Whilst all eyes are on Dixons and their diminishing returns, the other electronics retailer SHARP announced a cut of almost 50% in commissions, dropping from 6.5% to 3.5%, effective immediately.

“The Sharp programme has been a fantastic success to date, especially the recent discount code offering.

“Sharp has made the decision to continue to offer these codes as they feel it is a very strong route for affiliates to assist Sharp in finding new customers.

“The thinking behind this move is that affiliates will have much higher conversion and will therefore achieve a greater volume of sales, rather than a higher commission but much less volume without the end-user offer,” it was announced on affiliates4u.

I love that they’ve added a range of new codes to promote some significant discounts but it’s also a significant drop in commission in exchange for them.

As a discount site owner, I do already agree to cut my commissions to a reasonable level. This isn’t for every merchant that offers a code. It is in exchange for an Exclusive branded code ie SHOPCODES. I feel the unique code adds value to my site and becomes a unique selling point and differentiator as compared to another affiliate site that utilises a product data feed.

Also, those negotiated commissions are for a code that cover the whole product range. These SHARP codes that last until the end of January, only cover 11 products. This is now down to 10 as the 46″ TV is out of stock.

Thirdly, rather than increase conversions, this will likely make it more difficult. For now, every content site may need to publish these codes to make up for the shortfall in commission or compete. So every content site will become a code site too, meaning more competition for me, meaning I’ve lost my USP.

Fourthly, these codes are actually also published on the SHARP product pages, further diminishing USP. Although looking at their pages, the discount is below the ‘add to basket’ button.

Fifthly, some other non-code site owners may also suggest that you won’t acquire new customers with a code. Merely that they were your customers anyway but then found the discount code box at the Shopping Basket page, so went off to search for a code site.

The SHARP codes have been available since the campaign launch and it’s obvious they’ve been a success to a number of affiliates.

Myself, I’ve not made any SHARP sales yet, despite 140 unique page views. The paint hadn’t dried on my new SHARP page before I received an email saying my website hadn’t been approved.

That email was sent in error to all their affiliates, when it was intended for a limited number of new ones.

So yes, I’ll still be happy when I make my first sale. Whatever the level, it will be more commission received than currently. I’d have suggested offering a 5% commission rate and offering a Free Delivery discount code for all products. But with Free Delivery already available, there’d be no point.

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.

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.