I know, I know.. two posts in as many weeks – I’m turning into a prolific blogger again (don’t worry, it won’t last!). Anyway, I had a question in the Ask Lammo postbag last time that I started to answer but realised that my answer was getting rather on the large side and so perhaps was worthy of being a standalone post.

The question asked was:

Who is your business hero/role model?

Now normally I don’t go in for the whole “hero/role model worship” thing – I try to be my own person, and think you’ll never get far trying to emulate someone else. That being said there are people out that it’s easy to admire their personality traits and business practices. As I mentioned in the last post, I’ve found Sir Richard Branson’s autobiography to be very motivational and inspiring, and I can also say the same about Lord Sugar’s book which I read at the start of this year, although (especially with Lord Sugar’s book) it also served to remind me that I actually don’t want to build a huge business like Amstrad or Virgin, that is answerable to institutional investors, responsible for hundreds of people being able to meet their mortgage payments, and taking me away from watching my kids growing up.

It’s also easy to admire people within the Affiliate Industry as it’s choc full of self-starters and “let’s do it and see what happens” people. Just take a close look at what some of the great folks in AM have done over the years, and you’ll find something in common with most of them – They started with next to no money, had some great ideas and worked bloody hard. Don’t think you can just copy what they did and make it yourself – you need your own “great idea” and your own passion and determination to see it through with a shedload of hard work. My own “Affiliate Heroes” are the likes of Mark Boyd, Dom Hodgson, Clarke Duncan, Frank Paul, and Chris Clarkson (as well as many, many others..that covers those I’ve forgotten lol), who I would class as “Serial Entrepreneurs” – the awesome ideas just keep coming, but unlike most people these guys actually act on those ideas, rather than wait for someone else to do it and then say “I thought of that once”

If I had to choose one person as my ultimate business hero however, without a shadow of a doubt it would be Warren Buffett. Not because he’s the third richest person in the world, but because despite being the third richest person in the world, he’s never forgotten who he truly is, or what makes him happy. He doesn’t work from a 70-story gleaming skyscraper on Wall Street, preferring a small functional unit in Omaha to run his investment business that generates $1.4m in dividends a day.

Just because he’s a billionaire a couple of times over (47 at last count!) doesn’t mean he feels the need to live in the Playboy Mansion either – preferring to live in the home that he bought for $31,500 in 1958. He doesn’t feel the need for the status symbol of a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce, driving himself around in a fairly modest Cadillac DTS, and you won’t find him quaffing champagne and canapes with the other “rock star businessmen” – he’s strictly a cheeseburger and coke guy.

What does a guy DO with $47 billion dollars anyway? Well, if you’re Warren Buffet, the answer is.. give it away! He’s pledged to give away 99% of his fortune to good causes, primarily with his good friend and fellow uber-rich-dude Bill Gates. The only problem that faces Warren now is can he give it away quickly enough before he’s earned even more.. if you’ve ever seend the movie “Brewster’s Millions” with the late great Richard Pryor, then you’ll know how hard that can be!

Put simply, Warren Buffett is the most normal, down to earth, rich guy I know – And that’s why he’s my business hero.

Who’s your business hero?

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

Ask Lammo: Who is your business hero?

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Once again in no particular order…

To everyone who’s been to Think Vis before, raved about it and persuaded me that a 650 mile road trip over the course of a weekend was going to be a great idea. You weren’t wrong!

To Dom and the whole Think Vis team for putting on exactly what affiliates want from a conference: Parties you can actually network at, sessions that are truly interesting/educational/inspirational, Guitar Hero, Giant Scalectrix, Pick and Mix (Genius!), no pushy network sales staff (again, holding it on a Saturday.. genius!).. and all for around a quarter of what other conferences charge! I tip my gold sparkly hat to you Dom

To Dave Naylor – For ripping the shit out of hand-reviewing one of my sites in his session. I managed to scribble down a couple of pages of quick fixes based on his suggestions, and will be cracking on making all the changes he suggested as soon as I’ve finished this post – I’m not going to be one of those who gets given loads of brilliant advice from one of the Industry’s top experts and then decides they know better (anyone who’s ever seen an episode of “Property Ladder” will be familiar with that sort of person), so I hope to catch up with Dave at Think Vis 6 in September having made all the changes and reaped the rewards!

To Zak Edwards from Prezzybox – For not knowing that by “submitting” his site on the Think Vis website, he was putting it forward for Dave’s critique as above – Cue some great banter/disagreements between the two, and much amusement for everyone else.

To Chris Clarkson for the brilliant (and now bordering on traditional affiliate fare) all-you-can-eat-meat-feast at Fazenda. It’s also nice to see that Chris is a big fan of UK city breaks such as this.

To Micky from Existem AM for babysitting duties on the Friday night (not that we gave you much choice!)

To Mark Boyd for keeping me stocked with pick and mix throughout the day, even if you have now got me banned from all Big Mouth programs for “cookie stuffing”

To Paul Smith for giving what was for me the best session of the day. I didn’t make a single note during the time you were on stage, and can’t think of too much I can take away from a business perspective, but for me your session was just truly inspiring, and had me glued to my seat waiting on your every word. If I had to think of how I could transfer your session into a business lesson, it would be “sometimes you should just do cool stuff for the hell of it, and by putting your all into it and not being too serious, you can get some awesome momentum and have a shedload of fun too”

To all the other speakers too – There was only one session I saw that I was actually disappointed with, and that probably has as much to do with the fact I was expecting too much of it, but having done a couple of panels sessions myself at a4uexpo last year, I have a new found respect for anyone who has the balls to stand up on that stage and jabber away for 45 minutes, so I ‘d like to say a big thanks to all those who spoke, even if I didn’t get a chance to see their session.

To each and every person who attended – What makes Think Vis so much better than other conferences? Is it because it’s not in London? Is it because the network sales force aren’t there en masse? Is it because it doesn’t take itself too seriously? Is it because it’s a quarter of the price? Well yes, it’s all that, but so much more – it’s the people who DO go to Think Vis who make it what it is – they’re there because they love the Industry.. and it shows!

And to those who didn’t attend – Because you’d been out on the lash too much on the Friday night, so slept through the entire conference, recovering just in time to get back on the lash for Saturday night.. you know who you are!

To everyone else I’ve forgotten – And I know there’s loads of you.. But I was very drunk for most of the weekend.. and my memory isn’t very good at the best of times!

Who do YOU want to thank?

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

Think Vis Thanks

No related posts.

Here’s a new one for me – a rant on someone else’s behalf (although I have had this happen to me in the past hence why it’s got my back up)

I spotted the following tweet from fellow affiliate Purple on Friday:

Now, it’s perfectly acceptable for a merchant to ask an affiliate where they are being promoted (although IMO there shouldn’t be any need for them to do so as their network should provide full transparency so they can SEE where traffic is coming from with the need to ask each affiliate), but is there really any need to accompany said request with a threat of reversed commissions?

Fair enough if you’ve asked politely and said affiliate has ignored your request to send a strongly-worded follow up mail, but to go straight in with “tell me where you’re promoting us or we’ll decline all your commissions” shows a distinct lack of respect for affiliates, and ruins all the good work the previous account manager did in building up a relationship with Purple. My advice to him was as follows:

It doesn’t cost anything to be polite and show some respect to an affiliate, and when it’s the first contact you have with them, it’s even more important that you remember your manners and realise that whilst there are a lot of bad apples out there, not EVERY affiliate is trying to rip you off, and if you speak like this to all the ones you don’t know, then they’ll soon decide they’d rather work with people who don’t treat them like shit.

It’s always nice to end a rant with a happy ending though, so here’s the end result from Purple himself:

So well done Mr or Mrs Account Manager – you’ve confirmed that those £3 of commission were indeed genuine (which of course you could have seen for yourself by following the link from your referral report!), and pissed off a true content affiliate. Job Well Done.

ps. I should point out that Purple hasn’t asked me to post this on his behalf.. I took it upon myself after feeling the need to vent (140 characters just won’t cut it), and you’ll also note that I haven’t named and shamed the merchant (or network) involved – I’ll leave that up to Purple to decide if he wants to.

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

Dear Merchants, not EVERY affiliate is trying to rip you off

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Every year I think to myself “I’m going to get off my arse and start sending out some goodies myself this year”, and every year I’m too busy dealing with the Christmas rush to think about it, that I leave it too late – Now I’ve no doubt that the “unsung” account managers at some of the networks would really appreciate the recognition of the hard work they’ve put in all year, but how do I decide who gets a pressie and who doesn’t – Is there an Affiliate Marketing Naughty/Nice list? So, instead I’m sending virtual recognition to all those people (you know who you are really!), and only sending a physical present to someone who I know deserves it, and for whom it will really make their Christmas.

I don’t know them personally, and I don’t even know their name. But I do know that they’re having a tough time of it, and would really, really love to open a present from a lazy blogger in Devon.

It might be the only present they get this year. Now I don’t know where they live, but it’s more than likely going to be in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia, Kenya, Kosova, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Montenegro, Mozambique, Romania, Serbia, Swaziland, Ukraine or Zimbabwe, as that’s where Operation Christmas Child send their “shoeboxes” packed full of goodies to help bring a smile to the faces of the children there.

I’ve created a shoebox, and filled it with a Soft Toy, Car/Truck, Ball, Playdoh, Toothbrush, Toothpaste, Soap, Colouring Book, ,Wax Crayons Sticker Book & Stickers, Pencils, Hat & Glove Set, Scarf, Sweets, and a Small Bag. Some little boy aged between 2 and 4 (only a little older than Jack) is going to have a smile on their face come Christmas Day, and I’d much rather create a tiny bit of happiness in a remote corner of the world like this than send a bottle of booze to an affiliate who doesn’t really need it.

So, if you’re thinking about sending me a Christmas pressie this year, please think about whether there’s a better cause than my stomach that could benefit more from a small donation – I’m still happy to scoff any choccies etc that get sent my way, but if you’d rather donate whatever you’d normally spend sending affiliates gifts to the charity of your choice, then please do so – I’ll salute you for it!

And of you’re an affiliate who receives lots of presents from the networks, then remember – the pleasure is in the giving, not the receiving! Please remember to support your favourite charity, with whatever you can afford to give.

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

Merry Christmas Affiliate Land – you’re getting bugger all this year

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A huge proportion of my working day is spent helping newbies out, answering questions about Affiliate Marketing in general, as well as SEO, web design, marketing, PPC, and all those other things that I used to know nothing about. I’ll be honest with you – sometimes it’s frustrating answering “what niche should I work in?” or “how much money will I make from my voucher code/cashback/shopping directory site?” for the hundreth time that week.

But most of the time it gives me enormous job satisfaction to see a newbie go from wet behind the ears to the top of the search engine pile, with a great portfolio of really useful sites – some take years, others take months. But they’ve all worked hard, made a lot of mistakes and learnt from them. Hence my job satisfaction. But wait a minute.. training newbies isn’t my job! Running my affiliate business is my job. If I help a newbie go from £0 to £3,000 a month (for instance), let’s see who benefits from our work:

The Affiliate: Assuming no PPC or massive overheads, he or she is now £3,000 a month better off.

The Merchant(s): Assuming average 5% commission, this affiliate is now generating an extra £60,000 a month of business.

The Network(s): Assuming Industry standard overrides of 10-30%, they’re getting an extra £300 to £900 a month.

If I’m lucky, the affiliate will choose to use Easy Content Units Pro, and I’ll be a whole £19.99 a month better off. Not exactly retire-on-a-yacht money! Which is why I rely on the 2nd tier system that most UK networks have in place – In theory I would earn a % of every affiliate who I refer to a network (and subsequently mentor), meaning that if I help an affiliate go from £0 to £3,000 a month, I might be lucky and get an extra £150 a month paid by the network(s) out of their override)

Except it just doesn’t seem to work that way..

I’ve been referring affiliates to networks for the best part of 7/8 years now, and have referred thousands of affiliates over that time, most of whom will probably have never earnt a penny. However I know of affiliates who I personally referred to networks who now earn anything up to £10,000 a month. I should be coining it in.. but I’m not.

I used to earn several hundred pounds a month from Affiliate Window from my referrals a few years back. Then one day it all dried up, and when I asked a few weeks back where the 2nd tier reporting had gone, the reply I was given was “it’s not possible to do a report.” – so am I still earning 5% of every affiliate I refer as promised or not? I see lots of £2 CPA sales for new affiliates (who have paid £5 to join), but no 5% ongoing?

At the other end of the spectrum, once again it’s hats off to Paid on Results who have the most open 2nd tier reporting going – I can clearly see those affiliates I have referred, and every sale they make. I don’t earn very much from my POR referrals, but I can trust them 100% that the figures are correct. They’re also (AFAIK?) the only UK network to pay ongoing lifetime commission on any merchants you refer to them.

I should also give credit to Affiliate Future, who I know several affiliates have claimed don’t track 2nd tier sales.. I do see a steady monthly amount coming in for them, so I trust their reports.

The other networks are much of a muchness – they either pay a pittance one-off CPA, or claim to pay a % that just doesn’t add up when you look at the reports.

The networks all want fresh blood in the Industry. They would like them to be trained and/or mentored so that they are successful quicker and on a larger scale. They all want the next generation of super affiliates. However (on the most part) they don’t bother to train/mentor themselves, and fail to reward affiliates as per their original “2nd tier” promises.

Oh well, I’ll keep on doing it for the love of it.

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

Affiliate Networks: It’ll all end in tiers

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Been a while since I handed out one of these awards. These guys are more than deserving though, having pissed me off as BOTH a customer and an Affiliate!

First as a customer.. I booked a “twin” hotel room through them. Which on arrival at the hotel wasn’t a twin, but a single. If I wanted a room to sleep two people, I’d have to pay an extra £45. Which of course I had to do. On returning home, I complained to Hotels.co.uk’s “customer service” (I use the term loosely) department, and was given short shrift – It would appear that the word “twin” has no relevance to the number of beds in a room, nor the number of people it will sleep, and I wasn’t getting any of my money back. First time I’d ever used them, and without a doubt it was now going to be the last.

I’d spent the best part of two years slowly integrating deeplinks to hotels via hotels.co.uk on buy.at before this experience put me off them, so although I haven’t added any links since then, I wasn’t going to be anal enough to go through hundreds of pages and remove all the deeplinks I’d already set up for them and replace them with new deeplinks for different merchants.. except now I have to, as hotels.co.uk have forced my hand..

Some bright spark at Hotels.co.uk thought it would be a brilliant idea to change their site structure, instantly breaking every single one of my deeplinks overnight, and ensuring that my conversions (which were never great) have plummeted to zero. No-one thought to make sure that the old URLs redirect to the new ones (the hotels still exist, it’s literally just the URL structure that’s changed), and they all have a bog standard “not found” 404 page – At least a “Sorry, we can’t find that hotel in Manchester – here are some other Manchester Hotels” page would have mopped up some of the sales and meant I could afford to leave the links in place for the time being.

So, where I should be building my business as we enter the busiest retail period of the year, instead I’ll be hunting for and replacing hotel links that shouldn’t even need touching – thanks Hotels.co.uk!

Anyone recommend a GOOD hotel aggregator that allows deeplinking and converts well (oh, and actually gives a toss about their customers and affiliates!)?

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

Muppet of the week: Hotels.co.uk

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In a blatent rip off, erm.. I mean homage to Kirsty’s “Ask Kirsty” series, I thought I’d take the time to answer some of your questions here on Lammo. Well it sure beats thinking of things to blog about! Unlike Kirsty I won’t be offering in-depth analysis of your PPC campaigns, or valuable advice on the benefits of keyword density for your SEO efforts. What I will be doing is offering you answers to the questions you ask, getting through as many as possible, as quickly as possible!

So, for the last two weeks, I’ve had a little pop-up box appear in the bottom right hand corner of Lammo after a few seconds asking “Do you have a question you’d like me to answer on Lammo?” And here, dear readers are the questions I’ve been asked thus far:

how do I drive traffic to websites such as amazon and ebay without having a site?

Erm, don’t think you can! Amazon don’t allow direct to merchant PPC anymore, so get yourself a site, (WordPress!) make it look awesome (Custom Theme), and SEO/PPC the hell out of it.

I just read your link bulder article and am interested but was wondering have you heard good things about the apps out there for keeping track of your links for you, such as linkassistant. I’m looking to get serious on my sites now and schedule time for all aspects of building them including link building which i’ve never really done as keeping track of them manually would’ve been too much ballache.

Keeping track of links is almost impossible due to the time taken to actually index all of them.. Your time’s much better spent getting new links than counting your old ones anyway!

most successful dragons den product

No idea.. Reggae Reggae sauce maybe?

How much is the company now worth 2010… And well done you for NOT going with the GREEDY Dragons!!!

ERm.. think you’ve got me confused with someone else there!

what affiliate rate does Sainsbury have?

I believe it’s up to 5%, depending on sector.

are you there?

Yes.

I’ve looked at some of the freebies promoted on merchant websites but can’t see any affiliate info. How do the websites make their money?

Assuming you’re asking how freebie sites make their money.. it’s not from the decent freebies – that’s what draws people in.. freebie sites make their money from having a large mailing list that they can tap into weekly with CPA offers.

What is this plugin that has asked me this question?

It’s Kissinsights, as recommended by the Conversion Rate Experts at expo.

how many tesco shops are there in uk

I wouldn’t have a clue.. More than 10. Less than 10 million.

did you register yourself as self employed even when you were still working at your day job? I am struggling to work out how I would pay tax on any affiliate earnings when I am still employed full time.

Yes, I was registered as self employed whilst still working the Day Job From Hell – HMRC will be quite used to this.. basically you pay your tax/NI from the day job through the normal PAYE deductions from your wages, and then you also complete a self assessment return once a year declaring your profits (or losses) from your self employed activities, for which HMRC will send you a demand for the tax owed (payable in 2 installments the following January and July)

Give HMRC a call – they are (usually) really, really helpful for newbies setting up a SE business (you’re just starting out on the road to paying lots of tax, and they’d rather you got it right from the start than chase you for loads further down the line!)

Is My sister prettier than me?

Yes. Get over it.

There you go – one of the easiest blog posts I’ve “written” in a while! Please keep your questions coming, and I’ll try and get through them all again next time!

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

Ask Lammo

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Have I ever told you how much I HATE Link Building? OK, Maybe just once or twice.

But the fact remains that it’s one of the single biggest factors that can move your website from relative obscurity (anywhere from page two onwards of Google results) to the land of untold riches (a.k.a The top of Page One), and so I persevered with my link building attempts for several weeks before finally throwing the towel in and admitting that I was finding it mind-numbingly tedious to find new partners and sites to link to me, dealing with getting the right anchor text (and landing page) to be used, only to find 2 weeks later that the buggers have deleted or “no-followed” my link, orphaned the linking page, or even in a few cases not bothered to renew their domain name and taken their site down.

The problem was, the work I had put in DID see some results – up the rankings I went! I wanted more of the same – But I couldn’t be dealing with the daily blurghness of actually doing link building myself. So I started outsourcing my link building. I asked for a few recommendations from affiliate buddies, and over the last 3 years I’ve tried out 6 or 7 different companies and individuals. Of those, there are only two that I continue to use, and would recommend to others – One of them I’ve been recommending to readers of this blog for a couple of years now, and as a combined outsourced reciprocal link building/content writing strategy they’re hard to beat.

For websites simply looking to build one-way links to help them rise up the SERPS however, they’re not really set up to work in this way, and that’s where the second company I’ve been using come in – they do what I would call the more traditional link building work – They actually go out on your behalf and build one-way links to your website, based on your requirements. They work on an hourly basis that compares very well with the average for good link builders, and everything is reported – and I mean everything!

You get given a login area that gives you detailed reports of what your link builders have been working on for you, as well as historical reports of your search engine rankings for your desired keywords, so you can see at a glance the effect that their work is having. I’d been using them for quite a while and was so impressed with the service that I approached the owners of the service, and asked if we could team up to offer other affiliates, merchants and website owners the chance to also see how good they are. They agreed, and so Link Builder was born!

All of the link builders used are UK based, and put simply, link building is what they do. It’s what they’re good at, and they love to do it. And that passion and drive for the job really shows in the results that they get. They don’t tie you into lengthy contracts, and prices start from just £300 a month – an investment that will continue to pay off years down the line. If you’re heavily reliant on PPC, then spending a little on link building can really make a big difference to your profits as a long term strategy. If you’d like a free, no obligation quote, then just drop us a line, and we’ll let you know what Link Builder can do for you.

I’m still the laziest link builder in the world – but thanks to outsourcing, I can afford to be!

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

Introducing Link Builder – a UK Link Building service

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I have long been an advocate of attending conferences and networking events. I have attended many in my time in Affiliate Land, but somehow I’ve never made it any of the four Think Visibilities. The latest one, held on the Saturday just gone was no exception as it clashed with my niece’s 16th Birthday. Even Argyle managed to get their home match with Brighton postponed (under the ruse of having players good enough to represent their country.. I kid you not!), but I wasn’t going to get a pass from the family this time.

Luckily my fellow BIM Director and drinking buddy Jason was allowed to go to the ball, so we sent him along, and here’s what he had to say:

Thinkvisibility was held last Saturday in Leeds, and if you want the short version, it was Awesome (word taken from Ben my 7 year old). Why you might add, well for the first time in a while, I have attended sessions and walked away with copius notes from each session I sat in on.

I’m not going to go into depth about each session, as there are many posts which cover this, some of these are listed below. Instead, I will give you some reasons to make Thinkvisibility 5 in March.

Thinkvisibility is billed as an a series of conferences on “the things that usually get left behind in the web design process”, this definitely sums it up. Each session delivered a different aspect of the promotion of your web site, from affiliates, SEO, Agencies to social marketing, PR and Link building.

First up is relevancy, all of the sessions on offer were relevant to me, as a website owner, as an affiliate tool developer and as a mentor to our Easy Content Units members. Each session was delivered using real life examples which enabled the audience to relate to the content. Many of the speakers were first time presenters, so the content was refreshingly honest, and delivered in an unpolished way, which gave meaning and character. All of which were approachable over a beer or two at Drinkvis (the preparty/postparty drinks events) to ask questions or continue discussions.

The thread-like structure of the day, and speakers. Although I didn’t attend that session, there was a site clinic, which reviewed and improved submitted sites, the following speakers then took those examples, and built them into their sessions. Not only did that add value to the submitted sites, but gave the audience a real life example to relate to. This in my opinion was fantastic.

Networking opportunities were abundant. There was of course the pre-conference ‘party’, drinks in a pub with a pool tournament – oh and NO LOUD MUSIC! So conversations were easy and readily flowing throughout the evening. The idea of a pool tournament was great, it meant that we all managed to speak to someone (or winners more) that we hadn’t met before. Onto the actual conference itself, the sessions were not wall-to-wall, there were plenty of breaks throughout the day, that said I still managed seven sessions too! The post conference party too was conducive to networking, with a charity poker competition, bringing together 10 players on each table, who may not have met before for an evening of fun (raising £260 for NSPCC). Again there was no LOUD MUSIC, plus some free play roulette and blackjack to be had along with a couple of free beers.

Affordability, whilst not done on a shoestring, this conference realises that it doesn’t need to unnecessarily waste money either. Therefore, costs are kept to a minimum both in terms of for the conference, and for it’s attendees. Sponsorship too is reasonable and good value for money. The cost of the conference ticket is only £119, and the recommended hotel (the 4 star City Inn) was only £65 a night. There was even discounts secured for dinner between the conference and the after drinks.

Slides from the day:

Keyword Domains and Mini-sites – Gary Taylor’s Slides
Using Social media for SEO – Lisa Myers slides
Link Building in Real Life – Jaamit Durrani slides
The PR’s Guide to World Domination – Karyn Fleeting slides

Further reading, where slides are not available here are some liveblogging and thorough sessions reviews:

Liveblogging by Dave Chaffey
Liveblogging by Kieron Hughes

I would particularly to thanks Dom Hodgson (organiser) for his hospitality, not only did he (and friends) collect me from the Airport, put me up in his office for the day, and return me to the airport, he made me, and each delegate very welcome to his home town too.

In summary, if anyone is still unsure about attending Thinkvisibility, then you just have to do it. You’ll have so much to learn, I mean, if I having spent nearly 10 years in the industry can still learn new techniques for making our web sites (and our member’s websites) to succeed, then you know you’ll be in for a real treat. If you’re still not sure here’s a presentation on the 10 reasons why Thinkvisibility 4 rocked by Illiya Vjestica

10 REASONS Why Think Visibility Rocked!

View more presentations from Smartdog digital .

Thanks for that Jason – Looks like I missed yet another cracking ThinkVis. Dom & co have really hit the affiliate nail on the head with the ThinkVis conferences, ensuring that the event is well priced, networking opportunities aren’t drowned out by loud music, and the sessions are either inspirational, educational or both!

All of which make me even more determined to make ThinkVis 5, which according to the website is on Sunday March 6th. As luck would have it, Argyle are due to play Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough on the Saturday, so two birds.. one stone!

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

Think Visibility September 2010

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Continued from Part II…

Part Three: 2006 to 2010. Knock it all down and start again.

My return to Affiliate Marketing wasn’t exactly a joyous occasion, it was more of a firefighting experience. Balancing the books was pretty much impossible. I had £3,000 left on the company overdraft (which they refused to extend), and staff wages of £8,000 to pay on the 20th, along with PAYE of £1,500 and a VAT bill of £7,000 due at the end of the month. That was pretty much my first week back in the job. So I didn’t pay myself for four months, borrowed a considerable amount of cash from family and ramped up my own personal overdraft and credit cards to keep our heads above water and the remaining staff in a job.

Once we got over the initial firefighting, and the reduced expenditure that the redundancies and office closure brought kicked in, things actually started to get a little more comfortable, and I actually enjoyed being a bedroom affiliate again, knocking up websites and running things from my bedroom office again. Just as things were settling down, I got a message from Mark Russell that was about to shake things up rather a lot: “Would you be interested in selling Net Free Stuff?”.

He’d been chatting to Maz at IBG (then owners of Affiliate Future), and Maz asked the question. Mark promised to find out, and mentioned it to me. I asked what sort of ballpark figure they were looking at. Mark said that IBG were happy to put up around £100,000 for it. My gut reaction to this was to instantly say “thanks, but no thanks” – we’d actually turned down a few approaches several years earlier for more than twice that amount, and things were just settling down for us – the last thing we needed was another rollercoaster ride trying to replace the money that NFS brought in.

I chatted with Jason about it a few days later over a pint or two, and over the course of about an hour, we’d both changed our minds – Neither of us had any real interest in running NFS anymore – we ran it because it was our jobs, not because we enjoyed it. And given a big cash injection, we’d be able to pay off all the debt the company had built up in one swoop, and still have enough cash to start something new. It would mean a large dose of uncertainty, but also the chance for a fresh new start. A chance to “knock it all down, and start again, but with a big pile of cash this time” as I remember putting it at the time.

So we let IBG know that we would actually be happy to at least talk numbers with them, and we pretty quickly agreed on a price of £120,000. Once debts were paid off, solicitors fees paid, tax put aside etc, we’d have around £70,000 to “start again with”. NFS was bringing in around £5,000 a month profit at this time, so as long as we replaced that income within 14 months, and had no sudden unexpected large bills (more on that later…), all would be rosy! The due dilligence was a bloody nightmare, happening over Christmas as well, so I didn’t get many brownie points with the family that year! But we got through it, and finally completed the sale on 27th January 2007.

I’ll never forget the following morning, getting up to start work, logging onto online banking and seeing “available balance: £120,000.00″, and it then set in – we were no longer owners of a freebie site. The tag that had followed us around everywhere we went (I still shudder at the ignorant merchant who turned their back on us at a g2g with the words “I won’t waste my time talking to you - you run a freebie site”) was no more.

What the hell were we going to do now??

We had a plan of course. Pay off the debt, actually invest some time and money in existing sites such as Bingo Bongo and PrizeBug, and generally avoid burning out again. And of course that happened really smoothly.. not.

The aim with PrizeBug was to make it a much spammier version of NFS, but for competitions rather than freebies. Exploit the mailing list at every opportunity, but without doing the stuff that actually creates hard work and retains the strong community that NFS had. It’s been moderately successful, and still more than pays for the hour or so a week we spend on it. Bingo Bongo was a different matter – it was going to be our BIG project. The first thing we did was arrange a redesign (if anyone saw the previous incarnation, I hope your eyes recover soon), and as soon as this went live, we had huge budget to throw at the affiliate program, as well as PPC and offline promotion.

The problem with that statement? “as soon as this went live”.. Bingo Bongo was (and still is) a white label skin from Globalcom, and we were entirely reliant on them uploading any changes to the site. We worked with the template they gave us, and completed a redesign within 3 weeks. We handed the designs over to them and were told that there was “a short delay” for their techies to actually make the changes. How long is “a short delay” you might ask? A week? A month? Six weeks? No, all wrong. Eighteen months is how long it took them! Which, given we needed to replace the NFS income within 14 months didn’t work out very well for the huge budgets we were going to throw at it. Again, it makes a decent income now, but less than 10% of what it could have made if only we’d been able to get the redesigned site live in early 2007. Grrrrr.

But that was only a small grrrr. There was a much bigger grrrr to come at the end of March 2007. With all debts paid off, and work towards replacing NFS’s income underway myself and Jason went off to Amsterdam for an Affiliates4u/DFDS Affiliate event. Much was learnt, and some new deals were brokered. Things were looking up. Until I returned home to a letter from our landlords at the office we had vacated in 2006..

We actually had a lease until 2010, but with a break clause in 2007 that enabled us to get out “without penalty”. We exercised that clause, and as part of the end terms, the landlords employed a team of surveyors to travel down from Bristol (at £150 an hour and 40p per mile, payable by yours truly) to see that we had left the place in a reasonable state. At least that’s what I thought they were going to do. Turns out they actually thought that we could fully redevelop the property for them, and enclosed an estimate of the cost of doing so: £87,432 plus vat. Payable within 30 days. (a.k.a a sudden unexpected large bill).

Turns out the cheap lawyer we’d used when taking on the lease had left us wide open, and we were liable not only for the “upkeep” of the property, but to also retrospectively make improvements that should have been done 20 or 30 years before we moved in! More money was spent on solicitors (remembering this time that you get what you pay for when it comes to legal advice!) and we eventually did a fair bit of the work ourselves to bring the costs down (some examples of the estimated costs: “remove sticker from window: £60″, “empty rubbish bin: £250″, “remove poster from wall: £60″), but just escaping the nightmare of that office just cost us another £20,000 that we hadn’t budgeted for. Suddenly it looked like we needed to replace that NFS income sooner than 14 months…

We played around with several other sites, with varying levels of success, but after muddling through to mid-2008, we’d succeeded in just about replacing the NFS money and just about before it all ran out too! But I wasn’t happy with where it was coming from – it was still a lot of spammy, crappy stuff like the mailing lists and brand-bidding in the few places it was still allowed. I realised that we’d have to change our ways, and so remembering the initial point of selling NFS (knock it down and start again), I started creating some new sites, such as Away Grounds and I Love Algarve, that were genuinely useful sites on their own merits, and didn’t exist purely to try and make a quick affiliate buck. I was now going to be a pure content affiliate.

Of course building up informational resources such as these takes a long, long time and they can be hard to monetise, but then the days of making easy money are long gone IMO. This is a sustainable business that I can replicate and grow organically over the next ten years. They can survive recessions, which is another reason they were created. I could see that a recession was on its way by summer 2008, and so wanted to implement a price comparison widget into most of our sites. There was no way to do this on the networks, so I asked our techie if he could knock something up.

“Sure thing” he said, “I can amalgamate all the network’s feeds, and just pull the price info from there in a javascript widget”. Great stuff! “What else can you do with the info from the feeds?” was my next question. “Anything you want, as long as the info’s in there” was the reply, and if you’ve ever seen a cartoon in your life, you’ll know that this is the moment that the lightblub flashes into life above my head.. “So we could create our own content units, but for ALL the networks?”

And so Easy Content Units was born.. but that’s a story for another day…

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

A decade in Affiliate Marketing – Part III

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