It’s 10:30am and ShopCodes has already received more unique traffic than it did in a whole day in March. Yesterday was it’s highest traffic day since the heavy sales period of 27th and 28th December.

The majority of this traffic was not for people searching for codes. It’s Silly Sale Season and many high street stores such as Debenhams, Dorothy Perkins and Laura Ashley are offering up to 50% off.

My highly optimised site – for codes – is now converting visitors at up to 35%. So one in three of my sale-searching visitors are clicking through to the merchants pages and spending thousands. If only I knew this before.

You see I own a domain with the word ‘codes’ in it – a fact that will soon see my commissions being decreased by Dorothy Perkins – and I have always prioritised codes over any other type of promotion. This was down to the templating of my site and the fact that with a sale you just don’t know when it ends.

Only yesterday I generated £3,500 worth of sales to one of Dorothy Perkin’s high street competitors, netting me a substantial £400 worth of commission. And this was just one merchant, others which have not performed for me before have started to take spots in my Top 10 merchants list … once dominated by Figleaves and JD Williams.

This is not a fluke. Since my recent return of holiday I took a different approach to adding content to my site. As I had 3,500 emails to catch up on and hundreds of codes to add, I ignored them all.

I then worked on the last email in approach. So if the last email was about a code, I’d add it. If it was about top 10 products, I’d add that content. If it was about a sale, I’d add that content.

The result is I’ve a lot less codes on my site than I really should have but have now got a variety of alternative content, that is converting well

… with no ‘Click to Reveal’ in sight.

For the first time ever since I’ve owned both a mobile and a laptop, I’ve had a complete break away from affiliate marketing.

During the first half of June I’ve enjoyed my third holiday of the year in Zante and returned for a weeks training course and exam.

Whilst away from home for 2 weeks I was ‘always on’ and connected but rather than checking stats, reading my thousands of emails or editing files, I just updated facebook.

When I packed my laptop, this wasn’t the intention but whilst out in the sun I felt like I deserved a complete break.

Previously I’d have worried that my sites traffic and commissions would suffer. This month, I’ve been thinking ‘So what. I’ll catch up and get my site back up to speed later.’

So I’ve been bathing, flirting, drinking, dancing, learning, revising and everything else but update my site and things are looking promising.

In the last week that my site wasn’t updated AT ALL, it made over £1,000 in commission. During the whole of June I’ve edited only 8 files. That was on the eve of me travelling to Bristol to study for the ISEB Intermediate Certificate in Software Testing.

So, during June I’ve earned £200 per merchant update I’ve done. Not bad, earning approximately £800 per hour. If only it escalated that way.

Now that I’ve had more than my fair share of holidays in this first six months of 2008, it’s now time for me to do a lot more than 8 updates per day, never mind month.

It’s time for me to start adding the June codes before they expire in 2 weeks and earning more than that grand a week.

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”!