How I Got Rich

How Much Do My Sites Earn a Month?

After a recent post in the smingle thread on the a4u forum which recommended a domain name and gave a projected monthly income of around 150 a month if you got that site to number one in Google I decided to have a look at my sites and see how they performed each month financially.

It was pretty depressing reading.

I used the tracking IDs in Amazon Associates of which I create a new one for each site and then looked at the monthly reports.  Out of my 30 or sites only one was earning more than 50 a month (and only during a certain season).  The rest were bringing in around 5-20 a month.  Some make a few sales via Affiliate Window but not more than they do via Amazon.  I do have  a couple of micro niche sites which looks like are my biggest earners and they are promoted via PPC but are still not bringing in anything to write home about.

According to the information given in the smingle thread my domains and sites all sound  good in theory:

• Keywords with 8,000 – 20,000 exact local matches a month (sometimes more)
• Products that retail between 10 and 100 (more on some sites)
• Easy to navigate sites with product reviews and price comparison ECUs where relevant
• At number in one Google for their main keyword

But even with all that they are just not getting the traffic or bringing home the bacon.

A few people have advised me to find my best site and develop it further and to continue doing what I am doing as it working but I don’t really have a best site and what I am doing is too big to keep doing i.e. too many small sites not making much money and taking too much time to keep track of and up to date.

To make this year a success I need to shake it up a bit and try something new…

Knock me down with a feather – another £50 day

Another good day in the run up to Christmas.  Yesterday I tweaked my Adwords ads and updated some of my ECUs that were pointing to out of stock merchants and today I have a lower PPC spend and have made more commission.

Break down goes a little something like this:

• Awin: £42
• Amazon: £26
• Adwords: £14
• Profit: £54

Obviously these are all pending but I’ve not had many rejections so far (touch wood) and PPC spend isn’t in sync with sales as there are time zone issues afoot but overall it looks positive.

I’d love to spend today checking my sites and setting up some new campaigns but as regular reader may know I recently started a new part-time day job.  Although the job is only one day a week it also takes a full day to prepare so unfortunately today and tomorrow will be affiliate marketing free apart from the odd bit of stolen time.  I am quite gutted as I only get £35 for the day of work (which actually takes two days) and I could earn more than that from Internet marketing but its not all about the money right?

Stone the Crows! Another £50 day!

The month has ended nicely for me with another £50 day.  Well there was £65.61 worth of sales recorded through Affiliate Window and I spent £19.81 on clicks via Adwords.  This leaves £45.80 profit but I am still waiting for Amazon to update which is taking ages, I guess there must be lots of sales to add up for the Christmas perio but I am confident I have recorded at least £5 worth of commission for yesterday.

Update: Amazon has now updated and about £662 worth of sales were made of which 6% is £39 making the total profit for November 30 £85.52!

The day before I had paused about three of my PPC campaigns which were the ones that lost me the most money but today I’ve still managed to rack up £20 worth of  clicks.

It is getting increasingly difficult to work out which campaigns are the most profitable and which are costing me the most money but I seem to be making money overall so its  not too much of a problem yet.

I am definitely converted to the ways of PPC now and, if all goes well over the next few weeks, will definitely be using it long-term alongside SEO.

I know most of this traffic is Christmas traffic but hopefully I can diversify into non-seasonal niches and see similar results throughout the year.  As I’ve said before £50 a day would be amazing and would really change my life for the better.

November looks to have been a good month with a new personal best relating to sales and commission.  I’ll do a post tomorrow once Amazon has updated but for now its fingers crossed for December!

First Decent Payout

Today I received my first proper payment from affiliate marketing.  £255 was deposited into by bank account from Amazon Associates.  As Amazon pay two months in arrears this was the commission I earned in June 2009.  It was nice to see it in my account and I am looking forward to next months payment already!

Amazon Change Commission Structure

Oh dear! Just got an email from Amazon Associates as I’m sure most of you will have done and they are changing the rates of commission they will be giving.

Amazon have tried to put a positive spin on the news but from what I can gather its all bad news!

The 2.5% bonus you got for deeplinking has gone and the amount you have to sell to move up from 5% to 5.5% and beyond has been increased greatly.  Most of the items I sell come from deeplinks so I was often getting 9% commission per item.  Now it looks like that will be a flat 5%.   One item I sell a lot of earns me £2.70 on 9% but it will now get me no more than £1.50.  That means I will be earning 45% less per item!

There also appears to be some bad new for affiliates promoting Amazon via PPC but I didn’t really understand that part.

You can follow the debate on these forums:
http://forums.prospero.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=am-assocuk&msg=2297.1&ctx=4096
http://www.affiliates4u.com/forums/affiliate-marketing-lounge/112591-amazon-associate-updates-7-00-cap-across-all-products-lines.html#post510116

£15 in One Day!

I checked my Amazon associates account this morning as I do first thing most days and was pleased to see £15 worth of commission was added to my account today from the dispatch of yesterdays items.

This came from 9 items costing £238.03 in total giving me £15.35 commission (about 6%).

If this happened every day I would be almost hitting my target of £500 per month.