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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Er Indoors arrived home from work two weeks ago in excrutiating pain around one of her wisdom teeth - Her NHS dentist had closed for the evening, and as she was in so much pain, she rang the “Emergency Dentist” service, only to be told that there was not a single dentist to be found in the whole of Devon at 6pm on a Tuesday, and that she would have to wait and see her dentist the following day (if she could get an appointment). A further call to NHS Direct sent us round in circles before finally telling us to ring the Emergency Dentist. If only we could find one!

One sleepless night later, after trying a succession of “Internet remedies” including biting down on hot teabags, rinsing with salt water, and holding an ice pack over the jaw, she managed to get an appointment at her NHS dentist for 2:30 (at least they had a sense of humour) in the afternoon, at which she was advised that there was an abcess around the area, and was prescribed a course of antibiotics, which did nothing at all, so much so that by the weekend she was forced to try and find an “Emergency Dentist” again - This time she did manage to find one, who took one look and told her that the wisdom tooth would need to be removed. However as she would need to be sedated for the removal, her NHS Dentist would be unable to perform the procedure, and so Er Indoors would need to have it removed at Derriford Hospital under a general anaesthetic, which meant joining a 12-week waiting list. “count yourself lucky”, said the Emergency dentist. “Last year the waiting list was over a year!”

Unable to cope with the pain for 3 months, Er Indoors asked if it was possible to have the tooth removed privately - “Perhaps” was the answer - and she was referred to a private practice where she would need to pay £55 for an inital consultation to find out whether it could come out. Thankfully, the answer was yes (at a further cost of £231), but it couldn’t be done for a further 9 days due to “staff training”. By now we’d both hardly slept for a week, and the pain was getting steadily worse, so Er Indoors made an appointment to see her GP for some stronger painkillers and antibiotics.

By last Saturday (Day 12 of constant excruciating pain), Er Indoors was not sleeping at all, was being sick every few hours due to lack of sleep and the strong antibitoics, and her jaw had now swelled to the size of a tennis ball. As she was still 6 days away from her private dentists appointment, we were left with no alternative but to take her to A&E. Initially, the nurse told her that there was nothing they would be able to do, as “A&E don’t deal with dentistry”. However, as soon as she was seen by the Maxillofacial doctor, she was diagnosed with Periconitis and immediately admitted to a ward, where she was placed on Intravenous antibiotics and nil by mouth from midnight, with a view to removing the wisdom tooth the following day. At last - the end was in sight.. or was it?

After night 12 of little/no sleep, Er Indoors was visited by a Doctor the following morning, who confirmed the diagnosis of periconitis, and agreed that the tooth would need extracting. He did not however agree that he should have to do it on a nice sunny Sunday afternoon when he could be out on the golf course. His prognosis was to keep Er Indoors on the IV antibiotics for a few days and then send her home! She could then choose to either sit on the waiting list for 12 weeks to have treatment on the NHS, or pay £231 to have it done privately. When asked why it could not be done that day as promised the previous day, his response was “you have to go back onto the waiting list, else I don’t get paid”. Needless to say, Er Indoors was gobsmacked (I’d imagine if that Doctor gave that level of “patient care” to all his patients, he would find himself gobsmacked quite often).

Finally, on Day 13 (yesterday), the Doctor doing the morning rounds (different one from Day 12) actually gave a **** about his patients, and whisked her down to theatre under a local anaesthetic and removed the wisdom tooth - a procedure that took less than five minutes (I think it was trying to escape the infection by itself by this point!), and she was allowed home today (Day 14) - She’s still very unwell, and is now only being sick 2 or 3 times a day. The swelling has reduced greatly, and she’s not in so much pain. I just can’t believe that the NHS Dentistry system let it get to this stage - and at what cost to the taxpayer?

What was required was a five minute procedure that a private dentist can do (at a profit) for £67.90, as sedation was not required. If the procedure had been done on Day 1 or Day 2, it’s quite likely that Er Indoors could have been back at work the following day - As it stands now, she will have missed at least 10 working days. As a Primary School Teacher, that means the school have to find a supply teacher (at a cost of approx £180 per day) for those days. A hospital bed in an NHS Hospital costs the taxpayer approximately £450 per night, so by the time we factor in the cost of manning NHS Direct, the GP’s time, the NHS Dentists time, the A&E staff’s time, and the various drugs that she was prescribed, a £67.90 procedure has cost the taxpayer more than £3,000 on the NHS.

I must stress that apart from the one Doctor more concerned with getting paid than getting his patients better, all the staff we came across at the hospital were absolutely first class, and can’t be faulted in any way. It’s just a shame that the whole system of dentistry on the NHS is so shambolic, that all of this could have been sorted out easily, and at very little cost to the taxpayer. It’s all very well to say “we’re spending £xbillion on the NHS”, but it’s easy to spend that sort of money when you’re wasting money in this manner. It’d be far better to spend half as much, on a system that actually works, and then the nurses could be paid a fair wage too.

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Regular readers will know I’m a huge fan of Bookmaker affiliate programs that pay lifetime commissions, whether that is via Gross Revenue share or a percentage of stakes made. Either way, it’s a much fairer way than a straight CPA deal, as you’re rewarded for introducing quality punters much better than a flat CPA. Our effective CPA (what we’ve earned per customer signed up) with the Bet365 affiliate program for example is over £110 CPA and rising daily - Compare that with the pathetic £10 CPA offered by the William Hill affiliate program, and you’ll see why I send all my betting traffic anywhere but to William Hill.

I’ve been working with Sporting Bet for a number of years via a CPA deal (The Sporting Bet Affiliate Program on Affiliate Window currently pays £12 CPA as long as the punter deposits at least £12), and due to the low CPA have never really given them much exposure. All that’s about to change however, as there is finally an independent affiliate program for Sporting Bet that pays lifetime commissions on all your referred customers. As with all good sports betting affiliate programs, there’s no charge to join “sbaffiliates”. The current commission levels are 20% gross revenue share, which whilst not as high as some sites, if the conversion rates are anywhere near as high as on the Affiliate Window program (quoted as 8.14%), then your earnings should be considerably higher than on the standard CPA deal.

By joining sbaffiliates, you can also promote the Bet UK affiliate program, which also has a 20% Gross Revshare commission structure. The Bet UK Affiliate Program comes into its own though via its tiered commission levels. If your Gross Revenue exceeds €5,000.01, then your commission will rise to a nice 30%, and if you can drive some serious traffic and get your gross revenues over €20,000 a month, then you’ll be given one of the highest bookmaker commissions in the marketplace - 35% for the lifetime of the customer.

You can join the Sporting Bet Affiliate Program and the Bet UK Affiliate Program by clicking here. If you’re looking for bookmaker affiliate programs, then the best of the bunch right now has to be 888sport - paying up to 40% Gross Revshare for the lifetime of your referred customers, and a huge brand to leverage. As a relative newcomer, the chances of referring new customers is much higher too.

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