If You Catch My Drift
Quality product reviews and lists.
I am working through a one weekend hustle and decided that since I code for a living I need to expand my skill sets. This idea pushes me to learn the basics of marketing and share information about the things I enjoy.
I received an email from Amazon today telling me my website did not meet their criteria and that they are shutting down my amazon associate application. I find it weird that they are only now(after two weeks) getting to the point where they look to approve my application. But luckily I've already decided to shut it down anyways. Who knows if they were looking at my ghost blog or my new carrd landing page. Anyways. Just thought I'd record that here.
Sadly like all good things. It's time to bring this to a close.
This past weekend I transitioned the domain to point to a simple carrd.co landing page. When I run into anything interesting on amazon I'll post it there. As for the financial ending... I'll just post a screenshot of my Amazon Affiliate earnings below.
This project taught me a lot in terms of marketing. I ran my own ad campaign, created a blog, figured out the importance of consistency, and finally how to use the Amazon Affiliate program. I am very happy I pursued this adventure and here is to the next one!
Well, the hustle is taking its impact. After a week of going strong with two posts a day(plus 8 to 10-hour full-time SE job). I am drained. I'm not super confident nor positive about continuing on with this product.
The product isn't going to breakeven. Here Is the costs breakdown:
$12.00 - Domain
$00.00 - Ghost.org trial
$46.71 - FB Ads
I have $15.00 more dedicated to FB ads for the father's day post. That'll bring my total spent around $73.71
As for revenue. We've made a total of $2.20 with a 1.25% conversion rate via amazon affiliate links. It may be a small amount, but it was very motivating and helped drive my interest in this space.
What I Have learned
- I created my first Ghost Blog
- Set up an amazon affiliate account
- Ran my first few FB Ad campaigns.
Doing so has given me a bigger amount of appreciation for the people who run sites such as apartmenttherapy.com and 9to5toys.com.
I plan on continuing to push through this rut I am in, but I have a big deadline at my 9to5 coming up. So, I haven't been able to put the time I wish I could into this site. Overall, I am happy with what I accomplished. Once the Ghost Trial runs out... that's when I plan on calling it quits. Till then, I wanted to make sure I posted here to record where my brain is currently idling.
So my father's day ad has not worked. I ran it for 24 hours and didn't get a single conversion. Therefore, I decided to stop the ad, and instead, I am attempting to boost my Father's Day post instead.
Sadly I don't expect to see much from the post as it looks and feels sales like.. no descriptions... I just used copy and paste to create a list of cool father's day items. Taking another look at the post really makes me cringe. Don't get me wrong, the product list I created I believe in, but how it's presented, using amazon custom boxes... that feels weird. I don't think people are going to stick around on the page for very long.
The first ad campaign has been completed. I spent $30 over the course of 4 days on an A/B testing campaign, with the only difference being the age groups I was targeting. One was 18 - 34 and the other targeted people ages 35+. Ends up there was no clear winner.
Over the course of the ad campaign, we had 3 orders go through, one of which was where someone actually purchased an item we linked too. The other two orders must have been people who clicked our affiliate links but ended up buying something else.
Weird but cool.
I started another 4 day A/B test for the Father's Day post I made. I wasn't sure who to target audience wise so I posted here, and someone replied with a good idea, target people between the ages of 20 and 40. So I shall try it out.
Took a while, but I finally made my first dollar. Apparently I can't claim it till I have at least $10 dollars in sales, but when I do.. if I do, then I plan on putting it right back into the site.
I honestly am having quite a bit of fun writing the posts and just browsing amazon to find cool things for other people. Idk why I didn't start doing this sooner.
The only thing that could stop me now is burnout. Writing two to three posts a day is a bit tiresome.. especially when I have a full-time job and thus have to write the posts the night before. It'd be cool to get ahead of it by a few days.
Originally this product was supposed to be a one-weekend hustle, and whereas we did get it all set up within one weekend, I've genuinely been enjoying keeping it going. Therefore, I am going to try and extend my focus to this idea for no more than 1 hour a day, every day, for the next two weeks.
Meanwhile, we've spent $30 on FB advertising and have made $0 dollars back. That's not a great result, but then again our website is brand new and we are just now refining our marketing strategies.
The good news though is that we've had two orders via our affiliate links. That's two people we connected to products they might not have known about without our blog posts.
My next marketing plan is to target people looking for gifts for their dads as Father's Day approaches. I've already created a giant list and ordered my own dad something from it. Hopefully, it might inspire you to do the same.
https://www.ifyoucatchmydrift.com/2020/06/affordable-fathers-day-gifts-that-he-will-love/
We set up a Facebook page so that we can reach more users organically. We've even got 2 likes from just sharing it with friends. Feel free to give it a link if you want to follow along and see what kinds of posts we bring to the table. Maybe one of them will inspire you.
I also automated the posts to be linked to the blog. #FreeNotifications
Today I created around 4 new blog posts for the site and set up a Facebook pixel on the site. I am hoping to use this to learn how to run A/B testing via Facebook ADs. Being a technologist I know I've already written to many posts about electronics and not enough about anything else so from this point till the unseen future I shall try to focus on less tech product articles.
This morning I set my Amazon affiliate account up. From there I went through my 3 existing blog posts and replaced the links with affiliate links.
So far, most everything has come together smoothly, however, I doubt it'll be easy to drive traffic to the website. I haven't done much advertising or marketing before, so I think I will look into Facebook ads.