Unaffiliated

She Sells Seashells? ... How?!

I've mentioned before how terrible I am at selling things. It's coming back to bite me again.

I signed up for an affiliate account at Amazon, because why shouldn't I get a few extra percent when I send people their way? They have a ton of rules about where you can and can't use affiliate links (eg, not in email or on social media!), so it's not too surprising that my entire affiliate income after multiple months is $0.10. And I don't even get that because it's not over the payment threshold.

The real problem is they shut down your affiliate account if you don't have at least three qualifying purchases within 90 days. (And it turns out that one of their rules is you're not allowed to tell your friends to click on your affiliate links and then go buy their Christmas presents. Which... I mean, that would have solved my three qualifying purchases problem, but the rules say I'm not allowed to do that, so I didn't do it.)

Okay, so if there's no money in it, why am I even bothering? The answer: marketing. If I run ads for my books on some platform other than Amazon, I will know how many people click on the ad, but I won't know how many of those people went on to buy the book. Paying 10¢ per click on a $4.99 book is fine as long as more than 1 in 34 of those people buys the book. But if only 1 in 50 people who click on the link buy it, I'm losing money with every click.

Tracking affiliate purchases of the books allows me to figure out that number. Or it would, if I was running ads yet.

Anyhow, I guess I'll just let them shut down the account and then apply again later when I have more traffic going to my website. (Optimism! Next year there will be more traffic going to my website!)

Obligatory Pet Picture

From back when my neighbors had chickens...