Affiliate Marketing Questions and Answers

I tend to get a lot of questions emailed to me enquiring about how to get involved with Affiliate Marketing. Now while I don't have time to answer them all personally I thought I would reply to a few on here and give out some general advice to anyone looking to get involved in AM.

BTW guys please try to give me as much info as possible and be as specific as you can when emailing me. Questions like the first one don't give me enough information to go on/

1. Question from John:

Hi,

I have had an affiliate site since September 2004 which started at nothing obviously and turn into making £900-£1,000 a month, now traffic has gone and sales are rare.

After reading your blog and seeing your bank statement in Dec 05 I think you are the most successful Affiliate I have seen and you seem like a really nice down to earth guy.

Can you give me some advice on what to do next ?, I love this business and can put whatever I have into making it a success but I have run out of ideas and don't know where to go next.

I am self-employed doing this, so obviously if I make nothing, then I get nothing so I have to turn things around somehow.

Thanks for your time

Kind Regards

John.

John I've posted your question as its kind of an example of what not to ask! Sorry, but maybe you can give me some specifics on what markets you are active in. Send your URL too and I will be happy to help.

2. Question from Adam:

Hello Kieron, First may I offer my thanks for creating such a great blog, and for being so open about your Affiliate Marketing practices. I will try to keep this email short as I'm sure you're a very busy man.

I write to you as a total n00b, and would be very grateful if you would give me guidance on the following points:

Firstly, are there any books (or ebooks) that you would recommend reading on Affiliate Marketing? I'm aware there are 1000s of "get rich quick" type books, but I wondered if you knew of any truly valuable sources on this subject.

Secondly, I noticed you have mentioned the A4U forums numerous timeson your blog. Is there anyway you could give me a few thread links that show information for beginners? I signed up there and spent a good hour searching through the various sub-forums. However I was rather disappointed when I could not find any information detailing the basics.

Thank you for your time and I hope to hear from you. Kind Regards, Adam

Well I can honestly say that I have never read any ebooks on Affiliate Marketing or any other subject for that matter. I kind of have a distrust of ebooks in so much that if you are successful in a given subject then why write a book about it and potentially create your own competitors?

The way I learned about the industry was entirely self taught, I've posted a list below of forums that I can recommend that are very informative as well as blogs by industry leaders. Read these, read them again then put some ideas into practice is what I would recommend. There are no single threads that I can recommend, instead just read it all!!

Forums:

A4U Forum
Sitepoint Forum
Digital Point Forum
Wickedfire Forum
Wickedfire Forum
Webmaster World Forum
ABestWeb Forum

Blogs:

Affiliate Blog - Fraser's blog with loads of good podcasts from people in AM.
Affiliate Marketing Blog - Clarke's blog. Clarke is an affiliate, network and merchant so expect lots of different points of view on here.
Jess's Blog - News and views from the leading AM lady here in the UK.
Paul's Blog - News and views from Paul who works at a new media agency and manages lots of affiliate programs.
Lee's Blog - Well known affiliate and SEO fella.
James's Blog - Affilaite manager and all round good guy who helps me out with techy blog stuff.
Paul's Blog - Long time affiliate with strong views on the UK AM scene.
Jason's Blog - Another long time affiliate who runs one of the biggest UK competition sites amongst others.
Shoemoney's Blog - All things internet related blog from one of the big players in the US.
Frostie's Blog - New blog from my drinking partner, Frostie :)

There are also a couple of blog aggregators that compile stories from the above blogs as well as some that I missed:

Bumpzee and Internet Marketing Blogs.

Between the forums and blogs there is more than enough information and tips to help anyone thinking of making a go in Affiliate Marketing.

3. Question from Irfan:

Hello Kieron,

I have been a reader of your blog for little while and i must say that todays post shocked me a little bit.

"5. I don't know the difference between a datafeed and a database, php and html, web 2.0 and web 1.0. But I still manage to make a decent living from this web malarky."

You see i am in the process of trying to get a website idea to happen. Although i am a programmer, due to time limitations i am looking to get someone else to do my site for me. Please keep in mind that this is not a landing page with affiliate type site, it it pretty heavy on the functionality side with no adds or affiliates (for now).

What i need your help and advice on is how you go about managing your web development projects, do you keep it local or overseas, meet in person,phone,IM.....etc.

Please let me know if you dont mind me adding you to my google/msn chat.

Thanks for your time.

Irfan Rehman.

Originally I outsourced my projects from overseas developers via Elance. However this proved really troublesome having to deal with different time zones, people who ripped you off and the general unreliability of people I had to deal with. So from Elance I posted on some UK business/startup forums asking for people who were looking for work in certain areas. This worked well for a while and I made some good contacts who worked remotely on my behalf. However this too wasn't ideal as I would get sick of writing huge briefs for projects and then proofing and double proofing stuff via email/messenger/phone.

So in the end I decided to employ full time staff. To be honest its something I have always shyed away from as I like the idea of working from home when I like. However I am finding that employing people on a full time basis is by the far the most effective in terms of cost and productivity.

4. Question from Chris:

Hi Kieron

I've been reading your posts on various places including your blog for a while, I always find it hard as I'm involved with some fairly big sites traffic wise but the monetary return is sometimes really demotivating then I read your posts and always think we can get there one day!

For example we are currently pulling in 100+ referrals a day alone for 'nintendo wii'

Every time I dabble in CPA no matter for what site I don't find the returns that great, the kickback is usually only a few percent so even on larger £100+ orders I'm lucky if I see a few pounds, so I usually do some basic maths:

-If I send tradedoubler for example 10 sales from 100 clicks I might make £20
-Using contextual ads like google, from the same 100 clicks even at 25p per click I'd make more, £25

And if you had a few spare minutes if you could suggest what a good merchant might be that would also be appreciated (Game seems to the best at the moment with 3%, although HMV are cheaper so might return more sales)

Thanks in advance

Chris

This email is typical of a few I have had lately. It seems that there are a lot of new affiliates out there promoting game consoles and the like. The problem is that competition is high in this sector and the CPA's are low. So lets say a console sells for £200 and has a 2.5% CPA, thats a grand total of £5. Which isn't bad if you have organic traffic but if you are doing a ppc campaign you will usually see clicks from 20p to 50p which makes it extremely hard to make a profit.

So my advice would be if you have a hobby site that gets organic listings then great, promote consoles. If not then don't even attempt it via ppc. Instead hunt for those niches that haven't yet been exploited. Easier said than done but I see so many new affiliates diving into competitive areas that it just doesn't make sense. Take some time out to do some research first, look for trends too and try to stay ahead of the curve. What will be the next big thing? The latest craze? The latest fashion? etc etc.

If anyone else has any questions relating to Affiliate Marketing then please email questions@here.org.uk and I promise to have a few Q&A sessions in the future.

What I'm listening to right now: Donnell Jones - Journey of a Gemini

Affiliate Marketing