How To Be The Perfect Merchant...

I have finally decided to stop being so negative and give you some constructive ideas on how to be a decent merchant...

Planning Ahead
Planning ahead is crucial in affiliate marketing, it's pointless telling an affiliate, agency or network something after the event. Affiliates tend to plan at least 6 months in advance. I know you don't always have info so far ahead and if you do, you don't want to let it out... Get them to sign a disclaimer, tell them to keep it schtum... There are ways around this. For an affiliate to do their own SEO and PPC-ing, they need time!

Choose The Right People To Work With

• Agency - If you decide to work on an agency, shop around, talk to people and get a feel for what they do, how they do it and more importantly the results they achieve. Different agencies work differently, so you have to find out who works best for you and what you want to do with your business. Make sure they have regular contact with affiliates and networks.
  
• Network - Pick a network with great technology and decent staff. It's pointless having good technology if the staff have no idea what is going on. Attend the training sessions, these are a great way to get the ideas juices flowing. Make sure you understand the reporting, good reporting is crucial to making any affiliate programme work effectively and economically.
  
• Affiliates - Do your homework, find out who has what sites, talk to the affiliates, we are all human too you know. Pick some key affiliates to partner with and work with them, not for them or against them. Use any analytics package you can get like Hitwise to target your affiliate recruitment.

CONTACT
Possibly the most crucial thing to note down. Make it regular, make it important enough for me to read it, but make it short. Affiliates do not have enough time to sift through emails. Set up an affiliate blog. Use the emailing tools with the networks. Make sure you keep your agency informed. If you do not make regular contact, affiliates will forget about you. Too much contact and they will get annoyed. Strike a balance. Talk to affiliates, see how they want to be contacted, and how often, some like a text, some an email, some a phone call...

Incentivise Me!!!
At the end of the day, affiliates are hungry for money. Many of them have a primary job and do affiliate marketing as a secondary income. Dangle the carrot infront of the donkey and watch it run... Do what you can to make those happy little affiliates work that little bit harder.

Check Your Stats
It seems so simple, but keeping an eye on your reports and statistics can be the decider between profitable affiliate marketing and making a loss. Keep an eye on who performs well, who converts well and who isn't doing what they can be. This means you can adjust commissions to suit them and you can budget properly. It also means you can talk to the affiliates not performing so well and find out why. See what type of customer they have and see what solutions you can come up with.

Be Creative
Think outside the box, just because someone else did it, it doesn't mean you have to. Affiliates get bored of seeing the same old things over and over again. Create a hype about something and you will see the sales come in!

Stay tuned for 'How to be the perfect agency, affiliate and network'

Affiliate Bitch

Morals and Ethics - Yeah Right!

I often hear that the old school affiliates share a love for each other, they were there in the beginning and are still here now. They seem to be a gang of a few who everyone else apsires to be. I wonder though, do they stab each other in the back the way the rest of us do?

At the end of the day, we each run a business, whether it contributes £5 or £5000 a month, it is still our baby so when asked would we stab someone in the back to succeed, the honest answer is yes. Anyone who says different is fibbing. Do the 'originals' do the same? Of course they do! They may be sitting in their big houses with their posh cars and waitrose food, but they still have the killer instinct in their somewhere. They still want to trample over the smaller affiliates invading their territory!

Affiliate marketing whether we like it or not is competitive and money driven. There are bound to be site stealers, code pinchers and people who go back on their word. What I don't get is why some people are allowed to get away with it just because of their status within the industry. I don't get how promises can be made and broken and nothing said.

You have to fight for what you get within this industry, yes we have socials and we are all friendly on the outside, but ask someone when drunk what they really think about XXXX and you will soon get an honest answer. If someone annoys you, tell them... If it gets really bad then yeah, by all means make a public display about it using whatever forms but dont make a fuss if one isnt necessary, what does it do for your credibility, make you into some kind of whiny bitch like me? Really, is that what you want or yourself? To go back to my previous point, do you really think people care what you think if they are making money from it? Don't be naive!

Yes, I agree we alll have morals and ethics and to an extent we should follow them, but if it comes to treading on someones toes, or making some decent cash... be honest, which one will you go for?

Networks On A Vetting Spree...

There have been many posts on the A4U forum recently about affiliates being declined on programs and then being vetted on various networks, with threats of being kicked off the program should they not respond.

I personally find this really offensive. I think merchants and networks should have a good long think before they go irritating affiliates. Affiliates get hundreds of emails per day with new offers and voucher codes and various other site changes. So the chances of them reading an email where they have to ake time to fill in a form to prove they are working for you, plain ridiculous!

Don't get me wrong, i understand these audits, but if the affiliate isnt working for you, it doesnt cost you money to keep them on the program. 'Look To The Longtail' - One day they might just suprise you and have a customer who drops £20k of business.

Affiliates on the whole are very receptive to help with their sites, especially when it could make them money, and takes a little bit of the pressure off them. Being told you do not meet criteria and will be suspended or being told to fill in forms to show your interested still by a certain date or you will be suspended is not the polite way of doing business!

When Is Too Much Enough?

There are a few within the affiliate marketing industry who appear to have their hands in many pies. They turn up to every event and seem to have jobs, be affiliates and be advisors to others. This made me ponder when does a lifestyle like this become too much? You will eventually wear yourself out, and get a name for yourself as the affiliate bike. Going to everything and getting involved with everything cannot be healthy by any means.
Some people say affiliate marketing is like 'a family' and certain people who have been in the industry a while seem very close knit. There are indeed affiliate families. But is this too much. Is it healthy to be so involved with your work that it takes over your life? You work affiliate marketing, breathe affiliate marketing, and if you ever leave the house to see friends or family, they too are involved in affiliate marketing.
Without external interests and friends and hobbies do you feel consumed by affiliate marketing? Do you feel like it has become everything you are about? Yes, you make your money this way... But is money everything. So when is the point when too much affiliate marketing is enough?

I Never Have The Time = I'm Not Making Any Money And Don't Know How

This is just a follow up to the last post by Affiliate Bitch. It's funny because I was actually thinking to myself 'I dont really have enough time to write any posts for this bloody blog' before I saw the post itself.

The truth is, I DO have time to provide material for this site. However, being the selfish git I am, because I am just a contributing author to this site, and not being paid anything or making money from this blog, I find myself making excuses and telling myself I don't have time.

The fact is, if I WAS making money from this blog, then you can bet your ass that suddenly I would find plently of free time to devote to this blog

The point I'm trying to make, is that affiliate marketers who make excuses about not having time, are usually the ones who are not making any money, and dont know how. If you knew that by performing certain tasks each day, you would be guaranteed a certain amount of profit each month - would you find time to do it? Course you would.

To say you don't have time for affiliate marketing is admitting you don't know how to do it.

The fact is, there is a large percentage of people who are struggling to make money from affiliate marketing and will continue to do so. Forever. They just dont get it and probably never will.

You've all probably heard the statistic that something like 90% of people who try their hand at AM never make any money, and end up giving up. Thats because the 90% don't get it. The 10% do.

There is a lot to understand and learn about affiliate marketing and there are many facets involved. Unfortunately, a large percentage of people will fail to understand how to utilise these skills to make money. As well as learning techincal skills such as website design, PPC, SEO, copy writing, etc, you also need to have a business like and entrepreneurial brain to scale up your buisiness. Not every one is cut out for affiliate marketing - depsite what the MMO websites and gurus tell you.

Apologies if you're reading this and not making any money. Its nothing personal. It's just a fact of life. I know that I will never become a doctor, a professional footballer, a hollywood film star, professor of molecular physics, or the president of America. Why? Because I dont have it in me and I don't know how. Sure, I might be able to learn and try to become the above. But in the end I'll never make it because I dont' have what it takes.

If you're not making any money online, then get off your arse and prove me wrong - but I'm 90% confident that you wont.

I Never Have The Time!!!

Moan about this, moan about that, that is all the people in this industry seem to do. The most frequently moaned about thing is 'time' and the lack of it. We are all have a life, we have friends, family and most of us have full time jobs alongside our affiliate careers.
Some of the biggest players in the industry who are making the big bucks have jobs too - need i mention Frostie, Ray, Purple, Max etc etc etc... So if these guys can work (or go to uni) full time and still have incredibly profitable affiliate careers, why can't the rest of us?
Why not get home from work, chill for an hour and instead of draining brain cells watching soaps, use the hour or two to write some more content, email merchants and networks. You can't write one blog post a month and wonder why you haven't made any money, then moan about lack of time being the cause. We all know you go home and sit.
You get out what you put in, so find the time, put it into your website and watch the money flow.

Sorry, Who Are You?

I get really frustrated when using the A4U Forum, which give it its dues is really handy for snooping at rivals and just have a nose around for gossip. What frustrates me is when I'm looking at a new potential partner. I go to the trouble, in my hectic day of searching someone out only to find they haven’t bothered to take 5 minutes out of their day to fill in the contact details.

A large proportion of Affiliate Marketing is done on personality, if I like you – I’ll work for you. So if you can’t be arsed to fill in some info which could potentially bring you a lot of business, to be honest, I can’t be bothered to find any more of your details. Your loss!

All I'm saying is that it is nice to know a little about the people I work with, and asking for your biography isn’t usually something I would ask for when discussing commissions. So come on people, don’t be shy!