Monthly report for June
Well I reached and exceeded my target for June of £150 and brought in £255 of commission. I’m really pleased with this as its a just a little over double what I did last month and with it being only my fifth full month in affiliate marketing I think it shows I could make a living from this in the future.
£140 came from one site and the other £110 from 13 other sites. Some sites failed to make a sale but overall most are making some money.
The main challenges for next month will be the changes to the Amazon Associates commission structure which I think will hit me quite hard. If the new structure had been in place in June I think it would have reduced my earnings by about 45% as I make a lot of use of direct links. But I shall not be giving it any thought as I go into July and will just work hard on getting new sites up and running and adding content to existing sites and continuing to try and find backlinks.
My target for July is £300 – wish me luck!
![Daily Sales for June [Amazon]](http://howigotrich.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/2009-june-amazon.gif "Daily Sales for June [Amazon]")
Damn man, thats really good, especially as its just your 5th month!! You managed to make a sale every single day, which is pritty good doing if you ask me!
How many sites do you have in total?
I hope the changes to Amazon dont hit you too much and you smash your £300 target this month!
For you next sites why dont you try different merchants, or merchants from different affiliate networks? so you dont have all your eggs n the amazon basket?
The site that made you £140 – Whats the selling price of the product your promoting on there?
GOOD LUCK and Well Done dude.
David
Thanks. I have about 25 sites that are up and running in various states of completion and non-completion.
Yeah a sale a day is nice. No more disappointment when you log into Amazon and see nothing from the previous day. Although you quickly get used to it and expect more and more each day!
Yeah am going to try and diversify with more merchants. I’ve found Amazon converts better but maybe I should give others more of a chance.
The £140 site is mainly items that are £30-£50. I think £50 is the perfect price as it gets you a few quid a sale and people don’t mind too much parting with that kind of cash so are more willing to buy. It is also an item that you don’t get to really look at or touch in shops so buying online isn’t really that different from buying it in a shop. Not like with clothes where people like to touch, see and try on the items rather than buy them online. A photo is enough to sell the item.
Good luck to you too dude.
Congratulations!
What have you had more success doing -
Price comparisons featuring amazon
Or only featuring amazon?
Only featuring Amazon. I just to straight up links to the merchant.
I have a few price comparisons using ECU but for some reason they don’t seem to be making sales.
congrats…I’m really jealous of your success, but of course happy for you, you deserve this success after all its off the back of your own efforts…maybe i need to diversify py portfolio a bit and actually finish a few more sites!
Are your sites manually updates? or do you use Data Feeds? or a backend system of some kind?
I use ECU on a few sites but most of them are manual updates.
I just add new products to existing pages. Haven’t started checking links to see if the products are actually still in stock which I guess is something I need to start doing.
Maybe I should look into feeds too…
Thanks. Yeah finishing sites is a good start
Congratulations again!
Always happy to read about a success, it gives me hope. Not having had a successful site so far makes me want to get one right and then grow from there. Thanks for giving me the idea for my new site and getting me to try WordPress (I was scared of it and still have reservations). I installed a couple of plugins on the site and pinged today but no luck, not indexed yet.
The url is http://www.ministepper.org.uk – guys, feel free to have a look and give me advice, I really want this site to work. The domain name was an idea of Seamaster so I really hope to get some of his beginner’s luck
To make some of you laugh thoug, I will mention that when I put an Adsense script on the site, the script generated links to sites related to Mini Cooper, not Mini Stepper. Anyone remember my red tube dress site?
Cheers!
Quick question for everyone -
Do you make it clear to the end user where the affiliate links go to?
I’ve always believed it’s better to make it absolutely clear that for example, a link will go through to amazon, I even include amazon logos as I believe it adds to the credibility of your site.
Some merchants/networks (such as eBay) tell you that you have to make it clear to the user where the links go to.
Where possible I also make the calls to action very prominent – large buttons, logos, bold blue underlined links etc.
Nope. My links usually have the text ‘buy now’, ‘more info’ or ‘click here for full item spec’. I also link images of the products to the merchants. But on most of my sites it is not clear the user will be taken to the merchants.
Why do you do it? For ethical reasons or does it lead to better conversions?
A few reasons I suppose -
1. Most users won’t understand how affiliate sites work, and will probably think it’s your site selling the product – and might be wary of buying from a company they know nothing about. If they realise they can buy it from a trusted site like amazon, maybe they will be more likely to click through?
2. I suppose it is more ethical to tell a user where they will go if they click a link.
3. Similar to point one, an amazon logo is instantly recognisable and probably gives your site a trust factor.
Might be worth starting a post on a4u and see what experienced affilaites have to say on the subject.
1. True, but then if they see you are sending them to sites they could find themselves they might leave the site and try and find the sites you are linking to themselves.
2. Yes I agree with that. But then I don’t think affiliate marketing is really that ethical full stop. You are basically trying to put a barrier between your visitors and what they are looking for for you own financial gain.
3. I tend to have links on my sites, sometimes using logos, that say ‘click here to view all blue widgets at Amazon’. People don’t tend to click on these links. This puts me off telling users I will be sending them to the merchant as it might put them off. But I also think that general links that say ‘click here to view all blue widgets at Amazon’ don’t get click because they are general and not linked to a specific product like my other links are.
As long as the user end up on a relevant page on a trusted merchants site then I don’t think too much harm has been done.
Although saying all that I do have some sites where I have used the Amazon link types that are ‘Text and Image’ which shows the price at Amazon and a ‘buy from Amazon’ button. People do still buy these items. Then there are ECUs on which I have the merchant’s logo displayed which should indicate to the user that they are being sent to another merchant site.
Hey nice post and well done on the earnings! One thing I would say about the mini stepper site, add a privacy policy and contact page, they are essential for any site, adds to the trust factor and also some merchants require it.
1. The only users I can see doing that are probably fellow affiliates. Your average user won’t have a clue what an affiliate site is, and would have no reason to ignore a link to a site – and then either type in an address or do a google search for the same site they could have just clicked through to.
2. I think that depends on what you provide to the end user, if you provide some content that they can’t find on the merchants site (many merchants use the same generic text), or you compare prices then you are definetely adding to the user experience.
3. If a user is going to be put off going to a merchant, surely they will be equally put off buying once they have clicked through and not known it would go to a merchant? It does sound like the lack of click throughs on your logos is more down to them being generic links rather than targeted too specific products.
Looking at websites of some experienced affilates I’ve seen both methods used, some seem to use the merchant logos as a trust factor while others you wouldn’t even know you was on an affiliate site till you clicked through. It would probaly make sense to do some tests, though you would need consistently high traffic to get anything out of them, and not many of my sites get decent traffic
Yeah, that’s the problem: not enough targeted traffic. Until you have that coming in you just have to go with your hunches.
@Miracle
Your Mini Stepper site looks good and seems to have equally good content. I’d maybe look at improving the home page title to something like Mini Stepper | Compare Mini Steppers – though wait and see where the site appears in Google first before making any changes
Personally I think you may have gone overboard with the number of affiliate links and products down the side of the site. You also run the risk of making it less niche and more general.
Like the nice clear more info & buy now buttons, you could combine them as one image to reduce the number of affiliate links.
Nice work though, let us know when it makes it’s first sale
Nice post, and nice to see someone showing how well they are doing. Goodluck with your Goal.
We started around the same time as you and we managed to make a sale every day in June, although this is a clothing site, these sales could well be returned.
Another site we had has done really well with Amazon, just a shame they don’t hold the cookie length for longer as I suspect our sales could be double the amount. We are certainly sending them the clicks. Maybe more targetted traffic and trying to make the visitor think the product is the a best buy. We’ve found the following helps – 1.Best buy or Offer of the Month in the sidebar 2. Use Amazon’s sales rank and 3. Show any RRP and then discount price as the consumer may think they are getting a bargain. 4. Target keywords on specific products, this way you are getting the buyer who knows what specific product they want and most likely looking around for the best price. This consumer is likely near the end of the purchase chain.
Agree 100% with James, always include contact and privacy policy pages.
At first I put privacy, contact, disclaimer pages on all my sites but as time went by I get lazy and started leaving them out. Are they essential for a good position in Google?
July is going well so far and I’m on target to meet my target (touch wood) even with Amazon’s reduction in commission.
Inspiring! Am stuck in the £75-£100 per month band, with no clear way out, a lcak of time, and recently acquired wife stop me from spending as much time as I would like, and quick tips from you on stepping it up a bit?
How many sites are bringing you that amount? I guess all I can say is make more sites!
To answer the question about privacy, contact, disclaimer pages, they are key for two reasons:
1) Some merchants require it as part of the rules
2) When using PPC with Google, it sometimes affects your quality score if you don’t have them.
Also, users like it better, more “trusty”