Sorry, But I Don’t Want To Party Like It’s 2006

I’m not sure what’s been going on lately, but twice this month I’ve visited entrepreneur.co.uk to be greeted by two old homepages from previous incarnations of this website.  One was dated January 2006!  Apologies if you’ve been similarly confused recently.  It’s just one of a string of problems I’ve had with hosting this year and it’s getting to the point where I’m now looking for a new hosting company. As regular readers will know, up until this year I’ve had nothing but praise for Total Choice Hosting.  Whenever a problem arose (as inevitably it will with any hosting company because life happens) it was dealt with quickly and professionally, but something has definitely changed this year – or maybe I’m just very unlucky.

Talking of being very unlucky, still no positive outcome with regards the Carphone Warehouse and rejected sales. They have had since the 22nd of April to explain what went wrong, but I’m still none the wiser. Yesterday I asked for an email update prior to writing this, but I haven’t received one.  To be honest, if it was going to be sorted out it would have been by now so I’m not holding my breathe.  Funnily enough I “earned” £60 commission from Carphone Warehouse yesterday, but know that it will no doubt join the list of rejected sales.  I’m going to be revamping my mobile phone site this Summer in readiness for Christmas and will take down every Carphone Warehouse link then.  Not much point sending traffic to a site when every sale is rejected – including the one I placed myself.

Anyway, enough of the moaning because generally speaking things are going rather well for me at the moment.  In fact May was my best ever month as far as affiliate marketing is concerned. Still behind Google Adsense and advertising sold directly in terms of revenue, but considering it is May and I’ve surpassed both the Christmas months of November and December, I’m really pleased with myself.  No real secret, I’ve just been adding content to existing sites and bringing new ones online.

I’m also getting better at integrating affiliate offers into sites – and no this site isn’t a good example of my progress in that department unfortunately.  Blurb plus text link and image works SO much better than banners at driving clicks and sales for those who have tried banners, got little response and given up on affiliate marketing.

Christmas 2009 could be the one that sees me finally reaping the rewards for the amount of time I’ve been devoting to affiliate marketing.  I’ve been seeing some excellent search engine results of late and I expect those to improve further in time for the run up to Christmas.  As we all know the more traffic the more sales.  A £5,000 in commission month is my target.

I’m also busily integrating datafeeds into sites via Datafeed Studio so that I can offer my visitors a wider range of products.  I’ve always shied away from this in the past (not least because I had no idea how to use datafeeds), but even a tech clown like me can get an affiliate shop online using Datafeed Studio.  There is a learning curve as I’ve said previously, but it’s far from daunting and support is excellent.  I really think it could make a big difference to some of my sites.  Try it (for free) for yourself.

Last, but not least for today, congratulations to the winners of the recent A4U Affiliate Awards.  I voted for four of the five winners in the categories affiliates could vote in and I’m especially pleased for those winners as all have made a big difference to my affiliate marketing this year.  My choice of Account Manager, Hannah Swift, even thanked me in her blog acceptance speech, calling me a gentleman.  I’ve been called a lot of things in my time, but gentleman’s one of the nicest.  Something to live up to for sure.