Something I have struggled with over the past few years is whether or not it is worth it to keep my Amazon Affiliate websites. I have a total of 20 sites. I used to have 30 but purged 10 sites over the past year. The sites that I kept are sites that I think can still be successful. As it is now, I only make around $50 a month on average from Amazon Affiliates. Three years ago, I was making least $2000 a month from these sites so the crash has been difficult both financially and mentally. I put my heart and soul into these sites so it makes me sad to see them struggling.
Earlier this year, I took one of my formally successful sites and I did ‘The Kitchen Sink Method‘ on it. The Kitchen Sink Method is a guide I read on a message board that outlines every possible reason why Google could hate your website and stop sending it traffic. Theoretically, if you fix everything on your site, then the rankings and traffic should return. To be honest, it was a tedious process and I didn’t finish the list. I honestly don’t remember where I left off on the list. I did manage to get some social accounts set up, I added an “About Us” section to the site with an author bio and I started interlinking the articles. With the recent Google update, my site still doesn’t get much traffic, however, it is getting some traffic. Before it was flatlining and now there’s a small amount of traffic each day. This is encouraging and makes me want to continue working on the site.
In fact, I really want to work on all of my sites. Just think. If each of my websites makes $100 a month, then I would be making at least $2000 a month. That would be huge for me. Right now, I’m scraping by on Merch, KDP and Etsy earnings and doing surveys to make up the difference. I’m tired of ‘just getting by’. I want to have extra each month to pay off debts, to grow my savings and to be able to buy something fun once in a while.
I’m not sure if all of my sites can get to $100 a month just because a lot of my sites are in over-saturated niches. Here are the sites I currently own and their broad niches:
Site 1: Dogs
Site 2: Travel
Site 3: Outdoor Cooking
Site 4: Hobby
Site 5: Sports
Site 6: Home and Garden
Site: 7: Home and Garden
Site 8: Sports
Site 9: Large Appliances
Site 10: Crafting/Hobby
Site 11: Cooking
Site 12: Cooking
Site 13: Sports
Site 14: Home and Garden
Site 15: Camping
Site 16: Sports
Site 17: Health and Beauty
Site 18: Outdoors
Site 19: Home and Garden
Site 20: Small Appliances
As you can see, I have a wide range of sites with a variety of topics. Some of the sites are in niches that are hard to break into such as my health & beauty site or my cooking sites. Other sites might be easier to be successful in because the topic is more unique than other sites out there, especially my sports and camping sites. Over the next week, I’m going to come up with a plan on how to grow these sites and make a post with a checklist and deadlines to help keep me on track. I’m not sure if I’m going to work on all of the sites at once or break them into groups and only work on a few sites at a time. I’ll try to publish the next post on Wednesday, October 25th so keep an eye out for it.