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!

If you’re involved in affiliate marketing, the goto place is the afilliates4u forum. One of the busiest threads of late involved Frank Paul (smingle) giving advice on domains and SEO for newbies and old hands alike. Frank has been involved with affiliate marketing for over 4 years, and this week just launched his new site underwear.co.uk after many months of development.

Frank bought underwear in Dec 2008 for an undisclosed sum (a respectable 5 figure sum I believe!), recognising the potential of the domain as a “niche killer”. With a plethora of underwear merchants to choose from, the site currently has over 10,000 products listed, with another 10,000 or more still to go on.

From a niche killer point of view, the site was already ranking in the first couple of pages of Google for it’s main terms with the holding page in place. Now the full site is up and running, Frank is confident the site’s rise through the SERPS will continue. At the moment the site is sitting around #5 for “underwear” and ranking well for terms like women’s underwear, men’s underwear and ladies underwear. 

The current holder of the #1 ranking for underwear is figleaves.com. Much maligned in the affiliate world due to recent changes in their affiliate programme, how will they feel about the possibility of losing their ranking? Doesn’t this mean affiliate marketing is costing figleaves traffic and sales? Well, not really, their brand now appears on 2 of the top 10 sites, so they get more coverage. Of course I’m sure they’d like to hold onto #1 all the same! 

Of the other nine sites in the top 10 results, three are included on underwear.co.uk giving them an advantage over the other six. From the consumers point of view, they get a comprehensive site listing products from lots of retailers and high street brands. Win Win Win!

Incidentally, Frank’s first sale was a commission from figleaves.com of £3.48 only 2 hours after the site went live. I’d wish him luck but I don’t think he’s going to need it! He isn’t done either, with bra.co.uk and knickers.co.uk the next projects on his list!

Playing catch up, I didn’t actually mention it here since, but we recently scooped the “best use of Affiliate Marketing” Award (well, OK, Affiliate Future technically won ) at the IMA Awards at the end of last month.

You can read about that over here.

We’re entering the e-consultancy Innovation Awards, specifically “Innovation in Affiliate Marketing”. We’ll be using sunPress as our entry. Fair enough, it’s right on the cutting edge of innovation in my humble opinion!

There is also a category for “Most Innovative Person in Digital Marketing“, which anyone can nominate you for at no cost. I’d like you to consider filling out the form and voting for me!

Why? Well Andy at 10yetis reckons it’s a good idea and since we’re media whores I’m happy to go along with it! It would also, he tells me, be good for raising the profile of Affiliate Marketing if I were shortlisted, or God forbid, actually win. But mostly because we’re media whores.

Fill out the form here – Vote for me!

then email it to – awards@e-consultancy.com

Normal non-egotistical service will be resumed shortly.

On the 19th August I emailed Claire Taylor (née Hoyland) and confirmed we wanted to exhibit. 12 emails later that same day, asking Claire many many questions, we were booked in. Never having doing anything vaguely like this in my life I didn’t know where to turn! At this point I’d like to say how much of a star Claire was from that day until the actual exhibition, we really couldn’t have done any of this without her help.

So stand #5 was booked, as a shell scheme. Job’s a good’un I figured. Hmm. Next came the graphics. Michelle at Caboodle was once again patient as a saint, as I dithered as to what it should actually have and she once again pointed me in the right direction. A few days before the deadline we sent off the graphics to Billy at Event Exhibitions who would be creating the stand boards. Here’s the design -

Obviously it had our Top Secret Project details on the two left hand panels, so we had to come up with something to cover it until after our launch. Between Michelle and Billy they worked it out using several metres of velcro and this specially designed PVC cover -

A couple of weeks before the event we contacted Camden Exhibition Services who sorted us out with a couple of nice tables and bar stools. Even this took a few hours to decide! I’ll also add that, when one is married to someone who works in the conference industry and they suggest some kind of unit or cupboard to store all the paraphernalia at the stand, you should really listen!

Here’s a few pics of our stand in the flesh -

On the set-up day we turned up to find the electricians had run our electrical connection right down the middle of our stand, between boards 3 and 4! Claire to the rescue again, she got them to stick it in the corner, out of sight.

After all that time, effort and money, our stand was dismantled and the boards chucked away before the last session of the expo had finished! I’d still happily recommend it to any merchants considering exhibiting in 2009, or even in Amsterdam. 

The good lady wife, Lorna, will be taking in her first affiliate event at this year’s expo. We fly out of Glasgow on Monday to arrive at London City at 2pm. Check into Novotel sometime after, then get to Excel to see our stand around 4.30pm. I’m also hoping to scope out the room where we’re doing our presentation to get a mental image and scare myself a bit, no doubt.

After a bite to eat at the hotel, Alan and I intend do a final dry run of our presentation in one of our hotel rooms to the rest of the sunshine peeps. Then it’s off to the pre-event party, sponsored by AffiliateFuture, in the Novotel which is handy. Being sensible, I should be tucked up in bed by midnight in preparation for the big day ahead. If you see me in the hotel bar after 4am, give me a serious talking to!

I do actually hope to catch a few of the other not-as-interesting-as-our-session conference sessions. On Day 1 I’ve picked the following -

WordPress SEO & Optimisation Strategies 
by Joost De Valk
10 Ways to Get the Most Out of your Paid Search Affiliates 
by Duncan Jennings
Extreme SEO Strategies for Affiliates 
by various inc Dave Naylor

I’d also like to catch the Affiliate State of the Nation session hosted by Fraser, but Lorna is flying home Tuesday evening, so I may have to slip away early. In the evening it’s the Thames Cruise sponsored by Platform-A. I’ve been paying AOL around £30 a month for a few years now, so I’m aiming to get some of my investment back at the bar Then it’s back to the Novotel for a few late night cocktails, all welcome!

Day 2 -

Dare to Be Different – Affiliate Programme Brainstorming
by Naomi Brown
How to Manage a Successful Affiliate Programme : Strategies from Award Winning Affiliate Managers
by Zak Edwards and Graham Keen (still waiting on my late call up )
Technical Innovation in the Travel Sector
by various including Pete Norwood
Meet The Super Affiliates
by Kieron Donoghue, Doug Scott and Jamie Harwood

Not sure I’ll manage all of them but will give it a good go! Then it’s off to the Travel Vertical Reception before crossing over to the Fox for a few more sociable beers. If you don’t see me at the bar of the Novotel at 4am give me a good talking to!

If you’d like to hook up for a chat, drop by our stand and say hello. If you want to pre-book a certain time, the boys at Existem have been working hard on the “Connect” system to allow you to book appointments with us. No-one has used it for us yet, feel free to be the first!

Fly home Thursday afternoon, with a monster hangover and a hatful of business cards. More importantly I’m sure,  some great memories and having met loads of old friends and even more new ones!

Then we badgered Matt into letting us launch our Top Secret Project as one of the sessions. We had to convince Matt it wasn’t just going to be a self-advertising puff piece, that we actually had something valuable to show the conference attendees. I’m pleased to say he obviously thought we had something interesting, as there we are, Platinum Room 4, Day 1 at 2pm.

Never mind an unreasonable aversion to public speaking (I assume I won’t like it as I can’t ever remember having cause to do it before), our Top Secret Project has grown several limbs since we first started it. I’d like to tell you it’s 90% finished at this point, but it seems to be always 90% finished at any given point. Whenever we settle on something, another opportunity to improve/radically alter something else pops up and off we go again. While I’m sure we’ll have some kind of finished product at the Expo, it’s now slightly terrifying that it might not go down well with our audience. Call it paranoia, but suddenly the doubts are creeping in!

On top of all this is the ever increasing number of deadlines involved in being an exhibitor and speaker. Today I spent most of the afternoon going over drafts for our stand design. “Put a big logo in the middle” was my KISS approach. Apparently simple isn’t always best, our designer reassures me. At some point next week we’re to hand in a first draft of our “launch” presentation. The week after, our final draft. At this point I have zero words and can barely open Power Point.

We’ve also to decide what furniture / fittings to have on our stand. Daily emails from various suppliers offering desks, laptops, plasma TV’s and much more only serve to confuse this Expo virgin. If you come by our stand and we don’t even have a chair, my apologies!

Like Fraser, this year really is my first Expo, having similarly missed last year’s event due to the birth of daughter #2, Lilly. I’m mostly looking forward to it, but it feels like I’ve got an exam half way through, so I may look much happier come 3pm on Day 1.

PPC Policy: No affiliate may conduct direct PPC to the on the beach website. No affiliate may mention on the beach in any PPC ads for their own site and may not bid on any brand term or variations of the brand

and

PPC Policy: The following is prohibited from On The Beach affiliate programme: Using the On the Beach and otbeach.com brand names, brand misspellings or similar variations in the written copy of adverts on PPC (Pay per Click) search Using the On the Beach and otbeach.com brand name, brand name misspelling or similar va

A quick search on Google for “sunshine holidays” -

and it’s been like that for a few months now. I’m aware it doesn’t break any of Google’s new rules, and some of you won’t see anything wrong with that, but it just sticks in my throat. A lot.

The EPC is a number that every affiliate program on the major affiliate networks has, its like a batting average. EPC stands for earnings per 100 clicks. So if a merchant on CJ, Linkshare or SAS has an EPC of $30, it produces $30 for every hundred clicks that are sent to the merchant’s website. The EPC can be a very inaccurate number if the merchant is not expiring or kicking out affiliates that produce garbage clicks and no conversions. This can seriously skew the EPC downward. In CJ, Linkshare, and Shareasale, affiliates should look at a merchant’s EPC to see which offers are perfoming the best. As a merchant you should be trying to keep a very high EPC by keeping crappy affiliate traffic out of your program and working on making your website conversion rate to improve your click-to-sale ration.

Thought that might get your attention. The above quote comes from the Experience Advertising blog here. Emphasis above is my own. Assuming it’s not just linkbait, it seems a very short-sighted approach by an affiliate management company with a pretty decent looking client list, going by the site homepage.

We’ve had a few cases in the UK of merchants/agencies culling “non-performing” affiliates en masse. Maybe similar advice to that given above is the reason? Pfft!

Since those heady days of excitement, with talk of “Best Practice”, “Membership” and “Codes of Conduct” nothing much appears to have happened. Well except for the recently elected chair of the IAB AMC Ben Wood getting himself a new job as MD of Tradedoubler, an affiliate network you know.

I’ve been made aware Mr Wood has done a sterling job in getting things progressing, bringing much needed order and organisation to events. However I’d expect at the very least Mr Wood would tender an offer of resignation of his chairmanship at the next meeting of the AMC, even if it’s refused, to keep everything above board. Quite honestly I’m surprised no-one else has mentioned this up until now.

It would also be nice to hear more from the elected chairperson on an ongoing basis, along with a re-affirmation to the exact aims of the body. The message seems to be getting lost on the forums for now. While an outside observer for now, I fully intend to attend an upcoming council meeting in the next few months and try to help within the process as well as throwing stones from outside!