It’s always helpful to look back on the past year or past few months and analyze your performance in order to learn what you are doing right and what could be improved. Of course, you should always take care to avoid “analysis paralysis” and try to spend more time making the improvements and moving forward than thinking about what you did wrong or just crunching numbers from every different angle you can think of.
That said, two statistics that every internet marketer should be tracking religiously are revenue and clicks (among other things, such as conversion, click through rate, etc.). I started my passive income journey in April 2011, so I looked back on the past 8 months to see how I did and, more importantly, how I progressed.
To make money online, I have focused almost exclusively on the Amazon Associates program. I plan on getting into AdSense and other techniques this year, but right now I can only report on my Amazon review sites.
Below are two graphs. The first shows my monthly revenue from Amazon niche site earnings, and the second one shows how many clicks my Amazon affiliate links got each month. As you would expect, these lines match up pretty closely:
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
My total earnings from the Amazon Associates program in 2011 was $1,682.14. The total number of clicks was 5,811. If you do the math, that means each click was worth about 29 cents in earnings. So, in order to meet my 2012 goal of $1,000/month in Amazon commissions, I would need about 5 times more clicks (or 5 times more traffic, assuming conversion rates don’t change). This will be accomplished through a combination of more review sites and more traffic to my existing sites.
The most important numbers are the ones that show progress and rate of change. In 2011, my monthly Amazon earnings increased by an average of 35%, which is great. If I can maintain that rate of growth, my monthly Amazon revenue will be over $1,100 in roughly 6 months.
So, after looking at the numbers, I am very excited for 2012. I expect to reach (and probably surpass) my goal of 1k/month from Amazon. I also can’t wait to get into AdSense (more on this soon) and diversify my income streams.
