AffiliateStudent.co.uk - The Blog …Life and Times of a Student in Affiliate Marketing

Just quick small rant. Basically ive been pushing sales through one merchant for past 5 months, they pay per lead and ranges from 50p to 80p a lead, now ive pushed just over £12,000 to them in this 4 month period, and then last month tracking went down and reply to emails was vague and poor communication. Now they have launched a new site which is good but ive seen my conversion rate fall and have emailed them to see whats happening. Communication is one of the most important things that a merchant can have that can help me and help them !

Think its time I find an alternative merchant

Well thought ive explained what uni’s been like so far, I thought I would add some photos from past week and a half. Think my blog sometimes looks like too much text if I dont put photos in so I thought why not add some. Enjoy

Well its been pretty impossible to do any this week. Im now into the last half of freshers week at Manchester Uni. I arrived on saturday and have been drinking and going out to a club every night since. So 5 nights in a row…not getting in earlier than 2, most nights 3am. And every day except today ive had to get up at 7:30-8am. So an average of about 4-6 hours sleep each day is getting pretty tough. Intro lectures etc have ended up making me get back at 4-5ish where ive been to tired to do any affiliate marketing, just logging on to check sales etc.

Im sorry its taken a long time to post on the blog but ive got to make most of freshers week . I will try and get a few posts done at the weekend so keep checking back.

Oh and I kind of talked to the first ever person face to face who also does aff marketing

As some of you may know, I’m moving from good old Sheffield where I currently live to Manchester as Im starting University studying International Business,Finance and Economics. I move on saturday 15th and so I’m not entirely sure when I will get net access back to be able to continue blogging…and worst keep up to date with my sites and affiliate marketing. Can be abit risky not checking…if for example my host goes down for 2 days and I don’t know and keep google adwords going I will be throwing hundreds of pounds down the drain. Lets hope its all ok Can always take my lappy with me to a net cafe and check.

I’m a bit nervous but also looking forward to it

So bye for now, I will post when I get net in my new place

About the obvious of seeing thousands of pounds waiting for me every day what I would love to see in my aff network accounts are the following features that are used on some networks already. The combination of all of the below would be perfect for me however I know others wouldnt be happy with it and would prefer other features so this is only my opinion ;).

First Affiliate Windows Month’s earnings, so you can quickly see how the month is going on.

Seeing New Pending and Confirmed commisions is great. Also from last login as well as today is a good feature.

Next payment is great so you can work out cash flows etc

And next payment date also helps of course

 At a glance in Webgains is great too as it shows average daily commision aswell as total commision generated for the month.

Clicks and impressions not as important but you can quickly see if you have had loads of clicks and no commision so possiblilty of checking for a problem tracking.

 And finally Affiliate Futures Latest transactions box which is good for seeing whats been happening recently

Now mix these altogether so it looks good and not to messy and busy on the log in page on every affiliate network and you’ve got a happy Max

Well thats what task I have made myself today, its for a new site im developing which will need loads of hyperlinks to sites, im using a php redirect script for it, but it still takes the time to make each link link to the script itself. So a 1000 links which I reckon I could do about 7 a minute, so would take me … well quite a while and its more that it bores hell out of me.

So ive decided to outsource, well try anyway, see if I can get some team in india or similar to do it for me. Ive put details on rentacoder.com. Will report back here when its done.

Please leave a comment if you’ve been in similar situations and what you have done

edit: So an hour after the project was published on rentacoder I get over 25 bids for it. I decided to pick a more expensive but english person for the job. Will let you know how it goes

edit2: So i wake up this morning to find it all done and 100% how I wanted it. All for £10 I’m more than happy to spend that on getting someone to do 1000 or so links which would of driven me crazy

So result is OUTSOURCE

Its a question that I get asked quite often on various forums which arent affiliate related such as general business ones and on msn from people who are interested in what I do and what it involves. I’ve had a quick play in photoshop and come up with the following diagram to help explain.

Explanation - Affiliate Marketing is a method of promoting a website, in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber and/or customer provided through his/hers efforts. Payment can be per visit (Pay-per-click), registrant (Pay-per-lead), or a commission for each customer or sale (Pay-per-Sale).

Its similar to methods that businesses use such as gyms where by refering your friend to join you get paid £20.

For more info read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_marketing

A question that had me stuck for ages and a many a thread was started and read and eventually I made the decision to for a laptop.

I ended up buying the Dell Inspiron 6400 with an intel pentium dual core processer, 2gb Ram and a 120gb Hard Drive…now i would go into my detail about the spec but apart from the 3 parts above it means nothing to me. I bought it through Dell Business which made it cheaper

So from my numerous threads on various forums I found that the pros and cons of a laptop over a pc or vice versa really varies depending on situations, Me as a student I need something I can take back to sheffield if I decide to go at the weekend so I can do some work on the train or at home. Others may be happy with a desktop.

So what makes me go onto my laptop (which arrived today) when I have some spare time to do some affiliate marketing instead of lazying around watching tv or going to the gym ?

Its a question that I get asked quite a lot when people ask about aff marketing, they seem to wander why I do it. Now I know what most of you are thinking… “the money” well yes this is a big factor but its not the only one. Of course working and knowing you will be getting most of the profits (apart from the taxmans cut ) is always a great inspiration, but there are several other things which make me get motivated.

1. The freedom - I can work at 9am for 30 mins if I want, or 4-5pm or 3am in the morning. If im feeling tired from a night out then I might not do any at all that day other days i’ll do several hours. This is something that is virtually impossible in other jobs.

2. I enjoy it - yes I do, its built onto me into a passion, something I look forward to doing. I’ll have an idea for a site while im on the train for example and all the way home i’ll be thinking of how it could work and then once at home if the ideas still viable i’ll get working on it.

3. Choices - If I want to go into the wine sector in affiliate marketing I can do, if I want to go into baby clothes I can aswel (altho some sectors I just wouldn’t think about ) Basically you can go into sectors you enjoy, maybe something related to your hobby or your passion. I also have started to go into areas that have interest to me but I don’t know much about for the reason I learn at the same time as building a site.

4. Finally I can work where I want …be it my garden, starbucks, my office (if I had one, more like my student room) or in bed. Know let me know another industry so flexible.

 I’d love to hear from other affiliate marketers what motivates them.

There are many affiliate marketing blogs that have popped up since blogging has become the in thing to do, So I came to ask myself why haven’t I got a blog ? I didn’t really have many reasons as to why I don’t have one so then I thought why should I have one and here are just a few.

1. Affiliate Marketing is an amazing industry where you don’t need a degree, GCSE’s or anything to be succesful, I learnt all I know from reading forums such as Affiliates4u and from many blogs such as Kierons , John’s and Chris’s Blogs, So if I can help others then its a bonus

2. Being quite young/new to affiliate marketing I thought why give across an opinion  from a students perspective which may differ to those who have been in the game longer.

3. Its something to do when I’ve got something to say that doesnt warrant a full forum post or that just maybe off topic.

4. I can keep a track of the up’s and downs of my life in affiliate marketing aswell as advice to other people.

5. Getting the views of others is great, so if I write a post i’ll love to see comments from others on their own view points and if they can offer me advice it will help me further.

 So I suppose this is the end of my first brief post, In the next couple of weeks I hope to blog about the up’s and down’s of affiliate marketing, how I got into it, areas I dislike aswell as some off topic posts about student life in general. I hope you’ll enjoy it