Happy Friday to you all

I’ve been trying to spend a bit more time on knowledge improvement recently by subscribing to useful blogs and generally keeping up to date with interesting internet goings on. It occurred to me on  that if I made a note of anything I think is juicy I could turn it into a bit of a digest on here and (hopefully) give all you guys some good resources and general fun stuff to have a bit of a gander at on a Friday.

I’m not promising to do it every week as I don’t always find much of interest and I’ve never been into posting for the sake of it.  So welcome to the very first edition of Kirsty’s semi regular Friday amble around the interesting corners of the interweb!

Investing In Link Building

The bane of the affiliate’s life!!  This was a good link building post from the guys at Seomoz.  What I particularly liked about it was the thought that you can apply a budget to your link building, and not necessarily a cash budget either.

You can say “I will spend 60 hours building links for this site – now what can I effectively do with that time?” That really struck a note with me.  Most people can think of a few things they could do to try and get links in to their site. By creating a list and allocating time to each item you can set mini project for yourself. Structuring it before you start will make the task more manageable and interesting rather than the endless open ended and downright mysterious slog it can often appear to be.

Rand Fishkin also did an interesting video post about sitewide, reciprocal, and directory links and their SEO value back in May.

Twifficiency – What Was Your Score?

A bit of a buzz was created midweek with the outbreak of mass Twifficiency score reports on Twitter. This led to it’s creator, James Cunningham, getting his very own online article in time magazine and a host of other PR. UK AM’s very own Clarke Duncan had his tweet talking about how he was going to consider offering young James a job featured in the article meaning he was able to bask in the reflected glory of the latest internet sensation. He didn’t let his newfound online celebrity go to his head though.  Meanwhile, Kieron was a lot less impressed with the general Twifficiency hoo hah.

The Emperor’s New CO’s

Continuing on our Clarke Duncan related theme, this is ever so slightly old news but just in case you haven’t read his excellent post on the latest domain extension release you can check it out on his blog. A great take on a traditional tale.

This Document is Confidential – Errr… No It’s Not

Tweeter Garret Gillas noted that a lot of people have apparently still not learned how to use a robots.txt file to protect their secret documents!

No Index, No Follow My House

This gave me a rather ridiculous mental image of houses with large No Index tags just beside the front door. People in Germany can now remove their houses from Google Street View.  As an incredibly nosey person I disagree with this notion totally.

IAB Launch Their Blog

I noted on A4U this week that the IAB have launched their blog.  Subscribe now if you have ever asked yourself the question “what do these guys actually do for us?” and keep yourself up to date with their initiatives, meetings, and agendas.

Lammo’s Decade As An Affiliate Marketer

Think that once you’re on the full time affiliate gravy train that life is just a sedate saunter down easy street?  Check out John Lamerton’s full and frank disclosure in his recently completed 3 part post on the ups and downs of his affiliate business since he went full time.  Eye opening stuff and I’m filled with admiration for John, both for his tenacity through some really stressful times and for a very honest and open description of his journey.

Part 1 – Getting Started & Going Full Time
Part 2 – Making A Fortune, Losing A Fortune
Part 3 -Knock It All Down & Start Again

He’s Made A Total Arse of Himself

Nothing to do with affiliate marketing at all, but I’d like to round off with my favourite news story of the week about a burglar who was sprung after getting his ass caught in a window. Love the humiliating pictures they took of him before releasing him!!

If you have ever been burgled this will at least demonstrate there is such a thing as Karma

Have You Read Anything Good This Week?

I’ve you’ve read any crackers this week, post them below and share!

Affiliate marketing is all about change and innovation – that’s what’s fun about it. If you enjoy stability and stultifying boredom – get a job watching grass grow, cos this simply ain’t for you bucko!

Sometimes a good pruning results in amazing growth!

An Affiliate Business Is Like An Apple Tree

It gets pruned every now and again, but patient affiliate gardeners will be rewarded with greatly enhanced crops. Each and every time any changes outwith my control have impacted my business it’s come back bigger, better, and stronger than before.

Why? Because I’ve always viewed change as an opportunity for my business – not a threat.  I just get the old affiliate gardening overalls out, and look at what I need to do to satisfy Google, or find a new revenue stream. Like most hard gardening, the actual mechanics and sheer volume of work required is not fun at all – but the end result is always well worth it.

How My Business Has Been Pruned In The Past

• At the end of September 2003 I set off on my first ever affiliate marketing funded adventure with a year long trip to Australia.  November 15th 2003? Florida Update. For those of you who’ve never heard of it, here’s a description of what happened.  In a nutshell, Google blew the entire methodology I was relying upon to pay for all my antipodean adventuring right out of the water – all the rules changed. My mass produced spammy pages no longer cut the mustard, so I moved on to be heavily reliant upon direct to merchant PPC.
• Adwords Display URL Rule Changes – this was so long ago I can’t even remember when it happened!  Aaaaages ago, Google allowed multiple repetitions of the same display URL in their results. Google decided (correctly) that this gave a poor user experience.  Unsurprisingly several merchants banned affiliates from using their display URL to keep them from driving their in house marketing costs up. This happened fairly slowly but it meant that I repeatedly went out and found new merchants to work with in this way only to have them close off use of the display URL after a while. It was very difficult to get ahead. To cope with this I started to build my own landing sites using merchant’s feeds.
• The Death of Brand Name Bidding. At one stage I was heavily reliant on this income stream (ahhh…. back in the day!). Some programme terms were changed, and – shazam!! No more easy money.
• Adwords Quality Score Rules Are Changed (Announced February 14th 2007. I love you too guys!!)  Just as I was finally getting to grips with my feed type landing sites and Adwords, the goalposts were moved again.  Adwords put the bite on thin affiliate sites and, yep you guessed it all my lovely campaigns got zapped again. This time I took a good few months to work out what sort of content Adwords would want from my sites whilst cheekily “churning and burning” domains to buy me time.
• Mayday Update – unaffected. Finally I’d gotten ahead of the Google game!

Far From Being A Tale of Affiliate Disaster…

Throughout all of the above my business still grew nicely.  I must confess though, it’s only since 2007 when I ventured properly into creating my own genuinely useful websites packed with unique content that I’ve seen true income stability and excellent growth. I’ve created a few really good sites with healthy organic traffic.

Dealing with the changes above combined with the usual programme closures, network hassles, and commission reductions has always made me consider my setup and look at ways to strengthen my position and income. I not only enjoyed dealing with them (in a grim sort of way!) but I’m glad they happened.

It’s All Part of The Job Description

An affiliate can and should expect all manner of change and adversity to be thrown at their progress. I hate the success stories that seem to crop up all over the place where a super affiliate charts their meteoric rise into fabulous wealth and totally fails to mention what a complete and utter shit fight it can feel like at times.

This is not an easy job, but it is an interesting one. Even when things are going boobies up I’m constantly learning, growing and loving my job. If you’re just starting out and think you could deal with this – welcome to the club. If you’ve been in the game for a while – my sincere respects to you. If you’re an account manager or other industry bod who has to deal with affiliates and moans about them being a bunch of grumpy buggers – wouldn’t you be too??!!

I’ve posted quite a few different times on adding a unique description to your WordPress categories.  The last time I spoke about it was here.

The most recent update from my journey in using this technique on one of these sites is that I discovered that when your category gets spread over more than one page, the description gets repeated as well.

At the moment Google is just ignoring this as it’s only a few of my categories that have been affected. However, as the site grows so will the duplicated content – and I’m not at all comfortable with that sort of thing on my sites if I can possibly avoid it.

Just (Another) Simple Line of Code

A very kind friend of mine helped me out with this as it’s several million light years beyond my abilities.  If you replace the little snippet that makes your theme display the description with this one: -

<?php if (strpos($_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"], “/page/”) === FALSE) { print(category_description()); } ?>

That should do the trick nicely. It certainly worked on my site.

Why Bother Kirsty?

Most likely Google will continue to ignore it for quite some time, so I don’t think this was an urgent fix.  However, the way I like to think about a duplicate content penalty is a large (and possibly menacing) robot type chappie standing with a set of scales with which to measure my content. Should the Djinn of Dupe Content plant his thumb too heavily on the aforementioned scales it’s penalty time, the symptoms of which are an unpleasant “cardiac arrest” type shape on my beloved site stats.

Anything I can do nice and early to avoid a cardiac arrest like sensation around my own heart department seems like a great way to spend a quick five minutes in any working day.

I said that outsourcing was the absolute dogs danglies – and I stand by that completely. To be completely honest though I am suffering a slight hangover after the “champagne high” of finally ridding myself of all those terrible sloggy tasks. The thing is, in the last few weeks I’ve been feeling a little ummm…. lost!

I’ve Only Just Realised

I didn’t notice this earlier on in the year thanks to the wholesale destruction and reconstruction of my home not 3 metres from my office – I was just greatful progress was still being made and my feeble firefighting attempts seemed to keep the business just about plodding along in the administrative sense. The almost palpable noise of the money whizzing from my bank account was distraction enough without me having to hear the actual mechanics of change as well.

I’ve Been Feeling a Little Disjointed Without Knowing Why…

I used to measure my progress and reassure myself I was working hard enough based upon how many articles I was writing in a day, plus an hour or two of PPC, and the crossing off of at least 4 minor tasks on my to do list or 4 major ones. The main thrust was always around getting those new pages up and published – content makes the affiliate world go around after all.

But Now What?

My role has become a lot more nebulous in my mind and I’m suffering from terrible guilt because I don’t have any measurable benchmarks by which to define what I consider to be a good days work.

Damn this Scottish work ethic to hell and all the way back I say. I can just about hear several dozen of you thinking “what on earth is this silly girl’s problem?? She’s living the affiliate dream!!”

Creating Some Benchmarks

The ultimate thing I’m working towards is 1 ) A realisation of where I want to be with the business, and how I’ll get there. 2 ) A strategy for me to be able to implement more of my ideas without spreading myself too thin. 3 ) Keep running and developing ideas on my current sites whilst  1 & 2 are running through my mind.

Back to The Structured Day…

I’m going to have to resurrect my affiliate day planner and block off sections of the day for different types of task, thus giving myself permission to do the research that will ultimately make the business stronger and saving myself a lot of guilt about it not being proper work.

Don’t Say It, I Already Know…

I’m a bit odd, I’ll be the first to admit that my mind is unique and possibly bewildering.  Do try to feel sympathetic. I have to live with it all the time – you guys only have to put up with selected snippets!

On the plus side, it’s never dull being me

When I was starting out, I very stupidly thought you already had to be driving volume in order to ask for more commission.  Upon reflection, that’s patently ridiculous and I was a bloody idiot.

Waiting until you’re already driving thousands or tens of thousands of pounds in sales a month is the wrong way round.  That leaves you in a position where you’ve most likely exhausted a lot of avenues to ramp up volume.

Lets face it, most merchants / affiliate managers / agencies don’t tend to pay extra for sales volume they’re already getting, the rotters.

So If You’re Going To Work Hard On A Site….

Drop your local friendly affiliate manager a line.  Here’s what I usually say (now that I remember to ask BEFORE I spend hundreds of hours promoting someone!)

Hi Insert Managers Name Here,

My name’s Kirsty McCubbin and I run, Insert Site Name Here.  As we’re about to invest significant time and marketing resources into the site I thought it might be worth asking if you guys ever offer higher commission teirs for more volume?

I’ve always responded very well to targets so I thought it was worth querying this with you now in case there is something we can set up for me to aim at with the site, and a goal to keep me motivated through all the hard work that lies ahead!

Big up love and affiliate hugs and kisses,

Kirsty

There, that wasn’t so hard now was it?? (OK maybe I don’t sign off like that – but I’d like to!)

When To Ask

As soon as possible really, although doing it before you’ve even built a site may be jumping the gun ever so slightly. Also, if a merchant already has some commission tiers in place I tend to wait until I’m climbing up them a little, and then hit them up before I make that final push to generate even more sales.

But I’m Only A Small Affiliate?

That doesn’t matter – if you don’t ask you don’t get. Inferiority complexes get you nowhere. A special deal between you and a merchant is great motivation to keep pushing for those pennies.

If You’re Already Driving Good Sales and Don’t Have a Way Of Ramping Up

It’s worth testing some of your traffic with another merchant. Don’t be put off by lower commission rates, some merchants will convert better and earn you more money.

You can then use the data you’ve gathered to either ask the new merchant you’ve identified for more money by letting them know how much volume you think you can drive to them (you’ll be able to work this out from the EPCs of the test you’ve done) or go to your existing merchant and ask if they can offer an enhanced rate to keep you. No, it won’t always work – but you’ll be amazed at how often it does… and not just for people driving huge volumes.

It’s Never A Rude Question…

The worst that’ll happen is that someone will say no, or ignore you completely. The last time I checked my affiliate medical dictionary it wasn’t a terminal wound. Should you get a rebuffal, just use it as motivation to drive those sales to beautifully high levels… and then send them all to their competitors

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