Affiliate Marketing blog by James Little

As collecting data (email addresses specifically) is one of the most important parts of the Free Bingo Cards project it’s one of the first things that I’ve started working on, using an auto-responder called GetResponse.

I stumbled across GetResponse a few weeks ago when I was looking for an alternative to Aweber and was so impressed that I signed up as a paid customer straight away. It’s not let me down so far.

The main reasons for using the system are:

• It makes it very easy to collect the data – you don’t need any technical knowledge
• They have a good delivery rate
• You can do all your newsletter sends from it – it does all the opt-ins (validating the email addresses) and unsubscribes for you – taking out lots of the hard work!
• Most importantly – it lets you set auto responders based on the number of days since the user signed up, so you can setup 10 different offers over 10 different weeks and just change them across the board when you analyse the conversion rates.

So for the Bingo site I’ve started to pull of some email creative from the affiliate networks that I work with and setup the different auto mails. I’ve also customised the signup aspects (confirmation page, etc) but need to make a decision on what data I collect – i.e. just the name and email from the off or do I try and get more data (postcodes, etc) that will come in handy for non-bingo email campaigns in the future?

The next job is going to be designing the template and deciding between using Wordpress/Drupal or just some flat HTML. More on that next week…

I’ve been thinking about starting a new affiliate project for a while now – not really with the aim of making a huge amount of cash out of it (though I can always live in hope), but more because I haven’t built anything new for a while and feel it’s about time to do so – like many others I enjoy the buzz of seeing those earnings come through from a new site for the first time which is reason enough.

So I’ve dug out a domain I purchased a while ago – FreeBingoCards.org.uk.   I’ve found in the past that .org.uk domains have ranked quite well; especially on MSN but it’s obviously a hugely competitive space.

The first stage when I start a new site is generally to brainstorm a few ideas on how I want the site to work, so here goes:

• Data capture will be an important part of the site, including the opt-in process so that I can market to these email addresses with offers in the future.
• After a user has signed up I’ll put together an auto-mail path – so I’ll get creative from a number of bingo sites and send a different email each week.  Gathering the email creative may take a while!
• Need to make a decision on if I use a CMS like Drupal for the site, or just build it in flat HTML… still undecided on this.
• After I’ve put the main template together, I’ll start by reviewing the top 10 bingo merchants based on their Hitwise or Alexa rankings.

The next step is going to be to put together a calendar with some deadlines of when I want each stage of the site finished – I often find that this helps with making sure that I stay on track with the timelines and can plan it around the kids parties and the TV schedule!

I’ll look to do at least one post a week on the blog with an update on this project until it’s live and then keep the updates going once I’ve started the link building and traffic generation.

Suggestions and feedback are always welcome!

A few days ago I found one of my new favourite iPhone apps – Stanza.

My typically journey time each day is around 2/2.5 hours and I generally spend the time reading books but sometimes they are thousands of pages and can be a bit of a pain to carry around.. I looked at the Kindle and whilst it looked pretty good, it’s yet another item to carry around with me on a daily basis and is the kind of gadget I’d buy and use a few times before it ends up in gadget heaven, aka, my bedside cabinet with the Archos, PSP and DSi.

A quick google search revealed a free ebook app for my iPhone, Stanza.  Once downloaded it gives you the chance to download books from either some free stores or buy them and download straight to your phone from other ebook stores…. this is all well and good but the best bit for me is the Desktop application (also free) that allows you to convert any existing ebook that you have and Sync it via Wifi straight onto your phone.. Within minutes I had the Terry Goodkind novel that I am currently reading transferred onto the phone and into my pocket, probably saving me from developing arthritis later in life.

I also got a free Google reader app recently that lets you tweet / share stories quickly and easily aswell as bringing a few other useful features that make it easier to use than the typical webapp, so another one to try if you’re a news junkie and have plenty of time to spare on public transport.

This news is almost a week old now, but I’ve not seen it appear much in affiliate circles as of yet.  Back on 15th October there was a post on Search Engine Land about Yahoo announcing the end of their Paid Search Inclusion programme.

For the unaware, Yahoo offered two products – Search Submit Basic, which charged an annual fee, and Search Submit Pro, a CPC based programme.  Whilst it’s been free for spiders to come and crawl sites for a long time these packages allowed you to be a lot more flexible about your Yahoo search – allowing you to change items such as the descriptions and also by paying a CPC allowed clients to increase their organic search listings.

There are also a few very large affiliates who have built their model around this method and worked with a number of large blue chip brands in the Affiliate market space; essentially replacing the clients organic Yahoo listings with their affiliate links but increasing their overall rankings for some competitive search terms on a CPA basis – one of them was apparently TD and CJ’s second largest UK affiliate and responsible for huge amounts of revenue / commission.

I’m sure that these companies will find other channels to utilise and after the Microsoft deal was announced it was inevitable that it would happen but whilst a bit old school it’s a shame to see this advertising method come to an end and I do wonder what effect it will have with some of the networks that they will have generated millions of pounds worth of sales with.

I’ve not blogged in a while, but after a few people moaned at me at the rather excellent Expo about it, I thought it was time to try and get a bit more going again.

So I’ll start this with a rant.   As regular readers will know, as well as now working for a network I still operate a couple of affiliate sites which pay for some beer tokens every now and again – not as much as I would like, but with a wife, three kids and a full time job it’s difficult to find the time!

Anyhow – when I apply to programmes it is generally with the explicit aim of doing some revenue with them, perhaps I’ve purchased a niche domain and want to use them on this site for example.  I don’t sign up to every programme under the sun as some affiliates will do.

Today I received notification that I had been suspended/removed from one of the programmes that I am signed up to due to lack of activity.  It’s not the first time that this has happened but does lead me once again to ask why there is such a lack of understanding from merchants that do this?  Do the networks advise their merchants that it’s a stupid idea? I believe they should…

The only good reason I’ve ever heard for this is that some networks charge merchants on a CPM for their banners being displayed, and the costs for this are sometimes more than the commission being paid – but this is more of an issue in the states from what I understand.

I challenge anyone to give me another decent reason for this, especially for a retailer.

I would suggest that any merchant who has thought about doing this thinks again for the following reasons:

• Just because I’m not promoting you currently doesn’t mean I won’t in the future
• If you reject me, I will just use your competitors in the future and you’ll be the ones losing out
• If you communicate with your affiliates via newsletters then just by being signed up I’m likely to receive and read these looking for more opportunities – surely the more affiliates that read this the better

I’m all for rejecting specific affiliates if their harming your brand / reputation but just culling all the non-active affiliates really is stupid.