So the recent press headlines here in the UK have not been great for British Airways their brand spanking new terminal “T5″ has gone down like a lead balloon. The disaster now means thousands of bags are separated from their owners indeed many people even the most loyal BA customer I suspect are now thinking it’s time to look at what the other airlines are doing.

So it comes as no surprise that one airline is currently flying high. At the start of the year Virgin Atlantic started a ?£6 million pound advertising campaign to promote their new first class lounge and existing services at Heathrow. Now Virgin is a brand everyone is familiar with because of one guy but it has recently attempted to move the Virgin brand away from being the soul domain of Richard Branson and attempt to sell on the individual companies merits.

Affiliate Marketing with Virgin Atlantic

So what this got to do with affiliate marketing, well once you have started to get your first few cheques in, it’s worth putting some a side into a quick project slush fund. Not millions just a couple of hundred dollars for when events are just to quick to miss. So lets see how I would spend that fund right now:

1. Buy a domain name
2. Setup a quick mini site 3 pages or so on the current problems at T5
3. Create a dedicated landing page for Virgins new lounge
4. Base the headlines around the air line that gets you and your baggage their
5. Sign up for Virgin Atlantic 2 Affiliate schemes
6. Drive traffic

Buy a domain name

Domain names are cheap, so it’s worth setting the majority of your projects up on their own domain name for a $8 investment you have nothing to lose, if the project fails and or is similar to existing projects you can redirect the domain when you are finished for a little benefit from search engine traffic. When buying a domain name either keep it very generic or very specific, in this case be care to avoid domain names with Virgin Atlantic, Premium Economy or Upper Class in them as the Virgin affiliate program prohibits those terms. Given the current crisis and it will be in peoples minds right the way through the summer is baggage I would start there. Indeed flywithyourbaggage.co.uk is available from me if anyone is interested

Setup your mini site

We don’t really need to tell you how to do this part, suffice to say content, template rinse repeat. Find a suitable theme if your pushing the first class lounge aspect or Virigin all the way then Reds and Purple colour scheme will be your best bet. There is plenty of content out there, so use your imagination or scraper depending on your hat preference.

Create a Dedicated Landing Page

Or two, it really is worth creating specific pages dedicated to Virgins Services and those of others I’m using Virgin as the example, but let’s take Virgins Chauffeur pick up service, their are plenty of companies offering this service many with Affiliate Programs of their own. Each product your planning should have it’s own page. You might even want to consider a US to UK page and a UK to US version.

Sign up for Virgin Atlantic 2 Affiliate schemes

Following up from the 2 pages their are in fact 3 Virgin Atlantic Flights affiliate program and several others based round their credit cards. Both of the ones we are interested in for this article are run by the same company but require you to sign up twice. Why? Well the first is the UK based version of the program, this allows you to make money selling Flights booked from the UK to the US and to sign up you need to visit AffiliateFuture UK To make money booked from flights from US to the UK you will need the US version AffiliateFuture USA their is also a European option. Each program only pays out in its currency Sterling, Dollars, Euros and only by wire transfer. This is not a problem as your bank will do the conversions for you automatically just be aware when your looking at your currency values if you have never worked in multiple currencies before.

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GeoTarget - Given you are using two programs you don’t want a Brit accidentally clicking your US link so Geotarget this is not very hard you could use Nick PHP Class to make sure Brits only see the right code

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Drive traffic

You can drive traffic to your site via all the normal methods while the story is hot I would suggest PPC just be careful what you bid on. Terms such as Virgin Atlantic are out but Baggage Chaos is in. Focus on the terms that are topical today. Avoid things like Cheap Flights the cost per click certainly isn’t cheap. Ultimately while this example is a throw away site it could be a long term investment. Baggage going missing is a fact of life and people will be discussing terminal 5 for the next 10 years so don’t just use PPC build up more long term traffic streams and search engine traffic.

This was a quick example

This was an example in a pretty unsaturated market, but with a couple of hundred dollar slush fund and an eye on the news (ideally before the story breaks big time) you can make these sort of opportunist sites. Affiliate Future have an interesting range of travel related sites and I picked virgin because they are riding just so high at the moment. Just think in a few years time you could be promoting Virgin Galactic and making money off people going into space!

The idea, build up hype and expectations and then um deliver!
The reality build some hype dash some expectations and deliver more then most people expected. That was the feedback from our recent sale.

But just to take you back, the premise was simple:

Take one blog post packed with juicy info, take interested users money and deliver the info. To build urgency and hype we introduced a Fire Sale.

So what actually is a Fire sale?

Put simply its a price increasing system, where by the price is dictated by the time, so for the first few hours/days the price is x and then it increases. Often its not just time but volume so the price is for the first 10 items sold or the first 5 hours for example.

How did we do?

I would call it a success, from concept to the event was a little over 10 hours so the time frame was pretty short. The post was already half written, but was heavily expanded, the inclusion of some free software to which I owned the resale rights and the mailing lists were I think on balance a good idea. Cost wise and this is minus my time remember was entirely on promotion, two were run campaigns a Google Adwords Campaign and a StumbleUpon Sponsor Ads both were approved in record time and a big thank you to both companies after several emails were needed to get the landing page sorted. So total costs was about $40 I placed $30 in the StumbleUpon ads but in the end used just $14, the rest went on Google Adwords.

Revenue return: 14 people bought at $10 while a further 3 have bought at $20 so after basic costs you are looking at $160 return.

Remember this doesn’t take into account my own time, even so I would consider it a success if only because I have learnt a lot.

Traffic Sources

I have already discussed some traffic sources but the breakdown is as follows;

• StumbleUpon (prior to Ad) - 96(1)
• StumbleUpon (Ad driven) - 194 (4)
• Google Adwords - 189 conversions (7)
• WickedFire (buy/sale thread) - 12 (1)
• Digital Point (buy/sale thread) - 6(0)
• Other (Word of Mouth, direct to site) - 30(4)

The number in brackets is the number of attributed sales, This means the page converted at about 3% which is remarkable given how awful it was.

The Good, the bad and the plain ugly

The Good
Ok I’m going to say the content was the good, interesting subject hopefully of use to people but clearly not something we cover very often. The good is really people will pay for information if you give them a compelling reason to. Several people who bought the article are also on our Mac Book Pro Challenge judging by their email addresses, and so its nice to see perhaps it was loyal readers who were maybe less interested in the article but were looking to help the site out that pushed the figure up. Ultimately the good is it made a profit, and proved the concept.

The bad
The Firesale was badly organised, for starters it meant I had to stay up well into the night to change the prices. There was no mechanism in place to truly check time stamps and my half hearted attempt at a referral scheme was pathetic. From StumbleUpon side of things the sponsored ads attracted a few thumbs down mainly due to the wording of the landing page.

The just plain ugly
Never ever ever use a blog post as a landing page, don’t change your wording on the fly and proof read everything. These are simple lessons to be learnt. The landing page was by the biggest issue, when I originally envisioned the idea, the plan was for a separate landing page, introducing the article with an opening snippet, the bonuses and Firesale information but due to time constraints I didn’t finish the page. Because the original post was designed to whip people into some sort of hyped frenzy it emphasised the time more so then the product.
Ultimately the landing page failed because of this.

StumbleUpon does not accept time sensitive offers, which meant I had to reword the post to reflect and emphasise the fact you could purchase access after the post. This of course meant I was editing the post on the fly and spelling errors and some nasty grammar snuck in. A couple of negative comments appeared to my shame and slightly against my better judgement I did not publish them.

The information was not time sensitive and ultimately the Firesale detracted from the sale of the articles. In that respect I should have simply published and set a price.

Lessons Learnt

So what have I learnt;

• Always have a landing page
• Don’t change such pages
• Time sensitive offers are hard to get pass StumbleUpon (great fantastic and lovely staff)
• Fire Sales are not really suitable unless you have a time sensitive information or limited access
• Plan, prepare, check before you start your campaigns
• Automate as much as possible

Will we be doing it again, I think so at least in part, we need to automate everything on the purchase side but that should not be an issue. From the purchase point of view the Fire Sale aspect will I think be dropped and instead focus on offering premium content at good prices. What will not be happening is the site becoming into an article or ebook bazaar, the vast majority of posts will be free and hopefully of the usual high (one hopes) standard you come to expect.

Have you attempted to sell posts and articles? Did you have much success?

This post is part of the Mac Book Pro Challenge it’s not to late to get involved and start your journey to a shiny Mac Book Pro.

Email is on my mind

So with the Email Gathering Firesale which is continuing as I write this but will be over in a couple of hours, I noticed a couple of familiar email addresses of people who joined our challenge. So I think its worth throwing around some ideas around to help you get the most out of your potential new niche addresses without exposing yourself to a torrent of abuse and potentially your affiliate accounts shut down.

I do not approve of spam

Given I have spent yesterday telling you how to get clean, and verify your emails I strongly believe that if you are unsure of the legitimacy of how the address was collected then you never send more then a single introductory email.

Pressure selling via the first email never works

This I think is something that needs to be emphasised over and over again, and I know I covered it in the other article but throwing your affiliate links down peoples throats in the first email is not the way to convert them.

Instead try to build trust, given yesterday I managed to rewrite the Firesale opening letter 4 times and by the end it was a grammatical nightmare (sorry to the commentator who wrote the long comment on building trust with spelling at 7 in the morning you were deleted) to the point where people were questioning not only me but the information behind the letter. Suddenly after the initial rush people were holding back it is amazing but sometimes just spending time spell checking is enough!

Trust is getting close - trust is about persona

Remember our persona’s post from a few days ago? Well let’s put them to good use, the niche your targeting will dictate the style of the email. For example:

Is very unlikely to say…
Hey guys whats up? check out my new site its really cool!
Is she?
Well maybe she does but it is not what her peers and therefore the target audience will expect fit the language to the persona.

Sell the idea, then the product

If you are not planning a long recurring relationship with your new contacts? Why not? then at least get what you came for and grab the sale, or in our case entice them into the dream. Most Affiliate sites quite rightly do not approve of spam. So our process of verification is simple…

• Present your offer in brief
• Present the way forward (a link to your site and landing page)
• Present a way out

Remember your targeting this group of people because you think they are interested in your offer. If they are not then you do not need to waste your time and resources there are plenty of fish in the sea.

Introduction shot

If you have been given or got hold of a list and need to verify then the introductory email is critical. Clearly emphasis that it is a welcome, single email and that they will receive no further communication without there expressed permission. Explain why they are receiving the email, don’t be shy if you bought the address be honest tell them. Offer them the opt out even if you are never going to contact them again. Finally make your offer/sign up page easy and quick. If they have clicked your link you have them on the line so to speak don’t waste the opportunity.

Spam sucks - be personal

Seriously the way to avoid being classed as spam is to personalise your content, names, IP addresses you name it what ever you got that is personal to your target. The fact you are actually targeting a niche and not the masses gives you lots of potential. But remember if you want to flog Viagra no amount of me to telling you nice ways to present your information will help you will be just another spammer.

So I think it’s time to start building our landing site and looking at the idea of landing pages. There are loads of good articles out there on making persuasive sales pages, I will start up a resource list but if you have some articles let me know in the comments?

As promised the FireSale has started 2 people already have access, what are you waiting for. 5 Hours and the price goes up!

What do you get:

• The Article
• A Free program worth $47 and no its not a harvester
• oh and a pair of mailing lists ready for your use

So how do you get the password simple send me an email t.nash @ venture-skills.co.uk with subject Let me in or visit this thread and leave a comment for more detail on pricing visit the firesale post.

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