92ninja's Amazon Affiliate journey

92ninja

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Hey BHW!

Long time lurker, first time poster. I've always enjoyed reading these journey threads, so I figured I'd share mine; hopefully, it will be of use to someone. If not, it's a good journal for tracking my own results. Anyway...

I have a website, in which I review adult niche products. I use Amazon Associates as a revenue generator. The site was made about 6 months ago, has a little less than 20 articles on it. All links are either contextual or via clicking on a picture (no banners.) Links are globalized via GeoRiot.

I have an NSFW tumblr account with ~1100 followers, which points to my website. All my posts are run via IFTTT and include a link to my site (I know this may get banned, but it's been running this way for several months - fingers crossed!)

I have a twitter account where I tweet out updates about new reviews, etc. Very few (~25 followers) and I don't tweet as much as I should because it's a PITA.

Results have been modest, but steady at this point; I average about $2/day in affiliate commissions.

Please see Amazon Associates earnings for the last 2 quarters, as well as this quarter to date.

I'm not exactly sure of the correct direction to go in next. In all honesty, it needs to be cheap/free, as I am still interviewing for positions at this time. Anyway, I'm starting to ramble. Love ya, BHW!
q1 2015.pngq2 2015.pngq3 2015 as of July 10.png
 
I always loved Amazon affiliate journey.

Good earnings so far, and good luck!
 
I should note: the above earnings are only for US. Combined worldwide earnings minus US earnings amount to a whopping $10 :p
 
Best of luck with your journey man! I'll keep an eye on this! :)
 
Best of luck with your journey man! I'll keep an eye on this! :)

Thanks buddy! I read through your journey last night; you're obviously very talented and have a ton of background knowledge that I lack at this point. It's very inspirational to read about how other people "build their empire."

I just checked out Google Webmaster Tools and was pleasantly surprised to see A TON of links to my site that didn't show on my console even just a few days ago.
Screenshot 2015-07-12 at 11.52.53 AM.png
This is huge (to me.) Before today, I had about 10 links to my site. I guess the Tumblr campaign is working :)

As far as earnings, I made another couple of bucks in my sleep.
Screenshot 2015-07-12 at 11.55.58 AM.png
I also signed up for reddit and made a few comments on posts in a couple subreddits that are very relevant to my niche. I haven't included any links in comments yet, as I want to build (at least a little) legitimacy, I've heard they hate anything that even smells of spam.

Any questions or suggestions you all have, I'm all ears.
 
Encountering a slight problem today. I tried to test a link to my site and realized that I can't get my site to load!

Outside testing (unfortunately) confirmed that this isn't just a problem on my end :(

Screenshot 2015-07-13 at 1.22.14 PM.png

Earnings are obviously stalled at this point.

Perseverance is a virtue!
 
...and sometimes magic happens!

Site's back online. No idea what the deal was.
 
So! Today I...

Installed a new theme for the site. The old theme was OK, but didn't contain footer options (for associates disclosure, etc.) and I wanted something that felt newer. Found a WP theme that reminds me a bit of buzzfeed or instagram ("patio" theme.) It's a responsive theme, which I also thought was pretty important.

I set up another tumblr via IFTTT to try and direct some semi-relevant traffic to my site. FYI, as of the time of this post, my first tumblr has 1201 followers, 853 of those coming in the last month.

I also created a spreadsheet of my (US) Amazon Associates activity since this project began and made some charts out of that info. I did this mainly to see where I was at, and am happy to see that there's overall improvement, though as daily clicks increase, daily conversion percent decreases. Maybe that's normal? Anyway, I'm attaching the graphs if anyone's interested.

Screenshot 2015-07-13 at 11.10.04 PM.jpg

Also, I was looking at a recipe site on my phone as I was making dinner and realized that I may be missing a revenue opportunity by not having any ads on my site. What do you all think?
 
So! Today I...

Installed a new theme for the site. The old theme was OK, but didn't contain footer options (for associates disclosure, etc.) and I wanted something that felt newer. Found a WP theme that reminds me a bit of buzzfeed or instagram ("patio" theme.) It's a responsive theme, which I also thought was pretty important.

I set up another tumblr via IFTTT to try and direct some semi-relevant traffic to my site. FYI, as of the time of this post, my first tumblr has 1201 followers, 853 of those coming in the last month.

I also created a spreadsheet of my (US) Amazon Associates activity since this project began and made some charts out of that info. I did this mainly to see where I was at, and am happy to see that there's overall improvement, though as daily clicks increase, daily conversion percent decreases. Maybe that's normal? Anyway, I'm attaching the graphs if anyone's interested.

View attachment 67591

Also, I was looking at a recipe site on my phone as I was making dinner and realized that I may be missing a revenue opportunity by not having any ads on my site. What do you all think?

Personally, I would avoid putting ads on your site, since your sole objective is get the user on to Amazon and purchasing products. Ads may make your visitors leave the site. Perhaps that's a small possibility, but it's a possibility at that. Ads maybe a little overkill.

You're making excellent progress so far - keep it up!
 
Update time again. I think that reporting back to BHW keeps me from slacking off :D

I made $2.84 in commissions yesterday. Updated my spreadsheets to reflect this, as well as when I published posts. Maybe I can glean some correlation from this info. Either way, I like graphs.

I reapplied to Japan and Spain's Amazon Associate programs; Japan accepted me this time (I believe because I now have a disclosure in the footer,) but Spain rejected me because my site is NSFW. I'll reapply tomorrow I believe.

I wrote and published a new review and tweeted it out to the manufacturer; hopefully I can get some juice from that.

Anyway, til next time!
 
Just wanted to give my thread a holler and let you all (?) know what's up.

I've since been posting on reddit and twitter and writing more content for the site. Things have been going well and I've noticed a significant bump in traffic and sales in the past few days. It's been said ad nauseum, but consistency is key. You can make the best content out there, but if you never let anyone know about it, it'll just sit there unnoticed.

I read up on the benefits of silo sites in the WP environment...which I might pursue in the future. IDK.
 
does twitter traffic convert well on amazon niches

Tough to say in my case, since Google Analytics only shows spam referrals from floating-share-buttons and the like.

Anecdotally, I'd say it's paying off because there's a strong correlation in an increase in Amazon product clicks and the frequency of my tweets. If I can figure out how to have Google Analytics actually report my referral traffic, I'll post my results on this thread.
 
Hey BHW!

Just wanted to keep this updated.

Things have been running smoothly. As I said, being a real, organic member of forums and/or social media has seemed to be paying dividends; I'm seeing real improvement and I believe that this is the reason.

Please see some attached results for 7/14-7/21 ;)
Screenshot 2015-07-22 at 9.28.06 AM.png
Screenshot 2015-07-22 at 9.28.22 AM.png
 
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