Epic Fail: Passive Income Site Off To A Bad Start!

A little update from my on going series of posts/tutorials on how I AM building my passive income through niche affiliate websites and automated blogs.  So if you remember, our mission Tiffany lamp website got off to a good start.  I got on a one on one basis with my affiliate manager (Linkshare.com is the network and LampsPlus.com is the advertiser our website is promoting) and I got some good old social website traffic heading to our posts, which basically feature a product from the vendor site, with a little blurb and some anchor text.

Everything was going well and the site is getting increasing amounts of traffic and clicks – but what do you see wrong with the screen shot below (taken today from my linkshare account):

I’m staring at an order, but zero commissions or sales reported?!?!  Anyways, so after a while of sifting around, and calling my affiliate manager to inquire, I ended finding out how to generate detailed reports (Linkshare’s selection of vendors is AMAZING for niche sites, but their reporting system is not user friendly).  Here’s what I see in the report I generated which details the transaction in question:

EPIC FAIL MOMENT: Our first sale for our much anticipated, super killer niche website was canceled!  How’s that for a bright future??  All joking aside, I felt it was necessary to share this with you guys to prove a point…

If you fail, try again.  Plain and simple, just like they tell you in the text books, at school and at your AA meetings.  Just because our first referral canceled their order, it doesn’t mean that everyone else is going to as well.  More importantly, it doesn’t mean that there is something wrong with the website or what we are doing.

Shit happens!  I don’t want to hear any excuses about why you’re not putting what you know into action.  Even if you don’t know everything that’s needed, allocate energy towards learning where you lack.

How about that for a kick in the balls Epic Fail?!?

Cheers,

Elijah

12 thoughts on “Epic Fail: Passive Income Site Off To A Bad Start!”

  1. Hey Elijah,

    I don’t think I have ever seen a site that didn’t work as a fail…. It just didn’t work. Sometimes I retire them, sometimes I throw adsense on them and let them sit to see if they gain traction before resuming work…. But a site is never a failure.

    Anyway if you have made one sale it’s worth seeing why this sale was made and seeing if things can be grown in that area.
    .-= Forest´s last blog ..A Helping Hand For Fellow Yakezie Members =-.

  2. @Forest – My point exactly. There are so many places 1 website can go before you “give up” and rid yourself of the unnecessary, stagnant real estate.

    Take a look at the numbers guys – this site has a lot of promise for a great, consistent CTR. I built the site cloning the look of the affiliate site – which increases conversions like mad.

    This works well with micro niche sites like this that promote 1 single affiliate advertiser.

    SITE NOTE: You guys might have noticed the url change on my comment profile – getting some PR2 juice from TAHC and trickling it over to a start up of mine.

    Don’t ever be ashamed to do it! Permanent do-follow comment links are suuuuper yummy in the eyes of Google.

    Cheers,
    Elijah
    .-= Elijah | PhatPress.com´s last blog ..Grocery Gadget Shopping List for iphone \ itouch =-.

  3. What, you mean do this? 😀

    Also, I never had any luck with affiliate programs. I’m not sure why, but perhaps all my customers are like me and don’t trust companies they’ve never heard of before? I always go straight to Amazon or eBay, and I suspect most of my visitors do too.

    I have had a little luck with one affiliate, but sadly not enough to hit payout.
    .-= WordVixen´s last blog ..Walt Disney World Food Coupons =-.

  5. Talking of Epic Fails…I spent a few months wondering why the fuck one of my sites was not making as much cash as it should have been, only to find that I had blocked the search engines from crawling it. After all these years you would have thought a simple error like that could have been avoided.

    Good news is that, problem resolved, it made 30 bucks yesterday. So we are back in business!
    .-= Neal´s last blog ..The Childrens Heart Network =-.

  7. ‘Lijah- yeah, but what I mean is that I don’t even bother with Google except to comparison price. I never clicked ads even before I knew about affiliate marketing just because I knew that some unethical people auto download shiz to your computer and stuff. So, if someone sees something on Amazon, they may click the ad to look, but if they’re ready to buy, they just type Amazon.com into the browser without clicking your ad. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve just not had any luck with using Amazon. eBay yes, but not Amazon. Stupid 24 hr cookie….

  11. Do you use any amazon affiliate site scripts? I have used both Linkshare and CJ and find that their payouts are so low compared to Amazon or going directly through an affiliate network. I just found your blog so if you covered this already then I apologize 😉

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