January 2019 Income and traffic report

So, I'm realising that the niche I've picked was probably not the best: tea is mainly a low-value item and something that people pick up when they go to the grocery store or supermarket. Although my traffic is steadily increasing month on month so far, after six months, I have made just one affiliate sale through Amazon, which was for something completely unrelated to tea.

The good thing, I suppose, is that I've learned a tremendous amount about creating and maintaining a website, I've learned a lot about SEO and am in a position where, maybe, I could pick a more profitable niche and do better with a different site.

I'm completely out of ideas as how to monetize my site: AdSense and PubMedia are bringing in a tiny trickle of revenue but it's not much. And I was kicked off CJ (an affiliate network) for having made no sales, and was similarly kicked off Amazon but immediately reapplied and was accepted. I need to make three sales in the next 90 days to avoid that happening again. Not likely.

Time is the big issue. When I started on this affiliate marketing journey last July, I did because I was facing a downturn in my teaching work and though I would have enough spare time to do everything I would need to in terms of writing, publicising and updating content on a regular basis. Of course, that situation went into reverse and I now have more teaching work than I've ever had.

On top of that, both my parents have been quite ill over the past few months, especially Dad who's now waiting for a heart bypass so in December and January I did very little other than greet people on twitter daily and update a couple of posts.

I'm definitely not making enough use of WA to justify the yearly membership fee: I've not done any training since finishing the Online Entrepreneur Certification last August. The only upside is that I'm managing to write a couple of comments a day while waiting for the kettle to boil or dinner to cook and that is providing another tiny trickly of income.

Sorry for being a bit down about it all but I think all I've done is introduce even more stress into my already slightly too stressful life with no prospect of reward. Don't let anyone tell you that affiliate marketing is easy. It isn't. I'm not throwing in the towel, I realise that this academic year will come to an end in July and then, maybe, I'll have loads of time again and that might be enough to start seeing some success.

Anyway, the numbers for January are:

Outgoings: nothing, so that's good

Income: a grand total of £20.02 (it was £19.53 in December)

• Affiliate sales: 0
• Google AdSense £7.78 (lifetime total now £49.31 so creeping nearer that £60 payout threshold
• PubMedia Ads: £2.31
• WA comments: £9.91

The traffic situation is interesting: although I received about the same number of page views as I have over the last few months (1600), the number of people finding it through organic (Google) search jumped from around 40 to 180, which is encouraging, especiialy as I've published only one new post and updated a couple of them.

So, all in all, January was a hard month for many reasons but there is no need to despair!

Thanks everyone for your continued support, I really couldn't have done any of this without you.