Starting to Make Money as an Amazon Affiliate

I have been working hard to try and increase my AdSense income this year by publishing content consistently throughout the year and doing a better job of backlinking that content.  In fact, my goal has been to triple my AdSense income this year.  Although I am not currently on pace to triple AdSense income this year, I have seen wonderfully positive results in my Amazon affiliate income.

I am not a salesperson and have no real desire to write multiple Hubs on products for the purpose of selling them.  I have a difficult time recommending a product that I don't use personally.  That doesn't mean that I won't publish the occasional sales Hub.  What it does mean is that if I am recommending a product, you will know that I own or have used the product and am relating my personal feelings and experience.

That being said, I have been putting Amazon links on all of my Hubs where the readers of my articles can gather additional information on a topic by purchasing a book or simply shop for other products should the desire to browse and purchase strike.  Just by doing this simple thing, I have managed to see a gradual increase in the number of clicks, orders, and income through the Amazon affiliate program during 2010 and early 2011.

You can see these results in the table below:

As you can see, there has been a steady increase in the number of clicks bringing readers to the Amazon site to shop and an increasing number of people who are actually making purchases.  So far for 2011, I am on pace to surpass the number of clicks for the fourth quarter of 2010 and have already earned more money than any other three month period so far.

The bulk of that income was due to the fact that someone purchased an Amazon Kindle along with a carrying case and the two year warranty.  This happened just this past week and is by far my largest sale and most exciting to date.  I can only hope that more of my readers decide to purchase large items on occasion.

I would never have had the chance, though, if I hadn't been publishing articles and receiving some traffic to those articles.  Despite not using the Amazon affiliate program as my main focus, I have still managed to benefit from its inclusion on my Hubs.  This simply becomes bonus revenue.  I would encourage anyone writing articles to include a related product or book if possible since it is impossible to know what might result from so little effort.

My plan is to continue to focus on AdSense revenue until I am making a solid 3 figures per month.  Then I may look through my house and see what products I use and really enjoy in order to write some product Hubs aimed at income from Amazon.  I can't tell you how exciting it is to earn some extra cash with Amazon products.  It is like getting a surprise check in the mail.  So feel free to order another Kindle or maybe a $5000 watch.  I love surprises!