Being skint and single on 1st January 2007 made me doubly determined to make 2007 a very successful year. I knew the key to success was my own determination. So I made a conscious effort to be single for the year (not that girls were knocking my door down) and work as many hours as my body could handle.

I was determined to make my ShopCodes a success and drag me from rags to riches, whilst at the same time raising my own profile in the affiliate industry I’d been active in for so many years.

I could raise my profile by generating volumes and sales and being a bit controversial. Both appeared to do the trick.

JANUARY – THE ONLY WAY IS UP

I started the year at rock bottom, with over £20,000 in debt and struggling to pay off the crippling credit card interest rates. I successfully applied for a loan, stopped using my credit cards and then worked solidly on my website. By day I work for a telecommunications company and by night and evenings, I was working hard on making my website a success.

My ‘inspiring’ blog post was backed 21 times on the affiliates4u site and it was nice to share my progress.

FEBRUARY – BEFUDDLE LIMITED

When I was still making substantial commissions post Valentine’s Day, I had to take ShopCodes very seriously, as I may have had to become VAT registered. So I attended an Entrepreneur Conference and a few weeks later I was director of my own company.

MARCH – BEFUDDLED ME?

I attended my first ever affiliate event, on the DFDS trip to Amsterdam. I was shy so dragged my housemate Ben along but felt at ease as soon as I arrived as Jasper made me feel so welcome. This is where I met fellow affiliates such as Keith and John, who I made a lasting impression on by singing in the Heineken brewery.
I launched this blog at the same time with a view to raise my profile and inspire with honest tales of tragedies and triumphs. The honesty has been recognised by Kieron, winner of Affiliate Marketing Blog of 2007, who says, “a great example of blogging done well“.

APRIL – GOOGLE CHECKOUT

I started a thread about how some Google Checkout payments weren’t being tracked. The debate got very heated at times and the post was promoted to the home page of the a4uforum site as Moderator’s Choice. My post signature included my website url, so for a while I had a good PR site linking prominently to my own.

MAY – GOOGLE LOVE

May 2007 was better for me than December 2006. That was some achievement. I wonder how much the above link influenced how Google liked my site. This graph shows how traffic rose sharply. My site was appearing in the top 3 results for many targeted keywords.

JUNE – GOOGLE PAIN

June was a painful* month following the highs of May. My July blog post includes a graph that shows the severity of the fall. To counteract this I launched an RSS Email newsletter service, which now has hundreds of subscribers. *Even though it was ‘painful’ I think the commissions received that month still matched my monthly salary.

JULY – LEEDS MEETS

A Leeds get together organised by Nadeem saw the like of Elaine and family and Stu Foster attend. It was great to meet Elaine and Dave especially who I’ve later gone on to meet up with on later events.

AUGUST – VOUCHER DIARY

I launched a second voucher code site as insurance and opt to use WordPress and experiment a little. VoucherDiary is not a site that I often have time to look at but I do monitor the statistics on a daily basis to track what is working well for SEO. This is a site that gets a handful of visitors a day but it has an issue in than in it’s nature it will feature more out of date content than not.

SEPTEMBER – BEDSTAR CONTROVERSY

Little did Kier of Webgains know when he asked for help on a4uforum. My site, or rather my tracking url, had replaced the BedStar site in the Google organic listings.

His post had 160 replies and was viewed over 4,300 times. Many people had differing views on whether I should receive the commission.

In the same month I had to ‘Save Befuddle‘, when Google presented a ‘malware’ warning on their search results. My traffic dipped from 5,000 unique visitors a day to 1,000. I had to delete hundreds of pages and build the site back up as a quick fix before my holiday. Today, it still has several thousand page views a day, despite only having limited content. I am looking to change hosts, so that I can develop the site properly during 2008.

OCTOBER – a4uexpo

I marketed myself across blogs and the a4uforum to try and win myself a pass for a4uexpo in London. I got lucky with buy.at and stayed on the yacht where Kieron and a few others were staying. Here I met up with many people who I’d only had email contact with previously, including the likes of Hero and Jess and even my competitors such as Joe and Mark. It was also here I found a new drinking buddy in Kirsty.

In the same month, I also got trapped in my own kitchen. Nothing to do with affiliate marketing but the humour got your attention and the post was backed 14 times.

Oh and Google sent me a five figure cheque for VAT overpayments, pushing my business account over a credible milestone.

NOVEMBER – BUY.AT PARTY

Travelled to Newcastle to meet up again with more friends* at the Christmas Cracker. Took advantage of the free bar, went clubbing and left the casino with more money than I went with. Winning £5 from Kirsty’s cracker helped. An all round excellent night of networking.

*The affiliate marketing industry is so special that it’s great that you can get to know and work and drink alongside your own competitors.

DECEMBER – ‘MEGA MONDAY’

On the first Monday of December I received record traffic and made record commission, approximately 400% higher than the previous days. ‘Mega Monday‘ was indeed Mega. If I had more days like this, then I wouldn’t have a day job too.

ShopCodes performed so strongly thoughout October and November that I won several of the merchants incentives competitions. I didn’t have to buy many Christmas presents this year as I received or won gifts worth over £850. To me, this was more satisfying than earning commissions as it showed that my site was competitive against the competition and that I had got myself on the radar. Only twelve months earlier I had to beg for a single advent calendar.

2008 – ?

More commissions? More controversy? Yes, please!

I have aggressively promoted RedSave in the run up to Christmas and have been rewarded with £400 in commission from the gifts and gadgets retailer. I have been running an Exclusive 10% voucher code that has obviously converted very well.

I was then considering if I should remove the banner that has sat across the top of all my pages.

I’ve just took a detailed look at my statistics and it looks like RedSave stopped performing for me on 18th December. So, it is a no brainer for me. I shall have to remove the banner from the top of all my pages because the site hasn’t converted at all for me in over 10 days.

Being a Boxing Day baby and aged 33 (almost) and oh still single, birthday and Christmas presents are always thin on the ground.

As a child I’d be disappointed to find that I’d get a small Christmas Day present as it was my birthday the day after. Then the day after disappointed to find, that the present I received the day previous was a joint Christmas and birthday present.

So I’ve been very pleased to receive gifts worth over £500 £750 throughout the month of December 2007 alone. Some of them are genuine Christmas presents, others have been won in prize draws whilst some have been awarded as sales incentives.

Here I take a look back at what Santa’s helpers have delivered since 1st December ….

HOTEL CHOCOLAT – ADVENT CALENDAR

Technically this gift arrived in November but as it wouldn’t fit through the letter box I had to arrange re-delivery at the weekend. So on 1st December I opened the recognisable box to find a nice advent calendar from Hotel Chocolat. How appropriate a day.

DIRECT WINES – 12 BOTTLES OF WINE

At the end of November, Steven from buy.at let me know I won an incentive for “biggest increase in sales last week compared to previous week” for Sunday Times Wine.

“We’ll be sending you the Christmas Collection of 12 bottles of wine.”

So I got the large box, which I think contains 11 wines and 1 champagne to my parents during the first week of December as I’ll be spending most of the festive period there.

TOTALLYSHOES – PAIR OF SHOES OF MY CHOICE

On 27th November I entered a Totally Shoes ‘Just For Fun’ competition that I spotted on the A4uForum. On the 5th, Brian Edwards announced:

“Congratulations to Ray Theakston of www.ShopCodes.co.uk who won TotallyShoes’ first just for fun competition by knowing that Chuck Taylor was a basketball player and is associated with the brand Converse.

He has selected a pair of Skecher’s Citywalk Footpath shoes.”

The second most expensive pair of shoes they had available were delivered to my works address by the next morning.

SLENDERTONE – SLENDERTONE SYSTEM

On the 11th Steven, from Affiliate Future, let me know that I’d won the latest Slendertone System, worth £120 for the “most improved affiliate in November”.

This is a great prize for me as January will be the month I try to shake off the chocolates and wine of Christmas, with the least amount of effort.

LEGO – £100 WORTH OF LEGO

On the 12th December, Mumtaz of LinkShare, announced that I was one of two LEGO November competition winners. I won £100 worth of LEGO for having the biggest percentage order increase during October.

I selected some Princess’ Palace LEGO for my two nieces.

WEBGAINS – VIRGINIA HAYWARD FESTIVE TRAY

On Wednesday morning I woke to the postman delivering a Virginia Hayward Festive Tray from the Webgains team. This was opened and shared during a poker game that same evening.

JACKPOTJOY – VINTAGE CHAMPAGNE

As each day and night of last week were merging into one with all the Christmas parties, I woke up late one day to see a box delivered by Jasper and Claire from Jackpotjoy. It contained a vintage bottle of Champagne.

It was a simple thanks for promoting them during 2007.

I now seem to have a little collection of champagne bottles going. Just need something to celebrate

FLEUROP – £75 DELUXE CHOCOLATE HAMPER

Today I received an email from Andy at LinkShare, saying I’d won the Fleurop Advent Calendar prize.

All I had to do was generate 1 click between 12th-14th December for Fleurop-Interflora to be entered into the prize draw.

“We picked you randomly out of the hat!!” was the good news and now a £75 deluxe chocolate hamper is being delivered to my parents house.

So my thanks go to the above companies and those that have sent me cards.

Merry Christmas!

ADDENDUM:

VIRGINIA HAYWARD – CASE OF WINE

No sooner had the dust settled on this blog post, I received an email from Alex at Virginia Hayward, informing me that I’ve won a ‘case of wine in one of the affiliate incentive competitions this year.’

Guess I don’t need to go out in January now with all the booze I’ve won!

R.O.EYE – BOTTLE OF WINE

The delivery man left a note that there was a parcel ‘behind the grey bin’. I ran out panicking, thinking ‘Got a green bin and a black bin but not a grey one’. There, out in the cold was a package from Virgin Wines. Inside was a nice wooden box containing a nice bottle of Rioja.

AFFILIATE FUTURE – POKER CHIPS

On Christmas Eve morning I delayed going to work as I waited for re-delivery of a “large parcel too large for the letterbox.” I assumed it would be just another bottle of wine to add to my collection of 30. In fact it was a poker table mat with some chips. Very different. Affiliate Future is a network I do very little on but now that I am clued up to their merchants promotional codes, I plan to do more business in 2008.

AFFILIATE WINDOW/ 24 STUDIO – 4GB iPOD NANO

Save the best until last? I cut my Christmas dinner short to log into Affiliate Window towards the end of the Queen’s Speach. Then, with 8 incentive coins I clicked on the gift box, changed my delivery address and won a 4GB iPod Nano!

So my total gifts won or received during December are valued at well over £850. “Well done Ray,” as one of my friends would say.

The Independent reported that the first day following the first weekend of December, nicknamed ‘Mega Monday’, was going to see millions of shoppers online. The day was hyped to replace the last Saturday before Christmas as the vital day for gift shopping.

Over at the back-bedroom of Shop Codes towers I suspected that Monday was going to be a good profitable day. The signs were there. I’d spent the weekend not only removing all of November’s expired codes but adding a further 45 new ones to the mix. So the site was full of valid promotional codes and fresh content.

Sunday’s traffic was high too with an extra 266 unique visitors compared to Saturday.

So did ‘Mega Monday’ live up to the hype? Oh yes!

• RECORD NUMBER OF UNIQUE VISITORS: An extra 158 visitors arrived on the site compared to Sunday. There were also an extra 296 more visitors than the previous Monday, which itself was a good day as it was many people’s pay day.

• RECORD NUMBER OF REPEAT VISITORS: I take a lot of joy knowing that my repeat visitor numbers are climbing. I try to ensure that every code that is published on Shop Codes is valid and I test the majority myself. I also don’t imply that there is a code, if there isn’t. I believe users will trust the site more. On Monday I had more repeat visitors than I had total unique visitors during 11th August 2007.

• RECORD NUMBER OF PAGE VIEWS: An extra 727 pages were viewed from the previous day and this was an increase on 599 from the previous Monday. With Shop Codes converting at 37% for some merchants, the more pages viewed the better.

• RECORD NUMBER OF DAILY SALES FOR ONE MERCHANT. My most visited merchant’s page converts at a staggering 37%. With a high commission of £32.99 and a low of £0.48.

• RECORD TOTAL OF COMMISSION: So with more unique visitors, repeat visitors, page views and a high conversion rate, how MEGA was ‘MEGA’? Well, I can confirm it was the highest commission day ever for Shop Codes. I was impressed with Sunday’s total and I received £240 more commission.

• COME ON! HOW MEGA? For those that know me, or those who just want to guess, I received 8 times more commission in one day than what I receive for a days work in my full time employment. (And no, I’m not on minimum wage.) Considering that I only spent one hour updating the site on the Monday, that’s one fantastic hourly rate. Mega even!

Question is, so what do we call the Tuesday following ‘Mega Monday’. ‘Teasing…’, ‘Tiny…’, ‘Tortuous’?