88 karma · joined February 26, 2009
Opening reladraw/docs/index.html to make a diagram then copy-pasting to save it is a little cumbersome.
Luckily this change shouldn't impact me too significantly since my primary niche will be in the 7% bracket and I was making 7-8% previously.
$20k from a website I built a couple years ago (searchable product catalog with Amazon affiliate links).
Users of my site click on an affiliate link about 40% of the time and those that do make a purchase about 2.5% of the time with an average commission of $5. This means I make about $0.05 per visitor so I would need ads with a CPC less than that. In my niche this does not seem remotely possible.
Luckily I'm getting over 1,200 visitors per day without paying for them.
The approach is to find a type of product where Amazon has thousands of listing but the specifications are not very accurate and the filtering criteria are limited, and where there are highly active forums with people talking about and asking about these products. Then you build a proper searchable catalog for the products. Include lots of search criteria, sorting criteria, side-by-side comparison, recommended accessories, anything that would be useful for people looking to buy them.
Once my catalog contained over 1,000 models I started replying to posts on forums with a link to my site that provided what they were looking for. People loved the site and it wasn't long before they were posting links to it to answer each others questions. That's all it took to start ranking on Google which is now responsible for 3/4 of my traffic.
Initially this is not passive income. The first few months are a lot of work for very little money. Eventually the balances shifts to the point where additional work is only needed if you want to keep growing. Amazon's product advertising API allows you to get current prices, availability and popularity (sales ranking) to keep everything fresh.
I only recently got interested in mechanical watches. It's fun to have a mechanical marvel on my wrist for those times when I don't want to reach into my pocket to tell the time using an electronic marvel.
I'm not sure if I'd ever get a smart watch. Perhaps. I actually feel kind of attached to my automatic. If I stop wearing it for more than two days it will stop running. That just seems cruel to the little guy.
For some types of purchase I do a lot of research to find the right item for me. I actually enjoy the researching process so an affiliate site is a good match for me. A big part of the work is providing useful content which you can only do after performing good research.
My site is a huge searchable catalog of products with affiliate links to Amazon if they're for sale on Amazon, otherwise I provide non-affiliate links to wherever they are for sale. Most affiliate sites are based on product reviews but my site's approach is to provide more search options with more accurate data (data that is often incorrect on Amazon).
If I estimate the hours I've put into it so far I'm surely making less than $1 per hour for my time but as the earnings increase and my new hours decrease it might eventually be a wise investment.
After some thought though I can see it as consistent since when they do something well you can praise them for being hard-working (character).
To go faster than the tailwind you need a gearing ratio that spins the propeller quite a bit faster than the wheels are turning - leverage.
The interesting thing to me was that if we forgot to feed them they would always seem to be able to take apart the fence and get out to eat. The patriarch got out and visited the other pens before he passed away which reinforced my feeling that they treated each other like family.
Read the first google hit for pig intelligence if I haven't already gone on too long on the subject.
Or they forgot about or lied about having those private intentions? How do you know that someone had private intentions?