Affiliate Three » James

Does the design of a website turn people away?

James — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:25:05 +0000

One of the things I’ve often thought about is how much design matters. Does a poorly designed website cause people to go elsewhere? Or does the content matter? Well, I think the answer lies somewhere in between

If I think about how surf the net (admittedly I am a fairly seasoned surfer, unlike most web surfers), the design matters in that a site hosted on a default wordpress template or on a blogger account will certainly cause me to close that browser window (or tab for that matter). Unless there is something really compelling on that site, the little “x” gets my attention. I guess what goes through my mind is that if the writer/blogger couldn’t make the effort to use a decent template or some paid-for hosting (or at least point a paid-for domain for a wordpress.com account) then surely their opinions hold no value – if their value is the amount of time or money they spent setting up the website, then their opinions must be worth just as much.

I think the same holds true for affiliate sites – subconciously, the average man on the street arrives at a website and assuming their criteria are there, design dosen’t matter that much – however if the design is poor and dosen’t have the elements they’re used to (such as a shopping basket like Amazon, a nice looking header or credit-card pictures, a surfer will get the next wave.

What are your thoughts on this? How much do you think design matters for conversions? How about the initial “grab”?

Income report: December 2009

James — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 17:53:58 +0000

It’s done! I’ve finally reach the $500 per month milestone that I wanted to achieve. It’s taken me a year and a bit to get here and I’ve learnt a huge amount on the way. With introduction of the new QCP system from eBay, my first month looked bad, but I’ve recovered and QCP is now working very well for me. I’ve also been diversifying over the last few months after the QCP change, which was a blessing in disguise and I learnt very quickly that you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket. I’ve also been purchasing some more premium domains monetising them through Amazon, eBay and other affiliate merchants. The breakdown is as follows:

eBay -$497

Adsense – $37

Amazon – $7 (don’t laugh)

Overall, a sucess, although I’m still in progress of some more diversification, as one can see from the eBay earnings.
Happy New Years, may 2010 be an excellent on for you all!

EPN RIP – 1 October 2009

James — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:13:10 +0000

As most of you are aware today marks the move for the majority of publishers over to the new Quality Click Pricing (QCP). Many of the small to medium affiliates have suffered massive drops in their earnings, as have some of the large publishers. EPN used to be a fantastic affiliate, however now they are more like Google Adsense, getting paid for clicks “based on their long-term value”, calculated at the time of the click – make alot of sense doesn’t it? Add to the fact that eBay have been very cagey about exactly how their QCP system works, especially about how small and medium sized publishers have been suffering massive drops in revenue under the new system. Large sales which brought in tens of dollars before are now bringing in tens of cents, for all types of publishers.

EPN are kidding themselves if they call themselves an affiliate anymore, you don’t sell goods on their behalf anymore, you drive clicks to eBay auctions. I suspect the reasons EPN decided to go this route will come back to bite them later. I also suspect that in a year or two when eBay have continued their decline they will come back to this moment and ask themselves whether they went down the right route.

We really got to like you EPN, you will be sadly missed.

Fear uncertainty and doubt or what I think about eBay and QCP

James — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 19:54:27 +0000

If you haven’t heard, the eBay Partner Network (EPN) is moving affiliates over from their current commission based system to something called Quality Click Pricing (QPC) from 1 October 2009. Their announcement in September was a surprise to most and old news to others, as EPN had been beta-testing with selected affiliates (read: high-volume affiliates), giving us “newbies” ample time to figure out how this new (read: no-one except EPN knows how it works) system works so we can prepare for the impending doom (insert healthy doses of sarcasm here). And if you’re a eBay Motors affiliate, you’re really out of luck.

Obviously there has been much talk about this, both in the Phpbay Pro forums (users only) as well as the EPN forums. And whilst the “pinks” (EPN staff) have been especially helpful (another dose of sarcasm would be appropriate here), there still remains some confusion over how it all works. So, that begs the question, how does this all work? I’ll be honest here and tell you – I’m not exactly sure - however, I can speculate from reading many threads and posts from other members that quantity over quaility is best, quite contrary to the name which EPN has given to their new “system” (Derren Brown would be proud). It seems one of the things coming in from EPN affiliates is that you need to make up the shortfall in EPN earnings with enormous amounts of clicks as opposed to more quaility traffic.

I have however, waded through all the FUD and have the following tips (disclaimer: these may not work for you and it may change after October once EPN get their act together):

- some affiliates are grouping smaller campaigns into one bigger campaign, enhancing the higher click amount paid over multiple campaigns;

- try and get users to take action immediately after clicking the auction link, as according to eBay this is what determines “quality” traffic;

- don’t get ACRU’s (it appears that click earnings tank after this);

- “thick” (i.e. content-rich) affiliate sites may not be worth it over “thin” affiliate sites that generate lots of clicks; and

- low ticket items are preferable, as people click-and-buy these far more often than big-ticket items.

That being said, some affiliates are looking elsewhere, as pay-per-click programmes are not uncommon and some are reporting better earnings per click than EPN under the “enhanced” system. Some have recommended Chitika. With October approaching fast, it’s a good time to start thinking about it.
What are your thoughts? How are your earnings doing?

Find niches like a pro

James — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 18:41:02 +0000

I previously talked about niches, and this article is a bit of overlap, but contains some useful information. A niche is the foundation of affiliate marketing success. A large number of affiliates new to the marketing world don’t spend enough time researching their niche before plunging headlong into building the site, adding links, banners and grahpics, building traffic – without adequate research of the niche, all of this could be for nothing.

But how do you find niches and once you’ve found them how to you make sure that the niche is going to be profitable and if it is, which keywords should you be targeting? I’ll try and answer each of these questions in turn.

Firstly, finding niches shouldn’t be difficult – just pay attention in your everyday life at what is going on around you. For example, you’re at the park and what do you see around you – lots of people with their families, playing games such as soccer, cricket etc. There are some niches right there. Going on holiday? What are you taking with you, do other people need those things like suitcases, irons etc? Another niche. What are all your friends talking about? Your Mom? Your Dad? Listen and pay attention and you should have no shortage of niche ideas.

Second is researching profitability. Generally, there is a “sweet spot” where the product costs enoguh to make some decent commission, but not expensive enough to make it a tough sell. Generally this is around the £60 mark or around $100. Once you’ve decided it’s around the right price point, use the Google Adwords Tool (remember to use “exact match”) to get a better idea of the number of searches happening in a month – if this number is too low it’s probably not worth your while, while if its vey high it’s a very competative “niche” or you need to refine your niche (as a rule of thumb I make sure that there are at least 3,600 searches, but this may differ for you).

The Google Adwords Tool will also give you an idea of what keywords you should be targeting for your niche, both in your domain name and in your conten (make sure “use synonyms” is checked). Make sure you have a look at the section that says “Additional keywords to be considered” as this will give you ideas of what other searches are being performed.
That wraps this lesson up, let me know in the comments if you have any questions!

Additional keywords to be considered

How will Google v 2 affect affiliates?

James — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 20:27:45 +0000

As many of you may know, Google recently announced Google Caffeine, their new incarnation of their search engine. So what will change? Well, nothing mostly, as Google seems to be following in the footsteps of Apple and the new Google Caffeine promises speed. Most users won’t notice a difference and to be honest, the speed difference is marginal at best. Google also mentions more efficiency, faster crawling and indexing of pages and more accurate results.

However, I suspect for affiliates that Google is beginning to tweak it, which will mean even more problems more thin affiliate sites, as these will lose their rankings faster than you can say “quick buck”. What does it come down to? The age old affiliate mantra – build quality sites with quality unique content and you will probably notice no difference – in fact it may benefit you, as Google will be able to identify those “thin” sites far faster and easier.

At this point in time Google is looking for developer feedback on the differences between the “public Google” and the “Google Caffeine” results.

Whether or not you submit your feedback, it is very intersting to see how your sites will rank when the Google Caffeine infrastructure is moved into the real google.com.

Check it out here

The Michael Jackson effect and affiliates

James — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 10:49:11 +0000

The passing of Michael Jackson was a sad moment in the history of the world and as a as a result of his untimely passing and huge media coverage, there were many reports of the increased traffic on the social networks and sites devoted to the King of Pop. Some reportedly could not cope with these increased traffic levels.

I thought I would use this post to show you just how much an increase in traffic was experienced, from my little corner of the affiliate world. A bit of background first – I set up a small “landing page” style site, with no content except for the main page (and of course the standard pages like a privacy policy and contact details), about 4 months ago. The sites primary aim was to sell Michael Jackson tickets for his upcoming tour of the UK at the 02 arena. I had about 3 auctions listed on the front page with links to tickets on eBay, a popular scalping location for his tickets (some went as high as £500 for a ticket). I had undertaken relatively little promotion on the site except for the some social submissions – it was intended as a PPC experiment. Subsequent to the experiment, I left the site untouched and it received a little attention from Google and the other search engines, with an average of about one visitor a day, with it peaking at about three per day. There were two key events where traffic to spiked – the first being the death of Michael Jackson and the second being the funeral, with the funeral providing a greater influx of visitors. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so below you can see the Google Analytics graph for a period of a month.

As can be seen above, traffic levels increased by around 2000% around the time of his death and about 4000% around the time of the funeral. Admittedly these are not astounding levels, but the increases are phenomenal.

The lesson learnt? As an affiliate marketer, always be on the lookout for (ethical and moral) opportunities to increase traffic and look for niches (obviously profiting from someone’s death does not fall into this category, but I had not set out to do that).

Suggestions? Ideas? Feedback? Please leave a comment!

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Affiliate Workspaces and more

James — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 18:28:12 +0000

Following on from my previous post about my affiliate workspace, I thought I’d do a follow-up with some other workspaces which inspired me. I’ll also do another follow-up shortly with some more details of my workspace and also some better shots. So without further ado, here are some other workspaces (if you find any more, please leave a comment!

Dave Pit’s setup

Darren Rowse of Problogger fame 1, 2 and Darren’s own workspace video

Time for Blogging setup (loads of links from there)

Productivity 501 setup

Lifehacker has a whole series of featured workspaces

Affiliate Tip workspace

Zac Johnson

Massive thread on WickedFire

Hope you enjoy them as much as I did, let me know if you find any more great workspaces!

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My Home Office setup a.k.a my affiliate workspace

James — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:14:29 +0000

I stumbled across Dave Pitlyuk site the other day and was inspired by both his web site and associated sites, as well as his home office post, so I decided I’d take up his tag offer and show off my affiliate/blogger workspace. So without further ado, I present my workspace.

Front shot (click for larger version)

This is a front-on shot, which contains my 23-inch Dell LCD, running at 1920×1080 (full 1080p) resolution. I also have a Cisco VOIP phone, which I use for incoming calls. A standard Microsoft mouse and keyboard combo complete the picture (there is also an Axis IP network camera, temporarily placed on the left while I find a good spot for it).

What makes it all happen (click for larger version)

This is what drives everything, it’s a Core 2 Duo E6300 (quite old these days) running 4 gigs of RAM. I’ve got a 500 gig hard drive in there (with another 1.5tb on the home server). This is where most of the work gets done, however I also have a Dell XPS Inspiron M1330 in crimson red, running 2 gigs of RAM for when I’m in need of getting some work done on the couch or on the road. Both machines are still running Windows XP, I skipped Vista and am waiting for Windows 7.

Any comments? Let me know!

Tools for automation

James — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 13:06:15 +0000

One never forgets the excitement of building your first few sites and the adrenaline rush when you log into your affiliate dashboard and see your first commissions. This excitement and adrenaline drives you forward into adding more content and building more sites. However, the key to driving your affiliate success forward is automation. Building and managing sites, keywords and campaigns and tracking your statistics is key to becoming a more successful affiliate.

For the EPN’ers out there, I use a combination of scripts, plugins and Linode VPS’ (which give me root access) to manage my eBay sites. Setting up a new Wordpress site with PhyBay Pro takes approximately 15 minutes, with the content and link-building outsourced I can quickly attract visitors through organic search.

For affiliates who use other networks with Pay-per-Click (PPC), a self-hosted Prosper installation provides everything you should need in terms of tracking and statistics. For those that prefer an outsource pay solution, there is Tracking202 Pro which should meet your needs for an outsourced solution.

There are of course many other tools out there, some of which I will be covering in future writing, such a keyword tools (Google Adwords Tool is great) and the iMacros plugin for Firefox, which is invaluable in the long-run.