What a roller coaster month!
Here we are at the end of the first quarter of the year and already I'm changing direction.
I think I have multiple streams of income, but in reality they are all just trickles with potential. If i worked full time on any one of them I could convince myself I could make enough to live on, but my free time is scarce and my ideas too random and scattered. I have a plan, go after it and then have another plan. Meanwhile the money keeps trickling in at way less than the minimum wage per hour for all the hours I have put in. Still, I tell myself, it's residual. It will come in eventually. The flip side of this coin is that I have to live to 200 in order to fully reap the benefits of a luxurious lifestyle based on my residual earnings.
At the start of the year I resolved to increase my Amazon earnings month by month until I was earning $1000 per month by December. Now, only 3 months later I'm changing direction and my explanation will come soon, but first a few facts about the month.
Firstly, I spent a lot of this month getting my Living Simply book into paperback form. I thought it would take an hour or two, but we've worked on it for 3 solid weekends and it's still not quite ready. I hope it will be available in the next week or two, but when it is sold on Amazon I will make 50 cents per copy instead of the $2 a copy for the Kindle version. So I hope the hours I put in doing that will be rewarded with lots of sales.
Best-Reviewer (one of my biggest earners) lost their Google ads for their site, with no explanation. Then 2 weeks later Google said the site was "now fine" (nothing had changed) and put them back. Google actually did us all a favor because James (the owner of Best-Reviewer) created a sister site, called Best-Reviewers (notice the extra "s") and now there are two sites.
I spent a lot of time on Pinterest this month, mainly pinning products with my Amazon code, surrounded by other pins just to make it look like I wasn't just pinning things with the Amazon code. But a day or two ago Pinterest changed something so that if you pin something with a referral code, it displays it without. So there goes 200 hours of my life without any decent income to show for it. I did sell 7 things with Amazon through Pinterest, but I was hoping for more long term better results.
This just shows that life in the world of online marketing is more volatile than we would wish, or I should rather say, it's stability is like nitroglycerin in the hands of a toddler.
My Kindle books are selling well. I have a few friends with Kindle books that are pleased with the level of sales, so I have decided to go less in the direction of Amazon Affiliates and more in the direction of Amazon Kindle books. I now have two Kindle books fully planned and ready to start (all I have to do is write them!) And I have reserved May to write one and July to write the other.
In preparation for writing the books I have unsubscribed from most of the online newsletters I subscribe to and plan on not doing much online socializing while I'm writing. We shall see if I can manage it.
Also, hubby has encouraged me to declutter the house before I write another book advising others how to declutter. After proofreading my book a gazillion times, I know the techniques and just need to get off the computer and put them into practice, so that is what April is for.
So, I'm going into semi-Internet hibernation for the next few months until I have published 2 more books, both for Kindle and paperback. Then I'll either sit back and live off the earnings or keep trying to live to 200.
Here are my earnings from March. Just a little reminder that Google doesn't let you say how much you've earned, so I have to just give you my top 3 earners.
Amazon Associates $96
Google earnings top 3 (in order)
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