This Affiliate Marketing Path

I thought I’d do a tally of earnings just for the record.  While I did make some affiliate commissions over the past two years, Adsense heavily out-weighed those - so I’m just going to show that for this post.

2004 - $28.40 - I started making affiliate sites November 1st of 2004, after reading James Martell’s book.  Wow, did I have stars in my eyes, then I was beaten with the ungly stick of reality… but I’ve survived, and I’m still pressing on.  Before this I had had a hobby site up for two years, so I wasn’t a stranger to running a site.  40 some sites later, the hobby site is still my favorite and the only one that Google loves… too bad it doesn’t make any money.

2005 - $5928.45 - I got around ten affiliate sites up in 2005, put about 50 articles on average on each, and promoted them with a few articles that I submitted to the directories.  Straight up Martell-style.  They did okay, MSN seemed to love them for a while… then they stagnated a bit in 2006.

2006 - $5,483.22 - I was very frustrated at the beginning of 2006.  I had ended 2005 with two $1000 months, then in January my earnings dropped to around $300… and stayed like that for a few months.  I knew the holidays were going to be better than the rest of the year, but I didn’t anticipate such a big drop, and I really thought my earnings would go *up* over time.  I didn’t know what to do, that is, until BJ and Chrissie presented a new challenge - to make 50 sites before the holidays.  So that’s what I did with the rest of the year - only I didn’t quite make it to fifty, instead I eeked out about 30 new sites.  But what was great is that I found a place to host as many domains as I wanted for just $10 a month - so I could experiment with whatever I wanted to and not have to worry about wasting money.  I really learned a lot by doing this.  I learned that, at least when a site’s starting out, some duplicate content earns just as much as unique content; I learned that there are better ways of getting links than with article distribution and link exchanges (more on that to come); and that, like in Edward Albee’s A Zoo Story, “sometimes you have to go a long distance out of your way to come back a short distance correctly.”  I also learned that I have a lot in common with my fellow affiliate marketers, and I’ve certainly learned a lot from reading your experiences.  And I hope to get to know each one of you better in the future.

So that about sums it up - I will keep posting a detailed report of my earnings in the future, for the simple reason that I have learned so much from seeing other’s progress with their methods, so I want to show as much of mine as possible.