Greg’s DVD Box Sets

Following on from one of my previous posts, Frank’s Underwear, I thought I’d occasionally blog about affiliate sites that impress me. Hopefully, “occasionally” will mean more than once every eleven months, fingers crossed.

I was at the Affiliate Doctors panel at last years London a4uExpo and was hugely impressed by one of the sites the panel reviewed.

I spoke to Greg Findley (@gregfindley) at the time and he’s since taken on board the recommendations of the panel, continuing to develop DVD Box Sets (dvdboxsets.co.uk) into a great example of a price comparison site. I sent Greg a few vague questions to get an idea of his journey which I hope you’ll find interesting too!

Background?

I started as a freelance designer in 2008 after completing a graphic design degree, and always had an interest in running my own website projects.

I first found out about affiliate marketing through a friend who sent me a link for the Amazon store script, Associate-O-Matic, I used this script to start my first site, selling video games. I quickly learnt that Google wasn’t a fan of the duplicated content AOM sites, so started teaching myself about PPC, and was fortunate enough to have picked a good niche at the time.

On the back of my affiliate earnings I got the opportunity to go travelling in 2009 to New Zealand & Australia, which was an amazing experience heightened by the fact I was working remotely as an affiliate on a MacBook, on the other side of the World.

Inspiration?

After searching for a boxset for a birthday present I’d noticed there was a big difference in prices between the online retailers, so I figured there was a good opportunity for a price comparison site with independent reviews; DVD Box Sets was created.

How long did it take from idea to launch, what was the hardest part?

It took around 3 weeks to get the site up & running in it’s current format, I got lots of great ideas from the Affiliate Doctors panel at the A4U Expo last year, so set about a new site design/build following that.

I worked with a PHP developer who I knew from my freelance work, and we set about creating a new custom back-end to include all the features the site needed. I’m constantly tweaking the site and getting new bits of code added, I think it’s always going to be a work in progress!

The hardest part has been getting Google to like the site, off-site SEO is definitely my weakest point, so that’s something I’m currently working hard to try and develop.

How is it doing now?

The site’s been doing quite well, I think I’m still in the red as I spent a lot on getting the code/features how I wanted them, but hopefully it won’t be too long before I break even on the site. Another good thing about the code is that I was able to create the sister site BluRayBoxSets.co.uk with relative ease.

Anything else?

One other thing I’d like to add is the helpful advice I’ve received from reading Keiron’s Blog, and e-mails/twitter with Kirsty (Affiliate Stuff) and Fraser (Affiliate Blog)

Thanks to Greg for taking the time to reply to my questions! Pop along and have a look at DVD Box Sets, I’m sure Greg would appreciate any more feedback!