My background is as a retail affiliate, clothes, gadgets, gifts that sort of thing. So this time of year I basically come home, check the networks, smile and go to the pub. What id like to think about and possibly get some feedback on is how other affiliates treat peaks and troughs and if anyone’s really made it and covered all bases.
So what would I describe as ‘making it’ well a site that generates significant sales for every major sector so that you don’t necessarily have low points. From my experience as an affiliate the sales ive seen over the past month or so really do put the rest of the year to shame, im looking forward to January a well though a the sales generally keep the momentum going a bit but with prices being slashed it is just a case of keeping the volume going the revenue definitely drops.
Now the other major sector I operate in (as a merchant and not an affiliate) is travel, which picks up in January and by pick up I mean takes off! Compare November and December to January and February and your quite easily looking at a 400% growth in sales. But I wont go on about that too much, if your not in travel now its going to be hard to pull it off before January – see you next year 
So what are the other major sectors, well one has to be finance which seems to be expanding very quickly into the affiliate arena with a lot of lead brokers. I see a lot of new affiliates chasing these big fixed CPA payouts on lead programmes and good luck to them, it might just be a Morley thing but ive always preferred the sale. Yes! I’ve passed on someones details to a credit company who will harass them to take out a loan, get a new credit card, re-re-re mortgage or Yes! I’ve sold someone an ipod, they wanted it and I told them where they could get it with free delivery in time for Christmas. But when does finance peak? Without experience I cant say, but ive been told its early new year so February to March.
Like I said its probably personal preference but looking at my sales through networks at the moment I quite enjoy the fact that im selling clothes, lingerie, mp3 players, gadgets, other toys and allsorts of Christmas fun, im like a digital santa!
Anyway id be very interested if anyone could say “all bases covered” and say that year in year out they have every sector, every peak covered with something I know I don’t, and due to working in travel as a full time job id never want to push that sector on the side so im always going to have a hole in Jan / Feb!
