SuitcaseLifestyle.com

When I started affiliate marketing over a year ago, I was attracted to the theoretical freedom of lifestyle + large income that was possible. Now having been in the trenches for over a year, I’ll say it’s not quite the case. Full time affiliate marketing(especially by paid traffic) is a bit like a juggling act, when everything is right, it’s fucking awesome, and when something goes wrong, your balls are on the floor.

I still remember the first campaign I launched. I loaded up Adwords, dumped in a bunch of competitor/trademark terms, direct linked. I then jumped on a boat and went sailing for 6 days around the Caribbean. I came back surprised by 2 things. Firstly, I actually made money, secondly I had received an email from the affiliate network saying one of the terms I was bidding on was forbidden, and they are closing my account because I didn’t comply(they issued 3 warnings, I was on a boat, with 2 Swedish girls I might add). FUCK. So after a bit of apologizing and whatnot everything was cool and I kept my commissions.

I successfully scaled that first campaign into a decent income stream for 3 months, at which point, for no reason, the merchant decided to lower their commission from 27% per sale, to 6%. Balls, there went my hard work and there went my income. I couldn’t find another program selling the same product at a similar commission, welcome to affiliate marketing. So repeat this same process with a ton of other programs, now throw in some Google Quality Score, Google Slaps, FTC, the ‘Big 3′ disallowing rebills, Facebook changing their guidelines every second week, Google banning me etc. In the end, I found myself always working because nothing lasted so I decided to step back and take a different approach.

Now… The first affiliate program that I ever promoted, was from an Australian affiliate network, and the product was Coloured Contact Lenses. So I decided to enter the market with my own products and my own site(s). I can work as an affiliate for myself, and also help other affiliates make money at the same time.

In a previous post titled Blueprint – Make Stacks Online, I laid the foundations for a E-Commerce + Affiliate Marketing recipe for less work and decent monies.

Well my dear readers, I wasn’t bullshitting when I said I’d lead by example. So here’s what I’m up to.

I’ve been back in Melbourne for a week, and I’ve been crazy busy getting my new business ready.

The product you already know, is Coloured Contact Lenses, and yep, that is my site.

Although the initial plan was to ’sling as many lenses as possible, the project continues to grow. After ordering samples, I was 100% happy with the product and product quality, however I wasn’t a big fan of the box the contact lenses came in. So when I inquired about custom designing my own box, it dawned on me that I’d be more or less creating my own brand by doing so. And by creating my own brand, I am opening a possible truckload of possibilities in the future! It also gives me a reason to not get into a pricewar with the other online vendors slinging crappy Korean and Chinese brands. I can also build brand loyalty and blah blah blah. But fuck that, right now, I just gotta ’sling some lenses because I got a mountain of them!

So to digress a little, when I was designing my new contact lens brand, I researched the market. It was full of either big companies with clean/sterile/boring/made in Asia brands, and the cheaper/who are they?/obviously made in Asia type brands. And no fucking shit, mine are made in Asia too, but I decided to take a different approach to my product.

Introducing, EYE KANDY contact lenses!

So you can see the rather bolder, less boring approach I took to an existing product. It was designed to look like a candy box. And yes, every shipment comes with FREE CANDY. Like I read in a marketing book by Seth Godin, give people something they will talk about and you have a winner. And that is what I’m aiming for!

So now that my site is ready and I have a mountain of contact lenses to handle any flood of sales, I have been busy loading up a few campaigns here and there to start moving them. So far my initial in house campaigns are in the positive ROI territory so it is looking great!

When promoting my own product, I also work as an affiliate for my own program, to make sure my adspend doesn’t get out of control(a luxury that merchants have).

So lastly, a big thank you to the contact lens site that decided to lower their commissions and force me to move on. Now I’m competing against you and happily offering a 30% commission to all affiliates! If your interested in becoming an affiliate, this product is easy as shit to sell, and on top of that, I’ll be your affiliate manager! If this interests you, hit me up on AIM: thuxen88 or email me at johan@suitcaselifestyle.com