Question for Amazon affiliate marketers - My affiliate income has dropped drastically

41 replies
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I have a simple amazon site that was doing well right from time, but i noticed that since 21th of this month my traffic and affiliate income has reduced seriously. I make averagely $30-$100 daily from amazon but since 21th i still got lot of visits but no sales. Are you facing the same issue? Or have you experience hike in sales? thanks
#affiliate #amazon #drastically #dropped #income #marketers #question
  • Profile picture of the author MonopolyMan
    Christmas shopping starts to die down around that point.
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  • Profile picture of the author TuNguyen
    sorry to hear about your situation, may i ask how old your site is? if its less than 2-3 months old then it might just be the dancing google. but then again you say that you are still getting a lot of traffic, so is it just the conversion that has dropped?

    Originally Posted by masterpeez4py View Post

    I have a simple amazon site that was doing well right from time, but i noticed that since 21th of this month my traffic and affiliate income has reduced seriously. I make averagely $30-$100 daily from amazon but since 21th i still got lot of visits but no sales. Are you facing the same issue? Or have you experience hike in sales? thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author masterpeez4py
    yes it is less than 2 months, i already suffered the google dance in the past, i disappeared on google for 10days but am finally taking all my rightful position because all i have on my site is unique content with no single backlinks, i also notice reduction in traffic not only sales. thanks for your time
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  • Profile picture of the author gotmerunnin
    I had the same problem. From the 21 through 24, I had the same traffic, but no sales whatsoever. I went from a conversion rate averaging 7% to 0% for those 4 days. Very odd.
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  • Profile picture of the author JSProjects
    I've noticed that conversions generally slide a little towards the end of December and into early January. People are less likely to make a purchase when they've already spent hundreds of dollars during the busy buying season.
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    • Profile picture of the author gotmerunnin
      Originally Posted by JSProjects View Post

      I've noticed that conversions generally slide a little towards the end of December and into early January. People are less likely to make a purchase when they've already spent hundreds of dollars during the busy buying season.
      Good point. I never thought about it that way.
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      • Profile picture of the author Melkur
        Hi all!

        This is my first post here, though I've been an intermittent lurker for a while.

        I'm in pretty much the same position as masterpeez4py. I launched a site following wolfmmiii's excellent Amazon Blueprint in November (actually, I purchased the blueprint and did the site's basic setup in late Sept / early Oct, but then some life things happened and it got put on hold for a while).

        I started putting reviews on the site in early / mid Nov, and was just starting to see a little traffic before Black Friday. Over that weekend and the following week traffic went up from single digits to around 100 uniques per day (more over the weekend) and I made about $149.

        Traffic started to drop off in early December, and stopped completely around the second week in Dec for several days. I put that down to the Google dance and kept on adding reviews when I could (though not the recommended 2 per day) and traffic has gradually recovered until I've seen 50 or so uniques every day for the past three days.

        Unfortunately, conversions haven't picked up in line with traffic. I've made about $60 so far this month, all from the first week to 10 days of the month.

        I suspect the problem - if it is actually a problem, and not just a natural cycle around the festive season - is that people a hopping online to seek out product reviews before buying them in end of year sales in brick and mortar stores.

        I'm also seeing much more international traffic, much of it from countries that don't have an Amazon associates program. Clicks from there aren't going to help my conversion ratio at all!

        I've used Pete Williams' Amazon Affiliate Link Localizer plugin for Wordpress on another (so far spectacularly unsuccessful) Amazon site that I set up before I read wolfmmiii's Blueprint, but as I recall it only allows you to set up one ID per local affiliate program.

        For this new site, I've set up different tracking IDs on each of the main Amazon links in the reviews, so I can get some idea of which perform better. Is there another link localizing solution that would let me keep tracking IDs for different links in place, or do I need to abandon them in favour of passing clicks to the relevant Amazon site? Or is there a better way to handle this altogether?
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        • Profile picture of the author masterpeez4py
          Originally Posted by Melkur View Post

          Hi all!

          This is my first post here, though I've been an intermittent lurker for a while.

          I'm in pretty much the same position as masterpeez4py. I launched a site following wolfmmiii's excellent Amazon Blueprint in November (actually, I purchased the blueprint and did the site's basic setup in late Sept / early Oct, but then some life things happened and it got put on hold for a while).

          I started putting reviews on the site in early / mid Nov, and was just starting to see a little traffic before Black Friday. Over that weekend and the following week traffic went up from single digits to around 100 uniques per day (more over the weekend) and I made about $149.

          Traffic started to drop off in early December, and stopped completely around the second week in Dec for several days. I put that down to the Google dance and kept on adding reviews when I could (though not the recommended 2 per day) and traffic has gradually recovered until I've seen 50 or so uniques every day for the past three days.

          Unfortunately, conversions haven't picked up in line with traffic. I've made about $60 so far this month, all from the first week to 10 days of the month.

          I suspect the problem - if it is actually a problem, and not just a natural cycle around the festive season - is that people a hopping online to seek out product reviews before buying them in end of year sales in brick and mortar stores.

          I'm also seeing much more international traffic, much of it from countries that don't have an Amazon associates program. Clicks from there aren't going to help my conversion ratio at all!

          I've used Pete Williams' Amazon Affiliate Link Localizer plugin for Wordpress on another (so far spectacularly unsuccessful) Amazon site that I set up before I read wolfmmiii's Blueprint, but as I recall it only allows you to set up one ID per local affiliate program.

          For this new site, I've set up different tracking IDs on each of the main Amazon links in the reviews, so I can get some idea of which perform better. Is there another link localizing solution that would let me keep tracking IDs for different links in place, or do I need to abandon them in favour of passing clicks to the relevant Amazon site? Or is there a better way to handle this altogether?
          Hello, am also using the same strategy as yours, and my site disappeared for 10 days but it came back on the 20th, i made huge sales on the 20th but since then i have been making little or no sales for some days till date. What i can say is that "JSProjects" is right.

          This is the end of the buying season and i think people have stopped buying things already and am also very sure everything will pick up back in january second week at most when most people will be back in office and ready to replace things in their house or offices again. so the point is keep building.

          I personally did great using this method. i think you should just keep building. i wish you luck
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          • Profile picture of the author Melkur
            Originally Posted by masterpeez4py View Post

            Hello, am also using the same strategy as yours, and my site disappeared for 10 days but it came back on the 20th, i made huge sales on the 20th but since then i have been making little or no sales for some days till date. What i can say is that "JSProjects" is right.

            This is the end of the buying season and i think people have stopped buying things already and am also very sure everything will pick up back in january second week at most when most people will be back in office and ready to replace things in their house or offices again. so the point is keep building.

            I personally did great using this method. i think you should just keep building. i wish you luck
            It's good to see that other people are noting the same patterns. I think JSProjects has a good point, too. I'll just keep on building and maybe use the quiet period to set up some new site's I've been thinking about in slightly different niches.

            I'm still not sure how best to handle international traffic, though. I'm tempted to abandon the multiple tracking IDs and just go with the link localizer for now.
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  • Profile picture of the author mgreener
    As others have stated, it's just a slow time for spending, but usually picks back up quickly for retail as the sales start.
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  • Profile picture of the author elperuanito
    I'm doing 1-2 reviews per day but am only getting 4-5 unique hits per day, and only 1-2 clicks to Amazon daily. From that, I've made a couple of sales but nothing major. Have about 40 reviews on my site, 15 ranking on page 1. Wonder if it's the niche, my reviews, or something else?
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    • Profile picture of the author masterpeez4py
      Originally Posted by elperuanito View Post

      I'm doing 1-2 reviews per day but am only getting 4-5 unique hits per day, and only 1-2 clicks to Amazon daily. From that, I've made a couple of sales but nothing major. Have about 40 reviews on my site, 15 ranking on page 1. Wonder if it's the niche, my reviews, or something else?
      I think 1-2 reviews daily wont get you the result you need. If you should increase the amount of reviews daily you will surely do great without stress, i have 100 reviews or so and making approximately $10-$30 daily from the site. if you really need results i think you should put more effort on your sites.

      If you put more effort on your site the result will surely show for it.
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  • Profile picture of the author elperuanito
    Cool - yeah at the moment I'm following the training given by wolfmmii himself which is 1-2 per day. Am in the process of creating a new site now. How many reviews do you think daily? In any case, you have 100 reviews and I have 40 yet I'm making much less than even $10 daily! Hmm...
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  • Profile picture of the author masterpeez4py
    I did 100 in 30 days and made $10-$30 averagely daily. how long did it take you to write the 40 reviews? a month or more?
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  • Profile picture of the author elperuanito
    Hey, I did the in a month or so. I'll try ramping it up. Did you do them all on the same website or across several?
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  • Profile picture of the author masterpeez4py
    I did it all in the same website, am going to split them up by January. I think you should get great results posting 2-3 daily rather than 1-2.
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  • Profile picture of the author elperuanito
    Why though? At this stage shouldn't I be making a proportion of $10 per day rather than random sales every few days (if lucky)? Surely it can't just be an issue of increasing output by 50%? I think I must be doing something wrong other than simply volume.
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  • Profile picture of the author masterpeez4py
    i think you need to scale up. thats the most important aspect for now. then when you start getting traffic and no sales you can decide if something is truly wrong or not.
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  • WHo's wolfmmiii?
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  • Profile picture of the author tryingtolearn
    My amazon earnings have decreased, for last 7 days, around $43 earnings from 24 items shipped, and only 32 ordered items at the conversion rate of 8.29%.

    However, quite surprisingly, since, 25th dec, i.e. Christmas, the site traffic has increased a lot from around 200-250 to 350-550.

    To be frank I was expecting decline in both traffic, and earnings, but, I don't have any problem with increase in visitors.

    @globalwritersdirect:
    View Profile: wolfmmiii
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  • Profile picture of the author ProSence
    Some festivals are celebrated internationally, xmas, new year, so there would would be decerase in traffic as well.
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  • Profile picture of the author derfootmarcus
    Yea I have also had the same thing happening for both my Amazon sales percentage and my traffic. People just dont want to buy or visit topics from my niche during the holiday season so I am not too worried about it.
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  • Profile picture of the author elperuanito
    My conversion percentage is 3% - is this low/normal? I guess it depends on the niche. I'm going to try and build a website in another niche to see what happens. Guys, any ideas on the type of niche that converts well?
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    • Profile picture of the author masterpeez4py
      Originally Posted by elperuanito View Post

      My conversion percentage is 3% - is this low/normal? I guess it depends on the niche. I'm going to try and build a website in another niche to see what happens. Guys, any ideas on the type of niche that converts well?
      Yes ass you can see most people are experiencing the same issue as me and you. i dont think it has to do with niche anyway. people are not just buying anything now, when everything is normal next year you will see the difference. So just keep building.
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    • Profile picture of the author JSProjects
      Originally Posted by elperuanito View Post

      My conversion percentage is 3% - is this low/normal? I guess it depends on the niche. I'm going to try and build a website in another niche to see what happens. Guys, any ideas on the type of niche that converts well?
      Are you targeting "buyer" keywords, or just product names? 3% is decent enough if you're mainly targeting product names and have a good amount of traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author elperuanito
    Cool - yeah, will keep on building! I guess considering that I'm making some money means I can scale it! How many of your pages are retaining their page 1 rank? That's another issue I'm having. I have about 30% on page 1 - it was higher, but they seem to fall off. Not doing any link building though.
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  • Profile picture of the author agapril07
    I think its important to remember with the holidays and all things are not giongt o be linear sales wise.
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  • Profile picture of the author GGpaul
    Just like any business. You have your ups and downs. Just keep going.
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    RIP Dad Oct 14 1954 - Mar 14 2015.

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  • Profile picture of the author masterpeez4py
    I target low competitive keywords, product names in particular and sometimes add review at the back. i have no issue with conversion, i think its because of the season my conversion rate dropped.
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    • Profile picture of the author Melkur
      Just a quick update - after several days of zero conversions, I made about $60 yesterday. Not enough to retire on, but it's a start Hope everyone else is starting to see sales again, too, and that it's a good omen for the coming year!
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      • Profile picture of the author JSProjects
        Originally Posted by Melkur View Post

        Just a quick update - after several days of zero conversions, I made about $60 yesterday. Not enough to retire on, but it's a start Hope everyone else is starting to see sales again, too, and that it's a good omen for the coming year!
        Good to hear. As we get deeper into Jan we should start to see more sales again. December is crazy, right up until Christmas. Then it drops off a little until mid to late January. In my experience.
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  • Profile picture of the author Coolneter
    For amazon i never used seo with articles or dealing with google.
    I made 50+ sites on subdomains each displaying different products.

    Sent traffic to all of them using twitter, and earnings steadily increased
    twitter is not so easy as it once was though, but thats good because now there
    is less competition for me and other more experienced marketers.

    what im trying to say is - there are other options besides google, i learned that
    the hard way after i lost something that i put my whole heart into - all in the blink of an eye.

    good luck to you.
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    • Profile picture of the author masterpeez4py
      Originally Posted by Coolneter View Post

      For amazon i never used seo with articles or dealing with google.
      I made 50+ sites on subdomains each displaying different products.

      Sent traffic to all of them using twitter, and earnings steadily increased
      twitter is not so easy as it once was though, but thats good because now there
      is less competition for me and other more experienced marketers.

      what im trying to say is - there are other options besides google, i learned that
      the hard way after i lost something that i put my whole heart into - all in the blink of an eye.

      good luck to you.
      Thats impressive, but can you get great results using only twitter? Besides how many post do you make on your site daily.?
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      • Profile picture of the author Coolneter
        Originally Posted by masterpeez4py View Post

        Thats impressive, but can you get great results using only twitter? Besides how many post do you make on your site daily.?
        Thats the beauty of this, it doesnt matter if you never update the site.
        It doesnt matter if its duplicate content.
        Those are all search engine concerns.

        You could add enough products to fill the first page/home page
        and make it look nice and full, that's all you need as far as content.
        If you put a shiny gadget/product/electronics in front of a casual browser he
        might click on it.

        Your affiliate cookie gets dropped on his computer and he might get lost
        on amazon and find something else he wants to buy - you still get paid.

        The traffic part works only because of automation it requires 100's of
        twitter accounts, lots of private proxies and such. This means the accounts
        don't "have to" be targeted and no need to "build a relationship" with followers.

        Try building a relationship manually for 1000 twitter accounts.
        Not possible buddy

        The twitter landscape has changed in the last 2 yrs where you need to
        invest more to make what you were making before but your earnings
        still continue to increase as long as you don't give up.

        People say twitter and social media is filled with bots and bot traffic, yes its true.
        But i don't think bots are the ones making me these affiliate commissions.
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  • Profile picture of the author TuNguyen
    Re: The same volume of traffic

    Guys, have you checked to see if this was traffic from real users and not bots? The reason I suspect that you are getting the same (or less) level of traffic but substantially lower conversions is because Google is slowly working out where your sites and keywords should be in the rankings.

    However you are still seeing activity in the form of traffic from bots, which will visit your site when you create new posts etc. Obviously these do not make purchases (conversions).

    I wouldn't say that this is the main reason but just a contribution to the changes in your conversions.

    Re: Social Media


    Furthermore, please do not be fooled into thinking that social media will send you conversions. They will send you traffic (mostly bots) and help you get your new posts indexed, however by-in-large they will not help with your conversions unless your social media account is part your niche orientated (list) campaign full of hungry buyers.
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    • Profile picture of the author GGpaul
      Originally Posted by TuNguyen View Post

      Re: The same volume of traffic

      Guys, have you checked to see if this was traffic from real users and not bots? The reason I suspect that you are getting the same (or less) level of traffic but substantially lower conversions is because Google is slowly working out where your sites and keywords should be in the rankings.

      However you are still seeing activity in the form of traffic from bots, which will visit your site when you create new posts etc. Obviously these do not make purchases (conversions).

      I wouldn't say that this is the main reason but just a contribution to the changes in your conversions.

      Re: Social Media


      Furthermore, please do not be fooled into thinking that social media will send you conversions. They will send you traffic (mostly bots) and help you get your new posts indexed, however by-in-large they will not help with your conversions unless your social media account is part your niche orientated (list) campaign full of hungry buyers.
      Woah. I need to go message you on FB =P
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  • Profile picture of the author GGpaul
    Woke up today, and made a bunch of sales. Great start of the new years!
    Signature

    RIP Dad Oct 14 1954 - Mar 14 2015.

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  • Profile picture of the author masterpeez4py
    js Project, thanks for the update. i was already getting tired because of my traffic was dropping and ranking was dropping as well, suddenly i started getting increase in traffic since yesterday and it has been increasing since although no sales recorded yet but it shows that things will work fine very soon. So i will keep building and never stop.
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  • i have found the best thing to do when selling amazon products is to continue building niche sites on a regular basis so if one site slows down, you have others to back it up and make up for the slow time on the other sites. i actually have some brand new niche autoblogs i just released here.
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