Finally! My First Commission!

byTylerClark34

891 followers

Updated 5 years ago

See The Single Coin Stack?

Most businesses work pretty similarly when it comes to success. It doesn't happen like when you get paid per hour. It can feel like you are working for nothing for a bit too long.

Then it comes.

You see, it isn't just business that works this way. All the best things in life seem to happen immediately after the point that you feel like giving up.

This has happened to me many times over my life, and I did my best to teach my wife the lesson of patience.

Unfortunately, no matter how many times I did my best and tried my hardest to maintain belief long enough for a bit of success to show her the proof behind my theory, she would do her absolute best to completely shatter my belief, with things like, "What are you going to do when this fails?" and, "How much money are you going to waste on this this time?"

I'm not sure if it actually is needless to say, but we are no longer together and my success is knocking.

The Morning Of May 31

I've been noticing an increase in both impressions and clicks. The funny part is that it was on a site that I haven't really contributed to for about six weeks.

I had started a second website and it took a lot of work (still only half done), as it was a very large, multi-part tutorial that splits into many ways to do the same thing. It's pretty complicated to organize and write everything, and it has taken all of my spare time, so my first website took the back burner for a while.

Recently, my first site reached 60 Google clicks and over 1500 impressions, so I was still checking on it when I went to check on my second one.

So, I went to work, as usual, and didn't expect a lot of change before I got home. I expected maybe another click or two, while patiently anticipating my first click on the second site.

After Work

I got home and made supper, then watched an episode of Game of Thrones with my girlfriend (yes, I am starting it now that it's over). We showered and had a few glasses of wine, then came up to bed (my office is the corner of our bedroom).

I sat down for a few minutes to go through the usual routine: WA notifications, Google Analytics, Search Console, Amazon Associates...and there it was.

$3.35.

Now, that really doesn't sound like much at all, but I have been waiting to see ANYTHING since February 28, when I started my first site, and fully expected my first commission to be from my second site, started March 25.

My first site had an Amazon commission from an article that I wrote in early March.

I went to see what it was that the person had purchased so that I could target that item in other articles. My first website was home theatre electronics related, and they purchased a cell phone camera for working on a car, an oil seal, also for a car, a shaft seal for a car...hmm OH!

One HDMI cable that was just thrown into the article, never expecting to actually sell, and two other HDMI cables of a different length.

Total earnings: $4.40.

Wait, what?

Upon further inspection, I found that the commission on the home page, and on the reports page only reflects the items that had shipped.

When I came back to my Associates page on June 1, it showed the real amount, and my earnings were $3.35 for May and $1.05 for June.

Not only did I make my first commission, but it was sales in two separate months!

Moving Forward

I plan to investigate a little deeper into how one article on my site that I was completely ignoring has commanded so much traffic, and emulate whatever accidental success I incorporated into all of my future articles.

Find what works, and keep doing it.

I hope a few things in this article helps someone along the way, and remember: the links you least expect to pay you just might.