With not being in the mood to work I started to think that once again I just have too many domains and realistically will never get them all done, it’s better that I focus on 1 or 10 instead of hundreds, with that I’ve decided to get rid of loads of domains and work harder on the ones I really want to work on and grow, the Polo Shirt site for example, I also bought a couple of domains/sites on Acorn Domains that I’d quite like to develop too, Aftershave for Men and Spares.

I’m pretty complacent when it comes to Affiliate Marketing, I’ve just been happy with whatever income it brings in, even though I’d love to do it full time, and never really push myself to make sites make more money, so it’s about time I pulled my finger out and did just that, I want to be able to move to the sun and work by my pool

This is one of my favourite pictures from the US trip, from the top of the Willis (Sears) Tower in Chicago

I’ll go straight into listing my top 5 (number of sales):

1. Buyagift.co.uk – 771 sales
2. Getting Personal – 192 sales
3. Play.com – 146 sales
4. Activity Superstore – 116 sales
5. Red Letter Days – 18 sales

As you can see Buyagift.com are still my top selling merchant, with the total top 5 selling almost 200 more items than the previous year, Play.com is in at number 3 but because of their silly commission rates the total commission is less than Red Letter Days, in fact Activity Superstore generated 1500% more commission than Play.com

It is a bit disappointing to generate £23k in sales and not even receive 1% in commission, with using Easy Content Units I always include Play.com as I think even pennies is better than no sales, but very frustrating when you can sell a TV on amazon and get around £20 commission and the same at Play brings you £2.

I’m not sure if I am too happy with my 2009 affiliate marketing, in terms of commission I would have liked more but then I think that comes with the more you make the more you want to make, I want this to give me a full time income, November and December generates more than my day job it’s just the rest of the year I need to get sorted, I feel I’ve learned a lot in 2009 as I’ve actually made a bit more effort to and things can only get better

Anyway, I was looking at my AW stats for the year and thought I’d look back to see what it was last year, so my top 5 top selling merchants for Jan08 to Dec08 were…..

1. Buyagift.co.uk – 1031 sales
2. Virgin Experience Days – 9 sales
3. Iwantoneofthose.com – 6 sales
4. Brown Bag Clothing – 3 sales
5. Getting Personal – 2 sales

As you can see it’s heavily in the favour of Buyagift.com, in 2009 this has dramatically changed and I’ll do a post after Dec 31st to show how it has changed because of the implementation of Easy Content Units in my sites.

My income in 2008 didn’t just arrive from AW but it even shocked me to see how much of my income came from Buyagift.com

Why have I started a blog? Well everyone else seems to have one so I thought why not, sometimes I get excited and want to tell someone about it so this may be my outlet to do that, I can’t promise to give any valuable information as I just do what I do and things happen and I don’t always know why. This is mainly related to my affiliate marketing activities, for example having sites that seem to rank top in google and others that don’t and not being able to pinpoint why this has happened.

I can’t remember too much about exactly how I got into affiliate marketing but it must have been about 7/8 years ago when I first came across it, I had bought one of those local county information portals and was looking of ways to make money from it and that must have been when it started, I remember the first sale coming through a friend buying from ASOS, I think it was about a pound commission but it still felt good.

Despite that I didn’t really do much more with affiliate marketing for a few years, my first proper site was selling Little Britain Dolls when I found out they were going to be a big Christmas seller, I registered littlebritaindolls.co.uk and the .com, put up a simple one page site and linked into IWOOT, If I remember correctly I made £115 that christmas selling the dolls and other Little Britain merchandise, from then I was hooked, it took a while for me to stumble across something else to promote though but these days ideas are never ending and now I have more domains than I can cope with, just like any other Affiliate I expect.