July 20th, 2009 Affiliate Blogger
nice comments on viral videos which might be useful for marketing guys and for affiliates especially as you can now make clickable youtube videos…
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July 20th, 2009 Affiliate Blogger
I stumbled on this wonderful viral video about…viral marketing. as an comedian will tell you, comedy has its foundations in truth, and the truth in this viral is how big companies get brain washed in to the latest marketing craze, first it was display, the PPC, then the mysteries of SEO, and oh wait, affiliate next, and lets not forget mobile and so on…its easy for businesses to totally loose the plot and go hell for high water and jump on the viral band wagon, the social media train and so forth, totally forgetting the end point of marketing and that end goal, uplift in sales, yes there’s increased brand recognition, but it all boils down to, getting ppl to buy your stuff to make you and your shareholders money. full stop, no ifs no buts, thats that bottom line reason for any marketing. regardless of ppc seo, social media or viral or even affiliate marketing, ultimately its about selling. all these channels are just that, they are tools in a marketers toolbelt, and each has strengths and attributes, viral is like a grenade, when it works it really explodes, display like a bit of a sledge hammer, if you’re an expert you could in theory hammer a nail with it, but most of the time is a little overkill, ppc is like a sniper rifle honing in on the exact target and affiliate marketing is like a machine gun, lots of effort lots of bullets and more often than not you hit, and when you do, it blows a hole in the wall, ok, when it works it makes a big impact.
the fact of the matter is all these terms a buzzwords, it all comes down to – who do you want to target, how do you want to target them and what result do you want.
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July 19th, 2009 Affiliate Blogger
here’s a quick update for july.
google -£63.34 estimate – £109.08
amazon – £12.08
linkshare – £6.45
skimlinks – £0.19
total -£82.06 (actual), £127.80 (estimate)
not bad, but not as high as I hoped…
my test sites have been setup but as yet, i’ve not done any linkbuilding so I’m unsure how effective they will be, certainly traffic to these sites isn’t there yet and google seems to be taking age to pickup the sites, next month will be a hardcore month of linkbuilding.
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July 18th, 2009 Affiliate Blogger
I just found out (late I know) that google announced that their profits from adsense made $1.68 Billion last quarter, which if you imagine is a phenomenal amount of dosh, it just proves how much of a dominance google have in the marketing and how ‘perfect’ their revenue channel has become as a system, on one side you have adsense, on the other you have adwords, the physical admin time, is only dedicated to the top guys on adsense and adwords, which means that the vast majority of advertisers and publishers (affiliates) don’t even have any real contact with google other than using their system, talk about efficiency.
Given that I make around £100 a month from google, it strikes me as amazing that $1.68 billion could be generated, its not that surprising when you consider that 1. the key publishers will be pushing through some real significant volumes, 2. there are affiliate who work solely with adsense (made for adsense sites) and 3. with the sheer volume of affiliates out there all making a few quid a month, there must be hundreds of thousands of them.
I’m just awestruck that a single entity can generate $1.68 Billion in one quarter… makes my few thousand a year look like peanuts!
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July 18th, 2009 Affiliate Blogger
As you’ll have read I’m a big fan of working at speed, my girlfriend often thinks my hands are on fire because of the speed that i type (amongst other things!) and I’ve been banned from drinking coffee at the office before by some old colleagues as I’m wired enough already. Speed and efficency that what its all about, so I’m always looking for ways to do more, faster and easier than anyone else, which is why I’m a massive fan of the ECU, WP-o-matic idea, and literally I can go froma blank domain to a fully optimized completed site (abit without any high quality unique content) in about 30 minutes to an hour, including installing wordpress and optimizing the datafeed in ECU. This basically means the only things left to do on these ECU sites is 1. rewrite the content to be more unique, and 2. linkbuilding, both of these can be outsourced to Content New (keirons little side project), and actually don’t take very long.
as such a review by frostie about affilistore caught my eye, essentially this looks like it does the same thing as ECU and wp-o-matic, but as a single entity rather than two unrelated programs. affilistore seems to work in the same way as wordpress, you download the zip file load it into the server and a template is created, from this, you feed in a datafeed and the site automatically generates a price comparison. Brillant, its free for the time being so I’m definitely going to be giving it a try.
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July 18th, 2009 Affiliate Blogger
After being at my new job for a week, i’ve decided the main skill i’m lacking is in analysis, planning and report, which basically boils down to understanding and being able to put together accurate forecasts, and be able to provide accurate clearly justifiable plans and reports, whilst i’m certainly no genius at this, i’m neither a total green beginner, nevertheless, I’d picked up a book on marketing metrics which I’m not yet begun to read, and now seemed like the ideal time to begin reading it, in the hopes it might aid me in putting together more accurate and detailed forecasts.
Marketing metrics is basically a marketing book only about the equations involved that are of significance to marketing professionals, whilst it might not be of significant use for affiliates, affiliate managers and anyone working merchant, agency or network side and is involved with managing campaigns ought to at least borrow this from a library, its packed with equations which will aid any reporting and each equation is backed up with a detailed explanation of why it’s significant and how it affects the overall campaign, really useful stuff, i’m actually glad i got it and would certainly recommend it.
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July 16th, 2009 Affiliate Blogger
When i was at my previous job, i thought i really know what affiliate management was, it seemed simple enough, but i soon realized i’d learned all i could, not least because I was pratically the only one who even know what affiliate marketing was, let alone what it takes to fully manage a portfolio of client and turn a decent profit. I suppose it wasn’t just luck, but it was a case of working hard rather than working smart, i come from a non-business education, so everything I’ve learnt about projects, reporting and so forth came as i grew into my role, one thing I am really good at however is processes which is why I was able to sustain a small affiliate department for so long, and it made significant profit. But there was always a glass ceiling that I couldn’t get through, no matter how many affiliates we contacted, no matter how many emails we sent, I just didn’t manage to break through, and inevitably that meant that the real juicy clients were out of my reach. My new job on the other hand, is exactly what i needed, it really is one of those situations where you kick yourself going’if only I’d known that then’, the level of organization, efficency and business planning is on another level, something I’ve until now only glimpsed. It really highlights just how far affiliate marketing is and how its no longer a mom and pop business model, but one that caters for multimillion pound clients and makes millionares overnight. As i’ve previously suspected, this confirms my thought that affiliate marketing has more in common with business partnerships and banking than it does with traditional marketing. I was hoping that I could bring something to the table and really make a difference, and whilst there’s still a lot that i don’t know, I’m learning it fast! and its great, how refreshing to be somewhere where i don’t need to be fighting the internal battles to get what i need, just like with any thing in affiliate marketing, being here just proves, there’s always more to learn.
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July 14th, 2009 Affiliate Blogger
I’m just launching my very first atomic niche site, i’ve designed this so that it still uses wordpress but it works in such a way that it will appear as a small 3 page deep site at most, whilst using wordpress seems like overkill, its a simple to read and easy to install template which means i can save heap loads of time, not to mention, my copy of dreamweaver seems to have gone missing, I’ve decided to focus on a well know printer from a top brand name as a test, I imagine that the amount of research into a viable niche would be far greater than what I actually did, but I still think the site will rank well and have a standing chance, the big challenge will be trying to get backlinks to the site. more on this experiment later.
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July 13th, 2009 Affiliate Blogger
I’ve just started at a new agency which I have to say has been a great expereince, the variety of clients looks very promising and the opportunity to really take charge of the department seems really great, I’m hoping this will be my final long term move. It also coincides that this weekend saw some good performance on my sites as well with some good commission from adsense and a few sales via amazon and other networks coming through, my tests with ECU have proven to be very successful, saving me countless hours, the down side is that whilst ECU is great for getting things up on site at speed, content and SEO still need to be done, which means that at the end of the day I still need to find the time to write articles, the difference comes from the sheer amount of time it used to take, finding a program, finding the product, waiting to get approved, creating the deeplink then adding the deeplink to the article. All in all it looks like a positive start to the month (okey we’re on the 13th but still its a good start), My efforts will now be focused on a small handful of atomic niche sites and filling out content on the existing ECU test sites before i take things further.
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July 12th, 2009 Affiliate Blogger
I’ve been thinking a lot about why I’m doing this, put frankly i could have opted for a career in the city or the army, or moved back to HK and worked for the old man, and earn a tank load, but instead I’ve ended up, through a series of events, in affiliate marketing, and yes, I’ve got the affiliate bug. So why the late nights, pratically 24 hour affiliate lifestly right down to the day job? What’s it all for? Why do I subject my family and friends to this obscure term called affiliate marketing, why didn’t i just become a dentist or doctor? and Why has my typing speed gone so fast that i frequently need new keyboards because the letters have all warn away?
Its taken me several months thinking about this to come up with what I hope is a good enough answer. granted affiliate marketing is fun and the people I’ve met as a result of this industry have been some of the most friendly and smart. To be perfectly honest my reasons are selfish.
I want to be rich, or more accurately, financially free, where I don’t have to rely on the 9 to 5 grind, and I don’t have to worry about money to the degree that I do now, ultimately i simply want to provide for my loved ones and myself without having to compramise, I want enough that I can sustain the lifestyle i currently have and the lifestyle i hope to achieve.
I want to do something I enjoy, i cant think of anything worse than being a drone to the system, fortunately affiliate marketing, whilst totally seditary, does constantly change and evolve, infact it evolves faster than most industries, which means tha landscape keeps changing and its great for keeping the mind fresh, embracing the entrepreural spirit and ultimately keeping me interested.
I want to be able to work where I want, when I want, think ‘have laptop, will blog’ there are UK affiliates who live all around the world, doing business targetting UK consumers, I can’t think of any other industry that enbraces the freedom to work from wherever you choose more than affiliate marketing, I’ve created websites at the gym, on the plane, even sitting on the john, in my work clothing, in Jeans and t-shirt even in my birthday suit, (point to note for you network staff contacting me after office hours, I’m usually in my underpants when you MSN me). If work isn’t bad enough, obviously being comfortable as you work helps a great deal.
I want to master the art, affiliate marketing is an art, its both the art of being and entreprenure, the art of being your own boss, and the art of marketing, not to mention SEO, PPC and social media, being in affiliate marketing means you have to be a master of all these and its great feeling knowing you’re ahead of the curve compared to traditional marketers.
I realize that affiliate marketing might not be around forever, but I’m hoping that when that day comes, I’ll have learnt skills that i can carry forwards to other industries and I’ll have earned enough that I might be able to achieve some of my life dreams.
Ultimately affiliate marketing isn’t the be all and end all for me, but it is a means to an ends, and hopefully I’m on the right track.
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