Was it Aretha Franklin who said “S-U-C-C-E-S-S, that’s the way you spell success!”? Or perhaps it was Bart Simpson. Anyway, the point is that in life we are constantly asking ourselves how we’re doing, whether we’re successful day by day, year by year, and comparing our gains and losses against many different yardsticks. Self-help books and online gurus often map out routes to success in ‘10 easy steps’ and this is just as true as to how those ‘in the know’ define affiliate success.

The three affiliate groups
Although we’re loath to define the affiliate marketing spectrum in such regimented terms, for the purposes of this post it makes sense to bracket affiliate success in the ways in which it is most usually experienced. First there’s the ‘little guy’, making £100 a week or a month to top up the salary from his or her day job. There are tons of people who fall into this bracket and if you ask anyone on the street if they’d like £100 a week extra without having to put in too many more hours of work, most would probably yes in a heartbeat. For many people, £100 might just about cover their shopping expenses or rent, and the added income is a success in anyone’s book if the efforts to achieve it are not too great.

The next group are those who’ve quit the day job and made a full time affiliate commitment. Again this is a fairly large group with people taking part in the affiliate industry at all levels from site design, SEO and other affiliate activities either on their own or as part of a larger collective. Again, many see working from home and earning thousands a year as a massive improvement over office work of any kind. Success? We think so.

Finally there are the big boys. Those who make 5 or 6 figure incomes or more a year in commission alone. These are by definition a far rarer breed but not as rare as you might think. It takes skill, dedication and a bit of luck to make it to what many would consider to be the top of the affiliate ladder. Perhaps the term “ladder” here is misleading: it suggests that there is a top and a bottom and success can be easily measured, which is certainly not the case.

Whichever echelon of affiliate marketing you inhabit or aspire to, you’ll no doubt be following the examples and advice of others who’ve gone before, but should the success of the super affiliates be something to consider when defining your own affiliate success?

Measuring up and mentors
Many people pick an aspirational role model. This is part of the reason that we here at Lammo.net often pick out and profile key entrepreneurs who’ve risen from a modest background and created a multi-million or billion pound fortune. It’s heart warming to see that you don’t need to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth to make it in business. Affiliate marketing is just as enterprising and entrepreneurial as any other area, with the most successful affiliates starting from scratch, taking risks and eventually reaping the rewards.

However, there are two important “pinches of salt” that have to be taken to regulate the way in which we respond to and learn from the successes of others. Firstly, if you look at the career of anyone that you consider to be successful there’s a chance that they’ve taken years (in many cases decades) in achieving their goals and a near certainty that over the period of their lives they’ve suffered setbacks, major defeats and sometimes life changing circumstances that could easily have broken them.

The messages here are patience, perseverance and most of all flexibility. This is especially true of the affiliate marketing game, where we operate in such a volatile, cutting edge environment, and knowing when to stick with an idea to its fruition or scrap something that isn’t working is vital. The danger with some aspirational models is that you can end up valuing perseverence over common business sense!

The second lesson to take from the success of others is that you shouldn’t limit yourself through adherence to or goals based on those successes. Make sure that the only person you’re aiming to better is yourself. In this way you’ll make every day a chance to better your personal best. Whether this is generating more traffic for your affiliate site, tweaking the on-page SEO to ensure higher conversion rates or simply getting off your backside to go fishing for some links, each day in affiliate marketing can result in small successes which taken in a wider context could otherwise be dismissed.

YOU define success
Success in affiliate marketing has to be defined by you. If you operate in an environment where you’re chasing an unrealistic goal from day one then you’ll feel nothing but frustration at the end of every day. Although there are plenty of examples of a path to success that you can try and follow, ultimately you’ll need to define your own goals and forge your own path.

Not only will this stop your from tearing your hair out when things don’t go according to “plan” but it will also allow you more freedom and control over the direction of your business and indeed personal life. Sometimes making a few mistakes and taking a few wrong turns is the ONLY way in which you can possibly progress as an affiliate and no amount of advice or step by step guidance will be more valuable than first hand experiences.

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

What’s a “successful” affiliate anyway?

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Ian Ebbs recently announced on Affiliates4u that thanks to his Affiliate Marketing success, he is leaving the dreary shores of the UK to travel the world for several months, before deciding where in the world he would like to settle down. I’ve known Ian for a few years now, and despite being a Blackburn Rovers fan, he does know a thing or two about Sports Betting, and Affiliate Marketing in general – He’s not one of those to shout about his success, but rather gets his head down and has been busy building a fantastic Affiliate Business over a number of years now – One that, in his own words “can get by for a few months just working one day a week” – Now in my opinion, that’s the pure definition of Affiliate Marketing success – Building your business up to a level where you can bugger off around the world for a few months (or maybe longer!), and knowing that a great guy like Ian has got to that level is fantastic, and should give inspiration to us all.

I’m building my Affiliate Marketing business towards a similar goal, and hopefully in 2 to 3 years time, my Affiliate Marketing empire will be able to run itself with just 1 hour a day from yours truly – Unlike Ian, I’m not planning to go Globe Trotting for months on end, but I do hope to start a family at some point, and when that happens, I intend being there to watch them grow up, so I’m putting in the hours now, almost as an investment so that I can work as little as possible in a few years time. It’s amazing really how easy it’s been to fall back into doing 100 hour weeks as I was five years ago, but this time I have a definite plan – It’s not going to be work till I drop this time – Everything I’m doing now is building towards the type of business I want to have in 2 years time, so if I’m still putting in 100 hour weeks in 2 years time, somebody shoot me!

Of course, being able to choose whether to work 1 hour or 10 hours a day is the freedom – Just because I only have to work 1 hour a day doesn’t mean that I’ll always do the bare minimum – On those dark, grey January days I’ll be busily building the business, and in the Summer months I’ll be sitting in the sun (hopefully) every day, and off enjoying day trips to the beach etc – I’ll be like a Squirrel who’s forgotten the seasons, gathering my nuts (oo-er missus) in the Winter and saving them up for the Summer!

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that success in Affiliate Marketing cannot be measured in monetary terms alone – It’s the freedom that Affiliate Marketing gives you, whether you want to travel the world like Ian, watch your kids growing up, or emigrate to Canada to become a vicar. Of course to be able to enjoy those freedoms, you have to put the hard work in first to build your business up to the sort of level that can maintained with minimal effort, and have a strong business plan that enables you to succeed in Affiliate Marketing.

What does Affiliate Marketing mean to YOU?

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

What does Affiliate Marketing mean to you?

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It was great to see Jamie Harwood from UK Web Media on the Sunday Times Rich List (Joint 29th on the Young Person Rich List with Katie Melua, Keira Knightly and Ricky Hatton, a little behind Harry Potter but way ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lewis Hamilton). I remember chatting on messenger with Jamie at 3am not long after he’d just started out with Affiliate Marketing, and his passion and work-rate was second to none. He was also not adverse to taking calculated risks, and I remember being concerned as he was ramping up the balance on his personal credit cards to do PPC, although looking back now, it’s certainly a risk that paid off for him!

A lot has been made of the fact that Jamie is in a number of Closed Brand Bidding Groups, and yes, of course this will have contributed to his wealth, but then so has the fact he was willing to take on tens of thousands of pounds of personal debt to “try out” PPC, and was willing to work bloody hard in those early years to build a sustainable, scalable business. I don’t agree with BBG’s (I think they’re a little too close to a Cartel for my liking), but they’re here for now, and why shouldn’t people who can take advantage of them?

One thing that surprises me about the Young Person Rich List is that anyone under 30 with a personal wealth of more than £5m can make it onto the list – Given that, shouldn’t there be a LOT more affiliates on the Rich List? Granted, some of us old timers are sneaking over the age limit now, but I would have though Mr. Jennings and Mr. Wood are just two names that should have been on the list.

Jamie’s only got one year left on the Young Person Rich List, so he’s got to go some in the next two years to make the main list – He’ll need to increase his £18m pile into at least £40m to join Kylie Minogue, Jay Kay and Kate Moss at the bottom of the main list. Well done on a fantastic ahievement though mate, and can I be the 2,493rd person to ask: “Can I borrow a couple of million?”

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

Jamie and the Magic Touch

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Buy.at/Holiday Watchdog sales More and More – It’s the time of the big money sales again. I have to say no-one deserves it more than the two Chris’s from Holiday Watchdog (Who will have to become known as the two Chris’s from Sunshine now) – They show that you can start with nothing but an idea and see it through to a mega-money deal.

I’m a bit more reserved about the AOL/Buy.at sale – It’s not necessary that it’s a bad thing but I remember how good Advertising.com used to be before AOL bought them and started running things – The UK arm is neglected with queries ignored by the various account managers who have taken over our account. I think I’ve had so many ad.com account managers they’ve fitted a revolving door to the staff room!

Campaigns are very thin on the ground, and are even expiring before affiliates are approved, even when applying within 10 minutes of the obligatory forum post, any questions that are raised within that post suitably ignored too. Long gone are the days when our ONE account manager (Where are you Kirsten?) used to know our business inside out and ring us up as soon as campaigns went live ensuring we pushed them.

As a result, our earnings from ad.com have plummetted since the AOL sale, and it’d be a shame to see buy.at go down the same road. I’m not suggesting for a second that is what will happen, but history can be a wonderful guide to the future sometimes (even if not for Investments!) – If you look at ad.com and CJ, there’s two network business models that I believe demonstrates that you can’t run a major UK network as simply a small branch of a US operation. I’d like to think that the buy.at team is large enough, and well established enough in the UK to ensure that doesn’t happen.

Show me the errors of my ways – I’ve been going through our old shopping directory this past week, checking all the links to merchants are working etc. As the site is now 3 years old, many, many of the links no longer work. It amazes me that many of these links are for merchants that have switched networks, and closed down their old network’s program.

All those old links have still been generating traffic for years, going to deadlinks. Which shows exactly why you shouldn’t close your old program down when changing networks – How many sales have those merchants lost as a result of those deadlinks? And I’m just one affiliate – multiply that by a couple of hundred rarely-updated shopping directories (I couldn’t possibly keep tabs on all the network-swapping that currently goes on for all merchants), and merchants are missing out on a fair few sales by causing affiliates links to stop working.

All of which reminds me – Commission Junction have always had this wonderful report – “Invalid links generating traffic”, meaning I can see at a glance where those deadlinks are on my sites. It’s such a useful tool for those with huge shopping directories as it lets you see instantly where there is leakage on your site. Why doesn’t EVERY network provide this report? It’s in their interests for you to maximise your earnings by replacing dead merchants etc. And it makes affiliates lives so much easier. Please, I would implore any network employee reading this to look into providing this simple report for your affiliates.

Woah, we’re going to Barbados… again – Following on from my post last week about how networks don’t incentivise their affiliates, Affiliate Future have just reminded me that I’m wrong, as they plot to take affiliates to Barbados for the thrid year in a row, as well as hiring out Casinos and Theme Parks in this country to give them a knees-up. So, my humble apologies to AF, who whilst not quite on the scale of The Utility Warehouse’s free cruise, certainly put the other UK networks to shame.

Argyle win at Leicester- It was great to get one over on the lying little scrote, and hopefully push him closer to the sack, which is no less than he deserves. Still the lies don’t stop coming either – In his pre-match interview he stated that “They (Argyle) were in fourth place when I left” – erm no Ian, we went up to fourth by winning the game after you walked out on the team four days earlier, and we were actually in tenth place going into your final game, but don’t let the truth get in the way of your ego.

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

I am wrong, CJ do something right, and Ian Holloway can’t stop lying

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Approximately 17.4 times per day, the following question is asked on an affiliate forum somewhere in the world: “How do I become a super-affiliate?”

First of all, I’m going to change the question – Most people asking this question do not really want to become a mythical “super-affiliate”, donning their pants on the outside and getting changed in phone boxes.

What they really want to know is “How do I become a successful affiliate?” How do you define success? Any way you want – Success is personal to you: Many would be happy earning an extra £300-500 a month from Affiliate Marketing, others strive for tens of thousands every month.

Whatever success means for you, you need to know how to get there, and what happens when you do. So, how do you become a successful affiliate? Exactly the same way you’d eat an elephant – one bite at a time.

Take a minute now to think very hard about where you want to be, either in terms of traffic levels, revenue, membership levels, etc, etc. Now try and think how hard you’re going to have to work to get there.

How many inbound links are you going to have to obtain? How much content are you going to have to write? How many emails are you going to have to send? How many PPC campaigns are you going to have to put up?

If you’ve not given up at this point at the prospect of all that work, then congratulations (either that, or you’ve grossly under-estimated the work you need to do) – Now you need to plan how you’re going to do all that work. Most people would rush in, trying to do as much of it as possible, and a week or two later when they’re not rolling in money, they give up.

It’s far better to take the “Eat an Elephant” approach – In much the same way as Pound Cost Averaging makes investing in the stock market a more smooth ride, doing very little, every day, on a regular basis will, over a long period of time result in greater success than rushing in all guns blazing.

I’ve been following a simple formula every day since April: A little PPC, a little SEO, and a little networking every day. Nearly six months later, and I’m only just really starting to see the results of swapping from my previous regime of just trying to get everything done as quickly as possible.

The difference is astonishing – Whereas I’d previously had trouble getting motivated in the mornings (mainly due to not knowing where to start), I’m now straight into the swing of things, and whereas I’d be burned out by Wednesday every week, and still working through every weekend, I’m now finding that my much smaller to-do list is getting cleared by mid-afternoon most days, leaving me free to go out walking with the dogs, ride my bike, or just play some Wii or PS2.

Even more astonishing – Doing less every day has resulted in my affiliate earnings going up – we’re now making £9,000 a month more profit than in April – and it’s not really that surprising when you think why that is – Every single day for the last six months, I’ve done something towards the important stuff: Google loves regularly updated sites – most of ours have been updated every day pretty much without fail, we’ve got hundreds more inbound links, we’ve managed to put up around 400 PPC campaigns, and we’ve made loads of great contacts and new partnerships.

Of course, life will throw things at you to put you off course – you’ll have emergencies to deal with, priorities will change, and you’ll have days where you just can’t get motivated. In which case, give yourself the day off – or the week if you like. Then get back in the regular habit of a bit of PPC, a bit of SEO and a bit of Networking.

Don’t set your targets too high: I work full time at AM, and aim to do 3 PPC campaigns a day, an hour of content, and around an hour networking (which normally means playing on facebook, posting on affiliates4u or chatting to people on msn or email). It gives me enough “spare time” to ensure that I can deal with anything else that might need doing, or just head off to the driving range at 2pm knowing I’ve already done a full days work. and I’m still raring to go come Friday afternoon (although the pub is still calling by then!)

What if you’re still working the day-job, or at Uni etc? Well, you should be able to spare an hour a day (I used to work AM 9am to 12pm, then my FT job from 1pm to 9pm, and still do a few hours in the evening on AM), so aim to do 1 PPC campaign a day, 20 minutes SEO work and 10 minutes networking. Might not sound like a lot, but give it six months, and you’ll have done approx 130 PPC campaigns, 43 hours of SEO work and 21 hours of networking. That should put you well on the way to giving up the day job if you wish to.

You will need a degree of patience, as this approach brings steady results rather than instant ones – Most people would give up if they don’t see big bucks within a month or two – you should be prepared to give it at least 4 months before seeing any impact on your cashflow (as I’ve said, I’m only just starting to see a major impact after 6 months). Just don’t give up – you’ve only got to do a little bit each day – that’s not so hard is it?

There’s no doubt at all that I’m going to continue with this “Eat an Elephant” approach to my business, and there’s no reason why it can’t transfer into any part of your life – Want to lose weight? Don’t bother joining a gym, working yourself into the ground for 2 weeks then giving up like most people do – just do a little more exercise every day (walk to the shops and get a paper?) and eat a little less crap.

Speaking of eating, I’d better sign off – My elephant’s going cold.

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

Becoming a successful Affiliate is like eating an Elephant

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In January this year, I sold Net Free Stuff, my very first website, to Internet Business Group plc for £120,000 cash. It’s a very satisfying feeling, knowing that something you created out of nothing could be sought after by a stock-listed company, who are leaders in the Industry. I thought it would be worthwhile looking at how to build your website in such a way that companies will be falling over each other, waving wads of cash at you to sell.

If I had implemented all the following ideas from Day 1, I would have sold NFS for a LOT more than £120k, but hey, I was still wet behind the ears back then, and anyway, I was following Rule Number One – I just didn’t know there were any rules back then…

Rule Number One – Don’t build a site “to sell”

If you’re reading this thinking “Great. I’ll build a site tomorrow, follow these rules and flog it for a million”, then you should prepare to be disappointed. You should always build and run your site with the enthusiasm and professionalism that you would if you planned to never, ever sell it. If you’re building a site with the only intention to sell it, that will come across, and you’ll have a rubbish site that no-one visits (an therefore no-one wants to buy)

Your site users are the lifeblood of your site. You have to build it for them, and you have to keep them happy. If you get a complaint, remember that someone has taken the time to give you feedback on something you’ve created. Not everyone who emails you will be polite, but you must always be polite in response, and always reply to everyone. Never under-estimate the importance of giving impeccable customer service – Remember if you make someone happy, they might tell three people.. P*ss them off, and they’ll post about on a blog or forum for thousands to see.

Rule Number Two – Get them registered

This is my biggest regret, and one of the main reasons we could have sold NFS for a lot more money: We had been running the site for two years before we offered people the chance to register with us, and another year before we made registration compulsory.

One of the first things IBG asked was how many registered users we had, and the final price was very much determined based on that figure. Imagine how much more we could have commanded for NFS if we’d been asking people to register for those 3 more years?

Of course, your selling price is not the only reason to get people registered with your site – It means you can email them to highlight your best offers, offer them incentives to let their friends know about your site, or very simply keep your site in their thoughts, and encourage repeat visits.

Rule Number Three – Build a Brand

The first 2 years of Net Free Stuff’s existence saw it go through a number of different “brand identities”, with NFS being the third name (answers on a postcard for those who remember both the original ones!) and about 6 different logos. Once we had settled on NFS though – that was final. The name was set in stone, we’d had the distinctive “splodge” logo professionally designed, and from there on we worked on making NFS a brand in itself.

We sent out free Fridge Magnets to our registered users – all had the logo and URL on (I’ve still got a few lying around if anyone wants one?), and as many of our users were students, they ended up being stuck on the fridges of shared accomodation and student halls, thus exposing our “brand” to our target audience several times a day (and many, many times on a Friday night no doubt!)

We ran exclusive competitions and giveaways with merchants, and shouted from the rooftops that they were “exclusive to Net Free Stuff”, re-enforcing the brand, and the “something for nothing – that you won’t get elsewhere” mantra. Same goes for discount codes – we had a number of exclusive codes with merchants, and the code they had to enter to get their 10% off? Yup, “NetFreeStuff” of course!

It’s a very proud feeling to look at the Overture Search Tool today, and see that in June (5 months after I sold the site), hundreds of people were searching for the brand I created out of nothing one night in 2002. Obviously, that’s just OT (sorry, Yahoo.. I know), so when you take into account Google etc, we’re talking thousands of people every month. If I can create a brand like that, then so can anybody.

Rule Number Four: Do some PR work

This is something I wish I’d done a lot more with NFS, as we did receive an awful lot of press coverage without really trying too hard. There was a period back in 2003, when you couldn’t pick up a womans magazine like Bella, Woman’s Own or Family Circle without reading about NFS, and it helped bring in a tremendous number of new users, most of whom became regular users of the site.

That exposure cost us nothing at all (except a couple of hand-written press releases sent out, and a few hours doing interviews with journos), and yet to put a value on it now? Well, the members it brought in probably earned us around £60,000 over the years and contributed around £15,000 to the final sale price. That’s a fantastic ROI, better than any PPC we’ve ever done – Imagine what those figures could have been if we’d taken PR seriously?

Rule Number Five: Don’t sell!

Now you’ve created a site that is a brand, has plenty of type-in-traffic, people searching for it by name, a plethora of happy punters all telling their friends how great your site is, plenty of free press coverage, andhundreds of thousands of people you can email your latest offer to at the touch of a button. Why on earth would you want to sell?

Most people are probably screaming at the screen now “Well, you bloody sold.. Why shouldn’t I?”, and they’re right. Selling was the right thing to do for us at the time. Over the years we had rejected a number of offers, but when IBG approached us last year, the timing was right to sell – We needed a large injection of cash to help our other sites prosper, and running the site had become very tiring and repetitive after 6 years.

My point is, think about whether you really do want to sell, or whether just by following these rules, you’ll have created a site that you’re so proud of (and makes such good money), that you would never let it go for all the tea in China.

Originally written by Lammo.net, a blog all about Affiliate Marketing

How to build a site that sells for 6 figures

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