An affiliate marketing blog - a no nonsense guide to affiliate marketing. According to the Institute of Direct Marketing "[one of the] five most commonly quoted blogs in the UK" [cough]!
I really find iTunes annoying - you can't filter down different types of genres into its constituent parts, the search is crap and the Store is just as bad!
Now there's the Amazon Music store where you can download MP3s for just 99c (50p ish) I've not tried it out yet, but I will do when I'm back home. But for me, it's just fantastic.
In iTunes you can (as far as I'm aware) find top level crap but with the Amazon Music Store I can choose: Blues > Contemporary Blues. Then see what other people have bought that have bought the album I've selected. I can also review related categories that may be in other genres - fantastic.
I remember one day my brother, who runs a freelance web design business at mccoy.co.uk, was telling me about the number of emails he receives from people complaining about the discontinued range of McCoy's Crisps and how can they do it?
But the interesting thing is that if you search for "mccoys", or "mccoys crisps" his site doesn't appear. Even when you search for "McCoy" his site is 1st with "Freelance Web designer" in the title, the Mccoy's Massage parlour is second and my site third!
So people have been typing in the domain name thinking it's the company one and not even looking at his content about webdesign, family photos etc and finding the contact form and then venting their spleen. I'm going to recommend he puts up a link to Vision Direct on his homepage!
But the same thing happens with me. Luckily (ok down to hard work) I appear mainly first for a Microsoft Product name and do well for other brand names purely by SEO and I constantly get emails from people wanted product support. Where I know the answer I'll reply to them but still point them to the official support sites. But I still waste a good amount of time each week replying.
My view is that it helps foster a positive perception of the site and hopefully they'll refer it to other people, or if they blog, they'll link to it. But do you think I should just ignore them and spend my time building content, or just say "unofficial" more obviously?
I'm going to see how it fits in with my clients' needs, but it seems that the demographic filters are very limited - age and gender! That's it!
It does give an extra layer to exclude clicks and increase your ROI, by finding which demographics don't convert for you and prevernting them from being shown your ads. But I would like to go further and go down the route I detailed in point 2 in my post "What will affiliate marketing be like in 5 years" - but they're obviously concerned about the privacy issues.
One thing at a time I suppose!
P.s. anyone want to tell them that they're sign-up button does'nt work?
I'm lazy! No, I'm very busy and don't have a lot of time to research additional products and build links. In fact I was supposed to do this post yesterday as well as some client work. The problem is that I like to do everything correctly, so some times it pushes things back .
I spend most of my time writing content and finding new niches. So following on from my post about how Google has allowed me to make my affiliate business more streamlined, efficient, responsive and profitable, I thought I'd post about how I find products to link to and how I create them.
Unlike some, I don't spend ages reviewing commission rates etc. I do spend time getting to know merchants and can instinctively know (generally) if they'll convert. Perhaps it's something like what Malcolm Gladwell wrote in his book "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking"?
I don't like having my affiliate links visible to the search engines. They're normally fine if you have sites with a load of unique content, but I don't want to be at risk if they decide to tweak the dial a bit. So having them invisible via robots.txt and noindex, nofollow are essential.
So when I've written a load of content about a product I'll do it in a set way:
1) Use the Affiliate Window's ShopWindow service on central domain that I own. I'll search for the products and then build the links from that.
For example, if I was looking to find merchants for the "SanDisk Sansa Express 2Gb MP3 Player" I'd search for it on the domain and use their preformated deeplinks and drop them in my blogs.
However, if I was commenting on products coming out in the future, I'd link to a search results page.
The issue here is that if you work in markets that Affilaite Window don't have many feed merchants on board then you could have issues. Thankfully I work mainly in the toy / consumer electronics area and they do very well on it.
2) The second stage is to search for the product in Amazon and add a link to them. They generally convert like a dream and are a firm favourite of mine - despite having a quasi-session cookie.
3) I'll search for the product in Google and see which merchants appear in the natural results or are bidding. If there are any I like I'll take the effort to build links. If they're with POR, Webgains, Affilaite Future, they're more chance of getting a deep link than if they were with Buy.at and they'll have more chance than TD and they'll have more chance than if they were with CJ. It's just my generalised view of how easy it is to create deeplinks (balanced with other criteria I mentioned on the A4Uforum)
4) Sometimes I'll use widgets from Amazon or Affiliate Window, but they don't typically fit well in my templates (Awin are doing an additional size).
5) Sometimes I'll link to Kelkoo, but as I do targetted SEO, it is often far better for me to look at % sales than pseudo-CPC merchants.
So for me, I'm more likely to promote merchants on Awin within my niches because they make it very easy for me to link to their merchants. Sometimes I don't have a choice (like the other night trying to get my head round the deeplinking rules for Thorntons on buy.at), but I'll naturaIlly put some networks into a "if I really have to" category when it comes to monetising my posts.
5) That's why POR are up there with their Deeplink Generator. You simply find a merchant you want to create a deeplink for, drop the product url in there and it does the rest (expect for putting your own tracking id in).
6) I even went through a stage of using the Buy.at widget to search for products and then take the deeplinks out. That works too!
7) Although it doesn't convert them into SEO-friendly links (if that exists), the Affiliate Future "Shopping Search" still helps you find a wider range of links and shouldn't be ignored.
p.s. we've come a long way since Kevin Edwards emailed me asking me why I "don't like Affiliate Window?"
Anyone want to know how to stuff loads of keywords into Google and they can't see it? Well it looks like they haven't done anything about it yet?
Well take a look at this:
I've personally spent half an hour to set up a site to test how these lists of words are treated. And from the looks of this offending site, it seems to stay in the index at the very least. I'd just hopped these tactics went out with the arc!
mmm interesting stuff
I wish I hadn't thrown my black hat away :-( when you also see stuff like this:
I'm watching the United Youth Team play against Crewe in the fourth round of the Youth FA Cup and the phone goes. I've got a migraine from hell - and its 8:15 PM - do I answer it?
Well I did and it was the MD of iiRobotics wanting to talk about a post I made on here about their affiliate programme where I saw a transaction disappear which made me post my thoughts and pull back my promotion. Also it appeared they spammed my site and Facebook group - he assured me they didn't. He also gave me the run down of the ethics of the business and how they tried to communicate with their customer base and affiliates (I missed that latter bit - I was freeking hectic about that time though!).
Well my old man always said "turn every threat into an opportunity" and as I work heavily in the toy robot industry it looks like we'll be working closely together on the new robots coming out this year. (Wes - this isn't the post you're looking for ;-) )
I wonder how many MD of merchants would call you up at 8:15 PM asking to talk about your bitter views of them. Ok, apart from Zak?
Mr Jobs is part-way through his Macworld presentation and there does look to be some cool stuff coming out of Apple.
Not least the Time Capsule back up system for Macs. But also loads of gadgets for the iPhone and iPods!
For the iPod touch they're adding Mail, maps, stocks notes and weather - I may actually upgrade now!
They're also launching iTunes movie rentals with co-operation from Touchstone, MGM, Miramax, Lions Gate, Fox, WB, Walt Disney, Paramount, Universal and Sony.
It'll cost $2.99 to rent a library film and $3.99 for a new release.
Basically you have 24 hours to start to watch it and then you have 24 hours to finish it. To me this far beats Virgin Media as I think some of the films are over priced and a bit clunky.
The new version of iTunes launches today!
You can also download youtube videos from it (I was waiting for that) as well as HD 5.1" sound quality movies (but that's $1 more). You can also get tv shows for $1.99 an episode.
They're also relaunching Apple TV where you won't need a pc/mac to operate it!
There's also a fantastic hook-up with flickr so you can view your (and other's) photos on there. And all this is a free upgrade to the current ATV software.
And don't forget you can get the movies and tv shows on to your iPod and iPhone straight from iTunes.
But it works the other way too! Working with Fox they're creating DVDs that you can move a copy into iTunes. (er what - why can't you just download it? Oh the same reason why I still by CD's - I like having something physical - right!)
They're also launching MacBook Air - the world's thinest notebook (I'm glad I bought that domain at 7am this morning :-)
It's about 2cm thick and thats thinner than the Zony TZ!
It's got an 80gb hard drive and a backlit keyboard.
To save battery life you can watch movies wirelessly from Apple TV. You can also install software wirelessly - now this is freeking fantastic!
The affiliates' view of Google just reminds me of the Monty Python - Life of Brian sketch: "What have the Romans ever done for us?"
Watch it here:
Every week now there's a thread on the A4UForum complaining that Google has kicked them out of the SERPS or they've changed AdWords to increase minimum bids or remove duplicate display URLS or some other supposed action solely designed to harm affiliates.
I take the contrary view. I believe Google has done massive amounts to help us affiliates.
So what has Google ever done for us affiliates?
I just look at my affiliate business about 4 years ago. I could get away with murder, creating massive MFA sites. But the reason I did this was that I was basically forced to do it. I had no tools to streamline the creation of sites or the collection of useful information. I only had Webmerge which allowed me create tens of thousands of pages a day. I just couldn't be bothered using Dreamweaver to create useful sites - it was boring!
I had the stick from Google before they gave me the carrot. They all-but kicked my main revenue earning site out of the index and started to make Adwords less profitable for affiliates.
But then came the Google carrots and what forms the basis of my view that Google has done an awful lot for affiliates:
1) Blogger I can design sites, some may disagree, but I can do it. The thing is I don't enjoy it. I don't like spending a day working on a template, setting up the internal linking, making sure content fits and faffing around with the affiliate links - it bores me to tears.
When Blogger came about it was like a breath of fresh air. I didn't notice many other UK affiliates using blogging as a "route to market" back in late 2005 but I saw the opportunities to streamline my business and product useful content in a manner that Internet users would find easy to digest.
I can now create new sites in less than an hour. This leaves me more time to focus on the content - which I'm sure Google wants.
Whilst other use Wordpress, I stick to Blogger because its damn simple to use and doesn't allow me to waste time faffing with widgets, wodgets and gadgets - I focus on whats important - content!
2) Google News Alerts Google News Alerts for a fair while the main source of information for writing my blog posts. I'd put the keywords in and every day I'd be emailed the relevant news and gossip. I'd then blog about it. It's also a good way to way to monitor your own "brand". I now have to spend less time searching for content, It now comes to me. Google has saved me even more time.
3) Google Reader Google Reader is another fantastic tool to keep up with your favourite industries. This has also streamlined the affiliate industry and kept up more-up-to-date.
4) Google Analytics I can't do without my Google Analytics, you can cut and dice, explore keywords variations, understand your traffic much easier than other tools - I just love it. It's certainly helped my affiliate business.
The top four I know are also offered elsewhere, but no one else does it the Google way!
5) Feedburner I know Feedburner was bought by Google, but it's a fantastic Google tool. If you use it for your blog's RSS tool then you can get content into Google in minutes.
6) Google Webmaster Tools This is another fantastic Google Tool. You can obviously check how many pages Google is crawling, spot errors in your site, know when they're pissed off with you, set the geographic location of your sites. Any affiliate that doesn't use this tool, is either a direct to merchant PPC guy or stupid (nb. they're not mutually exclusive ;-) )
8) Matt Cutts Matt gives the community in general a heads up about stuff they shouldn't be doing and often gives examples of sites that have crossed the line. Every affiiate that thinks they're on the edge of acceptability should check in here regularly.
9) Google Blogs You can't say that Google doesn't communicate with it's users. You're always aware of new products they're releasing. You can keep up to date with changes to all their tools with the Google blogs.
10) Blog Search I don't think Google's blog search is as good as Technorati, but it's another tool in an affiliates armoury and does help affiliates get their message out and find new content.
11) Google Trends This really helps me spot the cyclical nature of certain products and events. It also allows me to compare sites I've worked on. I mostly work in stuff launching in the future so could they now work on a tool to do that please?
12 Related Searches Many searches will result in a list of eight other related keyphrases. It doesn't take a genious to work out how this can help!
Overall, Google has massively helped my affiliate business. And if you really think about it, I'm sure it's helped yours too! It's those that spend most of their time moaning about Google are the one's that haven't done their research and are in touch with their thinking so can't predict how they will try and clean up their offering and make it appealing for their audience. Just because you create a site, it doesn't mean that everyone is going to love it and it deserves a place in their index. It doesn't work that way!
So what has Google ever done for affiliates? Answer: Shit loads!
Part of the reason I became less communicative was that I didn't want people to copy what I was doing. I've been open (to a degree) about my strategies in general and sometimes mentioned sites that I work on specifically.
This is now going to change. I'm sorry, but people, dare I say it "friends", are copying what I'm doing. So I won't be mentioning any tactics I use or any sites I'm working on.
Update: The person(S) involved have said it's coincidence and anyone "with half a brain" would be doing the same - probs.
I've apologised for getting "the ump" but it still remains I'm going to keep tight-lipped about stuff I'm working on publically. But there still remains a close-knit community that I'll discuss ideas with and give my advice. It's a two-way street. But those of us that do discuss ideas always know that we'd never copy each other in their niches.
This sort of co-operation has made me and one mate in particular probs about £200,000 between us as we'd recommend tools to each other and then pass on what worked and what didn't. I just hope there are more "co-operatives" in the industry.
I've not received it yet, but if ya wanna through in a Clix 2 Cradle too I'd find it easier to review on my MP3 Player blog ;-)
I only did about 70/80 sales with them over the three networks in December, which to be honest, was a disappointment. The thing was that I had some other opportunities to make a fair whack so I focused my time there.
It has been one of my "resolutions" to spend my time on my MP3 site so I hope to get the top prize this Christmas.
Again I'd like to say thanks to Josh and Existem for coming up with a great incentive.
p.s. if that was to saccharin for you, I'll send some lemon - just email me your address!
When you're working on future projects do you discuss them with other affiliates?
When you're having success with sites do you disclose it to "friends or acquaintances"?
I've been copied on stuff recently, whether it is intentional or co-incedence is one thing, but the good thing is that they were at least two months behind the rush.
I've made my mint and am now on to the next craze - good luck!
I've been toying with the idea of doing a discount code site for a while. I used to run one back along which listed sites that offer postable vouchers but got bored with it. But Nadeem has roused my interest in them again.
I've just found the voucher code site is listed in Dmoz and has a PR3, but I also have a PR4 site I'm doing absolutely nothing with. My concern is that this site is still tainted with the black hat stuff that I used to put on there.
So let me know what YOU think I should do ...
Update: Well I've started the process now and I've whacked all my old content and QC'd it into my new discount codes site. I have no doubt that it won't compete with the big boys - but incremental sales are always nice.
I'm going to try a few markteing tactics that others haven't tried - so it'll be interesting to see how well it does.
Now I've got to add up-to-date content and brand it up, as well as work on my other sites.
I'd love it if more affiliate marketeers would put their views down in blogs - so we can progress the industry and get to know each other.
This blog may not be the highest trafficked - I'm generally not concerned with off-topic posts about general crap and I don't go out of my way to get every man and his robotic-dog to the site either. I'm more interested in attracting active affiliate marketeers as well as hopefully giving my experiences to those just entering the industry.
So here goes, the stats of this site, keywords and marketing strategies that gained it traffic in 2007.
Visits
I was a slow to get into the site and really find a style that I found comfortable with. I was not really focused on trying to fix the industry's ills at first, basically I waffled about inane rubbish in the early months. When I started writing about pertinent stuff people started visiting more. I suppose that's a lesson for any blog.
Where Visitors Came From There were 247 different sites that delivered traffic. I won't print the whole list, but here are some highlights (I'll linkafy them latter - just dashing out):
Affiliates4u.com
Google Organic
Direct (ok so this isn't another site)
Bumpzee
a4uforum.co.uk
here.org.uk (thanks Kieron - but not all were nice comments)
internetmarketingblogs.co.uk
Google.com referral (I'll have to check that badboy out)
Stumbleupon.com
Digg.com
affiliateprogramadvice.com (thanks Jess)
netvibes.com
kiethbond.co.uk (thanks Kieth)
bloglines.com
sphinn.com
mybloglog
Mooseontheloose.co.uk (thanks Paul)
Technorati
onelittleduck.co.uk (thanks Jason)
affiliateblog.co.uk (thanks Fraser)
google.co.uk
dfinitive.com
Yahoo!
exwebjunkie.com (thanks James)
5staraffliliateprograms.com
DavidFiske.com (thanks David)
3wdl.co.uk (thanks James again)
googlewebbmastercentral.blogpost.com
aol
facebook
affiliatestuff.co.uk
webaffiliate
affiliatemarketingblog.co.uk (thanks supercod)
affiliatefortunecookies.com
lammo.net (thanks John)
jamesavery.co.uk (thanks James)
live
azam.info (thanks Nadeem)
searchengineland
peterdickenson.com (thanks Pistol)
affiliatetip.com
affiliatewidow.co.uk (thanks Jules)
blog.webgains.co.uk
chris-boshop.blogspot.com
davidnaylor.com
Do you see a trend? Well there's an awful lot of other affiliate blogs linking in. I've also got some agencies and networks linking in. Write content that interests other affiliates and they'll comment on what you say and expand on it. It all helps.
But not all those links came from links in posts, some came from comments that I'd left - especially on the Google blogs. If you have a blog and want others to visit yours, contribute to other blogs.
But don't be too overt - I can't stand these blog posts purely aimed at getting links for examples, pictures of messy desks etc. They work but they're crap if you ask me!
Keywords I'm sure you know already, but you'll get traffic from keywords you never thought you'd get. In fact I got traffic from 2,247 keywords in 2007, most of them were pretty obscure. Obviously I thought some people would search on my name (not being vain), but "facebook bnp" was a bit of a surprise, I commented on Facebook's over-reaction and it got picked up well. There's a tip for you, comment on stuff in the news early on and you'll get traffic from it.
Also I occasionally go slightly off topic, the final stage in the e-commerce process (apart from after sales customer support) is the delivery. 2007 saw me get outraged with crap couriers, and my post about City Link still gets traffic now. So there's another tip: comment on what people are interested in, or gets their back up!
Most Popular Posts/Pages The top four were me playing around with the title tag of the homepage. But after that the most popular posts were:
Sky are you listening? You're a bunch of lying, self-obsessed, ignorant, arrogant, stupid bastards and just points to why I dumped you for a virgin!
I asked you to cancel my account in October, you only cancelled one box. You kept taking my money even when I asked you not to. I phoned up to complain and you said I was wrong. After half an hour on the phone you finally agreed that I was owed £34 but today I received a check for just £10.
So Sky and you fat Australian feck-whit, you're a bunch of lying bastards!
Now expect an investigation from the Information Commisssioner because you acted on incorrect information you held about me. I will then sue for the distress this incorrect information has caused me - and I'm fully entitled to do it. I told you on the phone but you probably didn't listen!
Now you're too busy to listen. You're not accepting any calls - perhaps there's many thousands of people you've fecked off too!
They can sense my anger: Their complaints lime doesn't work and their contact us page is down! There may be trouble ahead!
Apparently there's an ombudsman to complain to - I'm going to enjoy this.
I suppose one of the main things I learned from 2007 was that if people mess you around - cut them out of the equation. You shouldn't be too tied to a revenue stream that it prevents you from being rational, but at the same token you should be wise to think that if you just tweak a strategy you can get exponential improvements in earnings and "job"-satisfaction.
This happened with the pre-orders. Promoting pre-orders in itself isn't a bad thing - but you've got to do it properly. I moved away from PPC'ing them because I don't trust merchants and networks enough to put my interests near the top of their priorities when they've got thousands of other affiliates to look after.
Hence, I focused on gaining sales via SEO, keeping the visitors attached to my site by having competition leveraged mailing lists and a Facebook group where users can add videos, photos and comments without my involvement.
I did keep control of my blogs where all comments are moderated, but I feel the best way to grow sites is to let go some control of them and let the user push it in different directions - not all of which will be revenue generating.
I agree that overtly affiliate sites still work, but I just have a preference for content and interaction sites. Its upto you how you start or maintain your sites.
That was the main lesson I learned in 2007. Another was it pays to be sociable in the industry. In 2006 I'd rather be in a crowd of tracksuit-adorned scousers than be at a G2G - I just didn't like the industry. Now, I started going back to the G2G's and it pays - you talk to people and you can incorporate and modify their strategies into your own with positive results.
Obviously I became more sociable on this blog. I know I've been controversial, but if you believe something then stand up an say it - people will respect you for it.
I haven't used this blog necessarily to seed other sites as I've got high PR sites that I can contextually mention my new ones, but it helps other people to get to know what you do and can recommend merchants and offers when they know what your industries are. So my advice, every affiliate should blog.
I also realised that you have to be selective with who you trust -don't show all your cards to everyone. Keep a close group of 3/4 other affiliates that you can essentially "bare all" to and you know they won't copy exactly what you do - but modify it.
Getting back into the industry and working my nuts off has certainly paid dividends. But most of my sites were looking bring revenue in 2008 and not 2007, so I'm looking forward to a great year.
So thanks to everyone that made 2007 a nicely profitable and enjoyable one!
p.s. that pic is of my holiday in Alvor, Portugal.
At last, I'm now PPC free. All my revenue is now generated by other sources but none from PPC. And boy does it feel good!
I decided, after being messed around by HMV last Christmas that I'd work towards getting rid of PPC being a fairly large chunk of my sales source. I can't remember how much I spent then, but in June 2007 it was around £10.5k - which isn't huge compared to most, but still is a decent amount.
Last month I spent around £300 and now I've switched everything off!
But how did I get to this stage? Well, I started looking at niche products that were due to come to the market in about 6 months - 1 year and built up sites around them and obtained good quality links naturally because often the sites were actually useful. I also did the usual thing of registering with directories as well as utilising social bookmarking, social networks and other services such as Squidoo.
Obviously I'll still be looking out for PPC opportunities, but I prefer to spend my time finding products that most affiliates don't know about and building sites that way. I get a lot of satisfaction interacting with my users and this is something that PPC never gave me.
Hopefully there'll be no going back - but you never know!
Are there other affiliates that are PPC free?
What I'm listening to: Some boring git on Radio 2!
I love Amazon and Youtube! I saw a book mentioned somewhere, I can't remember if it was online or off ... but it was Microtrends by Mark J. Penn. So I go to the only book store I use - Amazon. I search on it and find the book. But what's great about Amazon is that they had a video introduction from the author about its main theme.
Now this is something I spoke about in my social media presentation to increase conversion rates and remove as many reasons for a visitor not to buy as possible. Amazon certainly did this - I bought.
But I was going to place the video in this blog, but couldn't - this is something they have to work on.
But Google stepped in by placing a presentation by Penn at one of their events on YouTube - showing how cutting-edge they are and in tune with the latest social/enconomic thinking.
I've bought myself a video camera and some software to make videos for this blog and others - so I will be doing what I preach (unfortunately for some). So stay tuned and you'll be getting some videos when I work out how to use the software!!
You can get the book here and watch his presentation here (it's a bit dry in this format so make sure you're well lubed):
I've just bought a new fridge freezer as my other one just konked out. I've just received the confirmation order and they say my delivery date is:
Am I seeing that right? They're going to deliver on Christmas day this year? A full 358 days time? I'm sure my prawns would have turned to mush by then!
Guys, sort yourselves out - the traking link at the bottom of the email says
I'm off to buy one from somewhere decent now - expect my cancellation call in the morning - you don't even have decent call centre opening hours! And your bloody "Mycomet" login is down for maintenance as well. Fecking pissed off
December was a great month for me. Much of my hard work started to come to fruition and I was earned the most ever. But it wasn't without it's issues.
There were affiliates out there using different target urls and display urls that gave them an unfair advantage over affiliates that play by the rules.
But I did do well as can be seen by my Affiliate Window earnings, which came out of treating users with respect and helping them to find the products they wanted with up-to-date and relevant information. I also showed how important these blogs can play in informing customers and driving revenue.
I continued my move into "White Hat" affiliate marketing but I still could paid attention to the dark ways by seeing the opportunity to spam Google using their Hot Trends tool. But I was annoyed that sometimes it looks like they take an eye off the basics.
I love web 2.0 and widgets and found a nice one that could start to add useful content to sites - that's if you wanted to! I also showed how you can use Google Maps to drive traffic to your site.
I had problems with .com's and Google getting the location wrong because some of them were hosted by 1&1 in Germany - thankfully they came up with a solution.
Golf World Cup - ditto! It seemed like a good idea at the time!
Pink PSP - these pink domains did really well using ppc. But I don't ahve the time to work on them now. Others include Pink GBA and Pink DS and Pink PS2.
Erotic Dvds - I don't work on it anymore. In fact I haven't for about 3 years. It just uses a Europleasure white label. It probably only generates about £500 a year. I suppose that's good for absolutely no work.
I really find iTunes annoying - you can't filter down different types of genres into its constituent parts, the search is crap and the Store is just as bad! 
I love internet users, they're amazing! 
I'm lazy! No, I'm very busy and don't have a lot of time to research additional products and build links. In fact I was supposed to do this post yesterday as well as some client work. The problem is that I like to do everything correctly, so some times it pushes things back .
Part of the reason I became less communicative was that I didn't want people to copy what I was doing. I've been open (to a degree) about my strategies in general and sometimes mentioned sites that I work on specifically.
There were 247 different sites that delivered traffic. I won't print the whole list, but here are some highlights (I'll linkafy them latter - just dashing out):
I suppose one of the main things I learned from 2007 was that if people mess you around - cut them out of the equation. You shouldn't be too tied to a revenue stream that it prevents you from being rational, but at the same token you should be wise to think that if you just tweak a strategy you can get exponential improvements in earnings and "job"-satisfaction.
At last, I'm now PPC free. All my revenue is now generated by other sources but none from PPC. And boy does it feel good!
... I neglected to do an "impact assessment" on my business! ;-)
