Tenacity Pays Off

byStacydee

2.8K followers

Updated 10 years ago

Rewind a little bit.

I joined WA April 28, 2010, which means I've been a member almost four years. I'm also a gardener so that means I've spent at least half of that time outside in the yard (not working on websites).

So in my mind I've only been "doing this" for about 2 years of solid effort. DomW said at some point recently that if you can stick with this for two years then crazy stuff starts to happen. Well, he's right (I had no doubt that he was but now I'm seeing it in action)

It's been a nearly vertical learning curve for me for all of those 2 years. I'm sure it is for many of you reading. My advice is don't quit and don't allow yourself to think about how "hard" this is to learn. Your brain will believe you if you tell it that this is hard.

Put your horse blinders on and work your finger tips into callouses.

I have a trail of carnage behind me in dead domain names and a lot of other mess from so many days of mistakes and not knowing what I was doing. Leave it, just keep going.

The biggest key is focus. (PM me if you want to know how fiercely I focused)

Don't try to do too many things at once...as in build too many sites at once. I was slow to learn this and tried to make too many sites. I did many things that caused myself to be slower and take longer to see results. I had to figure some things out on my own I guess.

*You may see results differently than I did, my experience is no indicator of your how your success will look*

The biggest change happened a handful of months ago when I finally had a clear idea of what I wanted each of my sites to look like.

Many people will say to build only one site at a time, but I found it easier to build two at once. I don't know why but I learned and understood faster.

I could only get my focus list down to 3 sites on different subjects (all with Amazon products on them). So I've been working on making 3 great sites at once, progress is much slower on each than if I was building one at a time. I know that it's not really efficient that way but I accepted the extra length of time it would take me.

The extra time it's taken to build them all nicely has been paying off, I have them all linked together in some way, through posts, text links and banners. So the one with the highest traffic (150-200ppl a day at this time) is pulling up the others. Very cool!

The point I'm trying to say is that things change quickly and exponentially (Don't quit the day before it all starts to happen for you). Look at this that I calculated on the 14th.

I've been a member since April 28, 2010, it's now March 14, 2014. That's 44 months since I started here. That number isn't accurate and equal to effort because I didn't start selling/promoting Amazon products on the first day I was here at all.

And also remember I said that I'm a gardener and not all of those months were filled with active online effort. But I'm calculating from that date because that's when I seriously started this whole online venture.

These are solely Amazon orders we are talking about here:

April 28, 2010 - December 14, 2013 (orders trickled slooooowly)
It took me 44 months to get
51 orders totaling
$2156.38 in sales for a commission of:
$100.48

They cut it off in December and it takes two months for the cheque to arrive. I recently received a cheque for $116.68. :D:D:D (only a zillion hours of effort to get it though)

Start counting again:

December 14, 2013 - March 14, 2014 (averaging a few orders a week)
It's taken me 3 months to get
36 orders totaling
$1012.54 in sales for a commission (so far) of:
$60.77 (it has to reach $100 for another payout)

I'm more than half way to another cheque in only 3 months.

Now, I'm not a math genius but I think that's a huge improvement and fast.
I think I see the horizon on that learning curve!!

It can only get better from here!
PM me if you want to know more. I'll post an update when there is one.

Mini Update:

I thought I'd have to wait a while to have anything to say as far as an update goes. But nope.

Two of the sites have made 5 sales in the last two days alone. The commission from those bump me really close to another cheque. :))

It's definitely the highest sales and commission month yet.