Highs and Lows of Affiliate Marketing
Here at Affiliate Project we seem to have come to a bit of a crossroads. We are doing really well at the moment, January was our best month so far commission wise which is great for us and puts us on a great high, however both Gary and myself realize we need to start taking this project to the next level. So while our niche sites are great and are fulfilling their potential we know that to do this full time as a successful business and to get to our aim of leaving our current jobs and pursuing our dream we need bigger sites.
To be honest this is where the low is coming in at the moment. We are struggling a bit. Each day we sit down and think where are we going and what can we do. We can carry on with creating niche after niche which sure will add to the overall value however the big affiliates all say you need a bigger site. I think this is the stage at which a lot of affiliates might give up. Not us though. We know we can do this, we know it will take hard work and we know it will take time. So hopefully now after a good chat and with some focus we can progress towards our goal of becoming full time affiliates. If you have any advice for us we’d love to hear it.
We try and write this blog from the heart. We know this industry isn’t a quick win or a chance for an easy income. We know it takes hard work and dedication and we have put in so much effort over the last year that we know we can make it a success. Hopefully in a years time we can look back on this point as a turning point to becoming full time affiliate marketers.
On the positive we are attending the Affiliate meet up in London on Thursday up in Canary Wharf. We attended this shortly after we started a year ago and as newbies we didn’t really know what to expect. A year down the line we are looking forward to meeting up with the networks we have been using, meeting some merchants to see if we can promote their products and meeting up with some fellow affiliates to talk shop. Oh and of course not forgetting the free food and drink and the chance for Gary and I to enjoy a rare night off. We are not expecting much work to be done on Friday!
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6 Responses to “Highs and Lows of Affiliate Marketing”
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Wow, depressing! I’ve followed your story for quite a while now and always looked upon your achievements with interest. Even now, despite your crossroads, you have had your best month yet! Is it not reasonable to think that next month could be better yet?
Its very difficult for someone like me who currently fluctuates between a few hundred pound a month in affiliate earnings to understand what you think is your turning point.
For me, I’d be happy to reach a few thousand pounds a month. I’ve set myself a target for this year to drive £400,000 of revenue to my merchants and get an avge commission of around 7%.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that its very hard to relate to your post without knowing what kind of earnings you feel is insufficient.
I mean, if you increase your earnings every month for the next 12 months would that still not be enough? When you say ‘big affiliates’, what are you talking about…£100,000 a year? More?
If you’re currently making 50 grand then its quite depressing for us working hard to make less than half of that at the bottom end…The other option of course to takeit to the next level is to put all of your earnings back into the business and employ someone to take it to the next level for you?
Hi Musketeer. Thanks for the comment, hope I haven’t depressed you too much. My post wasn’t meant to say we are doing badly. On the contrary as you say we had our best ever month in affiliate marketing in January driving a great amount of sales to the merchants and thus making our highest commission that month. We even managed to negotiate a rise in commission with one merchant due to the volume of our sales. All positive stuff. I don’t want to reveal figures but it was a good amount. What I wanted to highlight was the highs and low’s. That was a great high for us. We are still riding that high to an extent.
What I wanted to try and say is that Gary and my aims are to do this full time. At the moment we are employed full time but our jobs are not giving us much satisfaction. We would love to do affiliate marketing full time as we really enjoy it. We are in quite well paid jobs so to leave those jobs we have to replace those earnings with affiliate marketing earnings while trying to do that part time. Sometimes it just feels like we are a long way from achieving that goal. We do earn a good amount, but not enough to go full time, quite far off in fact. We are probably too hard on ourselves. We are doing great in terms of newbies to the industry. We probably want to get to the next level too quickly.
Basically we have a goal of what we want to achieve. At the moment we are working very hard to achieve that goal. We know we will get there. It will take time, Sometimes I think we just have to realize that and not be too hard on ourselves. As I said our ramblings are written from the heart. Sometimes life is great. Sometimes life can be tough. In our current jobs you can have really hard stressful days and I guess this showed in yesterdays post. After I posted I actually had a very productive day and felt like I added a lot of value so at the end of the day I actually felt great again. We are increasing month on month which for any business is great and what you want.
Those days make you want to do this more and more and there comes the pressure. All our own pressure. Our families are great, they are behind us all the way and keep saying to us it will take time. Deep down we know that, but we want to take it to the next level to be able to do it full time.
Thankfully there are two of us so if one of us is having a bad time the other picks us up. Hope I didn’t come across all doom and gloom. It depends on what your goals are really. Ours are to support both of us doing this full time. On the brightside its almost Thursday and almost time for a few free beers and a night out for Affiliate Project. Onwards and upwards.
Thanks for the detailed answer Paul. Given the industry that you work in full time I can only guess as to the level of earnings needed to cover you both on a full time basis in AM but I do believe that you are going in the right direction.
You did an excellent job negotiating commissions which points to a definite turning point for you and what I can say from experience is that whenever you work for yourself, you experience extremes of highs and lows that are not restricted to AM, but the good thing is that tomorrow could be a high extreme. I appreciate its not always possible to see this through the low days, but when you look back over your achievements in the last 12 months and measure your progress, you’re doing great.
Visualise where you’ll be in another 12 months and maybe then you’ll be ready to go full time.
I’ll be following your progress!
Hey Paul & Gary,
I’ve just read your blog from the start, a very interesting read and it’s good to see your efforts are paying off.
I would have thought natural progression would be a large site covering everything maternity, maybe even transferring your current swimwear and underwear sites then 301′ing the old domains onto the new domain.
Large sites are great because as they keep growing with age, content and backlinks, picking up different keyphrases becomes easier and easier.
I saw an example sometime last year where an established car leasing site was having a ‘debate’ with a car magazine. The leasing site ended the debate by outranking the magazine for their own company name and domain name. It was all done in fun but shows the power that a large established website has to control the rankings.
Anyway, good luck with your future in AM
Also, I meant to ask, how is your hosting with eukhost going. Their shared packages seem pretty good value.
Cheers
Ian,
Thanks for the comments. We attended the Affiliate Window meetup in London on Thursday and that was useful in we now know where we need to be. Your idea of a bigger maternity site is interesting and one we have thought of. We now have a couple of ideas in the pipeline and are working hard on those to get a bigger site out there while progressing with our niche sites.
Regarding eukhost our webhosting seems to be going ok. Like all shared hosting there can be problems if things need to be restarted on the server but that is the same with all shared hosting packages. Generally we have had good service from them and the times we have had to use their support they have been very good.
Hope that helps.
Paul