Unacceptable Affiliate / Merchant Communication / Actions

Bob Saver has started a pretty interesting thread on A4U about the Which? Magazine merchant on TD. He comments:

They are suspending paying out on the programme when the budget has gone(around 22nd Dec) until the end of the month, when the January budget kicks in. But that's ok - there was a couple of days notice. Don't worry about all the careful
search engine optimisation the affiliates have been doing - we'll have the trial but we just won't pay for it.

For me 2006 has been characterised by absolutely woeful merchant & network communication. Affiliates have been moved down the order of priorities for both parties.

There have been so many merchants that have treated us affiliates like shit. You could say that it's part of the industry and we should just cope with it. But us affiliates should make a stand and name and shame those merchants and networks that don't:

a) give us reasonable notice before suspending campaigns
b) give us adequate notice of a change in commissions
c) don't pay on time
d) inform us that their site architecture will change so deep links won't work

So my merchants that don't give us what we deserve are:

1) Which?
2) Beautyslueth

So how do you start a new site?

There's so much talk about this and an interesting thread has been started about this topic at the A4U Forum.

It all started from a comment reportedly from Mike Grehan which was:

"Sit down, look at your site. Write down 10 reasons why people would want to link to your Web site. If you can’t get past 5, you’ve created your own sandbox."

Totally right! This is what you need to do before you do anything else. I'd say even ignore your design and usability. Look at your site content in Word, Open office, TextPad form or whatever you use.

Don't even have your pc connected to the internet and think, "is this content useful to anyone?"

I'm saying you have to do anything totally unique or even substantially better than your competitors. Just find some USP's (unique selling points).

Find out what you offer that is different to others:

• Is it the tone and the humour which you deliver your message?
• Do you mix various forms of information in a manner that others don't?
• Do you have knowledge or understanding of your topic that is in demand and you have the ability to communicate it effectively?
• Do you offer others the ability to interact on the subject matter that others don't.

So the first stage would be to start off thinking about do you have great content?

If the answer to that question is affirmative, then move on to the next question, are you displaying the content in a format that is consistent with the subject? Make the people feel at home. Some game review sites would be dark - it's the audience you're catering for. If you're targeting a family audience make things bold, bright and clear.

So you've matched your content to a design that makes your audience feel comfortable think about how you offer interaction.

If it's right for your audience add a detailed and structured forum. If your users are less likely to register then create a simple comment form.

Offer your audience the opportunity to market your site for you - but in a manner in which they'll like. Some site's it'll be completely useless to add digg and furl links - your audience may not use them. But a "send this article to a friend" form may work for them, or a some quirky game/humour/voucher code stuff would work for a different audience.

One thing that is consistent: capture user email addresses. Some may expect a big hefty form that asks them about their interests but another group of visitors may only fill in a quick name + email addy form.

Some types of audience would expect regular contact, others may one expect an email/broadcast a couple of times a year.

So when you've really nailed your audience, you've got the content, design and interaction matched tightly with your target audience what should you do next?

Well link-building is so old hat. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't seek links. Find relevant directories and submit your sight. There is nothing wrong with submitting your site to generalist and niche directories.

Second. Contact those that you know and see if they have a site on similar topic. Ask them if a link to your site would benefit their users? If so, ask them to do it, ideally ask for a paragraph or two about your site.

Third. Go back to your USP's, think about what makes your site different, think about is there a news story here? Don't worry about getting on the front page of The Times. Just think about your niche and if it is of worth to them knowing about it. Think about what your niche's reaction would be if they saw your site mentioned somewhere and what they'll think about the news story and your site. If you think they'll turn their noses up at either then work out another story.

When you've got a story sorted then you've got two choices:

1. Create your own press release and send it to PRWeb and niche syndication services;
2. Pay a PR agency to do it.

It's your call but be prepared to take questions via phone and/or email. You need to be confident about your offering.

Create some buzz. But if you've got a MFA site, another clone shopping directory or price comparison service and you're actually adding no value to the world or the Internet - go back to bed and come up with something useful.

Unless you don't really "give a" about if you make a mint out of SEO, e-PR, SEM or anything. You may just create a site for a laugh, posterity or whatever. But if you do want to make a pile, then do it right from the start!

What I'm listening to: Here I go again - Whitesnake

SES London 13th 15th February

Anyone going to Search Engine Strategies in London this Feb?

Well I would have, but some daft sod booked it up over Valentine's Day. Are they mad? We don't all live in commuting distance of London and can't make it back for the "festivities" so will probs have to go to the New York Search Engine Strategies in April. Anyone going to that?

Blog-Tagged

The great affiliate meister that is James Little has blog-tagged me (what ever that is). So what I do now is add is a list five things that you probably didn't know about me ...

1) I'm not as intelligent as you may think. Every post I make I outsource to India and they concoct every word drawing on the combined power of a small village just a few miles from the Kashmiri border.

2) I almost qualified as a formula 1 driver but my lazy eye, colour-blindness and poor spacial perception let me down. And what ever Pete Dickenson says, I've never crashed anything in my life.

3) I don't actually make any money from affiliate marketing. My lifestyle is supported by various acts of kindness by people that feel sorry for my obvious social and intellectual inadequacies.

4) I've slept with half of the affiliate marketing industry! No really that is a joke!

5) I never wear anything pink, despite the computer generated "photos" going around the internet.

I tag Aaron Wall, Pete Dickenson, Alan Gilmour, Dan Morley, Louise, Brian Edwards

Christmas: It chuffing pays the bills

Well I've been out for a ruby with some mates and generally talked about work and women etc. However, the important issue that came to light is .... Christmas only comes around once a year and thank fook for that!

We all put too much pressure on each other buying presents and the expectations from your family and friends can be a bit too much.

But my take on it is that Christmas pays my bills, without having Christmas to work for this job would be a damn site less interesting.

I start planning Christmas SEO and PPC back in February / March of that year. I sit down and work out what domains I've got hanging around and which I could make something of. I also look at what products are coming out that year and try and match a decent domain to match. I do a lot of research and do buy a few too many domains for them - but I don't mind taking a risk with a couple of quid per domain and maybe spending a day setting up a basic site that I could do a bit of test ppc on.

If the product converts during that test then I'll go for it and spend a couple of days refining the PPC, design, really get to grips with the merchant and try and get some simple linking in done.

Perhaps I won't share my successes with you just yet, but I'll show a failure. A site like "Pink iPods" has shed loads of people looking for that product but far too few actually interested in buying. I thought about it, I've got some decent merchants on there, I've got Amazon which converts like a dream on my other sites but nowt much happened. After wasting a couple of hundred quid on ppc, I decided to pull the plug and see if any natural traffic comes along. Even with my "red ipod" site, it ranks chuffing well, but still very poor conversions.

Learnings:
It's all well picking products to build sites around and/or ppc. But at the end of the day it's all about conversions and how much each sale will earn you. Most electricals pay poor rates so unless you've got the rare ability to convert high searched on terms with relatively high costs into loads of sales - choose something less competitive and with decent commissions. Trust me those products exist!

What I'm listening to: Big Love, Fleetwood Mac