Sorry it's been such a long time I don't even remember if I wished you a happy birthday this year (June 8th '73 for me) but I’ve been trying to work out why I've got so much traffic and my income hasn't increased. Between the blog and forum I’m up to about 110-120,000 page view per month with well over 60,000 unique visitors per month, but still no money.
.... well when I say no money, I earn and average of about $40 from amazon.com (which I have to take in gift vouchers), my amazon.co.uk is non existent and I get about £100-130 from ebay. Not great, considering that's what I was doing about 2 years ago. My traffic has gone from .. well see for yourself.
Any suggestions? I've tried banners, ebay widgets, amazon widgets, amazon astore, taking off banners, nothing.
On the flip side, my art work is taking off, and I’ve been told by 3 people to sell my biro art for £1,000 a pop. Sold my first piece for £500 ... so swings and roundabouts!
Matthew, it's hard to say without seeing your site.
Are you sure your affiliate links are formatted properly? Are your pages too cluttered, so people don't know what to do? Do you have a variety of ways to present your affiliate links (images, text links, etc.?)
I must warn you that I’ve had a serious run in with some websites this week. Chinese manufacturers choose to con people out of their money. For example, headphonesale.co.uk have just conned another forum member by selling them a pair of fake Bose earphones. I don't take kindly my fellow music enthusiasts getting ripped of, hence the articles on the blog.
People are not coming to your site to buy headphones, but to see how not to buy a fake set.
You need to find a way to convert their interest into a buying mentality - or find something they do want to buy. One wany may be to get them to sign up to a regular newsletter and then send out a latest deals on headphones, or have a section on the site related to this.
Also forums are often harder to monetize and Google Adsense does not always work that well. Try and find a complementary product that might (have you tried Amazon as although the cookie length is short, people will often click and go onto buy something totally unrelated.
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