Staying Up on Your Affiliate Links

I have had more interest recently on making money from the couple of well ranked pages I have for some “As Seen On TV” products. One of these products is the Hercules Hook which I currently have a # 8 spot on the first page of Google results. From that spot I get about 30-40 people a day that hit my site looking for these little miracle hooks (which are quite cool by the way).

The Original Affiliate

Anyway, I had these pages linking to carolwrightgifts.com as an affiliate through Commission Junction but was only seeing about 1 sale every other day. I was making $1.20 off each sales which is nice but my conversion rate was less then to be desired.  

Changing To A More Reputable Company

I then remembered that I had signed up for an Amazon.com associates account a while back and was approved but had never done anything with it. I did a quick search with their “Build Links” section and found may companies that were selling the Hercules Hooks through Amazon. I picked the best price I could find that and added the code to my site.

The reason for my change was based on the fact that it seemed to be that the average had no idea who carolwrightgifts.com was and did not feel comfortable with them. Just about everyone who has logged on to the internet before has heard of Amazon and so my theory was that people would feel more comfortable buying from them.

An Upswing in Sales

The very next day I noticed that I had gotten a sale. I check back the next day and had gotten 2 more. Checking everyday revealed that I was getting at least one sales in not more everyday which was the desired result. I was really happy until I saw the amount of commission I was making per sale – it was half of what I was making with carolwrightgifts.com.

I was about to pull the code and go back to carolwrightgifts.com but then realized that I was actually making the same amount of money if not more. See before I was getting 1 sale every other day but now I was getting at least 1 sale if not more a day – I as making more money which seemed to prove my theory that people feel more comfortable buying from a reputable company.

I was stoked.

Sales Stop

 I had not logged into my Amazon account for a couple days and wanted to see how much money I had accumulated during my absence. I was surprised when the report for yesterday came up and there had not been any sales. I checked the day before that – none. Checking over the last week revealed that I had not gotten any sales for the last 3 days. 

I went to the post on my site where I had been getting sales to see if something happened to my page. Everything looked good except that there wasn’t and image in my Amazon advertisement. Clicking advertisement brought me to an Amazon page that did not have any information of the Hercules Hooks or how to buy them. It seems that my link was dead.

This explained the lack of sales.

I quickly looked for another link, tested it, and replaced the dead link on my site with the new one. Hopefully I will regain my average daily sales with the new link.

Conclusion

You need to regularly check your sales to make sure that things are look right. If for some reason you see a decline in sales you need to start checking where the leak is. The best thing to do is check you placement search engine results (if that is where your traffic comes from), check your page, and last but not least – check your link to your affiliate – they may have changed something that will not allow people to buy. If people don’t buy – you don’t make money.

Another lesson learned.