Everybody Love’s Raymond … or at least, everybody is talking about Raymond.

I’m back on the blogging trail and Kieron picked up on the fact that my site has gone up in Google for the term ‘discount codes’ whilst his had gone down the positions.

Well what goes up must come down and I’ll write my ‘Google Pushes Down ShopCodes’ piece in the near future, once I’ve got more data to collect.

12.5% of my traffic is now arriving from the three keyword phrases “voucher codes”, “discount codes” and “promotional codes”.

Now while this means that one eighth of my traffic is pretty much full of people who are not looking for particular merchants, it also means that my direct to merchant traffic is in theory down 12.5%. In fact it is much worse than that. Where I’ve gained in the generics, I’ve subsequently dipped in the long-tail.

Of my last 20 Google referrals, only 3 went direct to an internal page and the rest hit my home page. So it puts more pressure on my home page to work harder and I’d imagine the bounce rate of my home page to increase.

When this has happened in the past, it can take anything from 2 days, 5 days or 14 days before traffic returns to its previous high level.

As it nears towards the end of day one on this current Google algorythm change, traffic is down 55% on the previous day and commission accordingly.

The good news though is that the commission earned today is still a lot higher than my full-time job daily rate.

The other blessing is that I am totally relaxed about the change as I’ve got 2,600 unread emails to work through. That’s an awful lot of free content to use at my disposal.

BEDROOM ANTICS

Next up is John who spotted that I’m not attending the A4UAwards. He’s wrote a great post about his experiences of the highs and lows of running a business.

Black-tie dinners are not my thing and I even turned down attending one to celebrate my 10 years at Orange last year. This week I celebrate my eleventh year. I started my first real job just when Tony Blair became Prime Minister.

If I wasn’t going on holiday the first week of June, I’d have taken up Jackpotjoy’s offer of a seat at their table and started panicking about how to hire a suit. If anybody is after attending, maybe you can charm Jasper?

I will feel that I’m missing out on something though as I like my drinking and love freebies.

IF CARLSBERG DID AFFILIATE MARKETING …

Which brings me nicely onto the last person today to mention me. Ross from Affiliate Window announced that I was a winner of the Carlsberg Draught Master.

I was hoping to win another merchant incentive before Father’s Day to give my dad [Also called Raymond] a different present. However, this is too good to give away and I look forward to our 4 days of Summer, where I can quench my thirst in style.

Carlsberg Export is my favourite premium strength lager too despite the best efforts of Heineken to brainwash me last year during my first affiliate event.

Cheers Kieron, John and Ross!

A week is a long time in Affiliate Marketing and with traffic and commissions down, my motivation to spend long hours updating new codes to my Shop Codes site is diminishing fast.

So I have been spending more time reading blogs and forum posts on the affiliates forum site to be inspired and motivated.

I should have just switched off the PC for there in extra large print was the Bible Code type message “affiliate future losers Ray Theakston”.

The future’s bright … if I stick to the day job!

ADDENDUM

Following Martin’s and Phil’s comments I thought I would revisit the page.

This put a smile on my face: “ray theakston living legend affiliate”!

Mr Business Bank Manager,

We’re meeting on Tuesday with your Investment Manager.

I know you’re keen to for me to invest the money that is sat in my Company Bank Account. I don’t blame you, many people will never be able to save that amount in a lifetime of working.

However, I think we shoud cancel that meeting.

You see, there’s a big problem. Even though on paper I am listed as the Company Director and the only share holder. I don’t actually have much say on the direction and fortunes of the company.

Even though I wake at 6:45am and respond to business emails before going to my day job, my business doesn’t grow as a result.

Even when I am adding new fresh content to my site at 12:30am so that tomorrow’s visitors will see new offers, I don’t benefit as a result.

You see Mr Bank Manager, I’m not responsible for whether my site and business is a success or failure.

Mr Google is.

Google as we’ll call him, is the big American search engine that sends traffic to my site for free.

When he likes me, he promotes me on page one of targeted keyword pages and I receive targeted visitors. By targeted I mean they arrive on the page they search for.

I then persuade those visitors to click on my links to receive a promotion that they wouldn’t necessarily receive without visiting my or a similar site first. So the visitor is happy and I am happy.

I am happy because if that visitor makes a purchase, I make a commission on the sale.

But Mr Bank Manager, I think Google doesn’t like me no more. You see I’m getting less than one tenth of the traffic that I once received and this traffic is not targeted.

Let’s just say that I would be living on beans without the toast if I had to eat from my profits.

You could say fair enough that Google is no longer sending me traffic. The site is only two years old and spreads itself thin by promoting over 800 shops and services. I never had a contract to say it’s obliged to send me visitors. But while it doesn’t send me traffic Mr BM, I receive no visitors that generate commission.

This means my bank account won’t grow. So Mr Bank Manager, while things are out of my control I’m going to manage the few things I have control of and one of them is deciding where my money should be spent.

Let’s meet up again when things are back on track and Google likes me again.

Yours,
Befuddle

Never have I felt so happy printing off a ‘mini statement’ at the cashpoint.