The Confessions Of An Obsessed Affiliate

I know I’ve been rubbish at writing anything like a regular blog post but I promise things are going to change as a lot has been going on in the world of Grounded Vertigo affiliate marketing in the last couple of months.

This will, however, have to wait one more week because from the 21st September to the 27th September I am going to be internetless (don’t ask me how I will survive) as I am going away on a family holiday with the in laws to be and their offspring (again don’t ask me how I will survive).

If I make it back alive I promise there will be a brand new post on the 29th!

Fingers crossed for my survival!!

I haven’t posted for quite a while because, well I’ve been busy.

Now I know that sounds like an excuse but it’s the truth I’ve been working just about every hour I can on my sites and well..

It hasn’t really worked.

In fact I think it’s caused me to go a bit backwards.

So what’s gone wrong?

Well there’s been a few ups and downs with Google but that’s not really it.

It’s been my “I can do everything” mindset that I think has let me down.

I don’t do PPC (yet) so all my searches are organic and so it’s obviously very important I get the traffic organically.

So with this in mind a couple of months ago I turned 10 of my sites into blogs which I would continually update everyday with new top quality post based on great keywords.

Great idea but I ended up starting at 6.45am in the morning, ending at 6.45pm in the evening (if I was lucky) and well I can’t say it’s made a whole lot of difference  as my highest searched site remained the non dynamic, never updated static site about Coffee Tables!

So what was the problem?

Well I can’t say for certain but I think I was trying to spread my options too far and wide and wasn’t focusing on anything long enough to really make an impact.

And the solution?

Well I’ve slowed down, chilled out a bit and refocused myself and my sites. I’ve cut down the number of sites I’m updating and begun focusing only on merchants that have converted for me. It’s too early to see if this is really going to make a difference for me but the figures so far are looking promising.

I’ll let you know how I get on….

I’ve just been reading Matt’s Tips For Affiliates post over at the Existem blog and think it’s probably one of the most useful posts for affiliates new and old.

It’s all about how we as affiliates need to be more proactive if we want that something more than the standard links and banners to work with.

In other words - it’s about being a little bit cheeky and seeing what you get for it.

This is something that I’ve not been too good in the early months of my affiliate marketing career probably due to confidence as much as anything.

If I did it all over though I would definitely be more proactive. The worse that can happen when you ask for some free samples to review on your site or an exclusive discount code to display is that they’ll say no.

What they won’t say is (at least I hope not…)

“That’s a ridiculous request, leave our affiliate program and never return again”

You could end up getting hold of something that gives you that chance to really stand out from the rest of the ground.

I’m definitely planning to be more proactive and will be seeing just what I can get from merchants to help me achieve more for both them and me.

So if you’re a merchant in the technology, home and garden, underwear, gift or baby sector then watch out I’m coming and I have a list of demands…

UPDATE: This proactive thing works well. I haven’t even approached anyone yet and already been offered some software to test out and review!

Oh and just a quick thing, my blogroll is looking, well pathetic. If you want to get your blog link up then drop me an email at grounded @ groundedvertigo.co.uk and I’ll get you up there!

It warms my little cockles when our little affiliate community gets together and voices it’s discontent about one issue or another and there’s no better example of this than the response to Frostie’s Next post.

I could tell you all about it here but then you might not remember to go and back it and give it the support it deserves  so here’s the link to go read it yourself.

As I say I’m totally in support of this post and it’s important the affiliate community does come together at times like this to try and achieve change for the better.

It is important to say that no one is saying all merchants are bad. I have the pleasure of working with some incredibly helpful and delightful merchants (who I am more than happy to receive free gifts from) and it makes promoting their products a pleasure.

So thanks to the good ones for showing the those naughty merchants how to behave.

I don’t know if any of you are suffering from this fate recently but Google seems to be playing a game with one of my sites.

This site is all about shopping online and offers tips on getting the best deals and products and covers a wide range of areas.

It’s one of my top earning sites and when it performs well it can be in the top five listings in Google for keywords I have focused blog posts around.

However recently it and Google seem to be in a constant state of indecision.

One minute it’s up at the top of the listing. I check again a couple of days later and it’s disappeared out of sight. A couple of days later and it’s back at the top again and well you get the idea.

I’ve been trying to keep the site as clean as possible and have been implementing every SEO trick I can think of and it’s still happening which is leaving me puzzled to say the least.

The only two other reasons I can think of are:

1. I’m posting too much - there are at least three new posts a day

2. Google thinks I’m keyword stuffing posts

However these two don’t really wash at all. The BBC and other large sites post far more fresh content than me and do fine and I try hard to ensure I don’t “keyword stuff”.

So I’m basically at a point where I’m not too sure what to do. The site does tend to settle down again after a few days but it is a pain that it keeps doing it especially with it being one of my top earning sites.

This whole issue has taught me one thing though - it’s important not to develop “favourite websites”.

This problem site gets a lot of my attention and performs well because of it. 

It is, however, probably at the expense of others which could be earning much more if they had more time focused on them.

So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to loosen the reins on the problem site and start spreading my time a bit more evenly and see if that sees the earnings shoot up across the board.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

I haven’t posted for a few days and that’s mainly because I’ve been running out of hours in the day!

So what have I been so busy doing?

Well I made this week the week that I would not only re-jigged any sites that were stubbornly failing to earn me more than 2 and a half shillings but also set up a few new ones.

So far this has seen be install ShopWindow on a couple of old and am interested to see the results. I’ve used Affilistore in the past and been impressed.

It’ll be intriguing to see how they perform and I’ll post some links to them when I’ve Trinny and Susannahed them out of their basic clothes and added some elements that allow fresh content to be added regularly.

Concerning new sites one went up today and it’s a bit of a test site and is the result of some recent research.

This research caused me to come across some nice niches and they’re in one particular area. This is an area that I’m new to though so before I create a nice interlinking group of sites I’ve decided for once not to jump in with both feet and am going to tred carefully.

As with the old I’ll be honest with you all and let you know if it was a complete flop!

Anyone else going through a website spring clean?

If any of you reading are affiliates for LoveHoney then you’ll know that there was a competition recently to win a Gold Rub My Duckie.

Now for all of you who aren’t aware this is a great travel size vibrating body massager which is in the shape of a duck and is gold..

All you needed to do was complete the sentence “I Love My Other Half Because….”

When I first saw it I thought ah well there’s another competition I’ll never win and carried on reading.

Then I decided that thought was a bit defeatist because the main reason I never win anything is because I don’t even enter anything.

So I gave it a go with:

I Love My Other Half Because…

 she makes this ugly duckling feel like a beautiful swan

Yes I know incredibly soppy but I was hoping that the fact I’d carried on the theme of ducks would win me a few bonus points.

And it did.

I only went and won.

So now I’m the proud owner of a Gold Label Rub My Duckie which is saving my life as no longer do I have to spend my evening massaging the other half’s aching muscles I now just keep watching the telly and move the vibrating duck up and down her back.

The only issue is if  I don’t tell her before I do it she thinks it’s a wasp and jumps up out of her seat!

So thank you Catherine at Affiliate Program Advice and LoveHoney for the prize, it’s very much appreciated.

Now who’s going to give me another competition to enter - I’m currently looking for a prize of a house or wedding reception….

LoveHoney is on the Affiliate Future network and you can join here.

No I’m not talking about my body size, this is an affiliate blog…

I’ve just been looking at Mark’s post over at 45n5 where he posed the question “Is It Easier To Make One Site That Makes $3000 a month or 100 That Make $30 per month?”

Mark went with the 100 sites.

I’d tend to agree but I’m not quite sure about the 100.

At the moment I probably have around 10 sites that are live at the moment with some doing a lot better than others.

The ones that perform best fall into two different categories:

1. They’re updated regularly (as in everyday)
2. They’re very very nichey.

The ones that perform worse fall into one category:

Now the latter probably wouldn’t be a problem if these sites were updated regularly with fresh content but they’re not and that’s mainly because I run out of hours.

This is why the thought of 100 sites scares me. I think to make this viably work these sites have to be ultra-nichey without the need for regular updates and able to operate from one basic template.

Whilst it scares me the 100 sites excites me.

I’ve got to get buying a house before I’m 94 and now there’s and a Civil Partnership ceremony and reception (more about that in another post) to pay for and what I’m earning right now is nice but it’s so not enough to pay for all that as well as the day to day living expenses.

So what do you think?

Should I pick up a couple of very targeted domains and produce regularly updated content sites or fill up portfolio with static site after static site of ultra niche content?

I’m back here again and it feels really good.

So where did I disappear off to?

Well I didn’t head off around the world like Kirsty or have another cancelled trip to hospital like Kieron, what happened to me was bad web hosting.

It all happened one weekend when I wasn’t actually working but couldn’t help a quick look.

I looked at one site and there was a 500 error message.

I thought that must be a mistake so checked another on the same hosting - again nothing all gone.

Yes as you’ve probably guessed my hosting kicked me off for “using too many resources”.

Now this I can understand. It’s shared hosting. Far enough.

What I didn’t think was fair was I had been patient with them when my hosting went down at least twice a day for at least a month.

They weren’t with me. There was no warning, nothing and I wouldn’t have been aware till two days later if I hadn’t have checked.

It wasn’t even as though they helped me get it up again quickly. That took one and a half days.

So what has all this got to do with this blog. Well one of their many different reasons for booting me was something to do with a Wordpress file.

Now they couldn’t tell me which of my sites this was connected to so went along trying one after another.

When it got to this blog I was tired, fed up and not concentrating and instead of deleting one file, the whole lot went and as you might have guessed this was the only one without a backup.

So it all went.

But now it’s back, bigger and better and there’ll be none of this blogging ever so often, I’m going to be regular…