Cashback Shopper has just received its 12,000th member!! )

I’m really pleased to have reached this milestone, but don’t want to rest on my laurels as there are still millions of people out there that shop online & yet have never heard of cashback!

The difficulty is getting that message out to people! Until now, I’ve been focussing on the terms cashback, cash back, money back etc. but after a discussion with an SEO company, think I might change tack slightly and work on bringing peoples attention to cashback, by targeting those that are searching for related terms, but NOT cashback itself.

Things like discount shopping, money saving offers & discount codes ALL relate to getting money off your online shopping, yet aren’t people specifically searching for cashback & therefore may not be aware of cashback shopping sites at all!

Unfortunately, these phrases are even more competitive online, so how effective it will be remains to be seen. I’m looking into the article submission side of online promotion & I’m also considering some offline promotion.

I’ve got the Alexa Sparky ranking add-on installed in Firefox & obviously, the displayed figure is the only one you notice on a day to day basis. However, since my Cashback Shopper ranking started plummeting day by day (following on from the Google Vince update), from 205,000 at its peak, to around 460,000 & falling now; although my rankings for Cashback Shopper seem to have recovered & stabilised a bit recently, the ranking is still falling, so I decided to look into the figures a little more.

My attention was drawn to the following:

Cashbackshopper.co.uk users come from these countries:

• 77.3% United Kingdom
• 1.5% France
• 21.5% OTHER

and:

Cashbackshopper.co.uk traffic rank in other countries:

• 602,105 France
• 25,967 United Kingdom

This was very interesting – as my overall ranking is falling, my UK traffic rank seems to be rising! The last time I looked, it was over 28,000 & now is 25,967. Bearing in mind the fact that Cashback Shopper is a site for UK residents only, I can only assume that despite the displayed figure falling, the fact that my UK traffic rank is rising can only be a GOOD thing! My site is the 25,967th most visited site in the UK?

Perhaps I’m interpreting this wrong, but would be interested to know if anyone else has a view on this, or perhaps knows for sure whether this is the case or not?!

Today at 18:36 was when Cashback Shopper received its 11,000th member. Although sales have fallen off somewhat (probably due to the usual January hangover & current economic situation), I’m still hopeful that the site will still keep growing & that Cashback Shopper USA will take off as well.

I recently received an interesting message from Kelkoo in relation to its payments to cashback websites.

“The Kelkoo programme is revising its commission structure for all Loyalty affiliates.

To align with Kelkoo business objectives, commissions for Loyalty websites on the Kelkoo UK affiliate programme will be set at 1p and not 1% as previously stated.

As of Monday 19th January the commission structure on the programme will reflect these changes.”

I have to say, I predicted this about 2 years ago when I was running my previous cashback site & advised members that this “daily click” payment wouldn’t continue once the merchants realised what was going on. My only surprise is that they’ve lasted this long!

The fact that Kelkoo are now saying they will only pay a nominal 1p to searches from incentive sites, would seem to indicate that this particular “daily click” has had its day! I can’t imagine sites paying out 1/2p to anyone & even the 100% sites will only be able to pay the 1p they receive!!!

Despite the “daily clickers” strange obsession with earning their 1p here & 2p there, I imagine it will be hard for even them to justify the time spent logging in, clicking & wiping cookies when they’re only going to earn 1p! Thank goodness!!!

It was the “daily click” administration that forced me to shut down my previous site & cost me £000′s. Even though Cashback Shopper doesn’t offer them, I won’t be sorry to see them go!

The plan for the Ei42 business opportunity is “so simple” that in truth many people you speak to will not believe it. “It’s a con”, “it’s a scam”, “too good to be true”, “it won’t work”, “it’s a pyramid scheme”. I’ve had the same response to my cashback site! Everyone is looking for a catch!

Despite all of the arguments every single day hundreds of people continue to join.

One statistic that is fascinating is the forecast made by the managing director at the very beginning. He said that everyone should work on the basis that on average all sales will generate 1% of distributable income (worst case) that is 1% to the buyer and 1% to the network (after Ei42 has taken its margin). Today, almost a year later and with sales (not commissions) into the millions the actual average percentage is 2.11% to the buyer and 2.11% to the network, more than DOUBLE what he told members to expect. In addition if we look at the total number of members today (bearing in mind that some have been members a few hours, some days, weeks, months and a few for almost 1 year), the average spend PER MEMBER is £98.15, with 13 days left before the end of the first year, we are on target for members to achieve more than double the first year forecast.

What was actually said was that the average household spends £940 per year on-line, so if every member of Ei42 spends £100 PER YEAR then you’d get at least 1% yourself plus the distribution from your network. It was also made very clear this is not nor will it ever be a get rich quick deal. (Legal things never are!)

So, what would I do if I were you?

Your first objective is simple. You need to build a team of 5 people who each have 5 people and then help/nudge/remind them to do the same. So Pick 5 people, some could be your existing people or they could all be new people, but make a plan “my job is to get 5 people” and every time you get a new member pass that simple message on; “If you are joining Ei42 your job is to get 5 people… pass it on:-)“. Once you have built a solid working 5 x 5 x 5 (you told 5 and your 5 told 5 each) then start a new 5. This way you can keep focused on helping your friends build their team of 5.

One other thing. Don’t expect the earth when you start! If you spent £250,000 buying a McDonald’s franchise it would take a considerable amount of time & effort before you got anywhere near making a profit and you certainly would not be considering giving up & closing it within a few weeks/months!

Stick with it, be patient, it will take time but it’s free and it will work. It’s a bit like losing weight we all want it now but if the target is 1 year away it becomes achievable.

And a Final Thought

Many people might say that they can’t really be bothered with Ei42 as you only earn pennies, so ask them if they have a Tesco Club Card! If they answer yes, ask them… “Why? it only pays 1p for every £1 you spend… surely it’s not worth bothering?”

I would rather earn 1% off a 100 people’s efforts than 100% of my own efforts. John D. Rockefeller

Well, I did say I would blog about the downs of affiliate marketing too, so here goes!

What happened to all the Christmas sales?!!! I don’t mean sales in shops, desperate to attract people to them before they all go bust (goodbye Woolies & MFI), but the online sales I was expecting through Cashback Shopper. Transactions had been steadily rising as the membership grew, so I put extra effort (& money) into PPC to try & attract as many new members as possible for the Christmas rush.

But new memberships have dropped to a trickle & the amounts spent have also fallen as we get closer & closer to Christmas! I can only imagine that people have decided that because of the discounts offered in stores, it’s better to go & buy direct than online!! Perhaps this is affecting everyone, or is it just on my site that transactions have been disappointing?!

At the moment, all I can do is get through Christmas & hope things pick up again in the new year. But now there are bigger (national) companies starting up their own cashback sites & I’ve spent everything I can on getting my site where it is & can’t afford to spend any more.

January is a peak time for travel, but I don’t have the budget to push my travel extras site any more & to be honest, I may even have to consider getting a day job again   (   Or, at the very least put the affiliate marketing on the back foot & try to get more small business web design work……

At 19:08:32 on 17th November 2008, my cashback website received its 10,000th member!!! This was achieved in less than a year, as the first membership was registered on 22nd November 2007!

Mind you, there was a lot of hard work & plenty of advertising expense! I’ve even been leafleting shopping centre car parks in an attempt to entice shoppers from the stores to the internet, with the promise of free money!

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the age of the site will come into play as time goes by – Google gives great emphasis to sites of a certain age & this helps improve natural rankings.

The continued exposure of the site & recommendations from existing members should continue to recruit new members, but there is also a lot of competition out there /

Hopefully the costs of advertising will be less than the revenue from the site in the long term & I’m still hoping to be able to get the cashbackshopper.com domain up & running in the US at some point.

The latest Alexa ranking chart has been published by Cashback News & I was very pleased to see Cashback Shopper reach the dizzy heights of 14th place (although it looks like a slight error means I’m really 15th)!! Bearing in mind there are now 124 cashback sites in the chart, I certainly believe I must be doing something right!

Although the top 4 are like the Big 4 Premier League clubs & always seem to be in the same spot, overtaking Free Fivers was a real high point for me as they”ve been running for years & claim to have over 231000 members!!

I just hope I can keep the momentum going….here are the top 20 sites:

1. Quidco 19,166
2. Rpoints 77,337
3. Top Cashback 77,558 – ↑1
4. GreasyPalm 84,226 – ↓1
5. MutualPoints 103,947
6. eDeals UK 105,981 – ↑1
7. Paypal Offers 108,107 – ↑13
8. wepromiseto.co.uk 139,736 – ↑11
9. Give or Take 149,208 – ↓3
10. Cashback Kings 187,600
11. froggybank 191,141 – ↓3
12. NHScashback 206,077 – ↑9
13. Comparison Plus 238,505 – ↑2
14. Cashback Shopper 244,859 – ↑12
15. MoneyBackMadness 238,770 – ↓6
16. RupizCompare 272,581 – ↓3
17. CashbackToYou 289,869 – ↑14
18. Free Fivers 299,035 – ↓6
19. Linemypocket 302,300 – ↓5
20. eCashBack 352,290 – ↓4

Following rumours that Best of the Web Directory (the internet’s oldest directory) are going to buy DMOZ, which Google uses as its own Directory source, I decided to try & get some of my sites listed.

Also known as the open directory project, DMOZ is probably the most well known free directory online. Like Yahoo and Best of the Web, DMOZ is also known for its very high standards when it comes to website listings in the directory. It is best to submit your site to DMOZ on your own.

Considerable effort needs to be spent on making the right submission, according to the guidelines mentioned. You only get one chance to have your site listed in DMOZ, hence it must be ensured that the submission is made properly.

Best of the Web Directory like Yahoo Directory was established in 1994 and has since maintained one of the strictest editorial review policies, accepting only content-rich, high quality sites. This commitment to quality has made it one of the most highly regarded directories on the web. A link from Best of the Web directory would immensely benefit a site, substantially increasing its search engine rankings. Best of the web directory is a paid directory currently offering two listing options: one for an annual review of the website which costs US$ 99.95 per year and one for a one-time review which costs US$ 249.95.

Because I wasn’t sure that my site would be accepted & the fee is non-refundable, I decided to opt for the annual review option first & see what happened….better to lose $100 than $250!!!

I submitted 2 of my sites to the Directory: Cashback Shopper & My Travel Extras. My concern with Cashback Shopper was that it is a white label site & could possibly be considered as duplicate content. However, I needn’t have worried, within 12 hours I received an e-mail telling me that my submission had been successful & my link would appear on the site within 24 hours! )

My Travel Extras has also been accepted & the good news is that the sites can still be upgraded to the one time review option, albeit at a cost of $239.95…..but at least I know they will be accepted! Because this directory is so well respected, I hope it will add to my tally of backlinks in Google, which are looking pretty threadbare at the moment when compared to those from Yahoo.

I am considering adding other sites to the directory in the future, but at the moment the cost of advertising is too high to add any others. I also want to see if the directory submissions make any difference to my rankings.

I’ve recently dipped my toe back into the world of Google Adwords!

Recently I have concentrated my efforts on Miva & Yahoo PPC campaigns because they are still affordable for particular sites, whereas Google is not. But, with so many UK users only using Google for their internet searching, is it worthwhile; how many potential customers are going to my opposition?

So, I have once again bitten the bullet & decided to run a campaign on Google for Cashback Shopper, with a daily limit of £5. But, as the minimum bid amount quickly went from £2, to £2.50 & then in some cases to £5, is this value for money, or just a rip off?!!

Although the minimum bid to activate the keyword [cashback] is £5, the actual average CPC over the last week has been £2.35. However, this is still taking half my daily budget for clicks – two clicks & my campaign was off / With a CTR of 4.28%, maybe it’s not worth running this phrase & working only on longer tail keyphrases which will leave the campaign running longer and with a higher CTR. The table below shows how many clicks I’m getting for my £5 over the last 7 days & Google reckons I’m not receiving 82% of my eligible impressions!!

18 Aug Campaign activity: 4 Clicks 5.24
19 Aug Campaign activity: 7 Clicks 4.99
20 Aug Campaign activity: 6 Clicks 5.10
21 Aug Campaign activity: 4 Clicks 5.01
22 Aug Campaign activity: 7 Clicks 5.00
23 Aug Campaign activity: 6 Clicks 4.75
24 Aug Campaign activity: 5 Clicks 5.26

Google suggests a daily budget of £27.34!!!! Is this beyond the reach of many affiliate marketers? It certainly seems beyond mine!! But would those clicks convert to “sales”? This is the choice that has to be made & for many new PPC advertisers, it can be an expensive one – I know, I’ve been there!

My overall CTR for the last week has been 6.98% at an average CPC of £0.91, so this isn’t too bad. Purchases made through the site have increased substantially over the last couple of weeks & the new £50 prize draw competition I am running should create more sign ups from friend referrals, at much better value than PPC!!!

Because of the decent ROI I seem to be getting from the Google PPC campaign, I have suspended all my other search engine campaigns for now & have upped the daily Adwords spend to £10 (not yet the £27.34 recommended!) and will keep monitoring the CTR & ROI closely.

Naturally, if spending continues to grow, it would certainly be worth re-investing the income back into further advertising!