Lammo.net: Affiliate Marketing Blog

Pinch, Punch. first of the Month - No returns! Yes, it’s the first of July today, the sun is shining, and that can mean only one thing - it’s time to start planning for Christmas! Of course, some people have already been working on their Christmas sites for a couple of months, but for me July is when it all starts to happen. If you don’t plan your Christmas strategy until the nights are drawing in and the days are getting colder and darker, then you could be missing out on a huge amount of sales.

It can be really hard knucking down and thinking about Christmas when it seems that Summer is only just starting to arrive - Hell, it’s hard concentrating on anything when it’s nice and sunny outside - One of the pitfalls (or benefits, depending on how you look at it!) of being a Bedroom Affiliate workingfrom home is that when it’s a nice sunny day, and you’re working in your Summer Affiliate uniform of T-shirt and shorts, it’s really easy to “nip outside” for a cup of tea and 10 minutes in the sun. And then ten minutes becomes half an hour as it’s so nice, and then you come back in to work and spend the next 3 hours wishing you were still sat outside. Still it could be worse - I could be stuck in an office wearing a suit!

So the best way to motivate yourself is to plan accordingly - Planning isn’t difficult, and it’s certainly easier than doing! And at this stage, planning is all you need to do. Zak from Prezzybox issued a rallying call to Prezzybox affiliates yesterday to join him and his team at the Christmas in July exhibition in London on the 9th and 10th July. The exhibition is free to enter, and you’ll leave with the knowledge of what are likely to be the top Sellers from a huge range of retailers for Christmas 2008, and find out the products that the National Press are going to be writing about in the preceding months.

This knowledge is worth it’s weight in gold to you. Knowing what consumers will be buying, and what the national press are telling them they should be buying months in advance means you can steal a march on all the other affiliates who will wait until the Top 12 Toys list is published in October before manically publishing their content knowing that the surge in sales has already started, and only has 6 weeks or so left.

Armed with this knowledge, you can then start to plan target keyphrases etc, and start thinking about your landing pages. Are you going to go for a standalone Christmas site, targeting these products, or plug them into your existing site? How are you going to get content for these products - Will you be writing it yourself, or outsourcing reviews etc? Or can you badger the suppliers themselves for some content? Either way, you’ll know what the Top 12 products are (in truth, you’ll probably know what the Top 100 products are likely to be), and by the time the Christmas Shoppers are starting to look for those products, you’ll have built your pages/minisite, have a good number of links to them and a nice level of unique content on them.

All of which means you can sit back and relax whilst ten thousand other affiliates fight over the Top 12 list in a rush to get some sales in before the Christmas rush dies down. And not only that, but you’ll still see sales coming in long after the last cracker has been pulled and the last of the Turkey sandwiches has been polished off. Remember, an Affiliate site is not just for Christmas! Oh, and btw, there’s now only 177 days to go…

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A couple of times a week, someone will pop up on an Affiliate Marketing forum with the immortal words “I’ve just read Mr X’s ebook on ‘How I make a Trillion Dollars a Day from Affiliate Marketing’ and I’m more confused than ever” That same person will then usually ask for advice, have another twenty questions and finally give up as it all sounds too hard. Some voice of reason will then pop up with the poser “If you’d spent all this time trying stuff out rather than asking twenty questions, then you’d have your answers, and more than likely a few quid in your pocket too.”

I’ve worked in the Affiliate Marketing Industry for eight years now, and have been privileged to have met and worked with some of the most successful people in this wonderful industry - People who earn several million pounds a year from Affiliate Marketing, and they all have one thing in common - They didn’t learn Affiliate Marketing from an ebook.

One of the best things about starting an Affiliate Marketing business is that there’s no barrier to entry - I started out in 2000 with nothing at all - No money, no technical knowledge and on free hosting. I then made mistakes - hundreds of them. and believe me, you learn a hell of a lot quicker making your own mistakes than you do by reading about anyone elses. Ask anyone who is successful in the UK Affiliate Marketing Industry how they learned Affiliate Marketing, and I guarantee you that 90% of them will reply with the same answer - “I taught myself”

Yes, it can seem daunting starting out without knowing what you’re doing, but lets face it - this isn’t brain surgery. So what if you get it totally wrong? What have you lost, apart from a little pride and some time. you could spend the next 6 months reading every post on every affiliate forum and webmaster forum out there; you could stock up on all the latest ebooks from the “Gurus”, or you could just get off your butt and have a go. Think like the Nike slogan - Just do it!

Get yourself some hosting, a domain name, and sign up with the UK Affiliate Marketing networks such as Affiliate Future, Affiliate Window and Paid on Results. Then play around - Add some content, get some links. By all means pop over to a forum and ask some questions if you get stuck, but have a decent attempt at doing it yourself before asking “Should I do this.. would this work… Which is better.. what’s the best merchant.. etc, etc”

I know what you’re thinking - This is all lies, so you don’t buy that ebook and find out the “secrets” of Affiliate Marketing that “the rich don’t want you to know”. If you really believe that, then best you head off and spend everything you’ve got on ebooks, rabbits feet and lottery tickets, as there is no “secret” to Affiliate Marketing, and all the information you need is in the public domain.

“But they’ve got a picture of a guy with a Ferrari on their sales page” - Ah yes, anyone can go to a track day can’t they? And of course there are lots of very wealthy people out there who have written ebooks on Affiliate Marketing. How did they make their money? By selling ebooks to people who want to get rich of course! You pay your twenty quid to be told to go and write an ebook on how to get rich.

It’s no different from the age-old scam which you’ll probably find in any free classified newspaper - “Get paid £500 a week to stuff envelopes” - you send off your twenty quid to a PO Box, only to be given step by step instructions on how to earn your £500 a week - “Put an advert in a free classified newspaper saying ‘earn £500 a week stuffing envelopes’, and then when people send you £20, stuff a photocopy of this piece of paper into an envelope and send it to em”

Making money on the web is easy, and you’ll learn a lot more, faster by teaching yourself and asking a few questions as you go along. The only people getting rich as a result of these Affiliate Marketing ebooks are the people selling them to mugs looking for easy answers and “secrets”

Further Learn Affiliate Marketing Information

Affiliate eBook Marketing - A Guide to Affiliate Marketing Solutions. Find extensive affiliate marketing tips and affiliate marketing strategies….  
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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.

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