Darrell Freeman’s Internet Marketing Blog

I first went to A4U whilst SEO Manager at Prodo in late 2008. Good conference with plenty of quality sessions, good networking and a good vibe. Learnt loads of good stuff and really opened my eyes that working full time in affiliate marketing would be sweet.  6 months later I went to A4U in Amsterdam - not as good as London - too many of the same sessions as A4U London, however was worth it for just going to Amsterdam! Great City!

I missed A4U London 2009 as I was on holiday in Kenya and just looking at the details for A4U Munich now.  With the cost of €395 a ticket, over £150 for flights, £175 for a decent hotel and spends of around £200 I reckon I’ll get more benefit out of not shelling out the near £1,000 and also missing a few days of work.

However looking at the agenda, noticed a session by the guys at The Conversion Experts and thinking the cost maybe worth it for just that session.

Google Adwords is amazing! Not only does it drive relevant traffic to websites but without doubt Google Adwords is the best keyword tool there is. If you have your keywords on broad - then you can do a search query report and find all the keywords that users used to find your site. This is miles better than Wordtracker or any other tools out there! Obviously the only limitation is the initial keywords you have for your Adwords campaign.  Not only can get the search query show the keywords users are using to find your site but Adwords can also show the highest converting keywords aswell.

The content network also provides a great opportunity for SEO’s. The placement report can show the websites where your ad has been on.  These are websites that Google deems are closely related to your ad and therefore these websites are perfect for link building. Google Content Network can find you hundreds of relevant websites to approach for a backlink.

Finally got around to producing some business cards and flyers for big mens clothing shop Big Dude Clothing.  I think the design for both are wicked and got them printed from Scuba Printing.  They fit well and tie in nicely with the look and feel of the website.  Only problem is I should have gave 10% off to returning customers and not the tight 5%.  Oh well, next time I’ll sort that out!

Affiliate Marketing is great, the money and lifestyle of those working full time in Affiliate Marketing can be amazing (not mine though)!  However as with any job there are those things that I hate:

1. Voucher Code sites.  I would love to know how much my sites have lost out to voucher code sites as the user is on the checkout on the site and they open a new tab and go and get (or ty and get) a voucher code which overirdes my cookie.  My hard work lost at the last moment.  Obviously I could open a voucher code site but the market is quite saturated and also with new guidelines coming out all the time on voucher code websites, it seems a huge amount of work to get it working properly!
2. When merchants redesign their websites and do not tell the affiliates or give them enough notice. This usually leads to the structure of the urls changing and therefore the affiliate website is left directing the traffic to 404 pages, great!
3. Other affiliates in the same market ripping off your site.  I’ve even had other affiliates use my own banners on their own websites.   A few emails threatening legal action eventually sorted but how cheeky is that!
4. Merchants having poor checkout processes or poor lead generation pages.  On some offers I know I could generate a substantial amount of business but the problem is the merchant’s site or pages would have a very poor conversion rate due to design issues (e.g. generally asking the customer for too much info), so it is a no go.
5. Affiliate Network Interfaces - Lets be honest, most of the interfaces of the affiliate networks are confusing and are not easy to navigate around and find the info you want. I would say Webgains have the best interface out of the networks.

It is definitely time I updated my blog, considering it is now over 2 months since I last updated.  The only major event during that time was a holiday over New Year to Boston and New York.  Above are some snaps taken from the holiday and put together in a collage using the software at Shape Collage (nope, it is not an affiliate link).  Check it out, free trial edition and the interface is really easy to use, super quick at importing images and edit the overall image as you like (how close photos are, background image, shape of image, size, density of photos and loads more).

Adwords recently improved some of their reporting (few months ago).  For example the Search Query report now shows actual keywords (big help!) rather than ‘1 other unique’ or something like that.  Anyway, I would really love to get hold of the keywords which trigger an impression of my ad! Why?

Few reasons, firstly I could find more negative keywords, this would mean finding possible negative keywords before they click on my ad and cost me.  Therefore showing me keywords which produce impressions would lower my cost.

Secondly, with more negative keywords I could reduce my impressions which in turn would increase my CTR (click through rate) and therefore increase my quality score possibly leading to increased ad position at the same cost.

Finally, it would allow me to possibly better targeted ads, which in turn increases my click through rate and quality score.

I can see why Google do not provide this information as some campaigns will produce thousands of impressions per day.  However there would be benefits to Google aswell, such as helping advertisers to delete non relevant ads and produce better targeted ads and therefore more sponsored CTR equals more money for Google.

Not been blogging for a while mainly due to spending most of October on holiday (Kenya/Thailand) and spending November catching up with the backlog of work.  Just a quick post, as the freelance graphic designer I used for projects has now decided to go back into full time work and part of his contract is that he can’t do any freelance work.

Anyway I’m on the lookout for a good freelance graphic designer.  Main requirements is that they have experience of producing PSD visuals of a web site (normally homepage and internal) from a design brief.  Also usual little jobs (e.g. business cards etc….).  The jobs are infrequent but I would like to have someone lined when and if the jobs come up.  I normally pay a set fee per job, paid by Paypal upon successful completion of the project.  The graphic designer doesn’t need any coding experience.  Recommendations welcome - just leave details in the comment.

If interested just leave a comment with a link to your site or protfolio……

Blog post on a Friday night! Just about to go down the local for a few scoops but quickly wanted to let you know about a new (I think its new) cross browser tool called Adobe Browser  Lab that I have just come across.

When I get a new site designed I need to know that it will look good in all commonly used browsers (IE 6, 7, 8, Firefox, Chrome and Safari).  In the past I have used the Multi IE’s but it doesn’t work on Vista and also used Browser Shots a few a times - but nowadays have to wait nearly 30 mins on Browser Shots so no good really.  There are quite a few paid services (e.g. £20 a month) but as I don’t need the service too often I’d rather not pay.

I’m really impressed with the new tool, however it doesn’t have IE 8 which is a dissapointment.  Anyway as a FREE tool it is pretty cool.  Have a play around with it and see what you think.

Been hearing a lot lately about keyword domains and micro sites.  Hopefully sum up what they are, advantages and disadvantages of keyword domains and micro sites.

What are keyword domains & micro sites?  Examples?

Basically you buy a product related domain and then develop a micro sites (few pages) around the product and with some simple on-page SEO they will rank quite well in Google.  For example, Ipod Nano 16GB is a good example.  Good domain name and a great micro site.  The person who owns that site probably took a few days to build it, hardly any maintenance and gives them a decent monthly income.

I developed one recently, the Quinny Buzz site took me about a day to develop and so far as got me a few commissions.  In a few months I’ll report back on the progress and see if it was worth it.

What are the advantages of keyword domains & micro sites?

There are a few clear advantages:

• Domains are generally available.
• Quick SEO rankings in Google.
• Quick to build the site.
• High conversion rate (specific product terms usually convert better than generics)

Any disadvantages?

There are once again a few disadvantages to consider:

• Low search volume.
• You may rank page 1 in Google, but the ‘gold’ is in the top 3.
• Manufacturers may sometimes get pissed off with your brand domains.
• Unique text needed for all sites which for some people can take a while to produce.
• Losing true sales to voucher code affiliates (happens on normal affiliate sites though).

Top tips for micro sites?

• Make sure the on-page SEO is spot on before launching (e.g. title tags, meta description, keyword research, unique text, keywords in the text etc…)
• If you have a price comparison on the product, be selective about merchants you use.  Consider conversion rates, affiliate payouts (e.g. Click and reserve with Argos pays out just 25p, so I would never include them).
• Get a few backlinks to the site.

Let me know of any more tips and tricks for keyword domains and micro sites.  Are they working well for you or waste of time? Leave a comment and let us know!

Recently whilst building a new affiliate site I’ve been using a few tools to make life that bit easier and quicker on the design and programming side.  It always good finding easier and quicker ways to do things.  In the online world you are inundated with offers to use new tools (SEO, PPC, CMS etc….) and if you decided to trial them all, your bank account would soon be empty.

Anyway I recently decided to do a bit of a review site and really didn’t want to get a custom design from a graphic designer due to time therefore decided to go for a Wordpress theme.  After looking through the free themes I couldn’t find one that I liked enough and eventually went to Brian Gardner’s Studiopress and choose the excellent Lifestyle theme.  There are also loads of tutorials to totally customise the theme and a very active forum.  The themes are just $59.95 and after a Google search I picked up a discount code of 25% (PERF25) which made the theme just $44.97 (about £28 - Bargain!).  The theme was easy to set up widgets on the homepage and the one or two design issues I encountered have been cleaered up very quickly on the forum.  Considering using the corporate theme now for a few non blog sites.  Great stuff!

Another tool that is new (kinda) to the affiliate marketing space in the UK is Easy Content Units.  Now I can put products on my sites in super quick time with products from a variety of merchants and networks.  I’ve only just started to use this tool, but the units were very quick to setup in the admin area of Easy Content Units and then it produces some javascript code which you just paste into your webpage (easy!).  To add/delete products just use the simple interface in Easy Content Units, you don’t need to change the code on the page.  I’m currently using the free version (80/20 revenue split) and see how it goes.  If it goes well I’ll upgrade to the paid version (£20 a month, no revenue split).  Give it a play today, it is so simple to use.

So you have Studiopress to create a site and ECU to populate with products.  Need some content and can’t be bothered yourself?  Try Content Now (I’ve not used them yet so can’t comment on the quality).  Now if Tracking 202 would add some UK networks you could have affiliate sites up and running with minimal fuss and best of all, minimal work!