Merry Christmas All!

Just a quick post as its christmas day and I’m feeling rather full after demolishing an excellent xmas dinner prepared by my Dad (his first time…usually Mummy Boyd adopts the chef role, was dang good though).

I’ve got a bunch of Google Adwords Promo Codes that credit your account with a £50 free spend. These codes will only work on accounts that are 14days old or less, so generally for newbies to either affiliate marketing or PPC in general. Adwords is what I would class as advanced affiliate marketing (once you master it there’s serious dosh to be made!). Many are scared to give it a try after hearing the many horror stories floating around. I first tried it around a year ago and I’ve not looked back. Not only can it allow you to make money on a site instantly, its actually incredidbly good fun and really rewarding when it pays off.

Theres only one way to learn and thats to give it a shot. What better way to do that than with Google’s moolah!?

Here are the codes, they expire 31-12-2009 so use them up quickly, feel free to pass them onto anyone who can make good use of them. Sell them on ebay and ill hunt you down and probably give you a stern talking to, so watch out!

85PP-U2EL-6RVH-482K-QHA
85PP-UFTA-LDCT-CHEV-BGJ
85PP-UVP6-UXG8-2Z49-Q3J
85PP-TPJU-XH5E-39FZ-9PJ
85PP-U4ZP-9PCB-RMUD-4Y2
85PP-UJG9-AU5L-9DFJ-6FJ
85PP-TSKQ-AZX5-R7K4-T4S
85PP-U7K9-LLDP-KS8N-G2S
85PP-UMPE-T2R9-JBA2-972
85PP-V2PG-E83E-SRZH-D3S
85PP-TV4G-U4TP-L89L-8S2
85PP-UAQF-MW8Y-PNEB-4YJ

You can only use one per account so dont try and add them all! If you are a newbie and feel like giving it a try but dont know where to start feel free to add me on msn and I’ll give you a few pointers! If you use a code can you comment to let me know so I can score it off so others dont waste their time entering it

Merry Xmas,

Mark

 

Wordpress has become the weapon of choice for the majority of affiliates, due to its ease of use and customisability. As the use of wordpress increases, so does the need for plugins to meet the needs of the affiliate world. This post will detail a few of the plugins I’d recommend using on your affiliate sites.

1. All In One SEO by Michael Torbert
This plugin allows you to manually define the Title, Description and Keyword tags (all of which are basic SEO practice) while adding a post or page.

These tags are part of the basic on page SEO that seems to get overlooked by so many sites, so installing this plugin will remind you to populate these tags for every page. Once you have installed the plugin, goto Settings > All In One SEO and define the tags for your homepage.

2. Simple Link Cloaker by Steve Johnson
I use this plugin to cloak affiliate links and also to manage my outgoing links. In order to increase my click through rates, I find its important to cloak affiliate links. Which of the following links would you be more inclined to click while hovering over a “Buy Now” button?

http://www.markboyd.co.uk/dvd-rental
or
http://www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmid=2605&awinaffid=76861&clickref=&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lovefilm.com%2Fdvd-rental%2F

I personally would be more likely to click the first link, therefore I tend to cloak my affiliate links. Simply install the plugin, then when you’d like to cloak a link, copy the long affiliate link into the plugin settings page then define what you’d like the link to be cloaked as. Simples!

3. WP-Ads by Nick Brady
This plugin is a godsend.  This is the bee knees of ad management plugins. Its super simple to use, you simple create a “zone” and then define banners for that zone. These banners will then rotate evenly unless you specify another weighting. You can then copy a line of code into your wordpress templates or into a page or post and thats where the zone’s banners will be displayed. If you take a look @ Nrbet.com (a site I’ve neglected somewhat!) you can see this plugin at work. There are five zones defined on nrbet: the header 468×60 banner space and the four 125×125 banner spaces. WP-Ads also allows me to monitor banner impressions, which is particularly useful if you sell ad space by x amount of impressions.

4. SEO Friendly Images by Vladimir Prelovac
Simple yet effective plugin that defines your image alt tags for you based on your posts title or the image file name. This saves you having to define the alt tag for every image you include in your posts/pages.

5. Google XML Sitemaps by Arne Brachold
This nifty little plugin automatically creates an XML Sitemap whenever you update your blog and it also pings the search engines to let them know of the changes.

6. Robots Meta by Yoost de Valk
A very handy plugin from the King of Wordpress Joost de Valk. I use this plugin to define which pages I dont want Google to index, such as login page, privacy policy, terms and conditions and contact us pages. With this plugin installed you simply choose if you’d like the page to be indexed or not and also if you’d like google to follow the links on the page or not.

7. Custom Post Templates by Simon Wheatley
Not necessarily relevant for affiliate sites, but its a plugin that has saved me pulling my hair out at many times in the past. Its easy enough to create custom page templates, but wordpress havent made it as easy to create custom post templates and thats where this plugin comes in. Create templates in the same way you would for a custom page template, then simply choose your template of choice on the New Post page. Voila!

8. Link A Dink
Again, this isnt a necessity for affiliate sites, but I like it, so I’m sharing it! The Link-A-Dink plugin allows you to create a list of “buzz words” and if any of those words are mentioned anywhere on your blog they are replaced with a text link. For example I could setup this blog so that anytime I mention the phrase “the forums” it would add a link to Affiliates4u.

9. Contact Form 7 by Takayuki Miyoshi
Every site should have a contact form (apart from this one… I’ll get around to that one day!) and the Contact Form 7 plugin couldnt make it any simpler.

10. Smart Youtube by Vladimir Prelovac
If you want to embed youtube videos into your posts, then this plugin is for you. All you have to do is copy the URL of the youtube into your post and add the letter v – e.g. httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti3UL_mVHHI.

Hopefully you will have now discovered one or two new plugins worth using on your sites! I’d really love to hear your comments and more importantly, which plugins you use that I havent mentioned!

 

It’s been over two months since my last post, ridiculous huh? Well, I’ve been super busy since the end of September when I started my fourth year of my Management with Marketing course at The Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. I’ve had a 2500 word coursework due in pretty much everyweek. Add that to the affiliate stuff I’ve got going on and the seo consultancy work I’m doing and it doesnt leave much time for blog posts. Fortunately I’ve got my last coursework to be in next week, then I’m free for a few weeks breather of christmas, woohoo! I’ve decided one way to keep my blog up to date that I can implement while I’m dang busy is…. (Drum Roll Please!)…. Affiliate Quick Tips™! Basically quick tips that are hopefully useful for newbies to help them progress in affiliate marketing. I’ve noticed a lot of newbies popping up on the forums, which is great for the industry. I wouldnt have got to where I am today if I hadnt received help from experienced affiliates, so hopefully the quicktips can help out the newbies of 2009/2010!

OK, first of the Affiliate Quick Tips™ is the use of the allintitle syntax on google search.

Google has lots of little tricks you can use to get more from their search results, in the post I’ll explain the use of allintitle.

When you come up with any idea, one of the first things you should do (even before domain research) is analyse the competition in the market. If the competition is strong, it may not be worth your time focussing on that niche. If the competition is weak, excellent, you’ve found a niche worth targeting and you can move onto your domain research.

One way to calculate how many sites are going to be up against you in the SERPs is to use the allintitle search function. This function will show you exactly how many websites in the good index have the words you’ve searched for in their title tags. The title tag on a page is a key factor in the on-site SEO, so its important to include your targeted keyword in the tag. Here are a few examples of different allintitle searches and as you can see the competition varies somewhat:

allintitle:car insurance – 11.8m webpages have the words car and insurance in their title tag

allintitle:gavin and stacey dvd – 7,040 webpages have the words gavin, and, stacey and dvd in their title tag

allintitle:233LGS – 567 webpages have the word 233LGS in their title tag

So, as you can see the competition is ridiculous for car insurance, its pretty strong for gavin and stacey dvd and its pretty weak for 233LGS. But, what is 233LGS I hear you ask? Its the model number for a £95 watch available at Goldsmiths and various other merchants and the domain name 233LGS.co.uk is available. With commission starting at 10% at Goldsmiths I think it’d be worth a shot!

So, the next time you’re researching your niche market, give allintitle a whirl and let me know how you get on!

 

I’ve been using Adwords since the beginning of this year and it’s safe to say I’m addicted. While I was reading the PPC Dos and Don’ts post on Affiliate Doctors I noticed that Shane had recommended using Adwords Dynamic Insertion tool. This was something that I hadn’t came across so far this year in my time with Adwords so I decided to look into it further as it sounded pretty dang handy! Having played about with it I’ve become aware of its huge potential to increase your CTR.

So, what does it do? Basically it allows you to have the keyword that has triggered the ad in your ad’s title, ad text or display URL. When you create an ad for adwords you should always be aiming to get as much of the ad bolded as possible to help increase your CTR. The more chance of your ad standing out from the rest the better. If I do a Google search for Contents Insurance, the following three ads show up in the top positions.

As you can see, any mentions of “Contents” or “Insurance” have been bolded. So why is this relevant? Well, imagine you are running a campaign that has many keywords assigned to it, you would have to create a lot of ad groups to have an ad tailored to each keyword (to ensure your title gets bolded as it contains the search term), which would take a lot of time and would be pretty tedious!

So, this is where the dynamic keyword insertion comes in useful. When you are creating your ad, insert {Keyword:Default} into the ad title, ad text or display URL. Replace the word Default with the text that you would like to appear if the users search term is too long. So if I was creating an ad for my blog I would insert {Keyword:Mark Boyd’s Blog}. It is important to use a capital at the start of Keyword as this will capitalise each word for your ad text (if you want it to do that!).

So here’s an example. I have set up an ad for the purpose of this post using {Keyword:Mark Boyd’s Blog} in the ad title and at the end of the URL. I then set up a few exact match keywords… [mark boyd is ace], [i love mark boyd] and [wheres mark boyd]. Googling any of these terms now shows the keyword that triggered the ad as the ad title and at the end of the url…

In a nutshell, its a cracking tool, have a think about how it can help you increase your CTR!

 

I was at my Girlfriend’s parents house last week and her Uncle comes out with “Mark, you’ve not updated your blog in ages”. I didn’t even know he knew about my site! He has a point though, its been almost two months since my last post so I’ve decided to pull my finger out and get posting again.

So to start off my new round of posting I’ve decided to share my favourites tools that increase my affiliate productivity. To many of you these will be nothing new and you’ll have been using them for years, but for the newbies that read my blog, I hope this helps you out.

1. Google Keyword Tool

This is the first tool any affiliate should learn to use. It’s pretty simply to use but the information outputted can be invaluable to the success or failure of your new site. Punch in a few keyword ideas and the Keyword Tool will give you an approximate number of monthly searches. Having used this tool for a while now, I can safely say it isnt 100% accurate, however it still lets you know if a keyword is being search for in droves or not. It shows you how many searches a month a term gets globally and it also tells you how many in the UK.

2. Website Grader

This handy tool from Hubspot is very helpful for pointing out some simple SEO mistakes you’ve made. You can also use it to compare your site with your competitors’.

3. Statcounter

I understand that majority of affiliates tend to use Google Analytics, but I’ve always preferred Statcounter, it can give you all the information you need to monitor the success of your Website or PPC campaign.

4. Tweetdock.com

This is actually my website, so stand by for a shameless plug! Tweetdock allows you to set up automated Twitter advertising campaigns based on what people are talking about. Imagine you have a site about bananas (its just an example, dont make a site about bananas!), you can setup tweetdock to have your twitter account @ reply anyone on twitter who says the words “banana” or “bananas”. You can also geo-target and only message people within a certain radius of a city. So you might own a coffee shop in London, you can use Tweetdock to message anyone who mentions “coffee” within 20 miles of London. The possibilities are endless, you just need to get creative! Sign up for a week’s free trial now.

5. Easy Content Units

This should probably have been number one on the list as it solves a problem that has caused me nightmares for years. If you want to provide a price comparison on your website but don’t have the technical know-how, this is the product for you. ECU offer a free account which means you can make as many price comparisons as you like but 20% of the clicks will go through their affiliate link instead of yours. If that’s not your thing, you can pay £19.99 + VAT per month and get 100% of the clicks going through your affiliate link. The prices are taken from the merchants data feeds so you simply create the unit and leave it, no need to manually update the prices. I cant recommend their service enough and they have a friendly team behind them that are constantly looking to improve the product based on customers feedback.

Of course there are many more tools worth using, but these five stick out in my mind as increasing my productivity. Feel free to comment with your favourite tools.

 

A lot of affiliate marketers will tell you that to succeed you need to find a good niche. Others will tell you that you’d be better off going down the generic route. I’m a fan of both methods. I get a buzz out of creating small niche sites and leaving them to tick away making a bit of money each month and I also love making sites that I have to work a little harder at but reap better rewards.

For someone who’s just starting out in Affiliate Marketing I feel that going down the niche route to begin with is a good plan. So the first step is to find the products to promote, which isnt as easy as it may sound. So the purpose of this post is to point out some obvious ways to do some idea generation for niche sites.

Here are some questions worth asking yourself if you’re stuck for ideas;

What products are about to be released?
A good example of an answer to this question is the Rubik’s 360. I noticed a few weeks before it was due to be released that it was causing quite a stir and a bunch of people were already talking about the sort of sales figures it is likely to achieve (500,000 units by Xmas!), so I jumped on the bandwagon and created a PPC Campaign. I would have also created a small site around the product had I had the time.

What’s popular at the moment?
Popular products are easy to sell, well… because they are popular. However, the bad thing about popular products is the amount of competitors. If you’re smart and think outside the box you can still do very well.

What have you just purchased?
This is the way I find most of my niche ideas. Whenever I buy something I go straight to the Google Keyword Tool and punch in some keywords to see if its something many people are searching for.

What are your friends talking about?
If your friends are talking about a certain product, they’re obviously happy with it (or they could be upset with it!) and therefore it could be a product worth promoting.

What have you noticed in the Newspapers/Magazines?
This is an excellent method for finding products that are not yet released, which hopefully means there are still some cracking domains available for the product. Get you hands on some gadget magazines and read up on the best products.

What have you been looking for yourself?
The latest site that I’m working on is 5m HDMI Cable. Its currently under development but with a few hours work I’ll have it ready to start making some money. It won’t make so much money I’ll never need to work again, but it cost me just £5 to buy the domain and just a few hours work to get it going, so I’ll be happy if it makes even just £30 a month. I came across this site idea because I was in need of a long hdmi cable (that reminds me, I’ve also got Long HDMI Cable to develop!) and after a bit of research on the keyword tool I found that the exact phrase “5m HDMI Cable” was being searched for 1000 times per month and because the domain was available I decided to go for it. I’ll post again in a month or two to let you know how its going!

What do you love talking/writing about?
One of the most time consuming things in Affiliate Marketing is content writing. If you can find a niche that you love writing about then you’re onto a winner (assuming its based around a product that others will be searching for!).

So that’s just a few questions that might help you along your way. They are ridiculously obvious but hopefully they will help you find some good ideas.

Once you’ve got a list of ideas, check to see if they are being searched for using GKT. If they are, fantastic! If not, not to worry, just move on to another idea.

Good Luck on your quest for fantastic ideas! If you have any other ways of finding great ideas, Id be happy to hear them!

 

First off, Id like to point out that I dont proclaim to be a PPC expert in any way shape or form. I started dabbling in PPC on the 1st of January 2009. It was a new year, so I thought Id try out PPC, which Id heard so much about but hadnt had the money (or balls!) to try out.

So I got to it, within the first month Id sold over £90,000 worth of products for Amazon. I concentrated just on promoting amazon products. The reason for this is pretty simple, they offer great commission on electronics and people just  love amazon so it tends to convert very well. The point of this post isnt to tell you about my methods (I plan to post about them shortly though) but to educate newcomers to PPC of the benefits of using negative keywords.

When you set up an ad campaign in adwords, you define which keywords you’d like to target. There are various ways you can define your keywords such as Exact Match, Broad Match, Phrase and so on. For more information on the various types please see the Basic PPC Tutorial.

I use negative keywords to keep an ad campaign under control! I tend to focus on promoting electronics via amazon. My goal is to target searchers that are ready to buy the product. I don’t want searchers who are still in the research stage of the buying cycle. Therefore it is important to rule out such searchers using negative keywords.

What are negative keywords I hear you ask? Basically, if you add negative keywords to your adgroup, your ad will not show for users that have used that word in their search term. Imagine you are selling a television, lets for examples sake call it the “Boyd 301286″. Lets also say hypothetically its quite an expensive television and to get a decent ad position on google youre going to have to pay around 40p a click for the privilege.

OK so the scene is set, you’re promoting a Boyd 301286 television at Amazon that costs you around 40p a click on adwords. Do you want to pay 40p for any of the following search term traffic?

boyd 301286 reviews
boyd 301286 from dixons
faulty boyd 301286
boyd 301286 wall mount
how to setup boyd 301286

The answer you should have screamed out there was “Of course not! What a waste of money!”. Believe me, without the correct negative keywords in place I would spend hundreds of £s a month on what I would class as useless traffic.

When I set up an ad campaign I add a big list of negative keywords that I’ve used on previous campaigns. My work is not finished though. Everyday I check my stats and add to the negative keywords collection!

The best way to keep on top of your negative keywords is to check your analytics (I use Statcounter) as regularly as you can. Particularly the recent keyword activity. You can then view a list of the keywords that searchers have used to get to your site.  Sift through this list and you will see which traffic won’t have benefitted you in anyway, you then add the negative keywords to your ad campaign.

As time goes on and the campaign matures, you will see you have to add less and less negative keywords.

Its a very simple thing to do and it could save you a lot of money. At the very worst it WILL increase your earnings per click, which is what us affiliate marketers should always be looking to do!

Heres a list of negative keywords I am currently using on a campaign that is promoting a 32 inch television that is for sale at Amazon. It should hopefully give you an idea of how it can improve my EPC.

-28
-37
-42
-50
-connect
-currys
-dixons
-fault
-faults
-faulty
-feature
-features
-firmware
-forum
-hi fi
-how
-info
-information
-instructions
-mount
-pc
-play
-repair
-review
-reviews
-richer sounds
-samsung
-setup
-spec
-specification
-specifications
-stand
-support
-tesco
-tescos
-wall

As I’ve stated earlier in this post. I do not proclaim to be an expert PPCer so Id be delighted to hear of any negative keywords that you all use in your campaigns on a regular basis.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to get in touch!

 

Yesterday I was lucky enough to be sponsored to attend Doug Richard’s School for Startups. It was a full day event held at RGU in Aberdeen, hosted by the ex-dragon himself. The day was aimed at businesses (or prospective businesses) in the web and software sectors.

Being an affiliate marketer and looking to invest some of my profits in both software and web based businesses I felt the day would be very beneficial, I was not disappointed.

The seminar was held in a lecture hall at the Aberdeen Business School. The very same lecture hall I fall asleep in week in week out on my University course! There were over 100 people attending and the morning started off very fast paced with Doug grilling random people about their business ideas.

Doug gave his insights into which questions you should ask yourself when starting out in business. Overall the day was very interesting and insightful. At the end of the seminar I felt compelled to go and speak to Doug. So I headed down to the front of the lecture hall…

Me : “Hi Doug, just wanted to say, thanks very much, today was excellent, learnt a lot and found it very interesting, I hope you can come back to Aberdeen sometime to give some of your other talks”
Doug : “Glad you liked it, I could be back, it all depends on life. Sorry if I am appearing rude, I’ve got to pack my stuff up pretty quickly cause I’ve got a train to catch!”
Me : “Do you need a lift into town?”
Doug : “That would be great, I’ve actually forgotten to book a taxi”

At this point, you can imagine how excited I am at the prospect of being able to pick a multi millionaire’s brain during a 15 minute drive! So, I ran up to my car and tidied it up a bit, its safe to say the outside has never looked muddier! Headed back down to the building and Doug was ready to go.

I asked if he had a Twitter account, turns out he does (@DouglasRichard), so I then asked if I could take a photo to twitpic, he obliged…

So, I nervously reversed out of my space (I felt I had a great deal of responsibility!) and off we go to Aberdeen Train Station.

We had a great chat in the 15-20 mins he was in the car (I drove particularly slow so we had extra chatting time!) and it turned out to be a very productive journey. I wont say anymore than that, but let’s just say I’m very glad I offered Doug a lift!

Moral of the story, ALWAYS say Thank You (if its deserved!) -  because it might just lead to a 15minute car journey with a very successful millionaire!

Big thanks goes to Informatic Ventures for sponsoring me to attend the course.

 

The A4U Awards are taking place on Tuesday 2nd June at the Hilton Park Lane in London. One of the most interesting categories (IMHO) is the Affliate Marketing Blog of 2009. Having just started my own Affiliate Marketing Blog around 2 weeks ago I am very interested to see what makes a good Aff Blog. The shortlisted blogs are :

AffiliateStuff.co.uk from Kirsty McCubbin
Here.org.uk from Kieron Donoghue
Lammo.net from John Lamerton
LeeMcCoy.co.uk from Lee McCoy
OneLittleDuck.co.uk from Jason Dale

I have followed all of these blogs for some time now, so I can see why they have been nominated. All provide informative posts mixed with a bit of personality, which is what you need in a good blog. There are many other Affiliate Blogs out there that I love to read, for a full list of affiliate blogs, check out @KeithBond’s site Internet Marketing Blogs.

So, voting in the A4U Awards is really simple, the hard part is choosing who to vote for. Asking myself the question “How do I choose the best affiliate blog of 2009″ I found myself realising the best way to choose would be to interview each of the blog owners, from those answers I then may get a better idea of which Affiliate deserves it most! It’s so hard to pick from such a strong group of nominees, so I hope that this post may help you decide.

The shortlisted five…

Kirsty McCubbin @AffiliateStuff	Kieron Donoghue @KieronDonoghue	John Lamerton @Lammo77

Lee McCoy @GetVisible	Jason Dale @OneLittleDuck

As you can see, John has actually turned into a cartoon in a Roger Rabbit-esque fashion.

My original plan was to split the interviews into three parts/posts, but I’ve decided just to fire them into one big massivo Affiliate Bloggers Interview post!

Let’s getting onto the juicy stuff then!

Q1. Whats your name and where do you come from (in a Cilla Black styleee!)

	“Well hello chuck! My name is Kirsty and I used to live in Scotland but have recently moved to the Sunshine Coast in Australia.”
	“Kieron Donoghue, from Sexy Sunderland”
	“Hello Cilla, my name is John, and I’m from Plymouth.”
	“LOL – My name is Lee McCoy and I’m from, well, Durban – South Africa, but now live in Warrington, Cheshire.”
	“Jason Dale from Loquax.co.uk (or Swansea via Portsmouth, Warrington, Worthing, Sheffield and Newcastle if you want locality). Blogs at Onelittleduck.co.uk!”

Q2. How long have you been into Affiliate Marketing?

	“It’ll be 6 years in August since I went full time in the affiliate marketing world.”
	“About 10 years or so.”
	“Since the dawn of time itself. Actually no, just after that – about nine years.”
	“Since late 2002 – not as long as many, but I’ve cracked a lot into that!”
	“Although I started in 1998, it probably was 1999 or even 2000 that affiliate marketing appeared on the horizon when we started to promote a game company called Uproar. From then there was ukaffiliates.com and Magic Button and suddenly a whole new world opened out. Before that you could simply earn money just by adding banners – them were the days )”

Q3. What was your first affiliate site about and is it still running? We all love links, so don’t be shy! I might even dofollow

“My first ever affiliate site was about pets, it was a really spammy and embarrassing one promoting Petplanet.co.uk  There is still a site on that domain, but there was a nasty virus lurking on the server the last time I looked, so you can’t see it!”

“My first affiliate site was NorthEastCars.info. It was basically a listings of local car dealers. I built it just so I could learn how to use Microsoft FrontPage.”

“My first affiliate site was a crappy looking Geocities homepage all about how to make money on the Internet, written by someone who didn’t have a clue how to make money on the Internet. I made a few quid out of paid-to-surf programs, before the “site” evolved into a freebie site, which became Net Free Stuff, which is still going strong today, although no longer under my ownership after I sold it in 2007.”

“Get Financial. It’s not live anymore as I got bored with the financial market but was pretty poor to say the least. I think I also launched Get Booking about the same time. Before that I had a play with various bits and bobs.”

“Myself and business partner Kirsty Darbyshire started Loquax off as a demon homepage in February 1998 as the UK’s first competition portal – yes it’s still running, although in a much bigger and better format than the early days.”

Q4. Which one person (in the industry) has been the biggest help to get you to where you are today?

“Errr… if I say “Myself” will that sound a bit precious?  I’ve worked very hard to get where I am and I put most of what I’ve achieved down to complete bloody mindedness.  Other than that I have to say the lovely people who frequent the A4U Forum have been a massive help over the years.”

“Hard to single out just 1, however I do remember some MSN chats with Clarke Duncan (UK Internet Sites) from absolutely years ago. He was always available for a chat and didn’t mind a newbie bugging him. “

“There weren’t many people in the Industry when I first started, but one of them is still going strong today and was a huge, huge influence at the very start. If it hadn’t have been for Clarke Duncan, I would probably still be a Civil Servant today. He was happy to share tips and hints with me, even though I was a direct competitor, and proved a massive inspiration during those early days of putting in long hours after the Day Job with the hope of one day doing “this Internet thing” full time. “

“There’s far too many to mention them all, but there’s been a number of people that have either inspired me, kept me going or told me that my ideas are crap. But, my fondest memories are that with Luke Creigh who used to work for Affiliate Future and now runs Media Incentives at the time we were both making obscene amounts of money and even though we were actually direct competitors we both knew that the market was big enough and we’d tell each other what we were trying out and passing on the good tips. Luke definitely encouraged me to spam Google Today, I’d say that Purple is a great inspiration with everything he does in the social arena. There two people are quiet and unassuming – which is the right way to do business (when will I learn )”

“Difficult to name one person, but the original A4U crowd who used to spend late nights chatting online were a major influence. Clarke Duncan, John Lamerton and Paul Wheatley come to mind. I remember chatting to John at the first “Stormtrooper” pub evening and there were so many things we were doing wrong it was untrue. I think that was the epiphany moment that with Loquax there was an opportunity available that shouldn’t be wasted.”

Q5. What has been your proudest moment in Affiliate Marketing?

“Every second I’ve spent being self sufficient as a result of affiliate marketing is a source of immense pride to me.”

“Tough one. Being asked to judge the A4U Awards for the last 2 years and being asked to speak at the A4U Expo for the last 2 years running. On a more personal level I guess it was a few years ago when I first started making a full time living from Affiliate Marketing, my Mam was really poorly in hospital and she asked how it was going. She was a constant worrier, very traditional (i.e. thought I should be an employee and not run my own business) and was petrified I would end up homeless with nothing to my name. Anyway I told her I had just made more in a month than I did in a year in my old full time “real” job and she was so happy for me. At the time she was gravely ill in hospital and I have a very fond memory of the look on her face that her son was doing “ok” and wouldn’t end up in a cardboard box somewhere.”

“Probably the day I gave up the Day Job and started working on AM Full Time – From that day on, I was my own boss, and if I have my way, I’ll never go back to having a “proper job” again. That may seem a strange thing to be proud of, but 7 years later, nothing has come close to the euphoria and freedom that I felt having broken the shackles of working for the Government. “

“Now that’s a difficult one. I’m not one that’s un-naturally obsessed by money. But coming out of the situation I was in, where I had about £16k of debt and wrote that off very quickly after getting into affiliate marketing was a great thing. Another proud moment was when I tallied up all my income and expenses for a month and worked out I earned more in that month than I use to earn being employed by an internet company. Today, I’d say being nominated as finalist for the Best Affiliate Blog for the second year is also a proud moment. Not because I’m an attention seeker, just that I feel that if you’re going to do anything, give your best – and a nomination is an indication that you’re doing your best, even if I come last in that five or first. “

“The A4U award nominations for Loquax (2008) and One Little Duck (2008, 2009) were nice as was being asked to be a panellist at the first A4UExpo. But, I still like seeing commissions from new stuff we’re doing though – there’s something quite satisfying seeing an idea generate a few pounds. “

Q6. On the other foot, has there been a time where you’ve really been set back and thought about packing it in?

“Not ever.  Even in the darkest of times (of which there are relatively few) I know that the affiliate sun will eventually shine upon me again.”

“No. I can’t think of any reason why I would. I love what I do and I love the diversity and fresh challenges each day brings.”

“Thought about it? I’ve done it! I walked away in 2005 after getting well and truly hacked off with the entire Industry. It was a combination of exhaustion (I’d been working 100 hour weeks for 5 years without more than a week off) and frustration – The business I’d built in the early years was very different from the business I had in 2005 – It was much more “corporate” and I simply didn’t enjoy working in that environment. After a year out, I returned in 2006, changed the business back to the “pre-corporate” model I was comfortable with, and fell back in love with the Industry. I’ve been back nearly three years now, and I’m still loving every minute of it!”

“A couple of years ago I was seriously thinking about it and blogged about why (http://www.leemccoy.co.uk/2007/08/why-i-effectively-left-affiliate.html) but mainly it was because I was on the come down from immense earnings, I’d come through some personal issues and had started sub-contracting for a bit of sanity.  At that time I needed to step back and get myself out of much of the rubbish I saw going on in the industry. Now I’ve enjoyed a couple of really good years earnings-wise and have come up with a way of being an affiliate that I find both profitable and enjoyable. I’m not going hell-for-leather anymore as I’m trying not to burn out –like I did before.”

“Not affiliate marketing, no! I’ve often considered what we could be doing AM wise if we didn’t have a community site that requires a lot of time and “non-affiliate” attention on our hands, but have never come close to pulling the plug. “

Q7. What would you like to have achieved by this time next year?

“I’d like to increase my current profits by around 40%.  This isn’t really because I need the money it’s just that affiliate thing where you always feel you need to achieve more.  I think the root of that desire is that I want to broaden the areas I get my income from.  I got caught out a bit by Figleaves’ programme changes earlier in the year and I don’t like to see such a large chunk of cash falling away at the one time.”

“I’d like to build ContentNow.co.uk into one of the biggest online content providers in the UK. “

“I’d like Easy Content Units to have broken even. That might not seem like a very ambitious target, but it’s the single biggest investment I’ve ever made in one website/project – we’ve got a huge amount of cash and resources tied up in ECU, and it’s burned some serious money in the early days. It’s starting to repay a little now, but it still keeps me awake at night sometimes!”

“Well, I’m going through the process of rebranding a number of sites. Some of them are just aimed at getting search engine traffic and making a living off of those. Whilst, I’ve got one in mind that I’m putting a fair bit of effort in and hoping to build it up as a brand.  Hopefully by this time next year I’d have turned it into 1,000 visits a day site and it would have featured naturally in the offline media. “

“The main aim we have each year is earn enough and be happy – everything else after that is a bonus. However I’d like us to break into the vouchers market as a non-click to reveal system and I’d also love to double my blog readership to 4!  “

Q8. Everyone loves a good tool or resource. Which do you use on a regular basis to improve your productivity?

“A pen and paper!  Planning exactly what I’m supposed to achieve during my allocated work hours is one of the most powerful things I’ve ever done to improve my productivity.”

“Spotify. I work so much better to music.”

“I outsource all my content writing and link building – That’s the biggest thing that was dragging me down a few years back – I was spending all day writing content I had little or no interest in, and then forcing myself to go link building (I HATE link building with a passion) – end result was I wrote rubbish content, got crap links and didn’t enjoy my work. So if you want to increase your productivity – find the tasks that you hate doing, the ones you put off, and spend ages doing badly, and then find someone good to outsource that work to – It’ll free up your time to do what you’re good at, and the task(s) will get done better and quicker!”

“I created a list of tools that I used earlier in the year but I still haven’t found time to use the Easy Content Units tool . John, I promise I will when I get this backlog of stuff done”

“I read A4U and have RSS feeds from blogs, networks and marketing sources on hand but beyond that it’s simply just a case of knuckle down and work.  You also can’t beat coming up with your own initiative and ideas – so the old grey cells is probably the best recommended tool for any affiliate. We don’t do PPC or worry too much about SEO (although we probably should) so our focus tends to be what can we do for our users.”

Q9. Have you ever swayed to the dark-side and used any black/grey hat methods to get your site up the rankings? If so, how did it go for you and how do you feel about it now?

“I dabbled with spammy doorway pages pre Florida update but that was so much the accepted norm for web promotion in those days I really didn’t see it as spam.  It went well, got me hooked in the business and so I’m happy to have done it.  It also gives me a neat counterpoint to all the effort I put in these days.  I have to say I get more out of working hard for my money than I ever did from cashing in on 50,000 doorways. “

“No, never have and never will.”

“Nope, never. Two reasons: - I’d be scared sh*tless that I was gonna get caught, and lie awake all night waiting for the knock at the door from the Google police to come and drag me away. - I don’t know enough about SEO to figure out how to do anything dodgy”

“Hell yeh, I built up a Made-For-Adsense site. It was getting 8,000 visits a day mainly from finance and travel keywords. The CTR on the Adsense was often between 30% and 40% and had a good proportion on some good mortgage keywords. I also got a fair number of affiliate sales through that too. Those were the days when you could upload 40,000 new pages one day on a crap site and start earning from them over the next couple of days –bliss.”

“No.”

Q10. Being a successful Affiliate Marketer surely has its benefits, what’s your most prized possession?

“My freedom. “

“I could go all deep here and say my most prized possession is my freedom, the freedom and flexibility that affiliate marketing has given me. But I won’t. Instead I’ll tell you that it’s my white Range Rover Supercharged. I absolutely love it.”

“My most prized possession is my time. Sure AM buys you nice things – Big house, fancy car, exotic holidays etc. But they’re just toys. What’s the point in having 50 acres of land if you can’t spare an hour to enjoy it? Affiliate Marketing gives you money, but it also gives you the freedom and time to enjoy life, which doesn’t actually cost anything. If I’m having a crap day, I can just grab the dog, and bugger off out for a walk. If I want to meet up with a friend for a two-hour lunch, I can. We’re expecting our first child in August, and I’m going to be there to watch him grow up – something that many “successful” people fail to do when it comes to their kids.”

“I’m not one for expensive purchases, that’s really for people that don’t have anything intangible in their lives. One thing I have now is peace of mind and confidence – when I was deep in debt I had neither. Also I’m getting married, have a settled home-life and have everything I want. Why go and spend some cash on something flashy? Saying that, all of Laura’s family have Breitlings and I’m feeling left out.  I’ll resist for now.”

“Can’t say I have a “prized possession”. I do however have a lovely missus (Jude) and thanks to AM we’re comfortable and therefore get to spend time together – no amount of material items can beat being happy in life (although admittedly it’s nice to have them).”

Q11. Its all very well having a nice community and helping newbies by teaching them the tricks of the trade, but do you ever feel a little threatened by the amount of newcomers to Affiliate Marketing that are receiving excellent advice?

“Competition and new blood is what keeps the industry moving forward.  Personally I thrive upon it and think most affiliates probably do as well.  Staying ahead of the game is crucial.  I also think that the number of new entrants to the market won’t be affected by transparent advice.  You’ve either got it or you haven’t.  What we might see are fewer people getting ripped off by the dodgy MLM and rubbish make money product brigade.  All good and helps the reputation of the industry in my humble opinion.”

“No. The Internet is still a growth sector and as well as new affiliates coming on the scene there are also new niches, new technology and lots and lots of new opportunities.”

“No, I think it’s essential that we have new blood coming into the Industry. Many of them will fall by the wayside and get “proper jobs”, but there will be some real stars of the future coming through, and that has to be a good thing for the Industry as a whole. It may be bad for those that rely purely on PPC (You can’t ALL be #1), but for those that build useful sites that actually help and engage real people, there’s plenty of cake for everyone.”

“All the time. When I blogged about my Easter eggs site I saw a big influx of sites targeting the same niche? I wasn’t overly annoyed. I’m a strong believer in Karma and get a lot of satisfaction out of helping people, when I started off in this industry, there wasn’t enough people that were helping others without helping themselves first.”

“Not really. Whilst today’s affiliates do have access to some fantastic resources and opportunities it still takes initiative, effort and energy to succeed. I do think AM is a lot harder these days, most certainly if you take the brand route. New blood is always needed too, and even the old dudes can learn a thing or two from newbies.”

Q12. OK, so you have proven to be successful in the online arena. Do you think you could be a successful entrepreneur in an offline scenario?

“Jeez, I dunno.  I’d like to think so, but there are so many challenges in the offline world it would be a steep learning curve.  I’ve always fancied owning a youth hostel though!!”

“No idea. Haven’t tried it and have no desire to if I’m honest. Online is where it’s at for me.”

“Offline is a completely different kettle of fish to online. I know why I succeed online – It’s because I work bloody hard, online is a 24/7 business and I have very low overheads. I established an offline presence in 2004, and hated it. The red tape, the extortionate overheads (I remember the  phone call to the business rates people: “You want to charge me £4,000 a year, and you won’t even empty my bins?), the 9-5 mentality of both customers and employees. I believe I have some core business skills which do transfer well to the offline business world, but I think you need to focus your efforts on what you’re good at – and that means I’m gonna be chained to this computer for a few more years yet!”

“Well, I can play the piano, can rock climb, I nearly qualified as an Olympic swimmer  – I jest! I know what ever I try I’d be able to make a success of it as I plan and research in great detail but I’m flexible enough to know when its time to change strategies. I also used to be a manager in a PR company so I know about working with others and managing people. “

“Not a chance. I don’t even see myself as an online entrepreneur. I’m just an ex-scientist who started a website and it became successful.  “

Q13. If you could run any affiliate marketing network for just one day, which would it be and what would you change (if anything)?

“I go and run Paid on Results because it’s a network I like working with and people like Stuart, Carole, and Clarke make me laugh (and would probably take me out and get me drunk which I’d quite enjoy).  I don’t think I’d change anything.  My commission tiers with one or two merchants maybe!!”

“Tradedoubler. I’d hide the keys to their ivory towers and make them step out into the affiliate community and reconnect. Something they desperately need to do again.”

“I’d go to CJ and finally approve/deny my pending application to Marbles Credit Card from 2001.”

“I’d work for Affiliate Future because they have the best looking ladies (that’s what J Lil tells me anyway).  Thinking about it, I’d probably like to work for Paid On Results as they do wonders with the budget they have, they’ve taken a load of shit off a load of people and they’re good at what they do and I like to surround myself with people that are determined to do a good job and fight against entrenched views. I’m not sure about the lady situation though! If I could change anything, it’d be get the site tartted up a bit. But the functionality is rock-solid. I’d probably just make everyone coffee and talk to Clarke about shopping for clothes at Tesco!”

“I’d hate to run (or work for) any network. I know as affiliates and especially blogging affiliates it’s easy to give them a hard time, but often those in the front line are as frustrated by situations as the affiliates themselves. Jason in shock diplomatic answer ;o)”

Q14. What’s your secret? (I won’t tell anyone)

“Hard work, passion and never thinking I know it all.”

“Root beer.”

“After nine years working in Affiliate Marketing, I still know next to nothing about Web Design. And I still can’t fix computers.”

“There is no secret, just hard work and humility.”

“Work hard, embrace luck and opportunity when it arrives, keep your feet on the ground, be honest, don’t be too afraid to speak out and remember in the words of the great Take That “someday soon this will be someone else’s dream”.”

Q15. Congratulations on being nominated for the A4U Awards Best Affiliate Blog Category. If you could vote for one of your fellow nominees to win, who would it be and why?

“Oooh, that’s a tough question.  Chris Frost will be most upset!!  I’d actually like to see them all winning something. They all contribute to the great information being put out by affiliate bloggers in different ways, so it’s hard to pinpoint one I think is “best”. If forced to pick one, I’d go for John Lamerton he’s inspirational, his recent “how to guides” have been great, and he’s an all round good bloke.”

“Jason – purely for his cheesy “tabloid headline” blog posts. Plus he’s such a grumpy sod that I’d like to see him with a smile on his face for once.”

“I’d vote for Jason Dale, as he needs cheering up (he’s a Southampton fan)”

“When I thought about voting,  I discounted those who I believe didn’t have the primary purpose of helping others.  Now there’s a few in there, but I have an absolute huge amount of respect for Jason and Jude http://www.onelittleduck.co.uk/ – not only are they very successful but they do it with a smile on their faces, always willing to help others and are jolly good eggs. But then there’s Kirsty who does some cracking tip posts and John who can cut any issue into its constituent parts and cut through any crap that exists in any given topic. And Keiron who has made a popular brand out of his site.”

“I like all the blogs nominated as they all reflect AM from different angles. However I’d vote for Lee as it’s the one that has content more relevant to me as an affiliate. “

That literally took me two hours to copy and paste, so I hope you enjoyed the read! I certainly found the answers very interesting. I’ve made my choice for the awards and I’ve placed by votes. If you havent voted yet, you can vote @ http://www.affiliates4u.com/awards/vote.php

Thanks again to Kirsty, Kieron, John, Lee & Jason for taking the time out of their busy schedules to answers these questions. If you have any questions for any of the super bloggers, feel free to leave a comment.

Cheers,

Mark
(@hairycornflakes)

 

I am a full time student who pays my way through University by succeeding in Affiliate Marketing. I first started Affiliate Marketing in 2005 when I started a no risk betting site (which look liked this). The site started to do well, so I reinvested some of the profits in some other ideas. Today, I now have a lot (i just did a count, I own exactly 100 domains) of websites, therefore lots of revenue streams. Its very safe to say that I LOVE doing what I do and I’d recommend it to anyone, but is it the best job ever?

I think to measure how good a job is, you need to look at the following areas:

Wages

Money doesn’t bring happiness, but it does bring a hell of a lot of freedom. When I was in first year at University I would make around £60-£70 a week from a part time job, this would pay for a few nights out a week (oh the student life!) and not much else. I managed to get by, but I never had any financial security and I couldn’t buy the nice things I wanted. Then Affiliate Marketing popped its head up and ever since I’ve been financially secure and I can (and do) buy pretty much anything I want. Without trying to sound like I’m boasting, one of my best months in Affiliate Marketing I made more than double the minimum wage for every hour of the whole month. If you work hard at AM (Affiliate Marketing will now be referred to as AM from now on) you will reap the rewards. At the moment I probably only dedicate about 10 hours a week to AM and I make a good full time wage.

Wages – 5/5

Flexibility

AM can be done from any computer with an internet connection. I am going to Thailand for 4 weeks this summer. If I was in any other profession I would either have to take holidays or not get paid for those four weeks. In AM, you are most likely going to still be getting paid for the work you have done before you set off, and all you have to do is head to an internet cafe to do a little more work.

One thing that I think will influence a lot of people’s happiness in their job is their hours of work. In AM, you are your own boss, you work when you want to work. I tend to plan a schedule for my week, so I know when I will be working on AM stuff, but if for some reason at the last minute I need to be somewhere else, its not a problem, I can be flexible with my time and do the AM stuff another day. Being a one man band means I can work at any hour of any day. I can’t think of any other job that is as flexible.

Flexibility – 5/5

Holidays

In AM, you don’t have to request holidays from your line manager. You are your line manager, so you can take as much or as little time off whenever you feel like it! I currently work full time, as my third year placement for University and although I have managed to get away quite a fair bit (Madrid, New York, London etc) I have wanted to get away a lot more! I have not been able to get time off to goto all the AM events I have wanted to attend. Therefore it becomes even more apparent to me how much freedom I will have when I do AM full time. AM events, here I come!

Holidays 5/5

Satisfaction

You can get paid all the money in the world, get as many holidays as you want and have as much flexibility as you like and still hate your job! The thing that I love about AM is that I am always learning something new and I am always finding new opportunities. I thoroughly enjoy spending time on my current websites and also researching various markets to discover new niches. Due to me having websites on so many different subjects, I never find creating content boring. I simply dot from site to site, therefore I’m now constantly writing content about just one area.

One thing that I think every Affiliate Marketer will agree with me, is the buzz of getting commission (even 4 years after my first commission payment) never fails to excite me. I find myself checking my stats on a VERY regular basis. Every penny that I make in AM lets me know that what I’m doing is working. If you work in a standard job, you know how much you are going to get paid each payday. In AM, you get very nice suprises now and again that are enough to lift your spirits and encourage you to work harder. I am very happy in my line of work and I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Satisfaction 5/5

Support

In any job, it is good to feel supported. Affiliate Marketing could appear to an outsider like quite a lonely profession. However, I feel that there is a real community spirit among fellow Affiliate Marketers. I have a big bunch of Affiliate Marketers on my MSN list (and I’m always interested in chatting to a few more, so if you wanna chat, add mail{at}markboyd.co.uk). If I have a question I need answered I simply ask someone who is more experience than I at AM or I head over to Affiliates4U and ask on the forum. There are always many helpful people about who are willing to help you. I have found myself helping many people who are less experienced that me, I guess you could say its just paying it forward (what a film!).

Support 5/5

Career Development
When I finish University I think I will have so much experience in online marketing I could persuade a large percentage of organisations to hire me, even if its just to improve their search engine rankings! I am constantly learning from other Affiliates. A few blogs that I keep a close eye on are Kirsty’s, Kieron’s, Fraser’s and Lee’s (Willy Wonka himself!). I have learnt a great deal from reading such blogs and I will continue to read as many AM blogs as I can to pick up new tips and tricks.

I read articles on SEO, PPC and Link Building on a daily basis. Therefore I feel I am constantly enhancing my CV. I recently emailed around 10 online marketing agencies to request a placement this Summer. Within 24 hours of the email being sent I secured a week’s placement with BrightFire through in Glasgow for just before I head off to Thailand. I am really interested to see how such an agency works as one of my objectives (for when I finish University) is to start up such a business. If I had not worked so hard to teach myself all aspects of AM, I would not have had such a convincing email to send.

Career Development 5/5

Incentives

Everyone loves a good incentive. In AM they are all over the place. Recently Sunshine ran their annual competition for Affiliate Marketers to win a place on a trip to barbados. I happen to speak to a few of the people that won a place, so I can see how achievable it is to win such a prize. I have now got the incentive to start a travel site promoting holidays from Sunshine (I’ve bought the domain name Lads-Holiday.co.uk and will get to work on that soon!). Monetary Incentives are very common throughout AM. For example, if you reach a certain amount of sales, you commission rate will increase.

These incentives help keep me focused and encourage me to work harder.

Incentives 5/5

In conclusion, I think its safe to say Affiliate Marketing is the best job you could ever have. Im sure there are many many more reasons why it’s the best job, but feel free to add your thoughts in the form of comments.

In the current economic climate, shoppers are getting more thrifty and therefore looking online for bargains. This is excellent for all Affiliate Marketers. While a lot of industries are suffering, Affiliate Marketing is thriving. Its an exciting time to be involved in online marketing.

To summarise… I love Affiliate Marketing!