It seems that everyone wants to make money online these days and one of the most lucrative avenues that people have taken is affiliate marketing. If you’re interested in affiliate marketing and want to know about all the offers that help you rake in the cash, Here is a good place to look. Or rather here.org.uk, the official affiliate marketing blog of Kieron Donoghue. Here is his paid review.
Who is Kieron Donoghue?
The problem with a lot of the newer “make money online” blogs on the Internet is that the people behind them really know nothing about making money online. They just saw the emergence of a popular niche and jumped all over it, hoping that they’d be able to cash in on the trend. Sorry, it just doesn’t work that way.
Kieron Donoghue, based out of the UK, does not fall under this category. Quite the contrary, in fact, because he makes his living through running a series of websites that largely make their money through advertising and affiliate marketing. Scrolling down to the bottom of his internet marketing blog, you’ll find a list with some of Kieron’s sites, all of which fall under the UK Offer Media Ltd. banner. These include: Bingo, Broadband Providers, Cheap Mobiles, Poker, and Toys.
Yup, it looks like Kieron knows what he’s doing with this family of websites. It’s all about diversification and cashing in lucrative niches. We all love poker and cell phones, after all.
Is The Advertising Too Intrusive?
Here.org.uk is pretty blatantly monetized. Underneath the main header is an ad banner. Featured in the primetime space at the top of the sidebar is a 250×250 ad block. Under the “about me” are four skyscraper ads followed by a featured sites section filled with sponsored links, some of which are actually affiliate links (I do the same here on Beyond the Rhetoric for Text Link Ads).
Despite all this advertising — information about buying ad space can be found here — it actually doesn’t feel all that intrusive. It could be because we have recently been bombarded with similar monetized designs on the blogs of John Chow and Shoemoney, among others.
The overall feel of the blog is very web 2.0, and the ads are blended in quite well. It shows that here.org.uk isn’t exactly a personal blog. It’s a “site” used to discuss internet marketing.
Does the basic layout feel familiar, especially the fat footer? That’s because the blog design was done by Unique Blog Designs. It was then adjusted based on reader feedback. If Kieron dropped $799 into the blog design, you know that he’s got to mean business.
The Proof is in the Pudding
Having a fancy-schmancy blog design and a family of lucrative affiliate websites is one thing, but you won’t be able to maintain a reader base unless you have blog entries of interest to this public. Going through the archives, Kieron largely stays on topic with affiliate marketing posts, but he’s known to deviate a bit off course from time to time. Most recently, he talked about creative auto marketing and posted a video of a BMW M3 racing a Bugatti Veyron, but at least the former still had to do with advertising.
Other posts that caught my eye were:
- Facebook Flyers – Can you make money from them?
- Short-Term Discount Codes
- How to get around Google’s ban of advertising gambling sites using AdWords
- Where are all the good UK blogs?
- Easy method of gaining quality backlinks and building a database of users
With the Good Comes the Bad
This affiliate marketing blog is definitely a good read for anyone looking to make money online through those means. Naturally, there is always room for improvement. Here are a few of my observations.
- What’s up the domain? I don’t see the connection between “here” and affiliate marketing.
- The About page is very lacking and could use some fleshing out.
- Given the number of categories, it may be more fitting to use a tag cloud.
- Some post titles are too long. Balance brevity with an accurate description.
- The RSS and Technorati information is too low on the page.
- Popular posts section is well implemented.
- Try categorizing posts in the uncategorized section.
- The “What I’m listening to” at the end of each post adds a nice personal touch, but seems totally unrelated.
Win a Hot New Blog Design
Want to rock a totally awesome new blog design like John Chow and Shoemoney (and Kieron), but don’t feel compelled to pay $799 to get it? Well, Kieron has teamed up with Nate from Unique Blog Designs to give you a complete blog overhaul for free!
Check out his competition post for full details, but the gist of it is that you need to put up a blog post following certain linking requirements. Count me in, Kieron!
Kieron’s a cool guy. He’s linked to me a few times and I see his bumpzee across my blog sometimes. I likewise hit up his blog occasionally. Thumbs up in my book.
Kieron’s a great guy! Great review, Michael!
Thank you for this blog, it will be interesting for me to read it.