befuddled me? » Analytics

Dorothy Perkins – Not Last Referrer

befuddle — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:02:45 +0000

A staggering one in every four of my legitimate ethical sales I make for Dorothy Perkins are declined. The reason stated is my site was ‘not last referrer’.

As my site doesn’t drop cookies for simply breathing the name, I can only assume that visitors have been at Dorothy Perkins checkout; searched for a Dorothy Perkins code in Google; spotted my site; then clicked on one of the promotional links that I’ve built for them; then they’ve gone back to Google and repeated the search process looking for a code.

That could make sense if I even ranked for ‘Dorothy Perkins voucher codes’ in Google.

Over the 8 months of this year I’ve listed 9 different promotions for Dorothy Perkins, including a 50% Summer Sale, 15% Exclusive voucher and a free gift promotion code and so on.

The page has been viewed 1,241 times by 995 unique visitors.

Those 995 visitors made a total of 83 purchases, spending over �4,500.

Of those 83 sales, 22 were declined.� This represents one-third of my total declined sales made on the Affiliate Window network, where Dorothy presides.

22 declined sales equates to �99 worth of commission.

These figures put me off wanting to promote the merchant further. They are obviously doing something different than other merchants are. Maybe they are just more dilligent at checking last referrer stats.

Either way, I’d have rather have not made the sale in the first place if I wasn’t going to be paid for it.

22 other affiliates received that commission or maybe one other affiliate received 22 lots of commission for doing what I did but a little later.

Who knows? Does Dorothy?

YesAsia NoCouponSites

befuddle — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 20:45:43 +0000

Today I generated my last sale for Yes Asia, my 35th top commission earning merchant of 2008.

The entertainments retailer, which I have an Exclusive code for, have been studying their analytics and have signalled their intent today to kick me off their programme.

Effective from 17th July YesAsia will no longer allow affiliates who run discount voucher/coupon sites to promote the program. Please note that if you are a content site which also lists vouchers or a cashback site then this will not affect you, only those sites which are focused mainly or exclusively on vouchers.

I may be free to promote Yes Asia on my Befuddle content site which has a global audience but not on ShopCodes, where it rightly sits.

Only last month I won a Yes Asia incentive competition and won half a dozen Japanese pop cds. I’ve not listened to them but gave them as a gift to my Japanese housemate.

Today I’ve since removed the links to Yes Asia and replaced them with CD Wow! but in retrospect I should continue to promote Yes Asia but without listing any codes [albeit they won't pay me].

My reasoning is simple. My site ‘Shop Codes’ includes shop codes but 30% of my top 20 performing merchants don’t issue codes or I have never published a code for. So by that logic, if I have never published a code for say Kiddicare am I Kiddicare content affiliate? There’s content on the page. I’ve argued the same logic in the past with Mothercare and AlphaRooms [for which I've never made a sale but that's beside the point].

It appears the issue in this case, is the over writing of content cookies by users searching for codes at the basket stage.

This is highly likely to be true and below are the Yes Asia search terms that have brought people to my site.

My Yes Asia page, which is linked to from the Shop Codes home page has been viewed 90 times in the last 30 days, with 73 uniques.

The average time for people to spend on the page is a staggering 2 minutes and 33 seconds. This is more than twice the time people look at my Dixons page.

Here are the top 50 entrance keywords that attract people to the site. Interestingly people have been specifically searching for my exclusive code or rival merchants.

yesasia coupon

yesasia coupon code

yesasia code

yesasia codes

yesasia coupon 2008

yes asia coupon

yesasia voucher

shopyacodes

yesasia coupons

yes asia codes

asian dvd shops on line

coupon yesasia

yes asia coupon code

yesasia

cd wow code june 2008

powerplaydirect coupon

yesasia coupon codes

yesasia couponn

shops code

yes asia discount codes

yesasia coupon code 2008

yesasia discount code

cdwow discount codes uk

cupon yesasia 2008

dvd asia coupon

global yesasia coupon

global.yesasia. coupons

yes asia $5 coupon

yes asia discount code

yesasia 2008 coupons

yesasia coupon $5

yesasia coupons 2008

code yesasia

codes yesasia

discount code yesasia

free yesasia coupon

g�ltiger yesasia coupon

moviemail coupon code

shopyacodes 3

shopyacodes yesasia

voucher yesasia

yes asia code

yes asia coupon $5

yes asia coupons

yes asia discount coupon

yesasia +coupon

yesasia +coupon +shopyacodes

yesasia code coupon

yesasia coupon feb 2008

yesasia coupon next order

What I’m listening to right now: Andy Lau Wonderful World Concert Tour Hong Kong 2007 Karaoke Live.

Stop the Leakage

befuddle — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 10:25:50 +0000

I have 34 emails in my inbox that are tagged with the word ‘closure’. These emails all relate to merchants that are closing their affiliate programs soon, moving to another network or have in fact closed.

I deal with these emails as low priority but sometimes if one of your better performing merchants is included, it’s wise to act fast.

The JD Williams brand recently moved all of their sites to the dgm network away from Commission Junction (CJ). I’d started to transfer many links over but I was made aware that I’d missed a few pages.

When you login to CJ it tells you how many links are ‘invalid’ i.e. going to a merchant that is no longer live on their network.

I saw that I had 75 clicks for the JD Williams brand and that I should really stop that leakage, as every visitor lost was a potential lost commission.

The report not only tells you what url the click came from but the creative used.

I changed all of the links on the page to those on dgm and included a network tracking code, so I could measure the effectiveness.

Immediately sales began to be recorded and the commissions stopped being leaked away.

Webgains recently announced that closed merchants links will be switched over to a similar merchant in the same sector, ensuring us affiliates can still receive commissions.

We’ll automatically be signed up to the new related merchants and if you want to see which links are affected, you can set up a daily or weekly scheduled ‘click error’ report which can be emailed to you.

My mission for this week is to stop further leakage. I now have 34 emails to action.

Shop Codes PPC experiment statistics revealed

befuddle — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 11:27:20 +0000

When I cashed a cheque for �17,100 that Google sent me last week, I knew how I was going to spend that extra �100 on the first rainy day. So on Monday, I dusted off the cobwebs of my Google Adwords account and set about creating my first PPC campaign since 12th April 2007.

I’d said to a few of my fellow code peers at a4uexpo and online that all my traffic is via SEO and I no longer take part in PPC as I haven’t seen any evidence to suggest it is beneficial. So I told them that I’d pick a random day and join in and then take an indepth look at the stats.

I was to measure how many visitors I can buy for �100.

How much time �100 will buy me.

How much revenue that �100 investment would make me.

However, I also had to measure the benefit. And so I’ve collated traffic and commission figures for the day previous (Sunday 18th November) and one week back (Monday 12th November).

So here’s the backdrop. Sunday 18th November 2007 was Shop Codes highest traffic day ever, since launch. All this traffic was from SEO with Google contributing to over 1,000 of those visitors.

So to experiment on the following day was not probably the wisest choice as traffic may be on the increase and I may find the best is yet to come. And so it was. Yesterday Google (organic) delivered an extra 168 unique visitors, to make Monday 19th my highest ever.

I created one new campaign in Adwords that was to simply highlight that Shop Codes has 140 exclusive codes and I targeted keywords such as “voucher codes”, “discount codes”, “promotional codes” and “coupon codes”.

The minimum spend I was allowed to pay was �0.25. I set the daily budget to �300 and the maximum cost at �0.30.

As soon as the ad went live, it appeared in the top slot in the main part of the Google page. So within minutes I had maximum exposure.

Then soon after I could see that an affiliate network had started clicking on my advert. During my campaign an IP address of Affiliate Window appeared in my analytics.

The stats say that the first visit was at 15:10:53 for the search term “dixons discount codes”. The green url in the image is the url clicked on. The second url is the landing url. If the url is appended with “?clid” then that shows it is a paid-for link on Google.

The statistics summarise that this visitor stayed on my site for 2 hours 18 minutes and 28 seconds.

It shows they clicked on those adverts that were costing me �0.25 a click each, 26 times in those 138 minutes.

It shows that searches included “dixons discount codes”, “dixsons discount codes”, “shop codes” and “voucher codes”.

Some clicks were within seconds of each other, which suggests the visitor was using their browser back button and re-clicking.

After only a few hours, my campaign was at �95.91 and before closing it down completely I reduced the cost to �0.10 to see if the ad would show at all. It didn’t and so at 18:14 the last paid-for link was clicked and normal SEO traffic resumed.

It was not until this morning that I could assess the success or failure of paying for an extra 380 visitors. Was it a success?

Well, yes and no.

On Monday 19th November 2007 I received my highest days level of commission received this year.

Not surprising when I’ve joust bought 380 visitors but remember my organic traffic is on the up with Google organic sending an extra 250 visitors a day compared to just seven days ago.

OK, if I made the most money ever this year, why wasn’t it a success?

Well, the total commission was only �8 more than what I made on 12th November. That day there was no PPC.

I also made one fewer sale on Monday 19th than I did on Sunday 18th. That day there was no PPC.

So, �95 bought me only �8 worth of extra commission.

What else can I measure? Well, lets take a look at my RSS and newsletter subscriber figures. Did those 380 people contribute to an uplift in sign-ups? No, in the last two days I’ve had 5 new subscribers on both days.

So, I’ve summarised that I don’t receive any material gain from PPC. Yes, I’ll make more money (just) but I’d rather carry on making money without spending �95 a day. Or the �89 it would have been if a network wasn’t so keen on my site.

Shop Codes California Dreamin

befuddle — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 14:44:29 +0000

Shop Codes visitors arrive from 96 different countries. So as well as promoting those in Great Britain I’ve trialled diversifying into other lucrative markets.

Outside of the UK and USA, my visitors are mainly from Europe, Canada and Australia. Germany and France make up most of the European market.

I contacted Webgains to see if they could help me find a few European merchants I could promote. Their German counterpart got in touch and was keen to send me lots of promotional coupons for merchants in that market.

So using Babelfish, I translated the offers and built a couple of pages. Now I had a dilemna. Was the wisest thing to try and translate the German into my own English version or paste verbatim the German text. I ended up with a mish mash and the page promoting a herrenausstatter.de Coupon Code is the 5th result in the German Google for the same search term.

I’ve been building pages in German yet the closest I’ve come to learning German is from episodes of ‘Auf Wiedersehen Pet‘ and those seventies movies with the American ‘actors’ with German voices and English subtitles. So I quickly realised that promoting European merchants may not be the wisest choice. Geographically I should expand there but I have to follow the quick wins. So USA was the next target.

This morning I noticed in my referrer logs that I had two visitors searching for “20% code classiccloseouts” and “coupon code classiccloseouts.com”. As this screen grab shows I am top result in Google.com for the term “classiccloseouts.com $10 code”. This is a US only merchant on the CJ network that always has coupons to promote.

Both visitors came from California but the stats also show that they didn’t stick around for more than a second, if that. All the same, World domination has started with that red speck to the left.

If Google UK decide to drop my site in the rankings in the coming weeks, I’ll be doing some ‘California dreamin on such a winter’s day’.

It pays to sign-off properly

befuddle — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 13:27:55 +0000

On 16th April I started a thread on the affiliates4u site about the launch of Google checkout and how sales weren’t being tracked. The post included my signature which had a link to my Shop Codes site.

Later in the day ‘Qui Gon Jinn’ a moderator of the site moved the post to the ‘Affiliate Marketing – Moderators Choice’ section. As a result, the post was featured on the home page of the popular site.

It was a hot topic that got heated at times and the thread was viewed by members and guests over 2,300 times.

While the debate was in full flow, I stepped back, as I noticed another pressing matter – my site traffic was increasing exponentially. For more than a week, the site’s influential homepage was linking directly to my own.

I know this had a positive influence on how Google then looked at my site. Here’s a screengrab of how my traffic grew.

It’s no coincidence. I’ve mentioned in my own blog that May 2007 was a record month for my site and I have not looked back since.

Qui Gon Jinn, aka Moose, I’ll get you a drink if I have the time to attend an affiliates get together.

Meanwhile, if you write subtle page signatures, you never know what results it may bring.

BedStar site in Google includes my tracking code

befuddle — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 13:55:33 +0000

If you perform a search for “BedStar” on Google, their www.bedstar.co.uk site is the number one result in the organic listings. The title, description is exactly as it is from their site. However, the display url is a webgains one and includes my affiliate tracking code.

Beds are expensive purchases and so I quickly noticed some high commissions being received and with Webgains statistics you can see the referring page for the sale.

The stats show that this has been present since 1st September which coincides with Shop Codes gaining a lot more respect in Google. My discount code site is currently receiving fantastic traffic at the moment and so it looks like the search engine is giving my links a bit more weight.

A quick search on Google shows that BedStar are not the only merchant to experience this issue. There’s a discussion at Google Webmaster help on “Affiliate Links in Natural Search Results“.

“Recently we’ve noticed that our affiliates’ links have replaced our site links in natural search engine results. However the Title and Description listed is not our affiliate’s but our own. It appears that Google is following links on affiliates’ sites to our site. Indexing our site based on our site optimization, but listing referring URL (affiliate’s) in their database.”

I don’t use paid search to advertise Shop Codes. It’s just too costly. Instead I optimise my pages so that they appear as high as possible in the organic search results pages, to attract shoppers searching for a merchants discount codes.

I also don’t use redirects, framing, popups or pulldown menus. I just link to merchants with standard text links and creatives supplied by the networks.

All in all it’s a well opimised site and ethical site. So, open question to any readers out there, which may or may not include BedStar or Webgains themselves. Are the sales legitimate? Would BedStar have a right to cancel any sales? I personally think they’re legit as in theory having that link on Google is no different to having it on my own blog. It’s just that the volume of numbers and that it’s Google make it a unique case.

It’s worth pointing out that I’m not making many sales out of this. BedStar will be the losers, who may see a drop in traffic and therefore sales as visitors may not be happy with clicking an unrecognisable display url.

I predict that Google is going to change my own rankings on the 30th of this month. Assuming they’re spidering my pages daily I could help BedStar by removing all affiliate links and just linking straight to their site? If that would make a difference or not I don’t know. It would mean I miss out on any commissions though.

Anybody want a bed? I know of a great metal bed shop that could do with some link juice.

12% drop in available discount codes

befuddle — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 21:33:00 +0000

I know of at least 25 merchants that are currently not offering discount codes whilst they did last month. This included a dozen merchants that offered an exclusive code to me. I’ve emailed and got positive responses from 4 of those but I haven’t taken the time out to contact all 12.

I’ve looked at my top 20 performing merchants to see whether a lack of codes generally or lack of Exclusive codes will make an impact on my profits. The answer is a clear YES.

35% of the top 20 merchants have kindly provided an exclusive voucher code.
20% of merchants offer a discount voucher to new customers, which all affiliates can promote.
20% of the merchants have not offered a code recently or do not have a code facility.
15% of the merchants have discount codes available to all affiliates.
10% of the merchants currently have no code but have had one just expired.

In October 2006, I wrote “Exclusive Discount Codes Wanted” on Affiliates4u. I had 22 Exclusive codes at the time. Today, it’s that number plus another 100.

Exclusive codes are a staple diet of Shop Codes and they’re often the only merchants who you’ll see on my most visited page.

As I reported in my last post, September is going to be a strong month for Shop Codes as I’ve got a 400% increase in traffic. I’m happy for merchants to take advantage of that uplift.

This post is not a plug for more exclusive codes though. I just want to see more merchant codes made available to all affiliates. Only four days ago I had at least 60 more on my site to promote.

Google is keeping me in a job … for now

befuddle — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 12:31:55 +0000

Google appears to have a love/hate relationship with my site that changes at the end of each month.

Yesterday, Thursday 30th August, saw a positive move and my Shop Codes traffic increased by 400% compared to previous days.

If the last few months are anything to go by, it looks like I am going to have a very good September, followed by a reasonably good October, an excellent November enhanced with early Christmas shoppers, then a dip at December before a rise in time for the January sales.

May 2007 was an excellent month for me and as I’ve reported before the traffic abruptly disappeared from 1st June. June was still good but allowed me to measure May as the benchmark for being ‘excellent’.
Traffic later returned and substantially increased from 10th July and on 30th July it crashed back down to its June level. Exactly one month to the day later Google has done an update and my traffic has this time benefited.

When the traffic is good i.e with over 1000 visitors a day, the profits are excellent. Shop Codes has a very high conversion rate for turning discount code searchers into customers. I’ve already published top search terms for my site and the current number one is still the generic term “voucher codes”.

When the traffic is at its lowest, as in April, June and August, the profits are still very good. The only real cost I have to running my site is my time.

So, if profits are very good in the “bad months”, why do I continue to be a part-time affiliate and still have a day job?

The answer is consistency. My business profits are reliant on natural Google traffic and I am in and out of favour every other month. When I am flavour of the month, my site is often the number one result in the search results pages for merchants discount codes. When I am not flavour of the month, Google doesn’t spider my pages as often and my site is dropped a page or two. The traffic that comes and goes directly affects the level of income.

If Google were to consistently love my site for consecutive months I’d re-assess a lot of things (after having another holiday of course) but while the search engine is keeping me on my toes, it looks like I have to stick to updating my site at the times I should really be in bed.

Plain text, faces and cleavage

befuddle — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 16:22:47 +0000

In Jacob Neilsen’s recent ‘banner blindness‘ usability report, he highlights that users view web pages in an F shape and that ‘plain text, faces and cleavage’ are much more successful at attracting eyeballs than banners.

I use a combination of banner, skyscraper, micro bar and text on my pages to get the message across.

I use the banner as a tool for a legitimate call to action. As I run a discount code site, I may attract visitors who have already visited the merchants site or are intending to anyway. So in my 4* steps to use a code, I include ‘click the promotional banner’ so that my affiliate link is tracked.

Some merchants and DavidZHark don’t approve of these sales but then it’s not as if I am framing the merchants site or opening another new window just so I can ensure a cookie is served.

The banner also reinforces the merchants brand and I can also show that the creatives and text used also serve to create new customers for merchants.

Looking through some recent Webgains sales statistics, I can show that I can create sales for other related merchants by using micro banners.

At the foot of my merchant pages I include a series of 88×31 pixel sized creatives for related merchants. Each of these badges is its own php file which I include with a bit of descriptive text, such as “Tightsplease 5% Off Code Exclusive.”

On 16th August a user was viewing the BeCheeky page and spotted the advert for Tightsplease on the same page. Within two minutes they then clicked on the 468×60 pixel size banner for Tightsplease and made a �17.99 purchase.

More recently a visitor of the Healthy and Essential page saw an advert for Silverwellbeing, which had no accompanying promotional text and within five minutes spent �35.

So banners can work if they’re used as part of the content and they can be used to cross sell related merchants.

* As a trained journalist I have been told to write four instead of 4 but Jacob’s report on eye tracking data says numerals are better for catching the user eye for online readers. I’m not sure it’s a style I can get used to.