South West eCommerce

This is an interesting month.  Our aim here is to achieve the place where we are making a living and the actual figures are down a little, but we’re feeling pretty up, why is that?

Well some important things happened.  First and probably most important, we sent Graeme to the Affili@syd conference.  While there, he met dozens of Australians chugging along making a full time living from working as affiliate marketers.  The uber marketers we see out there are the kind of people who just click to this kind of stuff, they’re the rock stars of the internet marketing world, and it can seem like they’re not the same as us.  To sit with some people who’ve been doing this a little while longer than us, but who are pretty much like us and who make a reasonable living has been very reassuring.  To figure out that while we’ve each got our own little tricks, these guys are not a lot cleverer than or different from us, well it makes us breathe a little easier.

The second thing is related.  We’re understanding the role of social media a little more.  The old warhorse SEO is still the primary way to do business on the internet but social media is gaining ground and the trick seems to be that we really need to care about the people we’re doing business with.  That actually suits us and we’ve started to gear ourselves toward the new way of doing the business.  So many of our colleagues are learning at the same time that it appears we may be able to get onto a new mindset as it rolls through, rather than playing catch up.

Thirdly we are in a place where we’ve bought a new site.  The site itself is probably not all that important, but just our presence in the marketplace is bringing us to where we had something we’ve been considering arrive on our doorstep.  That's right, the deals are coming to us.  Having had one bad experience, we’d thought that new acquisitions would have to wait until we were more advanced.  Well it’s happened and in the scheme of things, that might mean we ARE more advanced.

So to the site by site analysis, how are we going?

Site A – Up from zero.  This is good for us, and clearly it is part of our direction for the future.  The products on the site are really good but it’s a competitive and fairly sophisticated market.  We’re building our understanding and approach to the site.  3% of a BoM.

Site B – Up 200%.  This site has been a vexed issue for a long time.  We thought we’d found some answers a while back but that hasn’t worked out.  Our ambitions for it are probably lower now than they were, but we can see a way for it to be a consistent part of our offering and we’re feeling more relaxed about its non performance in financial terms.  The rise in fortunes has been neither here nor there because it made next to nothing last time, so three times its output is still pretty insignificant.

Site C – Up about 160%.  Well, this is a pretty good result.  It’s a summer product and we’re in the middle of winter.  It has soaked up a lot of energy in SEO building and also takes some time in PPC management, but it appears to be the first of our sites to really start to do what the advisors say they will.  As the warmer weather approaches we have high hopes.  18% of a BoM.

Site D – Down 12%.  This is a slight step back, but it’s one of those sites that performs best on a set of target dates, and always will.  May had one of the dates in it, June didn’t, We reckon that dropping 12% is actually better than holding it’s own, allowing for the spike in May.  Referring to older reports, yield from this site has been March 9% of a BoM, April13%, May 18%, and June 16%.  The trend seems right.

Site E – Down 60%.  Ouch.  This is another of those sites that has target dates and one of them was in May.  We would have expected a bit of a drop, but this is more than we’d hoped.  Nevertheless, it’s also a site with a few more target dates than Site D, and the long term numbers are improving.  More SEO work to go on it.  6% of a BoM.

Site F – Down below zero.  Small loss on this one, number insignificant but it took work and returned nothing.  This is a PPC site and it’s susceptible to bouncing around like this, the site itself might have a future but we’ve got a lot on our plates and some things will pay better dividends for the time we spend.  Don’t expect much of it in the short term.

Site G – Up 400%.  This sounds great, but it’s the site/ market we love to hate.  We’ve had a new product on board for just over a month so this is the first full month of figures to see how it’ll go and we’re quietly pleased.  The number would be better except we had a couple of refunds due from the old product stuffing up.  Actual numbers quite low still but the direction is encouraging.  This site still owes us lots of money.  About 2% of a BoM.

Site H – Up from zero.  We like this site because it is a market that should grow, and that is good for the planet.  We’ve always wanted to do things that we believe in, and not just for the money.  Given that green ideas will continue to grow, this will always be there, but unless we find a new key to this, it’ll always be a little sideline.  Just over 1% of a BoM.

Site I – Junk league site, no sales.

Site J – No sales – This is a site that works harder than it gets paid for.  We use it as a drop ship site and the product is seasonal.  Out of season we’d expect sales to be low, but our supplier has also had a lot of lines out of stock, so some sales get refunded.  See what summer holds.  No income.

Site K – Up 65% - This site was built around a search term that we believed would work, according to Market Samurai.  We made a mistake in the purchase of a domain and it amounted to nothing for a couple of months, then we saw the error of our ways and bought a new domain.  SEO work seems to be coming along reasonably now and sales are trickling in.  Like some others, actual number still insignificant but direction right.  Less than 1% of a BoM.

Site L – Down to Zero.  Another drop ship site, with some supplier problems.  We wouldn’t expect it to be seasonal like Site J, but it jumps around.  We’ve got reasonable hopes for it.  No income.

Site M – Down 55%.  The absolute numbers on this are low, and so a couple of sales either way looks like a big move.  It came into being quite quickly and sold instantly so we feel quite comfortable with it.  Interestingly, this disappeared from the search engines for a couple of weeks, which also affects it’s overall performance, so it’s nothing earth shattering but still very early days.  Trend is right, as the last four months show – March 1% of a Bom, April, 2%, May 7%, June 3%.  Given the amount of work it takes, this is worth doing and could at some stage explode to be a real earner.

Site N – Down 70%.  Probably a bit disappointing, but it’s very young.  This site is pretty much a demonstrator for a very important vendor for us.  It’s in a market we wouldn’t normally have targeted, but we’re expecting it to open up some things for us in the long term.  Kind of a flag waving exercise really, so the disappointing numbers aren’t quite as important as they might seem.  Some business development outcomes, and less than 1% of a BoM.

Site O – Down 25%.  This is a site that makes its cash in small amounts and backs us up in other ways.  It makes regular enough sales to not be junk leagued but is a second row site.  This one had a target date in May, so a drop in June is no surprise.  Worth it’s place on the roster, but only 2% of a BoM.

Site P – Down 65%.  What a good result.  This is a junk league site, that made a sale out of the blue last month, and now made another this month, albeit a smaller one.  With very little energy, this might be a case of an aging domain finally making sense of a site.  Less than 1% of a BoM

Site Q – New Site, sales made.  A direct result of the trip to Affili@syd, this is something we believe will make us cash from the start, and while we don’t think it’ll ever be a flagship, it may well make paying the rent a whole lot easier.  It also introduces us to using the social media in a way that is both valuable to those we interact with, and profitable.  It's taken significant work, more than it would justify for it's cashflow, but it might well be the shape of things to come.  Lots of learning and just under 1% of a BoM.

There are more on the horizon.  This is a lot of work, especially given it’s not the whole business.  Meanwhile there are signs that overall the process is firming and we could get to full time in the foreseeable future.  For a month where we’re down it makes for quite a heartening report.