was instead presented with a series of hard to see text links requiring me to drill down 3 levels. I believe you’re probably still working on this section right now, however I think you’d be hard pressed to keep people’s interest after the first page, so this needs some work. I suggest no more than 2 clicks within the site before you are ushering them on to the merchant.

The actual menu structure you’ve created for your shopping sections makes a lot of sense, so well done there. However I’d add some more unique content to try and get in some additional traffic around these areas. Write at least a couple of hundred words for each section and team them up with the nice images and calls to action mentioned above.

The Home Page – needs to immediately offer some great product options and have a nice strong structure. Create some nice offers and buying options that visitors will immediately see. The homepage should be showing the best selling products that you know a lot of people are interested in buying, or be showcasing top site sections.

Navigation – It would be great if you are able to offer people a shop-like navigation either on your top or one of your side bars. People do look around for these and they can help make your site look a lot more polished.

I don’t usually do blogging without making more than one effort to contact a company, but this time I’m making an exception and I’m making it for Tradedoubler and their dreadful support system.  I’m seriously considering indulging in a bit of brand name bidding because I reckon it might well be the only way to get Tradedoubler to actually talk to me in a time period that can be described as “less than an ice age”.

I submitted a support request quite a few days ago.  I know they got it because I got a “we have your support request” mail back.  I can’t remember how long ago and I can no longer find the mail, but I was already annoyed about it on October 28th when I posted about it on Twitter.

So In The Spirit Of Comparison…

Here is the time it took a recent support request from another network to be responded to.

Affiliate Window:

Ticket Submitted: 27 Oct 2009 23:53
Response: 28 Oct 2009 11:18

Within 3 hours of office hours resuming. Nice one Awin.

But Of Course, Tradedoubler Know All This….

Because people never cease talking about it on forums and blogs, and they have been talking about it for some time.  To be fair there has been one time this year (June I think) where a support ticket was answered within 72 hours, which I consider to be adequate.  I remember being distinctly surprised by this.  I’ll also be honest, this ongoing issue means I only ever contact Tradedoubler when its absolutely unavoidable.

Do I Need To Know The Secret Handshake?

I don’t have any contacts in there I can use (which is the first thing anyone suggests I need) but why should I need a direct line to one of their staff to get a simple request sorted? In this case I need my payment details altering before the next run else I’ll miss out, so I’m feeling moderately aggravated about the whole thing. 

Lets Try This One More Time…

I am now off to re-submit my request. Perhaps they did reply and it got lost somewhere in cyber space, or perhaps my request vanished into the ether quite at random. But  is it absolutely out of the question that a multi million pound company might have a communications system that works?  Or am I being foolish?  Tradedoubler have beautiful offices in the centre of London, a massive client base, and an internation operation.  But do they have a support ticket system that works?

Lets leave that one for Tradedoublers newest member of staff to answer….

Computer Says No…..

P.S. Read This Post About Their 2007 Same Day Response Promise.

**edit – I had contact from TD and it transpires that they did respond to my original support ticket (on the first working day they got it) it’s just that I didn’t get it. So they did do what they should have – but alas because they don’t have a support section for me to log into and check on these things, I didn’t know. This is a bit of a shame as the network are probably copping bad PR for “ignored” support queries that they answered promptly and efficiently. I feel TD need to invest in one of these as I think people would see a marked improvement overnight in what is often seen as a poor support service.

Well, the parents have left the building and have all returned home safely.  We had a fab time and it really was all over way too quick.

As always after a few weeks off, re-starting work will be a completely mammoth task.  This time it should be relatively easy for me, I’ve got some accounts stuff I need to catch up on, need to prepare a brief for the guy who writes my content (a great way to feel like you’re getting back in the saddle without really having to do much!!), and need to finalise moving my business here to Australia under a new company name.

Did I say It’d Be Easy?!

Nobody with an aversion to swearing should ask me about the last point on my affiliate to do list.  I had to open a GBP account here and was staggered to discover that none of the staff in my local NAB branch had a clue how to pay my cheques in for me.    I first had the audacity to try and pay in my cheques on Thursday, but after a seemingly endless wait whilst the teller checked with any staff member she could grab to see if anyone knew what one of these accounts was, called a helpline, printed a form, read the Ts & Cs, etc -  I was informed that as I had no ID I couldn’t give them any money.  This took us 30 minutes on my parents last day in the country.  I think the teller was glad there was some glass separating us because I could have melted it quite easily with the 1000 megawatt glare which I treated her to.

Upon returning today clutching my form (which as an aside would make any beaureaucrat beam with pride), and no less than two forms of idenfication I enjoyed another hour stood in the bank whilst (the same lady as her bad luck would have it) made phone calls and generally admitted she had no clue what the form was on about.

“Oh, it must be a new product.” My poor teller twittered.

“No, NAB have been doing these accounts for at least 2 years. The terms and conditions are dated 1997″ I managed to say (very nearly politely)

“Oh.  You’d think they’d have told us”

At this stage the teller beside her leans in with “Nobody here knows how to do that you know.  It’s new.”

“Yes, I can tell” I said, winning several awards for diplomacy.

After 2 or 3 more eternities, another call to a helpline, a debate with some other tellers about one or two of the options on the form and what they might mean, she trooped off to the managers office to get him to countersign my application to give them some of my money.  After 20 minutes she returned and declared,

“Manger’s never seen one of those forms either.  He didn’t have a clue what it was about.”

“Oh how super, you must feel so much better!” I enthused (winning 3 baftas)

So Webgains and Affiliate Window I may well be asking you to reissue some cheques.  They’ve probably been sent to Outer Mongolia for all I know.  The only silver lining in todays sterling customer service experience was seeing the look on the tellers’ faces when I remarked,

“I’ll be in every month doing this you know.”

“Can’t you get paid electronically?” They gasped.

“NOPE!” I beamed.  “See you again later in the month!”

Hopefully that will be the most of the switchover sorted now, it took them no less than a  month to even open my account so it’s something I’ll be really glad to see the back of.

I should be firing on all cylinders by the end of the week and getting back into a nice bit of Christmas type fun.  Now I (allegedly) have somewhere to store my money, this will actually be worthwhile again!

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!