Well since deciding to restart my affiliate marketing career I have been a bit slow of the mark actually doing something about it, so now with the bit between the teeth I have registered two new domain names and have started looking for suitable programs to promote them. The main domain I am interested in is a very niche name / topic and I am intending on doing a 4 or 5 page mini site based around it, I am really looking forward to seeing if this approach will work because my last attempt focused on one large price comparison site and several link directories plus a couple of small one page sites (which only averaged about £40 - £50 a month income and did take up a lot of my time, I developed my own comparison script which was very time consuming to track and fix bugs).

As mentioned this time round I am going to focus on very niche sites which should require little to no maintainance once indexed and the inbound links are built plus all the SEO work is complete, I will look to average £1 - £2 a day income from each site and as I should be able to build and SEO them in a day I will look to build a portfolio of 30 - 40 sites in 6 weeks, hopefully I should be able to get them indexed and in a good position in the SERPs within a couple of months so this is a fairly long term trial (I estimate 4 months before I will know whether the whole idea will work or not).

Once I have some well performing sites I will add extra content to them and continue to build links and work on keywords on these particular ones, that will hopefully improve my income from those and give me a break from building new sites for a couple of months, if all goes well I will start the process again and continue to add to my portfolio, maybe throwing in a bigger site every now and again.

I will post some URLs as and when I get them up and running

Well after all the hassle of 2008 I have been thinking long and hard about how I can make 2009 better for my family and myself. I have worked so hard over the last 2 years and have earnt such a small income from it that I now call it my “busy fool period”. My main problem has been that I was trying to play every roll within that business myself, from book keeper to errand boy, I was running around so much that I was going round in circles! I really needed help but the business was not making enough money to pay me a good wage let alone employ someone else.

So after a lot of soulsearching this Christmas period I eventually came to the conclusion that I needed to gear my business down! (Yep not up as most people expected me to do), why? well… Continue reading this entry »

For almost 15 months now I have been working hard on developing my own retail business dealing in car modification spares from dashboard LED conversion kits through to replacement dials and more. It’s been going quite well with my main point of sale being ebay (where I have a very good reputation and sales have been steady). Unfortunately ebay has made a bit of a pigs ear of it all lately with too many changes and not enough time between them for everything to settle, also there is a new search system which randomly drops keywords from searches and from what I can tell is absolutely bloody useless.

The upshot of all this is that many sellers sales have tailed off quite considerably and whilst my business is still moving forward I feel the time might be right to renew my friendship with Affiliate Marketing and try to build a couple more income streams. I have a few ideas in mind for new sites and coupled with the fact that I have a little time on my hands I believe it could be a wise move.

Just going back to ultimate Mods for a second, one thing that dawned on me recently was that after my initial enquiries with a couple of Affiliate Networks which dwindled out without ever getting off the ground, is that it may be a good time to try that avenue again, so I thought I would ask you, do you think there is a place in AM for my site? and if so who would you suggest as a good network to contact, having been out of the scene for what seems an age I just want to make sure I contact the correct people who are making waves right now

I will get back to updating the site in the near future and will keep you posted on my progress with Aff marketing, please feel free to contact me or leave messages to this post

Well finally I have found a small amount of time to allow me to update the Blog.

So things are still going well, after a bit of a slow month in April (which seems to be the case for most businesses) May has started to see trade picking up again. Steve and I are still working well together and are looking to expand into other areas, possibly non retail and more directly focused around a successful website. We have a couple of ideas for this push forward, but implimenting them is going to take time and that is something we are fairly short of at the moment, with both of us still working on average 15 hour days although we do try and take a few hours off each 3 evenings a week now.

I am still reluctant to divulge the details of the business we currently operate and until we open the shop at the end of this year I don’t think that will change. I will, however, put a link up to our new web based business as soon as it’s complete.

This was a short update just to let you all know I am still here, still working in the affiliate industry (albeit only in a small way currently) and still earning a living online. Now to try and take it to the next level as Steve and I push forward with our plans to try and get multiple income streams an every day part of our business.

I noticed yesterday that MSN has completely altered the format of its CSV and Excel spreadsheets for mass uploading, this is something I will need to address in Keyword Organiser as soon as I get an hour spare to do some coding.

This bring me on to a quick round up of how I see the three main players in PPC advertising and how much competition I believe the underdogs will bring to the might of Google. What I will do is go over how I view each in a mini review below:

Yahoo:
When using Yahoo I get the impression that they are in PPC simply because they feel they have to be, kind of “Google is doing it so we must follow”, there seems to have been little thought put into the design of the interface, and little regard for the user in terms of making it an easy and joyful experience when performing the mundane task of entering keywords for an ad. Having to manually enter body and titles for each and every Ad is simply rediculous: Yes you can choose to use the same ad text and title for every keyword, but as all ads are manually reviewed and add the fact that unless your keyword explicitly exists in either the body or title of your ad it will most likely be declined, this makes the feature of little use.
Next we have reporting, how can the powers that be not see that reporting of keyword impressions and clicks needs to be as near to realtime as possible and that we the people paying for the service need access to that information in detail and as soon as pheasibly possible!
Overall
I think Yahoo is the Bad one of the bunch, they have nothing really going for them at all that I can see, although I understand that what little traffic they do send is supposed to convert quite well, personally I haven’t seen this trend though. The pathetic £20.00 a month minimum charge is amateurish to say the least, why would a company want to factor out the little man or put the beginner off before they even start?
Score: Sorry your score has been declined!

MSN:
Now MSN have definately got better with a little maturity, the process of putting up ads is fairly painless and at least they actually show sometime the same week you submit them! Although it can take almost a week for the page to load in busy periods and even off peak it’s very sluggish to load. I like the bulk upload feature and once you realise that IE is the browser to upload these in (due to Firefox nearly always receiving an error) everything works without too many problems. I personally preferred the old template for uploading of bulk keywords as I liked the fact I could control different prices for different keyword match types fairly painlessly - I’m not even sure of how to do this now, without manual editing!
The feature I like the most on MSN is the ability to see what my nearest competitors are bidding on to get to a certain position, it’s a smart move on their part too as I think it encourages people to push the bidding a little more than they might if they did not see that information.
Overall
I think MSN is the Ugly one of the bunch but with some work could definately turn out to be a swan, the biggest problem they have is supplying enough traffic, but the little traffic I do get from MSN seems to convert very well.
Score: Disqualifed! please learn that there is more than one browser on the market and code for them all!

Google
Obviously the heavyweight of the bunch, can supply massive amounts of traffic and has the most refined and useable interface of them all. The downside is that it’s getting increasingly more expensive to use (thus reducing profit margins even more) and add the fact that there seems to be ever more tyre kickers and / or fraud then I suspect we are paying massively over the top for the few genuine clicks that get through each day (i’m not implying that every click should convert, just that I’d like to know that the powers that be are ensuring I pay for as few fake clicks as possible). The positives of Google other than traffic and the general usability of the interface are numerous, fantastic reporting (although sometimes it takes a little too long to update clicks and impressions), the sheer ease of creating new Ads and the fact you can split test them with pure ease is just so immensely useful, plus many more…
Overall
Personally I like using Google although I wouldn’t say it’s Good it is certainly the best of the bunch and none of the rest come close, I don’t like they way the company uses its power with little regard for the people that helped get them to where they are today. Or the way in which it will happily claim that affiliate ads are of low quality and just get in the way so we will not show the ad - Well unless you pay us X amount more, then we will turn a blind eye for a while, infact until we think we can get away with asking for a bit more!
Score:8 / 10 - Start investing in ways to identify and reduce click fraud, stop penalising those that put the most money in your pockets and start helping them rather than working against them. Result Could do better!

Let me know what you think!

Mark

Busy has become my middle name this last month or so and I’m loving it, things are going well with the new business and I’m off to sign a partnership agreement this weekend and hopefully we will have time to setup a business bank account and if it all goes to plan also get to see our accountant

On another note: I’ve managed to do some coding on my Keyword Organiser program that has seen the addition of a new feature where the URL can be set within Google, I just need to do a little more testing and I will release it: Hopefully by the weekend!

Fitness: Ahhh all this sitting in front of the computer has seen me put on a few pounds, I’ve been taking my daughter to Ju Jitsu for the last few weeks and fancied doing it again myself (I did it about 8 years ago until I got quite badly injured). So I attended the adult classes last Thursday, it was obvious to them that I had done it before, so we skipped most of the basic training and went straight into throws, wrist locks and some of the more complicated break falls, well today is the first time I have been able to move without being in pain lol, but I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it and will be attending again this week!

I’m tired, exhausted infact and it’s reasonably late so I’m going to bed: Drop back soon!

Mark.

I’ve put this in the ‘affiliate marketing’ category because recent activities has me thinking quite a lot about whether most affiliates stay firmly within the ‘affiliate’ role (sending traffic to another business for them to close the deal - or not as the case is quite often), or whether they also Drop Ship or even buy items Wholesale and become a merchant. Having recently seen the view from the other side of the fence, I can say with hand on heart I wish I had become a merchant much sooner in my career.

I’ve been trying hard to make a go of affiliate marketing for about a year now, I have some reasonable sites that make some money, however, it is normally barely enough to cover the cost of my server, I’ve worked long and hard (as mentioned in a post below I’m often still found in my office after 18 hours of work), I’ve taught myself new skills such as mySQL and PHP and at times have been so stressed at the lack of sales that I’ve often wondered if it’s all worth it. Then I look at people who inspire me such as Keiron Donoghue and Keith Budden and realise what is possible if I could just find that magic formula, don’t ask me what it is as I am still searching myself!

So that brings me back to the main topic of this post, affiliate, merchant or both? Well as I said in the previous post I have now entered the merchant arena and I’m loving it! We have positive cash flow, we have stock, we have control and most of all we have a business! I cannot speak for other affiliates but personally I’ve never quite felt like a businessman, maybe it’s the lack of income, maybe it’s the lack of control once the visitor leaves my site, maybe it’s just me!

So what do you think, is it possible to be successful at being both an Affiliate and a Merchant or would you concentrate on just one or the other?

Mark

We are well into the new year and I thought I’d do a quick round up of where I am in relation to my goals for 2007 as I posted sometime ago.

1. To be making £1500 a month from my online activites by May 07: NET
Surprisingly this one is looking very good already, I started a new business venture with Steve (Carmod - from the competition I talked about in an earlier post, we have become very good friends and now business partners) and things are looking very promising for the future. This is not an Affiliate Marketing business but a full blown retail business, we already hold stock and have turned over nearly £500 in our first week, so I strongly believe that #1 will be easily accomplished.

2. To be up and running with my finance site by mid February
This one is definately not going to be achieved, unfortunately with so much work and such long hours going into making the new business a success I have had to put this goal on the backburner for at least 2 months. I still seriously believe I will get into this lucrative sector, it’s just that I need some positive cash flow now. My mlm business venture is getting a little tiresome and to be honest after 2 years of putting out catalogues I’m at the end of my tether with regards to making it work (it’s still an amazing earner for the hours I do though).

3. To finish Mad4Sport and make it a true price comparison site rather than a site which simply has several of the same products but no true comparison of them.
Hmm unfortunately this is another goal that has had to be put on the backburner, one of the biggest problems I feel with the sector is most of the bigger merchants have phone numbers plastered all over their site making far too many leakage points, so I am hesitant to put too many hours into this one at the moment as it would be at the sacrifice of making some real money in the new venture. On a positive note: Umbro sent me (through Sport-e) 2 tickets to the England - Spain game on Wednesday evening which was very nice of them (would have been even nicer if the seats they allocated had been together as they knew I was taking my 6 year old daughter - fortunately we were very lucky and some nice security at Old Trafford helped relocate us), other than nearly getting mugged by some Mancunian Drug Addicts as I mistakenly walked into an unlit car park, the evening was a complete success and thoroughly enjoyable (I’m fairly street wise and I can tell you even with my heart beating so fast it hurt, and as 4 blokes towered over me whilst carrying my daughter on my shoulders, my brain was fully functional, I briskly barged past the biggest one (I always go for the biggest one it puts the rest off guard) walked out into the road and called to some guys getting into a car after the match pretending to ask them a question, this gave us enough time and attention to get the hell out of there and back into the crowds, pretty scary though.

4. To have a site that I am totally happy with!
Hmm strangely this one is probably going to be fulfilled too, the new ecommerce site we have setup for our new business is very nice indeed (we are continually working on it tweaking things and changing the odd bit here and there) and I am very happy with it. Sorry I am not mentioning the new business name or sector, at the moment I want to keep my cards close to my chest to avoid unnecessary competition.

5 and 6:
To start and maintain a resource site, something that until now my portfolio seriously lacks
To live life a bit more, currently I work some days for 18 hours, I must find time to relax a bit more or life might just pass me by
I think theres enough information above to show that neither of these are likely candidates to win Goal achievement of the year awards

7. By the end of 2007 my goal is to be making at least £4000 a month profit
Hmm yes I seriously expect to not only achieve this but now I believe that I will surpass it, by taking what we learn from this new business and using that knowledge in additional ventures I see 2007 as being my most successful year ever.

I also promise to post more through 2007 - No really I do!
Okay this has been a long post, and I really don’t have the time to waffle on anymore, hope you enjoyed the read and I hope to see you here again soon.

Mark.

I have created a tool for pay per click (PPC) advertising that shuffles keywords and formats them into phrase / exact and broad matched keyphrases. It also allows you to set the maximum bid in Google and MSN, another neat feature (this was my main reason for creating the program) is that it will output a CSV file for you to bulk upload your keywords / keyphrases to MSN whilst maintaining formatting and will also add any negative keywords you have added.

I will be working on updates for the program on an ongoing basis and things in the pipeline are:
Ability to add dynamic text for keywords in MSN.
Ability to add a URL in Google Ads that is set in the keyword list.
plus one or two other ideas I have on the to-do list

This is part of the Affiliate Challenge competition I am taking part in, and the program Keyword Organiser only costs £10 currently, as new features are added the price may go up! so buy now and get all the updates I release for free forever!

One last thing I would like to mention, if you do buy it and find you would like a feature added, let me know and I will see what I can do… Now go and buy this MSN and Google Keyword tool

Mark.

2007 is approaching fast and I have been thinking about setting some goals, it is something I am quite used to as I use the technique to drive me on in other areas of my life. So here are a few of the things I intend to strive for through 2007 and beyond.

• To be making £1500 a month from my online activites by May 07: NET
• To be up and running with my finance site by mid February
• To finish Mad4Sport and make it a true price comparison site rather than a site which simply has several of the same products but no true comparison of them.
• To have a site that I am totally happy with!
• To start and maintain a resource site, something that until now my portfolio seriously lacks
• To live life a bit more, currently I work some days for 18 hours, I must find time to relax a bit more or life might just pass me by
• By the end of 2007 my goal is to be making at least £4000 a month profit

Well thats the bulk of it, mostly work or money orientated as one might expect for someone starting out on the road to fame and fortune, but I fully expect to achieve at least 90% of them. The biggest challenge I think is to cram it all in, I have entered myself into a competition regarding affiliate marketing and you can follow the progress of all the competitors here we have agreed to document our progress (successes and failures) throughout the 6 month trial, so hopefully everyone should be able to learn from the experiment. On top of that I have the above goals to work towards, a family to support, another offline business to run and God only gave us 7 days a week and 24 hours a day!

1and1 domains
I have for the last 3 and a half weeks had to phone 1and1 about this domain not propogating properly almost every single day, today however was the last straw and I asked for the complaints department and the procedure to request compensation, OMG not 12 hours later I can suddenly access my domain, now either that is spooky coincidence or they got their finger out and finally did something (I know it takes upto 72 hours to fully propogate but this was purely a problem there end with settings as it was never showing the same DNS settings after a refresh - very strange indeed). So heres my take on this, if you want support that is routed via a country that is hundreds or thousands of miles away, that when you get through cannot help you more than to say “Sorry Sir that is in the hands of our domain department, there is no further information I can give you” - Some support team, and you don’t want to be able to use the domain names you have purchased for say 1/24th of the contract term, then 1and1 are for you! I guess you gets what you pays for.

Have a Fantastic Christmas, a prosperous New Year and lets make some money in 2007! (I will probably post again but this is just incase I cannot access my domain again until January).

Mark.