Hi,

On the 06th December a visitor to your website clicked on an Affiliate URL
for a Merchant who has closed its Affiliate Program with Paid On Results.

The visitor was shown our Expired Links page, and given several other
related Merchants they may be interested in. This visitor followed one of
our related links and went onto make a purchase with Find Me A Gift.

Normally the commission due would just be added to your account, however
in this case you are currently not an Affiliate of Find Me A Gift. In
order for us to pass the commission onto you we first need you to join the
Find Me A Gift Affiliate Program

You can do this as normal though your Affiliate Control Panel, once you
have joined and been approved for this Merchant we will add the commission
due to you into your account.

If you have any questions please let us know.

Best Wishes,

Paid On Results Support Team.

Great use of technology to do something to reach a good outcome from an expired link. When the other options are sending the visitor through anyway or landing them on error page actually putting a solution in place that allows me to earn and another merchant to make the sale is fantastic.

This is one of only a handful of guest posts I’ve allowed on this blog. I’ve published this one because Finch knows what he is talking about. Check out Finch Sells. It’s full of great information, mainly about CPA offers. My only warning would be that the industrial language might offend some.

An Affiliate Needs More Than Commission

Fraser’s blog here was one of the first I read before carving out a career in affiliate marketing. My first dealings with the industry were purely voyeurism.

I would watch in wonder, sixteen tabs up during my lunch break, trying to understand how such a simple business model could provide such a fundamentally different work environment to my 9-5.

Three years on and my position is reversed. I now shoot off my own advice as a blogger and full-time affiliate.

I get to hear many questions from newbies trying to break in to the industry. The curiosity has grown, and grown. It seems everybody wants a piece of the affiliate marketing pie. But what about those who have been around the block for several years and have felt their love affair with the industry begin to wear off?

I think every affiliate, sooner or later, has to hit the wall.

When the thrill of earning ‘easy money’ wears off – at least, that’s what it’s called by my friends and family – the real challenge of staying motivated kicks in.

Being a middleman is a tough gig. How do you stay motivated without the pride of customers thanking you, or without the credit for driving a company to the next level? We are invisible, and with no attachment to what we sell other than the numbers on the cheques we receive.

I’ve battled for many months to conquer the overwhelming feeling of indifference. Truth be told, once the novelty of making good money wears off, it’s pretty tough to be satisfied – unless you’re working on projects that inspire something greater than financial security.

Clearly, an affiliate needs more than just commission to stay motivated.

It’s hard to get out of bed to work on a website if that website is only ever destined to satisfy a disconnected algorithm in Google’s underbelly. How do you motivate yourself to rank for products that, all commission aside, you barely give a rat’s arse about?

I think this is a problem many affiliate marketers face. They simply fall out of love with their projects. They don’t truly believe in them in the way that a driven entrepreneur should.

It’s one of the reasons so few of our projects ever come to fruition. If we don’t enjoy working on them, we can find plenty of reasons not to work on them. I know I can.

I believe I’ve created the world’s most emphatic repertoire of excuses to justify my own lackadaisical attitude to the websites I don’t like working on. Just last night the dog ate my FTP password.

Indifference, lack of passion, lack of excitement… call it whatever you want. We all need to engage in projects where there’s more than just a financial incentive, but something that gets us out of bed too.

And so, the number one piece of advice I give to new affiliates is pretty simple.

If you wouldn’t do exactly what you’re proposing for the reward of $0, then you probably shouldn’t do it at all. It’s passion and the desire to see projects through to their conclusion that separates the rich from the poor in our business. Do yourself a favour and work on something that gets you out of bed, or you’ll find yourself wishing you were back there long before lunch.

Finch

photo by dmwmartin

A couple of weeks back I went along to WordUp Edinburgh which was an informal one day conference about WordPress. Organised by WPScotland it was a good day to see what everyone else is doing with WordPress. Talks ranged from WordPress in large companies through to voluntary organisations with a mixture of presentation and discussion.

I can’t add much to the many good reports about the conference already written but thought I would note some of the many plugins that were suggested throughout the day.

In no particular order….

For Theme Development and Testing

• Log Deprecated Notices
• Debogger
• Theme Check

For Other Stuff….

• Custom Post Type UI – Making life easier for creating Custom Post types.
• Widget Logic – choose when you want your widgets to appear.
• Image Widget – Uploading images to widgets.
• Chimpexpress – Use existing content from your WordPress site to populate your latest Mailchimp newsletter.
• Mailpress – Similar to the above plugin but without using Mailchimp. Probably only suitable for smaller mailing lists.
• WP Help – Create help information as part of the WordPress dashboard. Ideal for handing over a site to a less experienced editor.
• EasyBlogging – Ideal interface for a new user by hiding away all the complicated stuff!
• Rolescoper – Better control over user roles for multi author blogs.
• Zend Gdata – Clever stuff this one. Allows you to link to data stored in Google Docs. I was shown this for linking rota data in a Google Docs Spreadsheet to the Adelaide Place Baptist Church website and I think it also has much wider potential use.
• ManageWP – This is the worker plugin for the main service at ManageWP. Recommended by both Wordskill & Canary Dwarf. Should make life easier for managing a number of different WP installs. I’m going to explore this one a bit further soon.

I’m sure there were many more plugins suggested as solutions to specific questions but that’s all I managed to scribble down over the course of the day

Greetings!  I’m pleased to report the recovery from the horrors of pregnancy is progressing nicely, I know you’ll all have been worrying about me   I’ve got my 19 week scan on Friday of this week and hope to find out if my little child will be selling princess toys or Bob the Builder merchandise!

In other news, I’ve found the time to do a couple of interviews recently and thought you guys might be interested in hearing from me in a second hand sort of way. I haven’t forgotten about you all honestly, I will get to all my planned posts in the end.

Interview 1 – Webtistic

I had a bit of a chat with the lovely Dave Bird of Webtistic fame (for all your SEO, PPC and affiliate management needs – now I want a discount  for that Dave, you know you want to!!!!).

I talked a bit about my current affiliate marketing goings on, what I like and dislike about it, and I didn’t even get cross when they referred to me as a Super Affiliate. As you all know I’m happy being “Pretty Good” but apparently that doesn’t have quite the same ring to it

You can read the interview here.

Interview 2 – Google Panda & SEO Type Stuff

This is basically a rehash of an e-mail conversation I had with someone about my SEO strategies as an affiliate and a bit about Panda recovery related efforts. It was put up after we realised we’d been talking about some pretty interesting stuff! It’s not as detailed as the Panda post I’m planning to (eventually!!!) do, but there’s some interesting content in there that some of you might find interesting or useful. I also mention just how terribly affected by Panda Lingerie Brands really was – get your hankies out because it’s truly bloody tragic.

But will I let Google have the last laugh?  Come on guys, you know me better than that. I’ll get her back in the end

Check out the interview here.

This post is from: Kirsty's Affiliate Marketing Guide - Affiliate Stuff UK

A Couple Of Recent Interviews

Down with King Content – long live user experience!!  The new focus on user experience is coming ever more sharply into the everyday lives of webmasters – and you could be forgiven for thinking that the world of image compression, CDN’s, and theme optimisation is well beyond you.

However, it’s easier than you might think to give your site a bit of a “superspeed” makeover!

Super Easy CDN and Website Protection

We’ve all heard about Content Delivery Networks and cloud servers and similar and many of you may think that implementing one is beyond you. However fear not, the good people at Cloud Flare are riding to your rescue with their FREE CDN.  This system has a five minute install that just about anyone can implement and will not only superspeed your site but also protect it from internet bastards and vagabonds (as I like to call them).

Using data from Project Honeypot it protects your site against spammers, hackers, and other ratbags. I have implemented Cloud Flare on one of my sites and it has halved the download speed. So far this month it has saved my users on one small site 20.7 hours waiting for my pages to load, which also saves me bandwidth.

You can find out more about all the features offered by Cloud Flare on their comprehensive Tour Page.

Get A Speed Monitoring Plugin For Your Browser…

The Firebug plugin lets you use a whole wealth of web development and debug tools as you surf the net using Firefox. On it’s own I find it very handy to nosey around other people’s source code. If you’re interested in how someone’s done something or want to check out an element of your own site without trawling through code, it’s great. You just right click on the bit you want to look at and select “inspect element”. It’s a great everyday timesaver for me.

You can then grab the Site Speed Addon from Google. Given that these are the guys we’re all trying to impress it seems sensible to refine site performance by their standards. There’s also a Chrome Addon. You can access their widget directly through your browser without any addons here.

This cool little tool gives your site performance marks out of 100 and a great big “to do” list. It also has a feature to show you versions of your images which are “losslessly compressed”. You can just save these and upload to your site for improved performance.

My own worst site had a rather dreadful score of 44 / 100 – which we very quickly got up to a 93 / 100 with the help of the Firebug site speed addon.

WordPress Site Speed Plugins and Wizardry

If you have a WordPress site you can do all of the above… and also make use of some handy WordPress resources!

First of all, read Yoast’s Guide to Speeding Up WordPress. He mentions you should install a caching plugin. I use W3 Total Cache which was recommended to me by my hosting company, Clook. I’ve found it to be excellent and regularly updated. It’s recently been updated for better compatibility with Cloud Flare and Yoast’s SEO Plugin. Whilst you’re giving your site a bit of a makeover do download and use this if you haven’t already – I think it’s the absolute dogs danglies and it does all the little SEO tasks that are too easy to forget about when setting up a site.

Don’t forget to grab an image compression plugin – Smushit is from the same guys who created W3 Supercache and is a great tool to squeeze that extra efficiency out of your web pages.

That’s pretty much everything I’ve personally used recently – if any of you guys have anything to add to this resource please post in the comments below – I’d love you to add your own hints and tips!

This post is from: Kirsty's Affiliate Marketing Guide - Affiliate Stuff UK

Superspeed Me – An Easy Guide To Speeding Up Your Website

Want to experience a day in my shoes and find out why this blog has been a little quiet recently despite my wild promises of more top quality affiliate prose now I’m back home?

Just follow this easy step by step guide to seeing the affiliate world through my eyes and all shall be revealed dear readers…

1. Locate a convenient greenhouse. Perhaps see if the botanical gardens in London can accommodate.
2. Move your office desk in there.
3. Increase the ambient temperature to 32c (that’s 89.6f).
4. Just for a bit of a giggle, whack up the humidity to around 95%.
5. Now do 6 hours affiliate related work in those temperatures with just a fan to cool you down.
6. Endure several browser crashes per day because your computer system is too hot. This will usually be at a crucial moment and will enrage you considerably.
7. Once you’ve finished your days work, pause to push your glasses back on your nose (they’ll have been sliding off for quite some time) and decide should you a ) think up a dazzling bit of blog prose or b ) rush off and spend some quality time under a cold shower before dropping insensible onto the sofa.
8. Now you know why I haven’t been blogging.
Image credit: CartoonADay.com

Don’t even dare ask why my office isn’t air conditioned – in this house nothing is as simple as selecting a single job and just doing it. Because we’re mid renovation even the simplest tasks seem to end up requiring an entire section of wall to be replaced, major drainage works, and some kind of retaining wall to be constructed.

It’s Not Only The Temperature That’s Been Distracting Me

Other than wrestling with blazing hot computer keyboards and still trying to do a reasonable days work I’ve also been having a hot time of it at the hands of Google.

In my last post about how affiliates need to lift their game I didn’t mention that one of my own sites had been affected by the rumblings from the Google jungle (although I spoke about it in the comments section). Lingerie Brands has had a rather nasty gouge taken out of its traffic and rankings and I’ve been spending a lot of time working out how we will redevelop the site to keep Google happy.

Initially I thought it could be a “thin affiliate” filter being applied, however I’ve since realised that it’s not so much my site having a blanket type filter applied as other sites being deemed more appropriate to rank higher in the SERPS.

I don’t want to go into it too much here but I’ve found where I’ve lost rankings I’ve largely been replaced by merchants themselves and sites doing interesting and useful type stuff with product feeds. Where I’m still ranking A-OK there’s not so many merchants or sites of that nature in the space. Also, if it had been an adjustment to their thin affiliate filter I’d have expected my other similarly structured mens underwear site to be affected – but it’s not. In fact its got more traffic than ever.

So I’ve spent a sweltering week working out a redevelopment brief for good ‘ol LB so she can keep up with the times. In all honestly, its long overdue. The current site format is old, tired, and needs to improve the value it adds to the users. I’ve known that for quite some time and Google’s just sent me the loud and clear message that they couldn’t agree more! I’ll post more on this when my thoughts are more… cogent!

I’m actually very happy this has happened in an odd way – I’m going to be able to add in all sorts of little time saving functionalities to my site and we will then also be able to roll out similar principles to our other sites and redevelop those also.

2011 is going to be an interesting year and so long as it cools down a bit – I’m really looking forward to it

This post is from: Kirsty's Affiliate Marketing Guide - Affiliate Stuff UK

Inside The Affiliate Greenhouse

Remember me?  Odd Scottish girl who likes to ramble on a bit about affiliate marketing?

Hehehe, I’ve had a handful of people wondering where the hell I’ve gotten to recently after an unprecedented silence on this blog. The answer is quite simple – I decided to take a complete and utter break from affiliate marketing for the last few weeks of my holiday and was mostly successful (barring having to upgrade my website servers around Christmas and being repeatedly woken from my bed by downtime alerts).

I did miss talking to you guys though

Back Into The Dynamic Cut and Thrust…

Urgh, they say breaking up is never easy but honestly it should be getting back together is never easy. I’ve now resumed my relationship with affiliate marketing and have spent the most dispiriting 4 days slogging through a pile of admin type tasks I’ve let build up. I definately lost the will to live a couple of times this week. But that’s all completely normal type stuff and it never takes long for something to reignite my spark.

What A Difference 4 Months Makes!

As soon as I got down to surveying my own personal affiliate landscape in depth I realised there’s been some massive changes for me whilst I’ve been on my extended break. My PPC is now barely registering on the spendometer, Christmas was “steady” rather than a “woah!!!!”, and my sources of income have altered wildly.

Thanks to my unwillingness to push my luck with Adwords this year, some programme changes, and some niches that have traditionally done well just not going off for me during December / January – I’m out into uncharted territory. However, I’ll still end this month 30% up on January last year thanks to one of my newer sites which has neatly stepped in to take up all that slack and then some.

And That’s What I LOVE About Affiliate Marketing

Ahh, the romance is back on!  I adore the ever changing, always challenging, and often perplexing nature of trying to keep making a living at this game.  If you stand still or rest on your laurels things invariably fall apart.  What you thought was the solid bedrock of your business turns to sand and dribbles through your unresponsive fingers if you don’t keep on pushing and innovating.  My business today is only still on the up because I enjoy and embrace the double edged nature of the business – even when it’s cutting me to damned well ribbons

But more about all these changes when I’ve had more time to analyse and ruminate on them!

Queensland Floods

As I’m sure most of you realise I’ve made my home in Queensland. Fortunately I live on the Sunshine Coast and despite a huge amount of rain falling we have been spared the devastation that’s unfolded in the rest of the state. My house is absolutely choked with mould, my front door has swollen to twice it’s normal size, and my house was infested with termites thanks to all the damp weather. I count myself incredibly lucky considering all the terrible flooding and tragic stories, and will be kept busy with the clean up for quite a few weeks to come.

If you’d like to make a donation to help those affected by the floods you can do so at this site here.

We did have an interesting feature crop up at the bottom of our garden which I think will demonstrate just how much water the sky can throw at you here in the sub tropics.

Should there be a creek at the bottom of our garden dear? I'm sure it wasn't there yesterday!

Meanwhile, Enjoy These Travel Pics

On a more sunny note, we did manage to find a bit of good weather recently – so here’s a some  sunshine pics to show you all that Queensland really is an incredibly beautiful place and a bit of what we’ve been up to since I last posted.

Walking along the best beach in the world with my friends - Whitehaven

Duncs chills out on our Whitsundays boat trip

Our birdseye view of the NYE Fireworks on Sydney Harbour

More from me soon, and any pictures from now on are more likely to be of mould than any gorgeous beaches!!

This post is from: Kirsty's Affiliate Marketing Guide - Affiliate Stuff UK

What Do You Mean Who Are You?