Plans For The New Financial Year

I’ve previously mentioned that our trading year is at the end of March (well, 5th April to be precise to tie-in with the tax year-end) and I indicated that I’d be publishing some thoughts on what we want to achieve this financial year. I’m a little late with this post (I’ve been busy) but a corking post (read it twice at least) from Andy Hagans has kind of nudged me to get on with it.

Last financial year was the first for me as a full-time affiliate. It went well overall and I’ve enjoyed it immensely. Both turnover and profit are up on previous years and both are at highest levels to date (and in a year when a particular search engine hasn’t been that kind to us). Improved turnover and profit was anticipated of course because I’ve dedicated more time to the business because I’m no longer also in full-time employment. It was also a necessity - when I resigned my position last year I gave up the salary, benefits, car, etc, etc. Not that money is everything to me anymore - certainly not to the exclusion of everything else. With the benefit of 12 months hindsight I can see that the rat race really does, absolutely stink. I want a quality lifestyle for myself and my family not just more money to enable us to buy more stuff. Of course, I don’t want to be living on or below the breadline - obviously I want us to be comfortable. But I want the right balance and this industry should enable me to achieve it. Time only runs out, you can’t buy more. Amen!

The term affiliate is one that really doesn’t reflect what I believe we’re trying to achieve - we’re more search marketers or online media publishers. Sure, revenue comes from affiliated sales, but contextual advertising revenue also contributes significantly and I can also go down the not yet explored much avenue of consultancy services. I’ll definitely be considering a re-branding tweak though because we’re not just an affiliate outfit.

As each month passes I want to be building a sustainable, robust business where there is a fairly even distribution of revenue channels. To achieve this I think we need a good portfolio of websites and PPC income streams with the aim of increasing the portfolio over the coming year. I have already invested in new domain names and hosting packages for several new ideas. I will monetise these new websites with a mix of contextual advertising and affiliate links. I’m also intending to derive sales revenue from advertising/sponsorship deals on a couple of these new sites.

As is the case with many search marketers, our current portfolio of sites addresses some very mainstream and often competitive areas like personal finance, wine, online gambling, dvd rentals, etc. We’ll still be focusing on some of these markets in the year ahead but we’ve got other sites in our current portfolio that either need revamping, replacing or just shelved and forgotten about. Being an affiliate of an online sunglasses store for instance is not something that I’ve personally had much success with!

Some of my new ideas might take time to become established as quality sites in the particular niche markets that they will address. But if a couple of them are moderately successful I’ll be quite happy. I’m looking to build loyal audiences with some of my new ideas - some free typed-in traffic would be great and reliance upon search engines wouldn’t then be such an issue. This would also improve cash flow - something we’ve had to actively manage more this last year as our successful PPC campaigns have resulted in up-front costs with delayed commission payments. Generally, given that we’ll have new sites at various stages of development, we’ll still have more diversification within the portfolio. Having steady, dare I say it, predictable revenue streams is what can really keep you ticking along quite nicely.

I think there is some scope at a local level to offer search marketing consultancy services to small businesses. Whilst I’m no expert compared to others ($1000/hr now!) I know more than some and my keep-it-simple, common sense approach worked reasonably well back in my software house world. The issue I have is that offering my time as a service doesn’t scale. Sure, I could charge a decent hourly rate but it’s still a one-to-one relationship. Building a successful website can give payback at a many-to-one level in terms of revenue-to-effort because it can scale. I think we’ll look at doing a small amount of consulting with local businesses in order to have another revenue stream.

Blogging is an activity that I started in April last year and it’s been great. Not too many people currently read my blogs, though I don’t market them much at all really, truth be told. But by blogging I’ve learnt an awful lot by reading other posts and stumbling upon new sites. It’s been really useful and I whole-heartedly recommend that it’s an activity that anyone with online business (or non commercial) aspirations should undertake.

So, lets see what happens between now and April, 2008. And hopefully beyond.

Affiliate Marketing Search Marketing