December Update

Posted on December 11th, 2008 by Jay

Posts on my blog have been a little sparse recently, mainly because I have been working hard on the Christmas season’s selling. Its been a really turbulent time in the UK recently - the housing market is shrinking due to a lack of lending from UK banks (despite a 2.5% drop in interest rates over the last 2 months) and this has been reflected in consumer spending. A 2.5% reduction in the level of VAT from the 1st December has done little to help (whats 2.5% in the whole scheme of things?) and the pound is now at its lowest level against the Euro since the Euro launched. On the high street, Woolworths is now in administration after 99 years (what a shame however I can’t help but feel that their senior management have simply not kept the business model up to date with current markets).

So, what does this all mean for my affiliate sites? Online spending has increased a the expense of tradional over-the-counter sales on the high street. I believe this is the result of a couple of things:

1. Consumers are becoming more internet savvie in respect of making online purchases. Companies like Amazonand Ebay have helped push the concept of online shopping out to the masses. To be fair, this is an obvious extension from the catalogue shopping of the 80s and 90s, but initial worries about security seems to be waining.

2. Consumers are looking for ways to maximise their spending power and are finally coming to the understanding about the power of using price comparison websites to find the lowest prices.

As a result, my two main websites (Find My Best Price and Santa’s Warehouse) have done well, taking into consideration the fact that they are both new websites and have had no money spent on them as far as advertising is concerned. However, the big surprise of them all is my Classic Watches website. I wasn’t sure about this one as it didn’t seem the time to be promoting luxury goods, especially online - how wrong I was! And this just goes to show the power of promoting niche websites. Have had a couple of big sales on there (and by big, we are talking a couple of grand a piece!) and so the commissions have been rather juicy!

As mentioned when I started this project, this is a journey more than anything else and I am constantly learning and reviewing my model. My goal is still to be generating £1000+ per month by next Christmas and I still believe this is more than achievable however I am making some more refinements to my current sites and my future plans as well. These include:

1. I am dropping the affilistore software on all sites after Christmas. Don’t get me wrong, its good however its not the best I have seen and I am now going to install Price Tapestry across all my sites from the New Year because it is just so much more versatile and powerful.

2. Am not going to launch anymore wide range sites but am going to identify further niche sites that I can then promote. Big ticket items seem to be the order of the day - you might not sell as many items however the commission is so much larger - remember, I am looking at the effort vs reward side of things on my project!

3. I will be including blogging as part of all future sites to keep the content fresh and to keep Google interested!

This will probably be the last update before Christmas as I am concentrating all my efforts on maximising income from the Christmas period - more in the New Year!