Affiliate Odyssey

Sheesh…it’s been a while.

This affiliate marketing game is so damn hard.

Since the last post, I’ve been following the Black Ink Project where updates have slowed to a crawl and I’ve also completed Ed Dale’s 30 Day Challenge.

The 30 Day Challenge was great and I learned a load of techniques for market research, keyword discovery, traffic generation, etc. but unfortunately, using a Mac, I couldn’t get any of the automated tools to work.

Market Samurai, the main tool used in the 30DC, looks awesome but it just wouldn’t work on my machine (an Adobe AIR issue). Luckily, many of the operations can be carried out manually so that’s what I did.

Key takeaways from the 30DC for me were the value of StumbleUpon for short bursts of traffic; that Squidoo is still a good idea and that Adwords is still as impenetrable as ever.

My next challenge is to try to crack landing page design - I’m just being killed by this on all of my sites and seems far harder to get right than getting clicks in Adwords.

So far, the Odyssey has been a complete failure with no money made - I am still going to see this thing through!

Aaron Wall’s SEOBook.com has been around for what seems an eternity and he has built a reputation as one of maybe five preeminent SEO gurus.

I was really looking forward to this session in the hope that it would reveal some of the secrets of link building.

For the first time in The Black Ink Project, I came away disappointed as I didn’t learn anything new.

Being positive, this means all the reading I’ve done has paid off, but it would have been great to pick up some new tips or techniques.

Finally, Aaron’s presentation style wasn’t quite as upbeat or inspirational as Amit’s PPC webinar and so, overall I felt slightly deflated.

I’ve been following Amit Mehta’s blog for ages now (I’m seemingly one of the few who enjoys his lifestyle posts as much as his PPC tips) and find him to be a real inspiration.

What I hadn’t realised was what a great speaker/tutor he is.

Last night I caught up with he and Jeremy’s Black Ink Project webinar on PPC and it was pure gold.

There were so many “aha”, “doh” and “wtf” moments for me that I found it hard to sleep afterwards, scribbling down pages of notes and thinking about how I could integrate all the tips into my campaigns.

I really am going to have to start again with my AdWords campaigns - I’ve fallen into so many of the traps Amit highlighted that it just isn’t funny.

If you’re a newbie PPC marketer, or even if you’ve been doing it for years, you owe it to yourselves to check out the webinar here - it’s free FFS!

Four weeks have shot by since the start of the Black Ink Project and I still can’t believe what unbelievable value Jeremy is providing.

Having a “one week on, one week off” system is great for catching up and I am now fully up to date (well almost - I was too tired to catch last night’s PPC session with Amit Mehta).

Here’s a quick review of what I’ve taken away from the project so far:

WEEK ONE

Session 1 - Finding Your Niche

• Find a niche which you have knowledge, experience and/or passion for.
• Focus on one niche fully before looking for others.
• Do one thing and do it really well.

Session 2 - Getting Your Business In Order

This session was targeted at US-based marketers rather than us here in the UK however, there were some relevant issues.

• Make sure you speak to an accountant and get a clear idea of the best vehicle for your business.
• I already have a Limited Company status and am VAT registered and luckily, have a great accountant.

Session 3 - Developing a Rock Solid Business Plan

• Fail to plan, plan to fail!
• Use SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis to understand your planned business.
• Competitor analysis is crucial, demand analysis even more so.
• Find a unique angle for your business and add some value - microsites are dead.
• Try to understand your customer and their behaviours

Session 4 - Getting to Know Your Audience

• Understand how to split your niche market into customer personas.
• Look at how your merchants are advertising and presenting their websites - they have much bigger budgets and teams than you.
• Sign up to community forums and get involved - find out your customers’ pain points.
• Go through the buying process - actually buy something from your merchant!
• Go wide then deep on keyword research bearing in mind the keyword buying cycle: Browse, Compare, Buy.

Session 5 - Setting Up Shop

• A budget of $1000-$2000 is ideal for starting out.
• Stop buying info products.
• Only spend what you can afford to lose
• A time budget of 20-40 hours a week is ideal.
• Stop multitasking, write a list of things to do, then do them.
• Unsubscribe from most of your rss feeds, newsletters and DO NOT SURF!
• Turn off all distractions when working - yes this includes twitter and email!
• Learn to say No.

WEEK TWO

This week focussed on the technical aspects of setting up a website which is what I do for a living.

It was great to see that the way I do things when building sites for clients is almost identical to the way that Jeremy builds his own websites and so there wasn’t too much in the week’s sessions that I didn’t know already.

The key session for me, was on landing page design.

This was illustrated, not just with the page designed for the project’s ultra portable laptops, but also with reviews of project participants’ own sites and landing pages.

I can’t stress enough just how valuable the information in this session was - if you only sign up to view one webinar session, this is it.

The landing page session was so detailed that there is no way I can do it justice with a list of take home points - you really need to see the whole thing.

Just for completeness’ sake, here is a list of the sessions from Week 2:

Session 6 - Architect a Bulletproof Site

Session 7 - Designing a Visually Appealing Site

Session 8 - Concept to Construction

Session 9 - Making Your Site Dynamic and Fresh

Session 10 - Landing Page Design

SUMMARY

Halfway through the project, I have already noticed a difference in conversion as a result of changes to landing page design and I can’t wait to get stuck in to the PPC and Social Marketing sessions this week.

I caught myself doing something yesterday that was mean-spirited, petty and frankly, just a bid sad.

I’ve been looking for a digital photo frame as a gift for my parents and specifically needed a 10 inch+ display.

I, of course, Googled and clicked on a promising looking ad.

The display url immediately redirected to a merchant which had exactly what I was after (with great customer reviews, returns policy, etc., etc.).

That’s when it happened - I simply copied the product’s url out of the address bar, closed down Firefox (which I have set to clear all cookies), restarted Firefox, pasted in the url and bought the frame.

I remember thinking, sod you, if all you can be bothered to do is a redirect then you don’t deserve any part of my hard-earned cash.

I now feel bad…

Have any of you ever done this or am I the only affiliate spoilsport out there?