Just started reading…

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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New job learnings

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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New Affiliate Job

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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My affiliate dream

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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Easy Content Unit Adds youtube feature

July 12th, 2009 Affiliate Blogger

Easy content unit has added a feature that allows you to include youtube videos in their units, as if ECU wasn’t already flexible and conversion friendly enough, they’ve responded to the growing trend in the internet age that users like interactive video content, below is a fantastic example, now imagine this, in addition to being able to embed video into an ECU, you could also make the video itself clickable with both google adsense and by using this. cool or what?

enjoy:

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Books on Affiliate marketing

July 12th, 2009 Affiliate Blogger

I thought I’d share a list of books, using easy content unit that I’ve either read or have the intention of reading, yes these are affiliate links and the books are mostly from Amazon, I thought I’d share them, and if it pleases you, please feel free to aid a fellow affiliate in earning some commission.

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Being declined by merchants

July 8th, 2009 Affiliate Blogger

I wrote here, that one of my pet peeves as an affiliate is getting declined for a program with out any reason, but it does happen, however getting suspended perminantly for a campaign i’ve yet to promote and only just got approved for really bites the bullet, suspending an affiliate essentially means terminate the working relationship, you’re not coming in here any more, so its a pretty big step.

I recently got a pretty decent affiliate network to sign me up to all, yes, all, their affiliate programs, mainly because i use niche marketing and easy content unit, and i’d rather be building a site and getting it ranking than waiting for approvals, the network duely obliged and i got over 3000 emails to siv through, of which one contained this wonderful gem of incompetance:

Your campaign xxxxxxxxxxxxx has been suspended from the program One.com UK.
Any links you are using from this program should be replaced as they will no longer function. If you wish to contact the merchant about this, you can request that they change your status to ‘under review’ so that links still work while you resolve any issues (nb. you cannot earn any commission while ‘under review’).
You can contact the merchant at sfd@one.com
Suffice to say i was pretty surprised, then surprise gave way to frustration, yet again, another merchant that clear doesn’t understand how affiliates work and isn’t prepared to give the benefit of the doubt, worse this one.com are in the domain and web hosting business, extremely competative and very lucrative. Unfortunately if you are going to suspend me without reason then my links will go to another merchant instead. It amazes me that the entire account was suspended based on 1 URL and a quick look, there isn’t even a link up on my site yet which I find hilarious, if they did this to all affiliates they wouldn’t get much of an affiliate program. It ultimately points to the fact that there is a big need to educate and train merchants, or at least their affiliate managers in the fine art of working with affiliates.

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My new project

July 8th, 2009 Affiliate Blogger

so I’ve decided to open up one of my sites to the affiliate community, basically, affiliates are free to add as many articles to the site as they wish, with as many affiliate links or links to any site they wish, they can even put easy content units on there if they wish, the only big restriction is that there’s no adult content or spam, which I’ll be checking regularly. The site is totally Do-follow and my theory is that as more ppl start to post on the site, the sites ranking will improve, along with the PR, which will flow back into the sites it’s linking to. Additionally specific posts should rank for niche terms which will help support each individual post.

Its long been my idea to try and do something that builds upon the affiliate community and embodies the spirit of co-operation and mutual support that’s so common in this industry. as a result the whole project is totally free and all i get out of it is google adsense commission, which will help pay hosting fees and ultimately support linkbuilding again that will help the site rank and thus support any sites linked from it.

Why should i use it -

Its free backlinks, your only cost is an article of any length

Its not spammy, we’ll be policing this regularly

Its dead easy to use – wordpress, couldn’t be simpler

It supports the industry

It will help your site rank better!

You can use your own affiliate links!

how do I sign up?

sign up here, with your name and email and a password will be sent and you can being posting!

yes really, its that simple and yes, its that good.

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Existem Affiliate management Summer BBQ

July 7th, 2009 Affiliate Blogger

Existem are an affiliate management agency recent awarded several prizes at the A4U awards, an industry awards ceremony like the oscars, for affiliate marketing.

They are having an excellent BBQ down in plymounth for affiliates, networks and merchants alike and is a perfect example of engaging with affiliates. you can book a place for this BBQ here.

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Whats the best ever affiliate incentive?

July 6th, 2009 Affiliate Blogger

I’ve been mulling over this partly out of curiosity and partly because some merchants I do affiliate management need this kind of information to make decisions on how to incentivise their affiliates, I touched on the fact that you need to budget for these here, and that affiliates like to be incentivised with ‘things money can’t buy’, I posed the question ‘whats the best ever affiliate incentive you either seen or won, ever, in all history?’ to affiliates  (here) and i got some fantastic responses.

The Barbados Trip by Affiliate Future came up quite a few times and no surprise really when you consider its an all expenses paid vacation in Barbados for a week along with all the trappings of a millionare lifestyle, a week of fun in the sun with drunken affiliates.

BuyaGifts trip to Las Vegas came up – again a big trip for affiliates, some even got a change to fly fighter Jets which was pretty cool to say the least, they also got to go to a gun range, drive indy cars and visit gentlemans clubs, not a bad present considering most affiliate would shell out an arm and a leg for this if they did it themselves.

One affiliate mentioned he got a Limited Edition Rolex Submariner as well as several other highly collectable watches. IWoot got a mention for their ‘Heli-boarding’ expereince, and Fontastic apprently offered up a car. BT despite all their misgivings gave away a holiday to Paris for two, Books direct gave away £17,000 in cash to two affiliates and Affiliate Window Christmas incentives got a mention as well. one of the most original came from a US network that rented out the playboy mansion, complete with bunnies for a weekend for affiliates.

so whilst the competition for the best ever affiliate incentive firmly rests on the Affiliate Future Barbados Trip, the question still remains, what makes a great affiliate incentive that will actually get affiliates motivated?

Some affiliate sites are earning in the region of £xx,xxx,xxx a year – to give you an example one of the key affiliates in the uk is made about £295.68 off one of the programs I manage, so if you multiply that by the 5000 campaigns in the uk you get £1,478,400 in commissions each MONTH! OK, lets be conservative and say that only half those merchants actually made a sale for them,  you’re still looking at £739,000 a month or £8,870,400 a year.

Because affiliate marketing is such big business and there are many affiliates who’ve become millionares as a result, incentives are going to need to be pretty darn tasty, I remember once talking to an affiliate about a football jersey he’d won and he mentioned ‘forget about the t-shirt, I can buy that myself’ and that pretty much sums it up.

At the end of the day affilaites are in the game to make money, incentives are a perk, an extra push. If you really want an incentive to make waves, its got to be something that money can’t buy, this is why the barbados trip, the playboy mansion and flying jet fighters made such a difference. Giving away free samples may be nice for affiliates but don’t expect sales to sky rocket as a result of a free sample pack, if you want to make a real difference, offer up a space flight or a dinner date with Alan Sugar.

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