October - Where have all the buyers gone?

Back in January I decided to increase my Amazon earnings so I was getting a residual income of $1000 a month by Christmas. But this is just not happening. My biggest earner got sandboxed in August and it's still recovering. So I've basically spent October fixing problems and not building new links. It's always more interesting to build a new site than fix an old one and so the motivation isn't there to fix problems.

I do have multiple streams of income, albeit small. So one site being sandboxed shouldn't affect the others. I can say though that most days I earn something from Amazon, a zero day is rare. But for October 2012 the first 9 days of the month I didn't earn anything, and the biggest problem is, I have no idea why. I haven't had that amount of consecutive zero days for over a year or two.

For a long time I wrote articles and advertised books. I sell a lot of books. However the commission on books is very small. About a year or two ago I realized that if I advertised something more expensive, then I would get a larger commission, and that is what I have been doing since. There are a number of niches I target and sales come from there. But why no one bought anything I recommended in the first 9 days of October is a puzzle. I had 264 clicks, but no sales.

And finally, on October 10th, someone bought a toilet, this one.


Thetford 92360 Porta Potti 550E Curve Portable Toilet

At least that got me $8 commission. And that's better than selling books!

Three or four months ago I would have told you that as I learned to increase my Amazon sales, I also got a number of sales from Shareasale.com. But October was a zero month, the first since February.

October 2011 my Amazon commission (when I claim I didn't know what I was doing) was $99. October 2012 it was $40.

So, let's see if I can do any better in November. I'm sure I can't do worse.