Making money with affiliate sales

When my hubby was young, he used to follow his older brother selling pasar malam (or flea market) stuffs in small kampungs (villages). He often tell my children how good business was back then as there weren’t any hypermarkets or even sundry shops around.

Until now, the bachelor brother is still opening a small grocery shop in his tiny flat. He is 60+ years old and is not likely to find a wife at his age. Anyway, he leads a carefree life, selling small items to the kids and housewives around the area. He may not make much but he is happy.

So, basically, when I have Amazon and Chitika ads running, I feel like them, opening a small shop and getting a tiny percentage. The income doesn’t make me rich but at least I am happy seeing those tiny dollars and cents (mostly cents) trickling in.

On Amazon, I get about 6% of the sales price. Usually, if you run Amazon product links, you start with 3+ % of the sales price and then, as you sell more things through your websites, you get better commission.

I also have PepperjamNetwork but they are rather picky. Sometimes, I get pissed because the advertisers rejected my proposal. The problem is I have several blogs registered with Pepperjam and I do wonder if they advertisers know which site I am proposing. For example, selling Christmas trees and Christmas songs on my Christian blog is like a no brainer, right? But I do wonder if the advertisers think I am going to sell Christmas trees on my Make Money blog and hence, rejected me?

So, I have sort of cool down with Pepperjam and concentrate more on Amazon.

Then, this brings me to the question – Would you prefer to sell one item and earn a big commission or do you prefer to sell a hundred small items and get about the same income as selling one expensive item?

I learnt through trial and error that sometimes, it is easier to sell cheap products much sought after by people, say $10 electric toothbrush than $1,000 home spa. So, now I have given up the ambition of making a huge commission from one single sale. Instead, I do not mind the small commission as they trickle in. After all, I do not need to do anything as they are basically self-running.

Of course, the better way of making money through commission is having niche stores. However, I do not have the time to work on them as these need a lot of SEO work. Right now, I am tied in a project that takes up a lot of my time and I cannot afford to get distracted with SEO works. So, I am happy with Amazon, Chitika and Pepperjam.

Post Author: lilian

8 thoughts on “Making money with affiliate sales

    appleblogger

    (December 10, 2008 - 3:16 am)

    i’m make money from cj, shareasale and chitika. even its still hard. i also will try my best.

    […] a search engine like Google, the company will be listed much higher in the “hit list” due Making money with affiliate sales – 5xmom.com 12/09/2008 When my hubby was young, he used to follow his older brother selling pasar […]

    Jason Lee

    (December 10, 2008 - 12:40 pm)

    I usually sell items from Play-Asia.com. Like Amazon, each item comes with its own affiliate links. The commission rate depends on the type of item sold, around 3-12%. My bestsellers are usually collectibles, figurines and video games. Did manage to sell a couple of video games consoles not too long ago.

    Affiliates Marketing

    (December 10, 2008 - 3:57 pm)

    I admit that affiliate is one of profitable stream to join.But it need powerful marketing to urge people buy your referal product.You need more work to do.:)

    zalds

    (December 10, 2008 - 4:36 pm)

    that was amazing.
    I did try affiliate marketing last month and I’m very happy for the result – I’ve written a mini-report about it and decided to allot more time.

    Its more exciting to check the stats that you are being paid $$ per conversion compare to cents in most PPC model..

    MyRiceBowl

    (December 10, 2008 - 5:22 pm)

    I think my ultimate rice bowl lies with affiliate marketing as compared to blogging. Although one gives me short-term spurts of income now, I believe the other will give me long-term income if I continue to build it.

    Don’t have much luck with Amazon and CJ yet though. Haha. I prefer Clickbank and have already received my first cheque from them.

    :)

    afas

    (December 13, 2008 - 12:41 pm)

    thats good. not many people manage to make money with affiliate sales. Looks like you really done great work. congratulatioN!

    Steve Yu

    (December 23, 2008 - 10:23 pm)

    I have no luck with affiliate sales. My online income comes from Google Adsense and TNX.

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