Zero in Amazon Earnings!
By: John Elder posted in Affiliate Marketing
Hello good people!
Well yesterday something weird and unprecedented happened. I earned exactly ZERO dollars in Amazon affiliate income. None, Nada, Zero, Zilch. The big doughnut!
It’s really weird because I had 2,800 visitors across my 300 sites, and $60.15 worth of adsense earnings, but no amazon income.
Both of those figures are down since the Panda update at the end of September, but that’s still plenty of visitors to earn SOME sort of money thru amazon. In fact, I had 113 people click my amazon widget, which is more than normal (at least, above normal since the Panda update).
Unprecedented?
This has only happened one other time. And that was on the third of this month (October). And on that date 1 person did buy something, but it was out of stock so I didn’t earn any commission. Amazon earnings have been a little on the weak side ever since the Panda update.
Earnings haven’t dropped in proportion to traffic. It’s almost like Google is sending me a different kind of searcher who isn’t in the buying mood.
This post is mainly just going to be me moaning and complaining. I don’t have a whole lot to offer by way of sage advice…
I’ve posted in the past that affiliate commissions fluctuate constantly, especially amazon earnings, and that it’s no cause for worry. But this time it needs to be monitored carefully because we might be seeing something other than the normal affiliate fluctuations…if Google’s latest Panda update is sending a different “class” of searcher to my sites…then something will have to be done.
I’m not sure yet what that is.
I suspect it will entail creating a different looking website. Maybe something that looks more like an ecommerce website, versus the design that I have now which is more of an informational layout.
But that’s just wild speculation at this point. I’ll need to monitor things for at least a few more weeks to be sure…heck a couple months of monitoring would be even better.
On the other hand, things might just snap back to normal tomorrow…we’ll just have to wait and see.
Stay on your toes!
But that’s one of the reasons why I love this business, because you have to constantly keep your eyes open and your powder dry. Plus I like building and testing new site templates, so that works out well for me.
Even if there weren’t constant problems like this that you need to stay ahead of, it’s always a good idea to be building and testing new site designs. If you come up with a site design that pulls 5% more clickthru’s, that can translate into tens of thousands of dollars over the course of your business life.
So always be testing and tweaking, even if it’s just small changes to your current site template.
Keep on building!
-John
The Marketing Fool!
