Darrat

I can’t believe that its been months since my last post.
Things have been busy. So, what have I been up to?

Well, I have eased up slightly on PPC and have spent more time of late working organic. It’s very satisfying working organic and it’s going very well. Still, my Adwords spend is still too large and over time I hope to reduce it further.

Other than work I have not done too much. It is all work, work and more work. Plan for June is to spend more time away from the keyboard and the time I have to work try and do it from the garden (assuming the weather picks up).

The other day I received an email from a merchant that I do a fair amount of business.
The email was to offer the top tier from the commission structure for one month as a promotion to all affiliates. I have no problem with a merchant offering deals, coupons and competitons but the offer that they were handing out did me no favours.

For me to get the top tier it took a few months of basically breaking even via PPC to get the increase commission. With the widespread increase of commission there is now more competition for the keywords and bids need to be increased. To be honest, whilst I push them a reasonable amount of business, I don’t make that much each month from them. If I continue to work them this month I would at best break even or make a small loss and the reduced business would bump me down to the lower tier next month. I have asked if there was a deal for those on the top tier but no joy.

So the result of this promotion is that one of their more successful affiliates has decided to drop them. Sure, I could pick them up again next month but then I will be back down to the lower level of commission and need start working it again to get back up the tiers. If there was more money then maybe.

I just hope that the affiliates who jumped to them because of the promo continue to work with them when it ends. I know from experience that the merchant is not easy to squeeze any profit from and if the new affiliates don’t find the winning mix then the promotion will backfire on them in the following months - they will be gone and I won’t return.