Many people get into affiliate marketing not just because they’ve heard about the money that’s to be made, but because they want to get away from office politics, the grumpy boss or the daily commute that can be such a pain. Or all of the above.

One of the ‘perks’ of affiliate marketing is that you can work from home, setting your own hours and sitting in your dressing gown whilst you work. Sounds great, right? Well, working from home isn’t always as peachy as it sounds. Sometimes, it just plain sucks.

First and foremost there’s the loneliness. While office work can be boring and commuting can be frustrating there’s always something to look forward to, whether it’s catching a bit of fresh air at lunch or chatting to your work mates about last night’s telly around the water cooler. Plenty of important relationships are formed at work, but working from home largely removes any chance of this happening. Of course there’s a big part of affiliate marketing that’s about forming relationships with merchants and with fellow affiliates, but there’s little chance of a face-to-face on a daily basis and reading emails or talking on the phone are not really substitutes for banter and the bustle of human proximity in an office. Interaction with other people doesn’t just have an impact on your levels of loneliness, it’s also linked to many other emotions. If you’ve gone from having a job with regular interaction to working from home there’s a high chance that your levels of motivation, productivity and general happiness could all potentially deteriorate. Being on your own in an empty house or flat doesn’t give you much incentive to get on with working and the internet itself is so full of juicy distractions that a seriously fragmented workflow can sometimes follow.

Part of this problem is a complete lack of feedback as to how you’re really doing. The size of commission payments is all very well and good as a measure of financial success but in the absence of direct feedback it can be hard to tell if you are doing as well as you could — or should. Whilst many people working from home will have family or friends around for certain portions of the day to stave off the basic loneliness, without colleagues around to give you obvious (and subliminal) hints as to your progress at work as well as your capacity as a sociable human being, some people can find themselves becoming lethargic and poorly motivated simply because they feel underappreciated and unrewarded. You may have felt under-valued in the “day job” but at least you had some feedback!

The realities of being your own boss are simple: as a boss, you tend not to treat yourself particularly kindly. Because much of the support you get from human contact at work happens at a subconscious level, when you start working from home there’s a chance that you’ll begin to feel frustrated and depressed but you simply won’t know why. Almost as mirror issue to this one, working from home might reduce your ability to cope with personal interaction as your daily conversations are limited to emails and the two dimensional medium that is the phone. Being able to interact face to face with other humans on a professional and personal level is something that needs constant practice and a home worker can all too easily lose their edge or – worse – start to actively avoid such encounters.

There are also health factors. Affiliate marketing and working from home both encourage a very sedentary lifestyle. You can spend hours writing content, seeking out keywords and scouring forums for inspiration whilst barely moving a muscle. As the old expression suggests, a healthy body is linked to a healthy mind, so your health is not something to be neglected. However, the temptation when working from home is to sit in your work area, drink sugary hot drinks and eat superficially gratifying by overly fattening foods. A lack of motivation and interaction can lead to depression and boredom which in turn lead to overeating, under exercising and an ever expanding waistline.

Finally there are the distractions. If you have a family there is a very strong chance that you’ll feel far more obliged to spend time with them that you would otherwise have spent working on your affiliate sites. This is part of the reason that so many affiliates work late into the night because their days are taken up with domestic comings and goings and other distractions: that leaking gutter can seem so appealing when faced with writing a particularly challenging piece of content . ..

Right – gutter fixed, back to work. The lack of structure to a working day and the often nocturnal working pattern can lead to irregular sleep patterns which, in turn, can exacerbate health issues and create a long term sense of weariness.

Ultimately there are plenty of drawbacks to what, on the surface of things, may seem to be an idyllic working environment. Understanding and accepting that they exist is, of course, the key to ensuring that you address them head on when embarking upon an affiliate career – or indeed any other primarily home-based role. Whilst we have to a large highlighted some of the worst-case scenarios in working from home, the truth is that your own ability to adapt to working from home is entirely subjective and different for each person. An environment which might be a struggle for some is one in which others will thrive. It’s also important to note that most people who talk about the pains of working from home are most likely still doing it many years after they gave up the office environment.

The good news is that for each and every hazard there are plenty of equally powerful positive aspects and approaches to working from home which we will examine in another post here at Lammo.net.

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

Working from Home sucks!

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Sometimes being an affiliate is absolutely brilliant and many of the benefits of working from home are immediately obvious to anyone who has ever had to deal with the daily grind of office work or the daily commute.

Here we are briefly exploring some of the more obvious benefits that make working from home a rocking alternative, as well as throwing in a few of the hidden benefits which aren’t as easy to identify without having experienced working from home for yourself.

Firstly there is of course the removal of the daily commute from your schedule. Not only does commuting take time out of your day and causes millions of people unnecessary stress on a daily basis but it is also a huge cost consideration. Commuting can cost thousands a year, whether you’re using public transport or covering the costs of running a car and that’s before you consider the impact it has upon the environment. Working from home makes you greener and better off – fact! It also generally improves your mental wellbeing as you won’t have to sit in traffic, endure the nuances of those particularly irritating fellow commuters or indeed base your home near to your office. This will further free you up to choose where you live. The internet is a truly global marketplace: as long as you’ve got access to a decent broadband connection you can take your work anywhere. Whether you’re working in a croft in the Highlands or a Penthouse in the City you’ll be able to make just as much money.

Next there’s the food. Working from home means you’ll never again have to guiltily munch on an overpriced, under-nourishing sandwich. You can not only reduce the costs of lunch every day but you can improve its health benefits by making your own healthy alternative every day. Even simply strolling to the shops without the constraints of a lunch hour is a huge benefit in its own right. You can also avoid the lunchtime rush and do whatever you need to keep your general health levels up. This means that off-peak gym membership is an option: you can skip the busiest times of the day for this – and indeed for everything you do. This is of course linked to managing your own working time and for many people their most productive period of the day isn’t defined by the set hours in an office. As an affiliate you can create your own timetable that suits you, with many people finding that working late or starting early is far better for them than adhering to the 9 to 5.

Choosing your working space and adapting it to your own requirements and tastes is yet another major benefit of working from home. Creating a room that functions as your office and which is organised to tease the best work out of you doesn’t need to take long or even cost very much and you should end up with something that is a far cry from the clutter, confinement and claustrophobia of the average soulless office cubicle.

Perhaps one of the less obvious benefits of working from home is the potential for serious, hard core concentration that you just can’t get in the office environment. Most people find that if they’re working without distraction at something that interests and stimulates them they will become more productive and able to maintain good productivity levels over a longer period of time. Working at home is conducive to getting your head in ‘the zone’ in contrast with so many office environments in which co-workers, time restrictions, endless meetings and other distractions sometimes make decent concentration levels all but impossible.

There is of course the worry that you’ll be negatively impacted by the lack of direct feedback from colleagues whilst working from home. In practice you will generally find that if you’re given the time and the opportunity to work on a project alone, make mistakes and learn lessons, you’ll have a far more enriching experience than one that is subjected to constant scrutiny and micro management by others.

Whilst most of us are essentially social beings and fear we may struggle in the absence of office-based human contact, the reality is that we simply find new means by which to interact. The affiliate industry offers plenty of events and opportunities for face to face networking and the building of lasting relationships. There are networks, fellow affiliates and merchants to engage with on the telephone, via various online forums and in meetings where appropriate. The point here is that YOU are setting the agenda and YOU can determine how much face to face contact you need and plan accordingly. If you are in a meeting with someone it is because you want to be there.

As you have probably gathered, I’m quite a fan of working from home, though I hope you’re aware that just as there are upsides there are always downsides to consider alongside them. Ultimately how you respond to working at home and how you change your habits to fit in with the new lifestyle depends upon your personal tastes. If you like the structure of an office day there’s no reason that you can’t apply similar constraints to your day whilst working from home, it all depends on your discipline levels and personal preferences.

For many of those working at home, there is, above all, one priceless benefit: they can structure their work around precious and irrecoverable time with their families. Not the other way around.

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

Working from home rocks!

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Calling all newbies! Do you struggle to know where to start in your Affiliate Marketing career? If so, then worry no more, Affiliates4u member smingle (real name Frank Paul) has over the last few weeks been providing step-by-step guides and advice on the a4u forum, and it’s proven to be so popular that it is now the most read thread in the history of the forum, also containing more replies than any other thread in a4u history.

Click here to read the thread in its entirety – Be warned, at the time of writing, it contained nearly 850 replies spread over 57 pages, so you’d better grab yourself a LARGE cuppa, and settle down to read everything you need to know to get started (and more importantly MAKING MONEY) in Affiliate Marketing – As the thread title (help and advice for newbies and people who need a kick up the backside in 2009) suggests, it’s also useful for those Affiliates who may have lost their way a little over the years, and need a kickstart to get them back earning decent money again.

Who on earth is Frank?
Frank is an SEO professional based in Swansea, who does the SEO for some major Blue Chip companies. He’s also a natural entrepreneur, and owns more than a thousand domain names (would hate to see his renewals bill!), and not just the crap that the rest of us buy when drunk.. He’s got some top Premium names, and is developing some really amazing looking sites.

What is Frank saying?
Well, if you’re stuggling to read the thread in its entirety, then the general gist is that Frank offers some sound advice on the basics of SEO (meta titles, use of H1 tags etc), but also real-life examples of how to build a mini site around a niche that exists, and even includes the domain name that (for at least 10 milliseconds after he posts it) is available to register, and an idea of how much traffic you’d be likely to see, and how much you could earn by converting that traffic well.

Why the hell is Frank giving this information away?
Of course Frank could very well keep this information to himself, and keep registering the niche mini sites himself. Frank appears to be a very selfless person though, always happy to help out, with advice, motivation, a little hand-holding or just some kind words. The only thing he’s asked for in return is a return link to some of his larger projects (such as Diets, Lollipop and Underwear) from the mini sites – a small price to pay for information that could earn you thousands of pounds a year.

But does it actually work?
It certainly does – many of the domains given out at the start of the mammoth thread are now ranked really highly in Google, and have already started to make sales for the affiliates who built them – Amazing going really for just a couple of weeks – Imagine what results we’ll be seeing in 6 or 12 months time!

I built a couple of similar mini sites last year, and they’re right up there at the top of Google for their chosen keywords – all with basic on-page SEO and a handful of inbound links. They’re not going to make me rich, but they do earn me a nice bit of beer money every month.

Can I do it myself?
Of course you can – Frank has given you pretty much all the information and tools you need to be able to go away and do your own research to find the niches and the domains to go with them. As soon as you see that there are literally thousands of untapped niches out there, you’ll start to think outside of the box, and find some brilliant ideas.

And of course, you can always do what everyone else does – If you’re unsure, run it past Frank first – He is incredibly helpful and always replies to people personally, whether on the a4u forum, via PM or emails.

Lammo’s Soapbox
For me, Smingle’s thread has been a throwback to how the Affiliates4u forum used to be 6 or 7 years ago – Really nice guys helping each other out, with no back-stabbing, bitching, flaming, or questionable motives. It’s just a shame that threads such as this are the exception to the rule: 90% of the posts on there these days are from people who use the forum solely as a promotional tool to push their programs, and what little conversation survives on there is soon drowned out by another hundred “Merchant X Discount Code” threads..

Finally (I really need to get off the soapbox), it would be really nice to see Frank getting some recognition at this years a4uawards – It appears they’ve done away with the rather fluffy First Annual A4U Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence (or whatever it was called), but I would argue that Smingle’s thread has contributed more to the future of Affiliate Marketing than several networks have in the last year, and it would be nice to see his efforts are appreciated, both by a4u, and by the affiliate community as a whole.

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

Newbies: Need a kick up the arse? Talk to Frank!

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After what seems like an eternity of beta testing (ok, three months) behind closed doors, I’ve finally been given the green light to launch a public beta version of our brand new Content Unit system. And what a system it is – Easy Content Units is the UK’s first multi-network, fully customisable Content Unit system. With more than 2.5 million products across the ten main UK affiliate networks, it’s really simple to make fantastic looking Content Units, comprising deeplinks to products from multiple merchants, across multiple networks in the same unit, containing in-stock items and up-to-date prices.

With the current financial climate, customers in 2009 are going to be ever more price-conscious. People will still shop online, they will just shop around more for the best deal. Those whose TV blew up in 2008 would have nipped down to Dixons and staggered home with the largest LCD they could carry. If the same happens this year, people will be more likely to go online, and find out who’d selling the cheapest LCD TV – If you can offer them all the prices on your site, then they’re a lot less likely to look elsewhere, and you close the deal – fab!

Which is exactly what Easy Content Units allows you to do – you can create Price Comparison content units (just add the same product from different retailers into a unit), and put those units on any webpage – If you know how to use a mouse and copy & paste, then you can have Price Comparison units on your site in minutes.

But that’s not all – You can showcase a particular merchant’s best sellers, highlight entire product ranges, similar products (why not cross-sell movie merchandise on a DVD site?)

The system is designed to be easy to use (it’s so easy, even I can use it!) – you simply search for products, and then tick the ones you want to add to your unit. Once you’ve got all the products you want, you can then customise your unit – And I mean customise! You can specify how much (or how little) information is displayed, change the height/width to fit your site exactly, change colour schemes, borders, add custom tracking IDs, add a title, Buy Now buttons and more. And your unit will update automatically – any changes you make on the ECU control panel will be reflected automatically on your site – you don’t need to change the code at all.

Best of all, we’ve made Easy Content Units completely free to use – The site works on an 80/20 split system, so the content units show your links 80% of the time, and our links the remaining 20%. However, as a special thank-you to my loyal Lammo readers, anyone who joins Easy Content Units before the end of the month and puts a unit live can have a Lammo bonus – a 90/10 split in your favour. Just get in touch with your ECU username once you’ve put your first unit live, and I’ll put you live on the better split.

ECU has been many, many months in development and testing has been hard work at times, so I’d like to publically thank Stu, our main Web Dev guy who basically built the system from scratch, and also remind him that the hard work still lies ahead – This is very much version 1.0.0, and we’ve got some huge, huge plans for ECU which we’ll be unveiling throughout 2009 – we’d really appreciate any feedback on the system (particularly any bugs or issues) that you may have – there is a support feature within ECU, but obviously you can grab me through the normal channels too.

We’ve really worked our asses off on this system, so hopefully you’ll find it useful! I’ve dotted a few examples of units around this post so you can see the different look and feel that can be achieved very quickly and easily with Easy Content Units – Please note they’re not the actual units themselves – these are simply images, so the links won’t work (and there’s a spot-prize for the first person to spot the deliberate mistake on one of the units!)

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

The world’s best Content Units… probably!

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How many times have you thought to yourself, ”Monday comes round too quickly’ or ‘I wish I could find a job that had low hours but good pay’? Let’s be honest, very few of us would choose to go to work and wrestle with the daily grind if we didn’t absolutely have to but what if you could find something to make it all a little easier?

One of the most popular books around at the moment is The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss. The book suggests that if you outsource and automate everything you can sit back and enjoy life a bit more.

And Affiliate Marketing fits perfectly into this model.

Affiliate marketing involves you setting up a relationship with a merchant that sells products or services that are in-line with the content on your site. You then place a URL on your site that links to the merchant’s products or services and in return you get a share of any revenue that they make through traffic driven through that link, usually in the form of pay per sale (PPS) revenues although occasionally as a pay per lead commission. Well done – You’ve just outsourced fulfilment to the merchant. No product inventory, no staff required to deliver services.

The earnings potential from affiliate marketing is potentially limitless. For some, it’s a great way to boost the revenue of an existing website, for others it is their main business. It is surprisingly easy to set up. Ferriss claims that by outsourcing and automating everything you can simply sit back and reap the rewards and that is almost exactly how affiliate marketing can work. When starting out you can either sign up to an affiliate network or go it alone and forge relationships directly with relevant merchants. The benefit of joining a network is that it gives you access to thousands of potential affiliate programmes and you get some degree of help and support from the network itself. This includes decision making data such as the average earnings per hundred clicks (EPC) or per thousand clicks (EPM) for a given programme, allowing you to start to calculate average visitor values once you have some data as to click-through ratios on your affiliate links.

The networks take care of the accounting and provide you with the links or data feeds you need to publish products and services on your site or sites. Once this is all set up, feeds can be automated and the links continuously updated as needed. So now you have outsourced all of the tracking and accounting to the network and merchants.

What about traffic?
There are essentially two ways in which you can drive traffic to the site in order to generate clicks (and thus revenue). One is via search engine optimisation (SEO) to create strong rankings for relevant keywords in the natural (unpaid) search engine results pages (SERPs). The other is by pay per click (PPC) advertising through Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and the like.

To take PPC first, there are numerous specialist search engine management (SEM) firms who will, for a modest percentage of your monthly spend, help you to identify the relevant keywords and a suitable bid strategy. They will then entirely outsource the PPC campaign for you. So, for example, you could ask them to drive X thousand clicks per day for keyword Y at no more than an average cost per click of Z. To do this, you will need to test – refine – test – refine repeatedly to understand what the click through ratio on your affiliate links will be for a given term and thus the average visitor value once conversions and commissions (including factoring in commission reversals etc.) have all been accounted for. Most PPC affiliates would suggest that it takes at least 90 days to get a clear picture on a given campaign — and you will get some of it wrong and lose money along the way! You will also need to work closely with the SEM firm to identify the right keywords, balancing relevance with cost. However, once the campaign has been suitably refined, you should be able to leave it largely in the hands of the SEM firm whilst of course continuing to monitor visitor value to ensure you are actually making money!

SEO is more complex but equally do-able. This needs to be considered in three parts: site creation and optimisation; link building and ongoing content creation.

Site creation is a huge subject in its own right – skip this paragraph if you already have a site! Depending on your technical skills and interests, you may or may not decide to handle this yourself or internally if you are a firm. If you look at offshore options, remember to double the original bid (yes double it – ask just about anyone that has actually had a site built abroad) and account for management time to cover the language barrier, time difference and micro management that these projects seem to need. There are many other options including pre-built templates (rarely very well optimised) and leading edge CSS divisional layer sites from a handful of firms that understand not only web design but SEO (shockingly few web designers have much of an understanding of even basic SEO). Have a look at some of our other articles here at lammo.net for more on on-page optimisation.

Once you have a decent well-optimised site and have added relevant programme links and set up the data feeds, you can start to look at content creation. Unique, fresh, regularly updated content is probably THE most essential factor in long term ranking You can entirely outsource your website content writing to specialist firms who can write SEO friendly, unique and relevant content. Off-shore firms produce . . .errrm . . offshore content and the search engines are sensitive to grammar, spelling and context so this is one place not to be penny wise and pound foolish. Go for reputable in-country firms.

With rich enough content you can then start to build links. Once again, look for in-country firms with a proven track record. We have all had “those” link building emails and let’s face it, how many of us have responded? Modern linking firms will handle the campaign in a professional, ethical manner in accordance with search engine best practice. Some of them can even handle the campaign “as you” which greatly boosts conversion rates. A couple of UK firms can also trade content in return for inbound links (the holy grail of linking) — all perfectly legitimate and very powerful approaches. Almost all major affiliates outsource link building – as anyone who has ever tried to go it alone will tell you, running a linking campaign is a great way of turning a 4 hour week into a 104 hour week!

Many affiliates combine both SEO and PPC approaches in driving traffic.

So with your site set up, your SEO and SEM firms beavering away on your behalf, the affiliate network handling the accounting and tracking and the merchants handling the serice or product fulfilment, you can literally sit back and watch the money come in. This is an example of automating; setting it up and then letting the system work for you. As Ferriss’ book states, minimum effort, maximum results.

Where’s the catch I hear you say? Well if it was as easy as Ferriss states to work a four-hour week and make millions of pounds everyone would be doing it instead of trying to do it. Although you don’t need any great technical expertise or know-how to run a website or set up as an affiliate — in fact anyone can teach themselves how to do it — it does take a lot of patience and bucket-loads of passion and determination.

The catch is that you will need to put the work in, and a LOT of work in most cases in the beginning. It’s a hard graft identifying programmes, keywords, average visitor values and constantly refining. It can also take a great deal of time and effort to identify the right SEM and SEO partners and to set up the relationships. Unless you are starting with deep pockets, you will also find yourself doing more of the work than you would like at the beginning. You need the patience of a saint combined with the impatience of a premiership footballer at a Maserati dealership. Commission rates can sometimes start off low, maybe 3p for every £1 sold. This is great if you’re flogging Boeing 747s and Jacuzzis but if it’s the odd DVD here or cooking utensil there it can take some time to reach a hundred pounds, let alone a thousand or a million. That’s not to say it’s impossible but it IS realistic. The benefit of being patient and taking your time is that you can refine, refine, refine, all the time making sure that you are (or are going to be) in profit.

Affiliate marketing IS an extremely lucrative online business and can make the four-hour week a reality but only if you do it properly, put the effort in where needed and keep on top of changing trends in the market. And you don’t even have to give up your day job until you are ready to!

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

Live the 4 Hour Week as an Affiliate

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I was reading Ray Theakston’s Blog at the weekend, and a comment he made about not attending the a4uawards as they “didn’t seem quite right for bedroom affiliates like myself” totally hit home with me.

One of the main things that I loved about Affiliate Marketing when I first went full time in 2001 was the freedom that being a Bedroom Affiliate gave me. Having previously been a Civil Servant, not having to drag myself out of bed at Stupid o’Clock on a freezing January morning, put on a suit and tie and drive for an hour to go spend eight hours doing a job I hate was a breath of fresh air – I could get up when I want, commute in minutes (depending on how long it takes the kettle to boil*) and wear what I like (even work in my dressing gown if I feel like it).

* I even bought myself the Quick Cup Kettle (which gives you a cup of hot water in about 3 seconds) to speed up my daily commute!

And pretty much the whole Industry was the same – 3am MSN chats with fellow affilates over toast and Marmite was par for the course, and there was a brilliant camaraderie amongst affiliates that meant loads of business was done, but in a laid-back, casual way. Nothing sums this up better than a trip to the UKs smallest network (at the time) in 2003.

Whilst other networks thought affiliates would be impressed by their Mayfair offices, marble floors and walnut staircases, and spent fortunes plying them with Champagne and Canapes served by waiting staff, Buy.at were totally in tune with what affiliates actually want, and the six or so of us that travelled to Newcastle were treated to a trip to the footie (complete with obligatory meat pie), all the beer you wanted, a trip to an all-you-can-eat Curry house, and finished off with a banquet at Steve and Paul’s favourite Chinese Restaurant. Every one of us left Newcastle with huge respect for Buy.at after that, and of course that led to them becoming the massive company they are today. Whether they have that same understanding of what “Bedroom Affiliates” want is another blog post in itself, and I’m already running waaay too long on this one..

I tried moving out of the bedroom to become a “Corporate Affiliate” in 2004, having seen the signs that “The Industry is getting more professional”, moving into rented offices with a plethora of staff, and I ended up losing approx £200,000 as a result – I seemed to spend more time firefighting staff issues, dealing with red tape and building issues than I did actually working on the affiliate business. It was also a tough way of finding out that I simply work better alone, and not long after we increased our overheads considerably, our income also went DOWN rather than up – Not a good recipe for a successful business, and a massive contribution to me walking away from the Industry in 2005.

When I returned to Affiliate Marketing in 2006, I was adamant that it would be as a Bedroom Affiliate again, and the first thing I had to do was to reduce those overheads. Unfortunately, that meant I had to make half of the remaining staff redundant, which I think is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life, and serves as a useful reminder that, as my last act as a “Corporate Affiliate” was to tell three people that they no longer had a job, I never want to have to do that again.

I pulled the surviving members of staff out of the office, and told them they could work from home full time, and paid them a little extra each month to compensate for their electricity/heating etc. They were also better off by not having to pay to commute to work, or pay £3 for a sandwich they can make at home for 20p every day. And of course, they can lie in bed for an hour longer, and work in their affiliate uniform (Jeans and T-shirt, or Summer Uniform of shorts and T-shirt!) We all meet up once a fortnight to check everyone’s still on course and happy, and touch wood, it’s worked brilliantly for the last 18 months.

As long as it’s still possible to make a couple of hundred thousand a year from your bedroom (or dedicated home office), there’s no way I’ll ever become a Corporate Affiliate again. Black Tie or Jeans & T-shirt? Champagne & Canapes or Beer and Curry? Spin & Politics or Honesty & Loyalty? I know which I’d rather have!

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

Why I’ll always be a “Bedroom Affiliate”

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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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Incentivising your affiliates effectively has got to be one of the hardest things for an Affiliate Manager to do. The purpose of any affiliate incentive should be nice and simple, so for those Affiliate Managers who seem incapable of working it out, the aim of any incentive should be:

To entice affiliates to do more.

Now there’s two key points to that simple statement, which merchants get wrong time and time again:

1. “entice your affiliates” – Sorry, but offering up £100 cash just isn’t going to cut it – Affiliates are busy people, and you need to really grab their attention. Affiliates are also fairly wealthy, entrepreneurial types, so offering them a the “chance” of a relatively small sum of money is going to get you very little response. If I want an extra £100, I’ll work a little later. Either way, I know it’s gonna be £80 by the time I’ve paid corporation tax on it, and I’m not likely to personally see any of it because it will end up being re-invested in my business.. boring!

So I don’t want cash, and I’ll tell you now – I most definitely do not need another bloomin iPod – It was fine as an incentive three years ago, but everyone who wants one should really have got off their arse and bought one by now. If you haven’t got one, you don’t want one that bad. Unfortunately, it still seems to be the merchant’s incentive of choice at the moment.

So what do I want? To put it simply, I want something that is for me, rather than my business. I’ve got a few quid in my pocket too, and tend to buy stuff that I really want, so you’ve got to think a little differently. For me, the best incentive is something “money can’t buy” – VIP Football tickets, exclusive gig tickets, private access to the Big Brother House, etc. Holidays are a good one, and they don’t come much better than sending one of your affiliates to Tokyo, unless of course you’re jetting several of them off to Vegas, and giving them supercars to race across the desert in.

So, Mr. Affiliate Manager – When putting together your next affiliate incentive, please ask yourself the following question: “Would the affiliates write to Jim’ll Fix It and ask for this prize?” – If the answer is “yes”, then you’re onto a winner!

2. Get your affiliates to do more.

Q: What do you think happens if you have an incentive that offers a “Dear Jim” qualifying prize to “the top affiliate in September”?

A: What normally happens is whoever your best affiliate was in August (which is probably a cashback site or heavy PPC’er) will win, having done nothing whatsoever to increase his sales. All the smaller affiliates will know they stand no chance of winning and will also do nowt. And you’ll be out of pocket. Or out of a job if you’ve screwed up big time and given away the annual promotions budget!

Yet I would guess around 75% of all affiliate incentives are run on this basis, which is ludicrous. It shows a complete lack of understanding on behalf of the Affiliate Manager. Especially when there are loads of better ways of running an Incentive:

• Everyone who puts up a link/some creative gets a prize draw entry
• Everyone who makes 1 sale gets a prize draw entry
• Everyone who makes xx sales gets a small “Dear Jim” prize
• Everyone who makes xxx sales gets a large “Dear Jim” prize (much like the Free Cruise I enjoyed earlier this year)
• Everyone who increases their month-on-month sales by x% receives a small “Dear Jim” prize (You’ll need to really do your maths here to ensure you’re not offering a £200 prize to someone for increasing your profits by £175 – I’ve only seen this worked well once, where the incentives were offered privately, on a case-by-case basis)
• Everyone who increases their month-on-month sales by x% gets a prize draw entry

I don’t have a particular favourite out of all the above. Some will entice me more than others based on how busy I am – If all I’ve got to do is chuck up a link, no problem, I’m in. But if I’ve got to formulate a plan to increase sales which will involve creating a bespoke landing page or mini-site, PPC campaigns etc, then I may not have the time.

Bad Examples

No offence meant to any of the companies featured here, but for me, these are some affiliate incentives that just did not work.

DRL “Sales League” – Up to £600 – I’m pretty certain I’m not the only affiliate who has read the blurb about this promotion, and is still none the wiser about how it actually works. I’m sure it seemed the best idea someone’s ever had, but it’s far too complex, and most affiliates are far too busy to waste time trying to figure out how they might win “up to” £600 over the course of a year.

Apparently the promotion was so popular last year, that they’re doing it again this year! Funny then, that looking back at the updates from last year, there was only one affiliate showing any interest in how he was doing.

Sorry guys, but this incentive is pants on two counts. Cash doesn’t entice, and confusion doesn’t get me doing more.

Bingo Bliss – “Free Flight” – Someone obviously thought this would be a great joke. Offer affiliates a “Free Flight” in return for putting a link up. Sounds like a great incentive, and a brilliant way to get new affiliates to have a look at your program.

But of course, there was a catch. The Flight in question was not your traditional “aeroplane” flight, but a flight that you stick on the end of a dart. Yes, feel the anti-climax. Of course, when this was revealed it not only killed the promotion dead, but pissed off several prominent affiliates and probably damaged the reputation of the agency. Whoops!

The initial offer certainly enticed, and if they’d delivered what they appeared to be offering, they would also have had lots of affiliates doing more. Once the “true” offer was revealed however, the incentive fell flat on its face.

As we enter the busy Christmas period, the incentives are bound to come thick and fast – Buyagift have already announced that their follow-up to the Vegas/Supercars/Helicopter prize will be announced later this week, and I can’t wait to see if they can manage to top last year’s incentive – One thing’s for sure, whoever wins the buyagift incentive should be wearing a “Jim Fixed it for me” badge, or should that be “buyagift fixed it for me”?

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

Affiliate Incentives that don’t work (and some that do!)

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6th September will always be an Important day for me, for it was six years ago today, 6th September 2001 that I handed my notice in at the last “proper” job I will ever have, and decided to concentrate on being a full-time affiliate.

Many part-time affiliates consider taking the plunge and going full-time but it can be very scary giving up the security of a pay-cheque to go it alone. So I thought I’d share my experiences of giving up the day job to help those currently considering it plan what could potentially be the best move they ever made. Plus I’d better write it all down while I still remember it – I am turning 30 in a few weeks, and I’ve heard the memory is the first to go…

To give you a bit of background to my circumstances in the early summer of 2001, I was working full-time as a Civil Servant, earning approx £14,000 p.a and had just got married, and bought our first house (For what was at the time a massive, and we thought over-priced, £55,000). Er Indoors was at University studying to be a teacher, so it’s fair to say money wasn’t plentiful, but we had all the bills covered and a little left over.

I had been running the affiliate business part-time for about a year now, and built it up to quite a nice level. I only had the one site at this time, and I had managed to slowly build it up by re-investing every penny I made for that year to a profit of around £500 per month. That might not sound too much, but when you’re only picking up £800 a month for working a 37 hour week, an extra £500 a month could come in very handy.

Now at this point, I had a dilemma that I would guess many part-time affiliates face: It is very tempting to spend that extra £500 a month, and continue to work the 9-5. It’s just like giving yourself a £6,000 p.a pay-rise! However, that was not an option for me, because I hated the day-job with a passion by now, and knew that I wanted to do Affiliate Marketing full-time.

So, the decision I made was to go part-time at the Day Job: I now worked only Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays. That meant that I could continue to work the Affiliate business around the Day Job, but also concentrate 100% on my affiliate business on Mondays and Thursdays. This cost me £300 a month in “guaranteed” income from the Day Job, but I knew I could cover this from my £500 per month affiliate earnings, and if everything went tits-up, I could always go full-time again.

What actually happened though was the reason I was only part-time for 3 months before quitting altogether – As a result of being able to concentrate on my business full-time for just those two days, my earnings went from £500 a month to £1,500 a month, then £3,000 a month. Now I had a real decision to make – Are these earnings sustainable enough to leave the security of the Day Job?

The answer was a resounding YES! I was now pulling in a regular £3,000 a month – I only needed £800 to pay the bills, so allowing for tax,National Insurance etc, I would be comfortable with anything above £1,500 a month. At this point, I still hadn’t taken a penny out of the business for myself – Everything was geared towards getting out of the Day Job rat-race hell.

This meant that by the time I had handed my notice in, I had built up some decent cash reserves of around £10,000. So even if “this Internet thing” didn’t work out, I still had enough cash in the bank to last me comfortably for 6 months whilst I found another “proper” job.

After handing my notice in, I had the worst month ever at the Day Job – Every day I spent in there, I knew would be more productive spent working on MY business – effectively, it was costing me money to go to work. If they’d offered me the chance to buy my way out of working the notice period, i would have bitten their arm off. But this is the government we’re talking about, so “rules are rules” so, like a good boy, I didn’t throw a sickie and worked my notice, and worked hard as always.

Finally, I was free though, and the day I had been planning in my mind for the last 9 months had finally arrived as I pulled out of the car park, “Boss of Me” by They Might be Giants blaring from the stereo. By the time I actually left, it was Christmas, so I gave myself the full two weeks off, and decided to start my “new job” as MD of my own company in the New Year.

The first couple of days were pretty normal to be honest. I was just doing the usual stuff. It wasn’t until about mid-way through the second week that it really hit me – I didn’t have to go back to “proper” work, and I was now working full-time for ME. The impact that going full-time had was phenomenal too – I had no worries about covering my hoped-for £1,500 a month – I was clearing £8,000 a month profit by the end of my first year, and after 18 months of working full-time, I took on my first full-time member of staff (who I’m pleased to say is still with me today), and Er Indoors and I moved into our dream house.

Going full-time was the best thing I ever did – I was very lucky though with how things panned out. If you’re thinking about going full-time, there are a few things you should consider:

Do you want to leave your job? There was no question for me – I hated my job. But you may really enjoy your job. AM is pretty lonely, so you might miss the banter with your workmates. You may be better off going part-time at your Day Job if that’s possible.

Are your earnings sustained? If you give up the day job, the security of your monthly pay-packet is gone. You need to know that your earnings from Affiliate Marketing can support you, and your family. Even if Google decides it hates you.

Have 6 months “pay” in the bank – This will really help you sleep at night in the early days, and placate those who feel you’re being reckless. It’s there if you need it, and you can always spend it on a new car when you don’t need it any more!

Take care of the “boring” stuff – You should already be registered as Self Employed with the taxman if you’re doing AM (He’ll fine you if not!). Now you are your own boss, you are responsible for taking care of things like Tax, National Insurance, Pension, Healthcare. Get a good accountant (He’ll save you more than he costs) and ask who he recommends for your pension and healthcare requirements. If you don’t get it sorted when you first start out, odds are you won’t bother ’till it’s too late.

Ask your new boss for some time off – You’ve just broken the shackles of full-time employment. So why chain yourself to a new desk? Don’t be afraid to give yourself some time off – you might think that you can’t afford to, but you’ll work so much better if you do. The ideas I’ve had whilst out walking with my dogs in the middle of the afternoon have earned me a fortune!

Tell everyone that you still have a job – . Because AM is a business that you can work anywhere, anytime, people will take advantage, especially if you’re working from home. I still get friends and family “popping in for a chat” when I’m trying to work. Or you’ll get phone calls: “Can you pick the kids up….Can you come and have a look at my computer… So and So wants a hand with moving… Can you drop me to the airport?” Of course, one of the benefits of AM is that you can do these things without too much impact on your business, but some days it will be frustrating, when it seems no-one will leave you alone!

Don’t believe the Doom-Mongers – It’s unbelievable the number of people who tried to stop me leaving my day job. None of them believed I could make any money from the Internet, mainly because they didn’t understand it. And what people don’t understand, they mock. So I’ll reserve the final words of this article for my “superior” who said to me on my final day at the Day Job: “You’ll be back”… Erm, 6 years and counting – No I won’t!

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

Giving up the Day Job

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Following on from my earlier article, “Why I love Affiliate Marketing”, here is the polar viewpoint, showing the not-so-nice side of our Industry. Far from just throwing together a few ideas to counter my positive viewpoints, the following are genuine problems within Affiliate Marketing. I walked away from AM in 2005, and the following points were huge factors in my decision to do so.

Affiliate Marketing is lonely. There’s no doubt about it, AM can be one of the loneliest jobs going – Sitting at home in front of a computer all day with no “real” people to speak to is no life for anyone. Prior to 2005, I had been known to go a whole week without leaving the house, or talking to anyone apart from on Messenger!

There are no set hours. It’s all too easy to sit there and do 14 or 15 hour days, seven days a week. I know, because that’s exactly what I used to do – It was very rare that I worked less than 100 hours in a week (Still only down to around 60 hours a week now, but that’s much improved!), working through the night was common, and holidays were rare. I would never go away for more than a week, and I would always take the laptop with me. It’s very easy to fall into this trap, particularly when your boss (i.e YOU!) is a slavedriver!

No-one understands you. My father is probably the best example of this. He’s now progressed from the days when he thought I had to stick stamps onto emails to send them out, but just the other day I had a phone call: “My mate’s got a shop, selling bits for vacuum cleaners. Can you put them on your website?”. It’s only taken him seven years to learn that I do “something with websites”, but I don’t think I’ll ever explain AM to him (or anyone for that matter – I had to use Salt and Pepper shakers to explain it to Er Indoors once!). The two questions I get asked most often are: 1. Can you build me a website? (No, I know next to nothing about web design.) and 2. Can you fix my computer? (No, I know nothing about computers, except how to turn them on.)

People think you’re grubby. Had to get some reference to Nick Robertson into the negative side of AM, but he’s not alone – There are many, many Affiliate Managers out there who believe all affiliates are leeches, piggy-backing on their brand, using spyware, posting unauthorised discount codes, etc etc. And it’s these affiliates that result in companies like ASOS tarring all affiliates with the same brush, dragging down commissions and keeping merchants from entering the marketplace. Most of the full-time, professional affiliates are upstanding, hard-working people that bring a lot to the table. Quite often it’s the newbies looking for a quick buck that try things on, but it’s the rest of us who lose out.

There’s no security. When things are going great, Affiliate Marketing is brilliant. But when times get a bit tough, it can be very unforgiving. No sooner have you lost a merchant that was earning you a thousand pounds a month because “they’ve run out of budget” (laughable IMO – how can you run out of budget for performance-based marketing??), than Google will decide to drop your site from the index, and your webhost goes down for a week. This happens to all of us at some point, and you’d be forgiven for thinking someone’s got it in for you. A nice 9-5 job looks pretty appealing sometimes – It would be nice to clock off, walk out at 5pm and not think about work until the following morning. But that’s not the life we chose.

The Goalposts are always moving. There’s a perfect example over at A4U at the moment, where a merchant has chnged their T&Cs, and then retrospectively rejected an affiliates commissions! Unfortunately, this kind of thing is quite commonplace in AM. Merchants are forever changing the rules, and many do not even bother to notify the affiliates that they have changed until they start rejecting commissions. CJ are the best of course. If any program terms change, you must accept the new rules within 7 days or you’ll be kicked off the program. Which is great if you fancy taking a fortnight’s holiday – You can come home to find you’ve been kicked off half your programs!

Too many suits, Not enough substance. The reason I stopped going to many get2gethers was the plethora of arrogant tossers in their flash suits, coked up, trying to stuff business cards into my hand whilst trying to get into the toilets. There’s obviously a lot of money to be made if you can get your affiliate program working well. Unfortunately, some agencies (and networks) decided to send their entire sales force, who would get pissed up and start giving it the hard sell. By all means, buy me a beer, tell me what you do and we can exchange cards. If we can work together, I’ll get back to you. Force a card on me, or get in my face with the usual “what can we do to earn you more money” sales line, and you can forget any chance of me wanting to work with you.

So there you go – Quite a few reasons to hate this Industry. Just writing this has brought back a few memories of why I left AM in 2005, and it’s a shame to see that the same problems still exist. However, the points I made in the “I love Affiliate Marketing” article were the reasons I came back to this Industry after just 14 months out, and on balance, I don’t think I’d want to work anywhere else than Affiliate Marketing right now.

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

Why I hate Affiliate Marketing

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