Andy’s Blog

As part of my webdesign services for small businesses I undertake the promotion of sites, SEO, Link building, banner advertising and PPC. 

At times you can put all your efforts into promoting a site and start traffic coming in, then the client will phone you and say “Client X didn’t even know we had a website”, and thats obviously my fault.

 So I’ve included here some of the things I recommend my clients, and all small businesses should:

• Ensure that all marketing materials have a website and email address as well as phone etc. give people the opportunity to contact you they way they want (within limits of course).
• If a potential customer requires further information, ask if they would like to receive it via email as well or instead of snail mail.
• Where possible have a “Quote this number for a…….” advert on PPC landing pages, particularly if sales aren’t completed online.
• Tell people that all up to date pricing/information is available on the website, and of course make sure that indeed up to date pricing and information are available on the website.
• Put a note or compliments slip in with orders or information packs etc. informing people of your sparkly website.
• When you email make sure the website details and emai details are present in the signature or similar.
• Make sure that the email you use is @yourcompanyname.co.uk using free email providers looks cheap and unprofessional.

and possibly one of the most important things, not just for your website but for any form of advertising.

• Where did you hear about our company?

Its suprising how many clients say “the website isn’t generating business” when there not even tracking where the business is coming from. I know we have stats etc. but if a products isn’t sold online and needs real world contact to complete sales, it can be hard to track.

If a company has invested time and/or money in  a website make sure you promote it to your current customers and contacts, if not having or them not knowing about your website makes them look at other companies then your loosing money, make sure you know where new customers are coming from, and as a result which advertising is working and make sure your site is up to date and working.

I had another meeting yesterday with the same business associates about various projects, normally these projects would take up 2 hours, the entire meetings duration.

Yesterday’s meeting seemed a little rushed we had come to what I thought would be the end of the meeting in around 45 minutes, so i offered them a coffee before they went, “Before we go?, you better get some more coffee on the go we’ll be here a while!”

 At this point my mind is racing, wondering what the problem is.

“This affiliate marketing, How does it work again?”

So I explained the concept, again, then about how you need traffic and content to keep visitors coming back.

Then the inevitable question “so why aren’t you doing it?”.

Aaaaagggghhhh!!! that same bloody question, I ask myself it everyday.

Due to the way affiliate marketing works there is anything upto and beyond a 6 week lead, from making the sale to cash in the bank, and when you’ve got bills to pay and food to buy waiting that long isn’t an option. If I had the bills covered for 2 months I would go hammer and tongs at affiliate marketing, adding as many sites as I can, as much content as i can and driving as much traffic as I can. With a 2 month grace period affiliate marketing could easily become my main income(I don’t need a lot).

“Well how about if we pay you to develop some affiliate sites?”

I thought it had too be a wind up, but they are serious, they have some site ideas and want me to build and monitize them. An hourly wage and a percentage of the profits what more could I want, apart from a few more sites like that ;).

Is this a done thing in the industry? have an idea and pay someone else to make and affiliate site from it?

I suppose its no different to paying for an ecommerce site to be built and managed. But it gives me the opportunity to tune may affiliate marketing skills and get paid at the end of the week, which will hopefully allow me to develop more sites of my own.

Chatting to a couple of business associates this morning about my current income streams(web design, tuition, Marketing) and we got onto Affiliate Marketing.

After outlining what it was and briefly whats involved, they turned around and said, and I quote “You must be minted then, all that easy money”.

So this post is for them and for anyone else that thinks Affiliate Marketing is easy.

Guess what?, it isn’t.

Well not entirely true, if you want to cover costs of hosting domains and have a few quid then no problem, you only require a relatively small amount of traffic to earn enough. This is where i’ve been for the past few years, having fun, covering costs, but never really dedicating enough time to earn anything decent.

If you want to earn a living from affiliate marketing then you have a lot more work to do.

 The biggest part of affiliate marketing is a numbers game. If you have 1000 visitors to a site and 1% click through your advert and purchase:

1000 visitors 1% = 10 Purchases
average sale £20
Commission 5%

thats £10 commission per 1000 visitors to your site. If this traffic is based on organic listing then all well and good but if your promoting via PPC then you have that cost to take off.

Assuming that all your traffic is generic and free then to earn a wage you would need 30,000 visitors to your site to earn £300.

Which isn’t a huge amount in the grand scheme of things but you’ve got to retain those numbers on a monthly basis. So you’ve got to get the same people back buying something else or you’ve got to attract new people. Keeping a site up to date and fresh attracts new visitors and retains current so this is a must.

Is 30,000 people hard to get to your site? maybe. So what i’m doing is creating more sites in different areas this allows me to distribute the traffic I need across different sites and different subjects. So instead of 1 site requiring 30,000 visitors I will have 10 sites each requiring 3000 visitors, a far more achievable target in the short term.

But, 10 sites all requiring maintainance and content and ads placing and researching is 10 times the work of 1 site. I’m sure with practise and the right tools you can cut down the time required for each site but if we bargin on 10 sites 2 hours each, 20 hours per week then if we get quicker we use the same time and just create a new site.

So earning a wage via affiliate marketing is doable but like anything you only get out what you put in, sticking a site on the internet and expecting the cash to roll in won’t work.

How many sites did I say I was going to do? i better get to it then.

andy