For those of you who blog outside of HIVE on your own website, feel free to offer feedback. And if you don't have another blog, this will at least be an educational post.
One thing I've learned over the past 5 years of building out my fishing site is that an affiliate website can make good money.
My site makes money but not good money, yet. Two of the most important choices when starting an affiliate website are your industry and your niche.
My industry of choice is fishing and that covers a lot of ground. It's way too big for an affiliate site to cover and be successful. At least it is without an entire team of writers at your disposal.
Inside that industry I narrowed it down to offshore fishing, publishing mostly equipment reviews. That is my niche inside the fishing industry. It's more of a micro-niche as there's quite a bit of saltwater gear I leave out.
So widening my niche to cover more saltwater fishing will definitely help build exposure in the upcoming months and years.
It's not tough to apply and get accepted by either Amazon or Google AdSense. The trick is to build your site out and have a little bit of traffic first.
Ads can start earning a trickle of money from viewers right away and Amazon has a three month trial for affiliates. They require at least one referral (sale) in that time period before authenticating your account.
Once you are accepted and ready to start earning a passive income, don't wait for that first sale. It's easy to get caught up watching your numbers or spending too much time on social media.
I've been guilty of it myself. If I'd have taken my own advice and posted more often, I'd have more traffic and earnings by now. Still, I have over 120 articles which bring around 300 visitors to my website daily.
Above shows the current and previous months' AdSense earnings. You can get way more detailed information though they are discontinuing support for this App. I'll have to go straight to Google for info now.
Account holders can look up data like amount of clicks, impressions, earning rate, and other pertinent analytics.
Because my site monetizes through the Amazon Affiliate Program, I go to their website for information on my earnings.
The screenshot above shows results from the past 30 days. I can view the full report to see what fishermen have bought so far today.
That's a big nothingburger! I can also check yesterday, the past week, month, or set a range of dates manually. Let's see how the past week has been for clicks and conversions. Amazon won't give you any customer info, but you can see what people buy.
With only 2 items ordered, it was a slow week. Above you see the five items that shipped which triggers the commission earned on each item.
And that my friends is how I monetize my affiliate fishing website. You can take a closer look by visiting FishtFight.com.
Though I've been considering this for awhile, I haven't found a solid path forward. Amazon is cutting commissions and no one wants to support Google anymore with good reason.
Perhaps I need to follow the Brave Browser and sign up for their Ad Program. I've also been thinking about going over to Rakutan instead of using Amazon. Maybe they'll eventually offer payments and commissions in crypto.
Hope you enjoyed and don't hold back with the feedback.
Happy Hiveing!!
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