I just completed my 4th month of being an Amazon Associate. This is a way of generating some passive income from products that I already recommend to my customers.
I still have a ways to go, but this month I hit a new record. It's still not that impressive, but it signals that I am on a good pathway.
For April, I generated $163.58 in commissions. This surpasses my previous high of $132.04. The main reason for this is that I generated more items that were sold, so this increased my commission rate from 6.5% to 7.0%. This happens when 111 or more items are sold within 1 calendar month. This month, customers bought 162 items. (my previous high was 94). Now, I got lucky this month, that one person bought 41 items at the same time (a whole bunch of light switch items that were bought in multiples. But, even wo/ that 1 lucky purchase, I was still above the threshold.
Here were my top performing pages for April 2016
- How long does it take to sand and refinish hardwood floors?
- Dark vs Light hardwood flooring - pros and cons
- Hardwood flooring supplies e.g. felt pads and doggie socks
- How to prevent and reduce scratches in hardwood floors
I'm learning and making some tweaks as I go along, so I'm hoping I can sustain the 7% commission rate in the months to come. And, then, trying to focus on some other items that cost a bit more.
Once I surpassed $100 mark for the month, I finally invested in a wordpress plugin called EasyAzon. This normally costs $47, so I wanted to make sure that it was worth it and that I had a good platform as a starting point. Not only does this make things faster and easier, but it improves conversion in a few different ways. One of the ways is that it asks the person if they want to "add to their cart." And, if they do add it, it extends the cookie from 24 hrs to 90 days. And, this can really make a difference as some people buy a few days later or a week or two later. I was lucky as I was doing some research, I found a blog post that offered a discount, so it only cost me $29. Yay.
So, I've been in process of converting some of the links on these pages (gradually) to leverage this plugin. And, I started to see things accelerate. I've only had the plugin in place for close to a week (and been gradually converting links) and already it looks like this generated at least an incremental $27 in commissions, so it's practically paid for itself within a week, so I'm very pleased with this small investment. I still have 5 more pages to convert (hopefully I can get that/most of that done today. It's a rainy day anyway.
Unfortunately, the plugin doesn't work on here, but that's not the end of world since most of the sales are coming from my site.
I'm hoping May will be stronger than April, so I'll keep you posted on those results. Year to date, I've generated a bit over $510. If I keep going at this month's rate, I would generate an extra $1,300 for the year bringing the total to a bit over $1,800. (I am hoping to accelerate this and I am hoping to start another site that can supplement this). More to come.
Oh, and if you are every buying ANYTHING on Amazon, please use the link in my footer (and buy within 24 hrs). It won't cost you anything extra, and I will get a small commission. And, I know a few of you have done this, so I thank you for your help.
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