Campaign Recycling - What's Inside Your Trash Can? (9)
A few weeks ago, I made the brave decision to go where no Finch has gone before... and open my iMac's trash can.
I hadn't emptied my trash can since 2008 and there were no less than 250,000 files inside it. Pretty impressive going. That period covers my entire affiliate marketing career, meaning that practically every campaign I'd ever launched was hidden somewhere in the trash.
It's pretty weird to cycle through 4 years worth of campaigns.
You look back on some ideas and question what you were smoking at the time.
Other ideas are useful little reminders of projects you were supposed to take action on (several years ago, unfortunately, in my case)
And of course, there's a metric crapton of images, banners, screenshots and creatives that have proven successful over the years. Many of which are buried in folders that go 7 levels deep with names like "To Sort", "Organize This" and "June 2009".
Just by looking through my trash can, it struck me as obvious that I've been wasting a LOT of time by not having a cataloguing system. I mean, for god's sake, I have the Matchmaker logo cut out and optimized at least 150 times! That means I've done the process over...and over...and over again. Why? Because I'm a disorganized mofo. I've spent the best part of 4 years with zero systems in place.
A simple archiving/cataloguing system is all you need to get on top of your work and stay efficient.
Think of all the things that can be modularized, templated and stored for future use....
- Landing page shells
I have 3 or 4 landing page shells which are basically HTML/CSS templates with placeholder images and placeholder text. They are structured in the same way as my best converting landing pages over the years, but stripped down so I can recycle them cleanly to new campaigns.
- Complete landing pages
What happens to a landing page when you finish it and start testing? Does it get clicked and dragged in to the abyss? Mine used to. Now I prefer to archive my completed landing pages. If a version works well, I'll highlight it in my library. If I find myself working on a similar offer in the future, or looking for a successful LP formula, these are the templates I'll come back to.
- Campaign imagery
How many hours of our days are spunked on stock photo collection? Too many! When you find imagery that works well - either as a landing page photo, or as material for one of your creatives - save it for future use. Just remember that labeling is important. I like to use subfolders breaking my images down in to niches, genders, ages and special interests.
- Prepared campaign imagery
Same as above, but these images have been formatted and transplanted in to my IAB ads, complete with borders and ad text. They're ready to be uploaded to ad platforms. I have a shortcut to this folder on my desktop because I use it so frequently.
- Scripts
How many times do you go Googling for the same countdown script in a single year? There are lots of useful scripts out there that can boost conversion rates. Keep them nicely stored in a scripts library and you'll be more motivated to include them. I remember times where I've wiped a proposed script functionality from my LP completely. Why? Because I couldn't be bothered to track it down. Laaaazy.
- Call-to-action imagery
It's so important, it deserves its own library of top performers. If you keep these on-hand, you'll be less likely to commit the sin of ruining a great landing page with a 2 minute slap-job CTA in MSPaint...or Google Images.
- Brand logos
Like I said, I have about 150 versions of the same Matchmaker logo. That's just not good cricket. Aren't you sick of loading the Real Mature Singles homepage and attempting to grab a screenshot before the pop-up wench launches in to a speech about the benefits of mature dating? If people hear that shit in a coffee shop, it's just embarrassing. Store your brand logos! You'll use them often.
- Prehacked Wordpress themes
If you're a publisher who gets involved in the murkier side of LP-design - i.e. the flogtastic farticle kind... - you should keep a file on all the hacked themes that you've previously been using.
- Copy that performs
Good copy is an absolutely priceless commodity in our world. If you happen to stumble across the right blend of copy that boosts your conversion rates, copy and paste that shit in to an incubation file and save it for future use. We misfire so regularly with copy that we can't afford to lose the good stuff.
If I'm ever feeling inspired, I will just sit and write excerpts of strong copy to be stored for future use. It's another great trick for launching campaigns much faster in the future. You'll be prepared with the artillery necessary to sell.
A lot of the content being stored is basic common sense. But I reckon I've lost many, many hours repeating these same steps over the years.
It took me a while to realise that creating a few good landing page shells would enable me to scale in to new niches much more rapidly than I was managing before.
When you have a converting structure in place, and creating a new campaign is as simple as filling in a few blanks, you're much more motivated to get it done.
For the record, I've since deleted my trash can contents. The hoarding was getting out of control. How does yours look?
Since 2008? Like, seriously? 
I don't know how you do it, I constantly need to delete stuff on my harddrive to make room for new things (movie/music/seminars/etc). Not emptying my trash definitely isn't an option.
The lazy man's version of a good catalogue is a great search tool. On my PC I use "Search Everything"which is great software, much better than Windows' built-in search. The only effort then is to name things properly (eg "Matchmaker logo"), and no matter in what obscure sub-folder you put it way back 6 months ago, it'll pop right up in the search. Not as good as a proper catalogue, but close.
Yeah, I don't keep any music, videos, torrents or porn on my Mac - so I probably save a fair whack in space from that!
Even so, it was quite a collection. Lots of embarrassing photos from my past.
I agree that a good organizational system is crucial. The way you outlined everything has given me some ideas as how to better organize my stuff
I organise everything in my dropbox (marketing + uni stuff). Get the paid plan, pay for packrat if you wish, put everything in there. All my marketing stuff (images, vids, campaigns, scripts, server files, etc) is in there and available in the cloud. Can rollback deletes and edits. If you have packrat it's like an endless recycle bin anyway since you can restore anything that was deleted ever.
I don't have many template landers and things but do make a point of making a generic "fill in the gaps" version of any php script I use to make it easier to sort out later.
Smart idea, I occasionally take a gander at my older files for inspiration. It helps a lot on new projects.
Originally Posted by zeno
What Ryan said is the same for me. I don't have a system really, but i have all my old affiliate stuff well-organized by traffic source, niche etc... and always look back to campaigns for inspiration. I highly recommend this!
Also saves tons of time with scripts, code etc especially when i can't code easily.
Old is Gold, that's proved again 
to make a better thing we have to review the olds
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