Building websites that make money can be frustrating.\u00a0 Over the past two months, I’ve built 10 websites that I know will sell a considerable amount of items through Amazon in the future, producing big commissions for me, possibly enough to replace a full-time income.\u00a0 However, I’m not yet seeing that money.<\/p>\n
Why not?\u00a0 Two main reasons.\u00a0 First of all, although I link to all my sites from my blog, in the long run most of my sites’ hits will come from Google search traffic.\u00a0 Problem is, it takes Google a while to trust a new site and reward it in the search rankings.\u00a0 Google wants to see new sites stay around for a number of months, so it’s sure they aren’t fly-by-night scam sites.\u00a0 It also takes several months for other bloggers\/webmasters to see new sites and link to them – the more incoming links Google sees to a site, the better that site gets ranked.<\/p>\n
Tube Top Boutique<\/a> has been up a year and a half now, and has had time to build Google trust.\u00a0 As a result, it now has a PageRank of 4 (same as the Commercial Appeal’s home page), and gets 400-500 hits a day, not bad considering December is hardly tube top season.\u00a0 As recently as last month it was running as high as 800 a day.\u00a0 My newer sites, however – especially those less than 3 months old – have not had time to build that Google trust, and are lucky if they get 20-30 hits a day with a PageRank of 0.<\/p>\n The second reason that it takes a long time to see money from these sites is Amazon’s payment schedule.\u00a0 Commissions earned during a particular month are not paid out until the end of the second month afterward.\u00a0 That means that if you go to Mid-South Alcoholic Supply today<\/a> and buy a cocktail shaker or electric drink mixer<\/a>, I will earn a certain amount of commission from its sale (probably 7.5% this month), but I won’t get that money until the end of February.\u00a0 So I can see myself earning money when I check my reports on a daily basis, but I don’t have access to that money.\u00a0 Meanwhile, I doubt my apartment building’s manager will be too happy if I tell her I plan on paying my December rent on February 25.<\/p>\n I’m not complaining about these things… I’m just saying, they are facts of life if you do business on the Web.\u00a0 I’m hoping that writing about my experiences will be useful to people just getting into website affiliate marketing.\u00a0 Don’t put all your eggs in one basket and hope for a big payday within a month or two.\u00a0 Sorry, but it probably won’t happen.\u00a0 There are exceptions, like that “I can has cheezburger” site where you caption pictures of cats that went to a million hits within a month’s time, but those are one-in-a-million sites.<\/p>\n You know what I think will be a big business in the future?\u00a0 Payday loan companies for Amazon Associates.\u00a0 People who have pending commissions a month or two out will be able to go to these places and get advances on their commissions at a massive interest rate, much as paper paycheck loan companies do nowadays.\u00a0 There’s a business idea for anyone willing to take it on.\u00a0 You don’t have to give me any royalties for the idea, but if you want to stick something in the Buy-Paul-a-Beer.net<\/a> account, that’d be cool.<\/p>\n When my 10 new stores attain the same level of Google trust that Tube Top Boutique has, they’ll start getting lots of hits and generating big commissions.\u00a0 In the meantime, though, I just have to wait it out.\u00a0 And look for office jobs.\u00a0 Sigh.\u00a0 I guess it’s time to contact the recruiters and let them know I’m ready to start hunting.\u00a0 Probably tomorrow I’ll do that.<\/p>\n Trivia tonight at the Saucer at Bardog at 7.\u00a0 Immediately after trivia I’ll pay my tab and head to Bardog for Pint Night.\u00a0 If anyone wants to join me there, please feel free, I’ll be there about 9:15.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Building websites that make money can be frustrating.\u00a0 Over the past two months, I’ve built 10 websites that I know will sell a considerable amount of items through Amazon in the future, producing big commissions for me, possibly enough to replace a full-time income.\u00a0 However, I’m not yet seeing that money. Why not?\u00a0 Two main … Continue reading “The waiting game”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2863"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2863\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}