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.

I thought I’d take a moment out to praise an excellent email from Jon from Jewellery.tv, the contents of which should shame those affiliate managers who kick under performing affiliates away.

Health Check

“Why doesn’t Jewellery.tv convert for me? If you are one of the Jewellery.tv affiliates that aren’t seeing sales come through regularly you are probably wondering what is going wrong. Don’t despair send me an email with your name, ID, a brief note of what you do to promote us and any links, and I will review and give you a full health check by response…”

Jon, who replies to every single affiliate email should be taken up on his offer as there is a healthy 10% commission available for every sale.

Even high performers can earn up to 20%, so it maybe worth seeing how you can generate £10,000 worth of sales in a month.

I’ve yet to implement the suggestions he made to me in our last email thread but I am satisfied with the slight improvement my own site has made in conversions.

This January I’ve already generated 33% of the Jewellery.tv sales total I made in the whole of 2007.

I promote the merchant with an Exclusive promotional code, which is provided to me on a monthly rolling basis, so if I don’t perform, I may lose the code.

Compare Jon’s email with the one from B&Q, both on the Affiliate Window network.

“B&Q is currently under going a review of their affiliate activities. We are looking to ensure B&Q partners with Affiliates driving high volume traffic and sales to diy.com.

Unfortunately, as part of this process we are looking to remove affiliates who are not delivering the desired threshold on these metrics from the program.

After reviewing the clicks and sales delivered from your website in the last 3 months, you have not met our minimum threshold. Thus, it is with regret that we will be suspending you from the B&Q program. This will take effect 7 days from receipt of this email.”

B&Q, I think your affiliate program needs a health check.

Inspired by Chris Frost’s post detailing total sales revenue for 2006 and 2007 I thought I’d take a financial look back at 2007 myself.

Whilst I’m not going to list the individual network totals I can tell you that I generated £1.25million worth of sales for the hundreds of merchants I promote.

Chris generated £1.8m worth of sales, which I think is a fantastic achievement for both of us. All the more remarkable as we both hold full-time jobs, as well as working hard on improving our affiliate earnings year-on-year.

I know I’ve done well last year by winning merchants incentives competitions.

But it is now getting harder to get rich. There is the increased competition from new and existing affiliates, fuelled with new targets to reach by blog posts that inspire.

There is also the ongoing battle to maintain high commissions so that we’re not just fighting over pennies.

Three networks stand out for me in 2007. They may not hold the highest turnover but they are improving more rapidly than the other networks. The basis of the improvement is improved communication.

WEBGAINS

I started working closely with these towards the end of 2006 and they provide the widest collection of Exclusive voucher codes.

AFFILIATE WINDOW

They must have had a power meeting early last year because all of a sudden all their affiliate managers were getting in touch and pushing codes my way.

LINKSHARE

New kid on the UK block and I’m gradually switching all my merchants onto this network.

The network that I’m going to force myself to do more business on is Affiliate Future. They’ve just started communicating with me by sending me a list of valid discount codes. It is the details like this, that really matter.

I want my site to improve by approximately 400% this year. That’s a sales target of £5m and roughly £250,000 commission.

Will I make it? Not currently. I’ve got five other things to sort. Oh, make that six things to sort first.