Back to business (An 'on topic' blog) - First payout from Amazon!
Yesterday was a momentous day, I received my first payout from my Amazon Affiliate account. My website this month has finally earned me enough to pay a month of Wealthy affiliate subscription.
When I was top 50, I would get many messages asking me about how much money I was making. At the time I had not earned a single penny. This would baffle many as they seem to assume that being ranked high in Wealthy affiliate means you are earning good money. I had to burst many people who messaged illusions.
It has taken me a grand total of ten months to achieve this. My website has been receiving a steady flow of visitors but the sales were for very small ticket items and earnings were for small amounts.
What I have noticed in month ten is that my average ranking has dropped significantly, so maybe the search engines are now beginning to trust my site more and this has resulted in far more impressions and of course many more clicks.
It has also given me a renewed motivation to write for my original blog. The pandemic and resulting isolation sees many more people turning to the internet to entertain themselves, to seek advice and information and of course to buy things. In some cases the internet maybe their only source to purchase goods.
This is great for those of us with websites in retail, I can imagine those with sites in crafts, baking, school supplies, gardening, DIY etc are going to potentially see an increase in visits and maybe even sales. Anyone who sells toilet roll, or hand sanitiser right now is going to be really busy!
The really great thing with Affiliating to amazon is that visitors do not have to only buy the product you are linking to. This month I have been credited sales for toothbrushes, cashew nuts and chocolate chip cookies, and rose syrup, when my website is for baby products! It is of course really exciting when you actually get a sale from your link, which I also got this month for 3 baby blankets.
I write this blog to give you a realistic idea of earning potential. Now this website could have earned a lot more, if I written far more frequently and had targeted much higher ticket value products. This is now something I intend to do from this month.
Rakuten Advises "Content producers could see an increase of 20% in visitors"!
In an email I received from them they gave an update and some advice for us affiliate marketers. They state:
"The top performing verticals across our regions include:
UK: Jewelry, Gifts, Pets
Central EU: Apparel, Department Stores, Luxury
US: Video Games, Education, Food & Drink
Canada: Luxury, Department Stores, Software
APAC: Sporting Goods, Food & Drink, Beauty Goods
Brazil: Department Stores, Sports, Décor
Consumers are increasingly turning to content publishers, which isn’t surprising as people’s attention is turned to the news. Content publishers in the Rakuten Advertising network have seen their share of traffic grow by 20% over the course of the past week."
The global pandemic has of course seen the world change in a very short time. My job has been paused for a while, which on the one hand is incredibly stressful. However, what this does do, is give me the time and energy to dedicate to my website and create content for an audience who are also likely to also be isolated at home.
I wish you all well building your websites and sincerely hope you are finding more visitors to your sites. This unique difficult period may also find you with more free time, it would be wise (if you can) to invest it in your websites, it could pay dividends in the future!
Be well my friends
Much Love
Sara
Reply
Wonderful to hear from you, how are things in your part of the world?
Yeah job pause was very stressful, however pay got all sorted so I am isolated at home on 80% pay, which I feel truly blessed and grateful to have.
Yep, here I am with nothing but time, so my website is going to get some much needed love and content!
Stay well xx
How is your son? Are you still healthy?
It has been very weird. I think we already had it but there was no testing happening here yet so I have no proof. Last week I started getting all the same symptoms again but they have been mild. I don't know if I have partial immunity but got infected again or what.
Our Governor wanted all Executive branch employees (my husband and I are both in that group) to keep working even after the rest of the country was encouraged or ordered to stay home. Our mayor said everyone had to stay home but the Governor overrode the mayor and made us come to work anyway. Our union even filed a temporary restraining order to force the Governor to let us go but it failed. We have no problem working but we had been told to get ready to work from home. We spent two weeks setting up for that and then were told we couldn't. In the meantime we still don't even have hand sanitizer there!
This week I will finally be able to start working from home officially I think. I know I am lucky to have a job but it was difficult not knowing every day if I was supposed to go to work or not.
Both of us have parents with health problems now so we are mostly worried about them. My Mom has lymphoma and my father-in-law has something still unidentified that caused what looked like small heart attacks or strokes. Now he is fainting off and on and they still don't know what it is. He and my mother-in-law are in California and will be flying back here via Seattle next week. We are so worried about them.
We are ok but everything seems to be changing day by day. We have lost tenants too so now we have to apply to the SBA for another loan (at the end of 2018 it was the 7.1 earthquake we had right here) so we already have a disaster loan.
I hope your family is ok and your son is improving.
Jessica
My son Jack is much better, thank you, he has good days and bad days. The good days he has energy and hardly ever coughs, but then he'll have a day where he says he is tired and needs to just rest. Today has been a good day, with him gaming online with his cousin and I have heard him laugh for the first time in a few weeks.
My husband, daughter and myself didn't develop any symptoms, so then you start questioning whether it was just a normal chest infection and cough all along. But then like we have said, us three had symptoms earlier in the year.? Who knows, I guess we won't until we all take the immunity test.
for now we are still under strict lockdown. we are still allowed to go for up to an hour exercise from our homes (obviously with Jack being poorly, we were on 14 day isolation!, which we came out of last Friday!), so we have our limited freedom again.
Both of our jobs are on hold. So I am using the time to get an article a day written for my website. Yes toilet rolls, paracetamol products and hand sanitizer are all in short supply here too!, luckily I got two big bottles of anti-bac hand wash just before they sold out.
Crazy times! I am so sorry you lost your tenants. we have had to cancel our holiday to Portugal, which was booked privately through a friend. She has said she has lost a whole seasons rentals for her apartment, If eel terrible for her, because there (as I am sure is the same for you) is no cover, or way to get the money back.
Bosses are being idiots currently. But then I guess they are just desperately clutching at their businesses, hoping to survive. I guess all we can do, is be grateful for our health and send love around this world of ours. Keep well xx
My in-laws have an 8 foot snow berm in front of their home (which is a 3 hour drive from here) so my husband is trying to figure out how to get it plowed out before they get back. Since we have been sick so much we know it would not be good for him to try to shovel the whole thing out himself! There was a lot more snow up there than we had this year so at least ours is almost gone.
There is always something.
Thanks!
I've just seen another post of yours, so I'm off to read that before tackling the back garden for an hour.
My new website is more an outlet right now and takes far less research and time as I just let my writing flow on that one, so right now,(apart from the global pandemic, the pain of home schooling and the toilet roll crisis) all is good.
