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Affiliate Marketing Blog from bedazzle.co.uk

  • Oct5

    20 Comments

    You can make some money from small Niches

    Posted in: Niche Sites

    Quite often you’ll see people asking on forums how many exact searches is enough to make money, the answer is not as straightforward as some think, it depends on the niche, the commissions available the competition to rank and also how much you are happy to be making.

    There’s those that won’t get out of bed unless they are making tens of thousands from a site and there are those who would be happy with a few hundred and if you’ve got a few of those sites making a few hundred or more then that can add up nicely over the year.

    So the point of this post was to just show a few of my smaller niche sites with exact match domains and the kind of exact searches they get and how much they have made so far this year (Jan – Sept 2011), unfortunately I’m not going to name the sites as it’ll be like shooting myself in the foot, I don’t want the competition, but i’ll tell you the industry :)

    Niche Income

    For me I’m happy with these kind of figures, mainly because I don’t rely on Affiliate Income to live, and the fact these sites don’t require much attention to them, small sites like this can cover a lot of your household bills and cover the cost of some nice treats too.

  • Oct4

    1 Comment

    Adding HTML and Shortcode support to WordPress Category Descriptions

    Posted in: Tips, Wordpress

    This is a guest article by Dan Harrison, who’s the director and chief developer for WordPress Doctors. Dan is also an experienced affiliate marketeer, focusing on eco and gadget niches.

    Many of us spend a lot of time on our affiliate sites making them damn useful for our website visitors. That includes adding plenty of relevant and useful content. How many of you are adding descriptions to all of your categories? I expect quite a few of you are already doing it.

    Are you frustrated by WordPress’s default behaviour of not permitting HTML in Category Descriptions? Do you want to add bold, images, perhaps even video to your categories? Well this article shows you how to fix that, plus another little trick for supporting WordPress shortcodes.

    Adding HTML in Category Descriptions

    This is a very simple fix, allowing HTML in category descriptions just requires you to add the following code to functions.php for your current theme:

    $filters = array('pre_term_description',
	'pre_link_description',
	'pre_link_notes',
	'pre_user_description'
);

foreach ( $filters as $filter ) {
	remove_filter($filter, 'wp_filter_kses');
}
remove_filter('term_description', 'wp_kses_data');

    That code basically tells WordPress not to strip out HTML when saving a category description. So now, HTML will work in your current theme.

    HTML Categories description editing

    HTML Categories description rendered

    Adding Category Descriptions to your WordPress Theme

    If you don’t already have category descriptions in your theme, then add the following code to your theme’s category.php. If you don’t have a functions.php file, then copy index.php to category.php, and make some tweaks.

    <?php
$category_description = category_description();
if (!empty( $category_description)) {
	echo '<div class="category_description">'
	      . $category_description .
	     '</div>';
}
?>


    Adding Shortcode Support to Category Descriptions

    If you don’t know what a WordPress shortcode is, it’s basically a word inside square brackets that looks a little like HTML, e.g. [example_shortcode /]. In WordPress it’s the best way to insert ‘stuff’ into the main content of a page by a plugin or theme. e.g. this might include inserting YouTube videos without having to insert the nasty embed code.

    If you know what they are, then you might appreciate being able to add shortcodes to category descriptions. To add shortcode support, you just need to tweak the code for showing descriptions to the following, using WordPress’ do_shortcode() function:

    <?php
$category_description = category_description();
if (!empty( $category_description)) {
	echo '<div class="category_description">'
	      . do_shortcode($category_description) .
	     '</div>';
}
?>

    HTML Categories with Shortcode editing

    HTML Categories with Shortcode rendered

    Conclusion

    So there you go, some simple code that you can copy’n'paste into your WordPress theme to allow you to create pretty category descriptions. I hope you found that useful!

    Please do post your examples in the comments below, we’d love to see what you’ve done with yours. Please only post 1 or 2 links in your comment though, so that the spam filter doesn’t automatically remove your comment.

  • Sep2

    No Comments

    Are you making use of Social media?

    Posted in: Social Media

    This is a guest post from Mark Hall from Improve SEO a SEO Leeds company and a regular speaker at SEO events.

    You can follow mark on twitter @therealmarkhall

    As we are sure you are already aware social media has become a must have element of any companies marketing plan. A lot of businesses and brands have already got on board with the idea of using Facebook and Twitter for ‘free’ and potentially ‘viral marketing’. However when you look at these early adopters you will see that they tend to be SHOUTING at their ‘fans’ rather than engaging with them, the key thing to remember here is that social media is all about having conversations online and not a traditional advertising medium to push marketing messages.

    Smaller brands such as a local hair dressers or a local bar or restaurant have to ensure that they interact with their local online community more and more as we move to read reviews and gain approval from the actions of others online before making a buying decision. Unfortunately most local brands do not do this well at all, which only goes and damages their reputation both online and offline. The best tools that local companies and brands can use to engage with current and potential new customers are Facebook and Twitter, and the easiest one to master is no doubt Facebook.

    Below are a list of to follow guidelines that any local company small or large should follow before they embark into social media.

    Create your fan page

    Do not use a fake profile or a group this is sloppy. lazy and incorrect and a complete waste of time. Set up a fan page and ensure you select the correct category and page name to suit. Once you have 25 ‘fans’ you will be able to select a custom url e.g facebook.com/yourcompnayname

    Upload a profile picture

    Upload a profile picture, this is a very important area on your page so ensure that you get the most out of this space and use it wisely. Things to include would be;

    Your logo
    An engaging image
    Your products / services
    And an all important call to action

    You you can upload a decent sized image here as big as 180 x 540 px and for those of you with bigger budgets you should consider creating a custom Facebook landing page

    Add extra value

    Customers and potential customers will become fans with ease if they feel that are going to gain extra value by clicking that all important ‘like’ button. You could offer a Facebook only promotion such as a discount code, or promotional competition to fans only.

    Engage on a regular basis

    Its very important that you talk to your fans. When doing this ensure you speak as a first person and that the brand its self has a voice, this is great opportunity to bring out your brands personality. To start with you can write simple updates such as events, product launches and respond to ‘wall posts’ but ensure you add in a touch of humor and a few questions of your won to get some conversations flowing.

    You can also post pictures and videos and glimpses of what goes on behind the scenes, as this content will only be available via the fan pages, ‘fans’ will be feel privileged.

    Above all do not talk at or SHOUT at your fans, they want to be engaged and feel that they are valued and form part of the brand, talk to them and ‘like’ their wall posts.

    Know your competition

    Have a look at what your competitors are doing with their social media Facebook and improve on it!

    Remember to promote

    Its not a case of build it and they will come. You will still need to promote your ‘fan page’ and attract new ‘fans’ .
    Integrate your ‘fan page’ on your website, add your custom url to you email signatures, put a sign up in your store, send out a newsletter, pop a leaflet in everyone’s bag.

    And remember to do all of this with a smile on your face, don’t throw a baby fit after a week / month as you only have 5 fans nothing great that lasts comes with complete ease, analyze what you are doing and where you can improve engagement and where you can push the promotional activity.

  • Aug9

    13 Comments

    Here’s what I’ve been upto in July

    Posted in: Site Scripts

    So I know I said I was going to document the process of building a site but I’ve been too busy really to do that, besides a few people are doing that already, here and here.

    I’ve been busy developing a system for myself to use to create affiliate web shops, whatever you want to call it, that integrates with WordPress, now I already use Price Tapestry alongside WordPress and have a few domains using Storeburst but I wanted something a bit more really.

    Wordpress Affiliate Shop ScriptI like the ease of Storeburst but I don’t like the front end so much or the lack of content ability, I love WordPress so it was obvious to me what I had to do, get it made!

    So here it is, my demo site for my system Compare Sunglasses, and here’s a list of what I can do with it:
    - Upload Datafeeds
    - Set filters on the datafeeds to include/exclude keywords on Product Name/Description/Category
    - Search and Replace words on the Product Name/Description/Category
    - Menu can be by default merchant categories or bespoke menu within wordpress using a keyword
    - Homepage categories can be defined and shows random products for that category
    - Search results are viewable by relevance, price low-high, high-low, 16/32/48 per page
    - If product names match they will ‘compare’ in a table, it also shows a little thumbnail because for things like Polo Shirts the same thing can be listed loads but in different colours so makes it easy to distinguish the difference in products
    - If a voucher code is present for that merchant then it will appear on the product page
    - If a voucher code is present for a merchant it will display on the homepage with a link to view all products for that merchant
    - Category description can be added for each category

    I need to tinker with the on-page SEO functions and then all that’s needed is fresh content to be added via wordpress posts! :)

    I’ve also been getting hold of some new domains, it’s hard to stop buying them to be honest, some that I got are Volcanoes, isleofwighthotels.org.uk and lasvegashotels.org.uk, it’s also getting frustrating not developing them all, there’s just no time and when I look at all my domains for ones to sell I can’t bring myself to get rid of any as I see potential in them all :S

  • Jul31

    No Comments

    Thanks to Red Letter Days

    Posted in: Affiliate Marketing

    Just wanted to say another quick thanks to Red Letter Days for the Q2 incentive prize I received of a Logic iSTATION iPhone/iPod Dock.

    The great thing with Red Letter Days is you don’t even need to make that many sales to receive a prize, no matter how small it’s always nice to receive something for any affiliate efforts, on top of the nice commissions already!

    Red Letter Days

    Logic3 iSTATION iPhone Dock

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