Affliate Earnings April 15th
Sweet! I just made another $5.31 on my BANS sites. A few days ago I had another commission for just over $1. I’ve now reached payout (payout is $25, and I’ve reached $28.50), which means that I only have $25 left to go until my Build A Niche Store software has paid for itself.Now, I know that this isn’t the kind of money that you can live off of. I bought the software in December 2007, and it’s now April 2008. I sold the BANS software once, which gave me a $44.36 commission (the program is $97), and now the sales through the program is $28.50, leaving $24.14 unpaid for.
That may not seem very impressive to you, but I’ve mostly ignored my sites since setting them up and changing the color schemes (and logos). I find the initial building of a site to be the most interesting, and so I lose interest very quickly when it comes time to tweak and improve. Plus, every single site is set up on a sub domain rather than on its own domain.
I also was experimenting. What constitutes a niche? How tight a niche should I have? What if Ebay doesn’t support enough products in my niche? And as a result, I ended up with some very broad sites. One for coffee and coffee related products, one for tea and tea related products, vitamins, a certain make of car, tires, collectible pins, and a particular type of classic car.
Guess which site produced the most clicks and all of the sales? Nope, not the big sites. The classic car site (and keep in mind that it was not simply “classic cars”. It was a very specific make, though I didn’t get into specific years).
Originally, I pumped most of my energy into the classic car site. I was under the delusion that Ebay’s percentage cut applied to all of their products. I thought that one sale would make me $1000 or more. I was wrong. Ebay charges a flat fee for autos, businesses, homes, etc. Yes, a commission on a single car would be nice, but not enough to justify all the time I was spending on that site.
I’m learning though. I have loads of very niche sites that I plan to build, and plan to stock with quality, original or mostly original content, and possibly a few other affiliate programs as well. One of the great things about the BANS program is that I don’t have to put auctions on my page. I can use it as a simple website template, or stick the auction on to a single page like an after thought. I can build these affiliate sites as I see fit.
And now, I’m making progress. The program is almost paid for, and once I achieve that, it’s all gravy. I may never make a living from BANS, but it can certainly help smooth my lifestyle transitions.
As far as my other affiliate programs, I’ve done better this month than usual, but it’s not saying much. I made $2.33 from Squidoo, plus $10 from selling two of my lenses (I didn’t do much with them). Associated Content, I get paid up front plus page views. The page views I consider part of my affiliate earnings, and it was about $1.50, and I’m already up to $0.77 earnings one week from that payment. I think this month will impress me with my extra earnings. That may be because many of my articles are appropriate to the approaching summer.
All in all, I’m very pleased with this month’s progress. Once I get my BANS sites switched over to the new affiliate program for Ebay, I think these sites will really begin paying themselves off.
