A very quick note: I thought it was worth noting that I have put my thoughts from the last Affiliate Marketing Council online at the eyefall search and affiliate marketing blog.
Today the eyefall search engine marketing blog was put live with quite a bit of content to come over the upcoming weeks/months ahead.
My aim is to continue writing on exwebjunkie (a lot to come about the IAB meeting today) and use the eyefall site to contribute guides and tips for running an affiliate program.
There are a number of other contributors and hopefully it is a site that readers will find useful and though provoking.
I’m heading off to see the IAB tomorrow in their latest Affiliate Council meeting. The event is an open one so if you want to go along you should phone up and speak to Dan.
NMA released an article which caused a bit of a stir (talking about a Code of Conduct) and apparently NMA misrepresented this news (not like them at all), so it should be an interesting afternoon.
If anyone can’t make it but wants any questions answered at the event leave a comment and I’ll do my best to get them asked. Should have a nice long blog post for Thursday!
Back in January I entered the Affiliate Challenge - a site where the idea was to create a brand new website with a very limited budget and see how can make the most money out of it.
The site I created was for Unfair Bank Charges and whilst the Affiliate Challenge seemed to fall to bits, it was certainly something fun to be involved in and I’m happy say that that I have now sold my unfair bank charges site - the papers have been signed, the cheque cashed and the domain transfered.
Seeing as I was using the site as a €œcase study€ on if it was possible to make money in a short period of time purely from SEO I thought it would be nice to let you know the results.
As I write the site is number #1 on MSN Search for the term €œUnfair Bank Charges€. It’s hard at the moment to put a monitory value to what has been earned as the program that I was promoting takes about four months for leads to complete and pay out.
With all that being said though SEO alone (and a small bit of MySpace marketing in January to kick it off) I have produced 1,113 Clicks and 64 Leads. If all of those leads convert (unlikely) at the likely lead value of £50 per lead that is over £1,000 a month profit.
As for the websites, here’s an idea of the volume:
January:
Visits: 567
Pageviews: 1,668
February:
Visits: 1,333
Pageviews: 3,792
March:
Visits: 2,358
Pageviews: 6,295
I won’t give an exact amount of how much the site sold for but it’s fair to say it was between £1000-£2000 (I could have potentially got a lot more, but wanted a bit of fast cash).
As an affiliate manager who’s been half-seriously dabbling as an affiliate for the past 6 months this is the first real money I’ve made out of an SEO site and it’s quite a nice feeling - thanks to everyone that gave help, encouragement and links over the past few months.
My desktop PC has started to give up on me and considering the amount it’s used for work I am tempted to buy a new one. Looking around at prices I discovered the following on PC world. I’m guessing it’s a typo considering the price, but if I order it do you think that I can claim under the fair trade act and get them to provide the extra?
£330 (inc VAT) for a desktop with 1,600GB sounds pretty good to me.
The first version of Affiliatebounty.com was launched today. The site, designed and developed by Funware2000, has a nice AJAX search function to help search for merchants and find out not only what network they are on, but what the commissions are, the EPC, Conversion rate and datafeed status.
The soft launch has gone out with merchants from Webgains, AffiliateWindow, DGM & Buy.at.
I was shown the beta of this a number of months ago and it’s great to see it live - hopefully all the networks will come on board soon and we’ll see this as well used tool across the industry. We might even see less people starting a post on the a4u asking which network the o2 affiliate program is on!
Well done Jon and the team & good luck - it’s a tool that the industry has needed for a long time so hopefully it will be well received
More Info/Signup to Millet Sports on Paid on Results
About Millet Sports
Millet Sports are one of the UK’s largest direct online sports equipment suppliers. Established in 1987 they offer years of experience, some of the best deals on the internet and excellent customer service and support.
Why promote Millet Sports?
Affiliate Friendly Website
Whilst the main Millet Sports website is plastered with phone numbers you can rest assured that these are all removed when your customers visit the site via one of the affiliate links - even the deeplinks are protected.
Competitive Commission
Millet Sports offers a base rate commission of 6% (7% if you make just 16 sales per month) which makes it one of the most competitive of commission values in the market.
High Average Order Value
The average order value across the board is £75 (Just over £5 commission). Table Tennis Tables are also great sellers and sell for upwards of £300 (£21 in commission) - this should make the EPC very attractive.
Long Cookie Period
Our cookie period is 999 days long which means because of the excellent service that Millet Sports are renowned you should see a number of re-occurring sales on a regular basis.
Quality Datafeed
Our datafeed has been created with Affiliate Marketing in mind and includes a list of best selling items. Cleaned up though the excellent Paid on Results system we are confident of the quality & are open to any changes that may be required on an individual basis.
Excellent Affiliate Management from eyefall
eyefall are experts in their field for SEO, PPC & Affiliate Management. James Little is running the program and has over 5 years of experience in the affiliate market place. You can contact eyefall for any questions about the program and advice on how to get going on:
james.little@eyefall.co.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7309 5751
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7309 5730
Mob: +44 (0) 78 6046 6735
Extra Bonus€¦ Pagerank10 Script
We are also happy to say that Pagerank10 have produced a MySQL script based on the Datafeed available to purchase for just £24.99; they are also working on a free CSV version. These allow you to get a site up and running with ease and help towards producing a strong quality score for your PPC campaigns!