I’m kicking myself today after reading Kieron Donoghue’s affiliate marketing blog.

One of the things I did at the start of this year was write down important dates for 2007 - New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Easter, and so on. The idea being that I could see what important dates were coming up and tailor relevant sites accordingly.

At certain times of year it makes sense to push certain products and services so that you earn more in terms of affiliate commissions and so on.

One of those important dates on my list was Mother’s Day, but I let it come and go without any thought at all as far as my websites are concerned.

Not Kieran Donaghue. With less than two weeks to go, he launched www.mothersday-flowers.org.uk. A very simple one page site with details of online suppliers of flowers. He then went to work, driving traffic to the site using Google Adwords.

The result? He generated 800 or so sales a day in the days running up to the big day.

Now, job done, the site will sit there gathering dust until next year when Kieran will no doubt do the same.

So why am I kicking myself?

Well, you may remember that the 500th domain name to enter my domain portfolio was bunchofflowers.co.uk. And when I blogged about it for the first time, I wrote that the commission from selling just one bunch of flowers would pay for its registration.

That was last May.

So how many bunches of flowers did I sell in the run up to Mother’s Day?

None.

A big fat zero.

And the reason? Because I haven’t developed it.

What would have happened if I had thrown up a one page website like Kieron did? Well, I reckon I wouldn’t have had to kick myself quite so hard for one. I don’t share Kieron’s expertise for Google Adwords (and the man is a true Adwords artisan), but I know I could have driven very relevant traffic to the site and earned more than I did by letting it gather dust.

Lesson learned. When it comes to putting bread on the table, action speaks louder than words.

And I won’t miss out this time next year that’s for sure.

Footnote: If you read this Kieran, it would be fantastic to see you over at Internet Entrepreneurs.