Episode 15: Behind the Scenes of Affiliate Marketing and Business Growth

This is a transcript of my weekly video diary of my exploits in building an affiliate marketing business.  To view the video on YouTube please click below.

Hi, thanks for reading. This is a transcript of my weekly YouTube video this is episode 15 of my exploits in the affiliate marketing sphere, business  let’s say business as it is a is a business. As usual, we’re coming from my patio here in Gambia. The weather’s actually changed a bit, so it looks like it may be winter here, but it must be 20+ degrees still, quite early in the morning. Saying that, I’m happy with 20 degrees, better than freezing in the UK. So, out on the patio, maybe a little bit of background noise, excuse that.

Before we start, one thing I want to mention: If you watch the actual video (Theres a link at the end of this post) I highly recommend that you watch at one and a half times the speed. There’s a setting up there, I think. (It’s actually bottom right) You get the settings and you can do it at times x1.5. I do believe it’s better at 1.5 times the actual live speed. Also, it’s a time-saving tip that if you’re doing any training, you can often listen to that at 1.5 times the speed without losing any comprehension.

Just a little time saving tip there.

Got through a lot of work this week. Done a crazy amount of work, but it’s all behind the scenes stuff, nothing groundbreaking, just routine stuff such as the WordPress website and blog. It’s an ongoing project. All web-based websites and anything like that is an ongoing project. You always find something you could improve and tweak and make better. Also, been going through my mailing sequences, looking at open rates. Some of them have dropped, so tweaking the subject lines a bit to make them more intriguing, to get the open rate level at, I don’t know, 25%? I’m happy with that, it will get there.

Got my posting plan for January all set up, my social media postings for Facebook, Instagram, and outlines of my videos for TikTok etc. They’re all done for every day in January. They’ll need a bit of tinkering on a weekly basis, but the ideas and the basic outline of everything is all in place, ready to get going come January 2nd.

Talking about emails and the open rate, those doing bulk emailing, sending emails in bulk to mailing lists, there are some major changes taking effect in February. People like Google, Yahoo are going to have strict limits on undeliverable emails, complaints, etc. The emphasis is going to be very much on quality rather than quantity. I think the rate where you’re going to get warnings is less than 1%, for spam and complaints. People may end up getting their ability to get into mailboxes severely hampered.

Through my business, we’re getting ahead of the game, setting things up for that. Basically, I’ve got a mailing list of a thousand I’ll have by the end of this month. It’s a question then of cleaning it up, getting rid of bounces, people who haven’t opened an email for 90 days. They’ll go to keep the reputation.

Just starting out, I don’t want my list or my autoresponder to say your account’s closed because of poor management. As they say, the money is in the list, but going forward, it’s truer to say the money is in the quality of the list. This is why we’re changing the way we’re promoting our businesses. Instead of just getting people in and bombarding them with offers, you come into the blog and the idea is to turn strangers into fans. They’ll just be glad to receive your items because they know you provide them with value and valuable content they can use in their business.

Planning for next year, now is the time I set goals for next year. This year’s goals, a couple of hit and some missed, so I’m going to reschedule them. My goals for the end of next year, where I want to be, getting towards my why, why I’m working, what I’m working to achieve. I’ve got yearly goals and breaking those down into quarters and months so that I’ve got a plan I can follow for the year. As we go through, I do a review every month and every quarter to see how we’re getting on and tweak the plan, the how, the when, as necessary. Always have to expect the unexpected

That is basically it about my achievements or lack thereof this week. I do have my business back in the UK, still window blind business, and it’s time of year where we do review prices. That is quite a task, and it’s one of the things I do in that business. Suppliers put the prices up from January 2nd, so I’ve got to do it at the same time. That is a bit of a priority at the moment because I don’t want to be buying stuff and having eroded profit margins.

This week, a bit more tweaking, planning, etc. On Friday, I have a full-day training with Dean Holland on the beginner’s advantage theme. Part of that, there’s someone called Alex Jeffreys. I’ve never heard of him, to be perfectly honest, but he’s apparently Dean’s mentor. It’s a privilege to learn from somebody like that. I think he’s going to do about an hour with us on Friday, so I’ll have an update on that, anything I learn.

Then it’s Christmas. Merry Christmas, everybody. I plan a couple of days off, right away from the computer, to reboot myself, unplug myself, be myself for a day, reload, hopefully get rid of negative stuff from this year and fill myself with positivity and action plans for next year. Next Monday is obviously Christmas Day, and I don’t think I’ll be doing a film, so the next week will be New Year’s Day. I do have a small bar and restaurant here in Gambia. We weren’t here last year, but the year before, we closed at 5 in the morning. If it’s anything like that this year, I probably won’t be in on the Monday, but you know, I’ll do an update on the Tuesday with anything I’ve learned over the break.

A little bit shorter than normal this time, but thank you for watching. Check out my blog, www.stevemoore34.com, or catch me on here every week, about every Monday, except the next two😁😁. If you celebrate Christmas, have a great Christmas. Okay, thanks for reading, and bye for now, thank you.”