I Must Be Crackers

28th November, 2007 1 Comment back me up

I’d have been crackers to head to Newcastle last year to gatecrash the Buy.at Christmas party. I only started actively promoting their merchants from 18th September.

By the time the Christmas Cracker party took place on 30th November I’d clocked up 38 sales.

I attended a4uexpo in October and the staff at buy.at kindly offered me a ticket in their competition as posted on the affiliates4u forum.

There I met buy.at staff for the first time. It wasn’t that difficult really. They had a bar and I like alcohol. It is a winning combination. Being from the North East myself, I wonder why I never found this alcohol serving affiliate network sooner.

I introduced myself and said that I make a decent amount of commission on their network but only for a handful of merchants.

During 2007 I have generated £55,000 worth of sales via their merchants alone and I’m totally amazed by that figure to be honest. I don’t know how I got there!

What I do know though is how I could improve, given the right tools. Oh Santa please give me a certain baby store promotional code for Christmas.

So on Thursday I’m heading to Newcastle for the night. It’s going to be a fun and interesting socialising and networking event. I’ve noticed via Facebook that it’s Laura’s 25th birthday night too.

I’m looking forward to it. For those buy.at staff I’ve not yet met, I’ll be the one propping up a bar until I catch my 06:15am train back to Leeds.

I must be crackers.

Networking

Penny Profit Per Paid Click

26th November, 2007 4 Comments back me up

I receive 26p for each visitor that arrives at my Shop Codes site. I know this based on the last 30 days unique visitor numbers using Google Analytics and commission totals using the Affmeter software tool for the same time period. In that time, 29 days worth of traffic was all from SEO or my own newsletter subscribers. Only one day was from Google pay-per-click.

In my last post (PPC experiment statistics revealed) I reported that I didn’t see much benefit in promoting my site via Pay-Per-Click as I wasn’t seeing a clear return on my investment. With PPC spend at 25p per click, it is now clear that it’s not worthwhile, when I make 26p for each visitor.

That’s one pence return. Now I may spend 1p to make 1p but I’m not spending £250 to see a return of just £260.

Shop Codes doesn’t use iframes on it’s site, so the 26p per visitor may be a lot less than other sites operating in the same arena.

However, it is a figure I am very happy at. I have no benchmarks to say whether it’s good or bad but for every 100 visitors landing at my site I am seeing a healthy conversion and profit of £26.

That 26p figure was almost blown through the roof this weekend when someone spent £56,688.33 at Empire Direct. In theory a company could have been kitting out a venue with 20 LCD tv’s, taking advantage of the Empire Direct 10% Voucher Code.

As it was, Marie Carrol of Empire Direct, confirmed this morning that the sale has been cancelled.

“There was no payment details entered. So it looks like the customer was either testing to see if the discount code worked or messing around.”

If the sale had gone through, it would have been a very Merry Christmas indeed.

My commission per site visitor would also have shot up to 31p. Then at least I’d make a 6p profit if I were to advertise on Google.

Affiliate Marketing Shop Codes

Shop Codes PPC experiment statistics revealed

20th November, 2007 9 Comments back me up

When I cashed a cheque for £17,100 that Google sent me last week, I knew how I was going to spend that extra £100 on the first rainy day. So on Monday, I dusted off the cobwebs of my Google Adwords account and set about creating my first PPC campaign since 12th April 2007.

I’d said to a few of my fellow code peers at a4uexpo and online that all my traffic is via SEO and I no longer take part in PPC as I haven’t seen any evidence to suggest it is beneficial. So I told them that I’d pick a random day and join in and then take an indepth look at the stats.

  1. I was to measure how many visitors I can buy for £100.
  2. How much time £100 will buy me.
  3. How much revenue that £100 investment would make me.

However, I also had to measure the benefit. And so I’ve collated traffic and commission figures for the day previous (Sunday 18th November) and one week back (Monday 12th November).

So here’s the backdrop. Sunday 18th November 2007 was Shop Codes highest traffic day ever, since launch. All this traffic was from SEO with Google contributing to over 1,000 of those visitors.

So to experiment on the following day was not probably the wisest choice as traffic may be on the increase and I may find the best is yet to come. And so it was. Yesterday Google (organic) delivered an extra 168 unique visitors, to make Monday 19th my highest ever.

I created one new campaign in Adwords that was to simply highlight that Shop Codes has 140 exclusive codes and I targeted keywords such as “voucher codes”, “discount codes”, “promotional codes” and “coupon codes”.

The minimum spend I was allowed to pay was £0.25. I set the daily budget to £300 and the maximum cost at £0.30.

As soon as the ad went live, it appeared in the top slot in the main part of the Google page. So within minutes I had maximum exposure.

Then soon after I could see that an affiliate network had started clicking on my advert. During my campaign an IP address of Affiliate Window appeared in my analytics.

The stats say that the first visit was at 15:10:53 for the search term “dixons discount codes”. The green url in the image is the url clicked on. The second url is the landing url. If the url is appended with “?clid” then that shows it is a paid-for link on Google.

The statistics summarise that this visitor stayed on my site for 2 hours 18 minutes and 28 seconds.

It shows they clicked on those adverts that were costing me £0.25 a click each, 26 times in those 138 minutes.

It shows that searches included “dixons discount codes”, “dixsons discount codes”, “shop codes” and “voucher codes”.

Some clicks were within seconds of each other, which suggests the visitor was using their browser back button and re-clicking.

After only a few hours, my campaign was at £95.91 and before closing it down completely I reduced the cost to £0.10 to see if the ad would show at all. It didn’t and so at 18:14 the last paid-for link was clicked and normal SEO traffic resumed.

It was not until this morning that I could assess the success or failure of paying for an extra 380 visitors. Was it a success?

Well, yes and no.

On Monday 19th November 2007 I received my highest days level of commission received this year.

Not surprising when I’ve joust bought 380 visitors but remember my organic traffic is on the up with Google organic sending an extra 250 visitors a day compared to just seven days ago.

OK, if I made the most money ever this year, why wasn’t it a success?

Well, the total commission was only £8 more than what I made on 12th November. That day there was no PPC.

I also made one fewer sale on Monday 19th than I did on Sunday 18th. That day there was no PPC.

So, £95 bought me only £8 worth of extra commission.

What else can I measure? Well, lets take a look at my RSS and newsletter subscriber figures. Did those 380 people contribute to an uplift in sign-ups? No, in the last two days I’ve had 5 new subscribers on both days.

So, I’ve summarised that I don’t receive any material gain from PPC. Yes, I’ll make more money (just) but I’d rather carry on making money without spending £95 a day. Or the £89 it would have been if a network wasn’t so keen on my site.

Analytics Case Study Shop Codes

Sabbatical year in 2008?

5th November, 2007 3 Comments back me up

Several people I had a beer with at a4uexpo got around to asking me the questions of ‘why aren’t you…’ or ‘when are you…’ leaving the current day job.

I was totally frank with these people, many I’d met for the first time and gave them honest insights into my life.

My business is currently performing to a high standard and it’s all the more impressive for me, seeing as my site updates have been very restricted lately with holidays, attending a4uexpo and latterly no phone line at home.

Then taking into account the previous 12 months, the question has to be asked – and is being asked of me every week, “When are you leaving to run your sites full time?” This is not just from people in the affiliate industry but my colleagues around me who keep up to date with my developments.

John Lamerton has wrote some excellent posts on the pros and cons of affiliate marketing and why he took the plunge and gave up the day job.

I’m in a job that pays a healthier salary than he was earning 6 years ago but I have considered his steps, including working at the day job part-time.

Could I live off my own business profits? Yes, based on the past years performance but I have some financial commitments too.

There’s also the benefits that working in my current job bring. I currently get 7 weeks off a year in paid leave, having been there for over 10 years service.

My monthly phone bill, which can be a substantial payment for others, is a few pence per month.

And as well as the nice salary there’s bi-annual bonuses – which have helped pay for 2 of my holidays this year.

I am also surrounded by very talented and friendly people who I can bounce ideas off and get support from. In another post John says:

“Affiliate Marketing is lonely. There’s no doubt about it, AM can be one of the loneliest jobs going – Sitting at home in front of a computer all day with no “real” people to speak to is no life for anyone. Prior to 2005, I had been known to go a whole week without leaving the house, or talking to anyone apart from on Messenger!”

That is a fear I have and it’s an issue that is just as important than the level of revenues made.

Going back to the perks of my current job, there is one other benefit that could make my transition from part-time affiliate to full-time, so much more easier.

As I’ve done the time I’m allowed to take between 3 to 9 months unpaid sabbatical. There are lots of terms attached but the crux of the matter is that I could be in a no lose situation.

For example, I could decide to take 3 months off work and then crack on with my websites at home, as I would if my life now depended on it.

I would lose those 3 months salary but my business account has the savings to help me there. If at the end of the period it was clear I wasn’t making enough money or I decided that I was too lonely, I could return to work to my existing role.

If I were to run my business full-time then on paper I should be working 3 to 4 times more than I currently do. Would my revenue have to increase by 4 times to be measured as a success?

Well not really but I know the daily and monthly targets I’d like to achieve.

There are restrictions in taking a sabbatical. For starters a line manager and a VP of the company need to approve. However, if you were planning on leaving the company anyway then this step may be just a formality.

You also can’t use the time to compete against the company but this is as currently. I’ve already made sure that I don’t have any conflict of interests.

You also have to request for the sabbatical 6 months in advance. This seems a long way off but it makes sense if the company have to replace you or your position.

If I were to take this option it would be approximately 9 months away anyway, allowing me to build on my 5 point plan. If I say a Facebook application is 6th on my list, then Sabbatical is certainly there at number 7.

For those in affiliate marketing you may be seeing more of me in late 2008.

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