Clickz reports on the latest stats of online spending this holiday season.
Spending online is up 24% (with last month totaling $11.75 billion) on last year and traffic is up 13% (it seems people are buying more per visit this year).
Obviously those taking the majority of this income are the big online retailers – but I’m wondering how many entrepreneurial bloggers are enjoying an increase in traffic and earnings?
As I analyze my own earnings for the last couple of weeks I’d estimate that they are up about 50% on two months ago. Particularly performing for me are Amazon Affiliates (up by about 70%) and Chitika’s eMinimalls and Shoplinc (up by as much as double across Chitika’s different ad types) (aff) and to a lesser extent AdSense (up around 20%).
How have others earnings been going in the last few weeks of this holiday period? What’s working for you? What’s not?
I don’t use any of that stuff. I’m thinking of going donation only..
I’ve got some other sites beside Incomexit, they’re mainly adsense sites but I haven’t seen any change in the earnings.
My clicks are up, although CTR is down. The amount being paid is down a bit. With all this I am making more.
Confusing? Not really.
Everything on my site is up but I have noticed that my Amazon Astore is up the most for no particular reason. Must be seasonal. Not complaining though!
Luke – interesting move. Going the donation route is a difficult one and generally either requires one (or more than one) of 3 things:
1. High levels of traffic (only a small % of readers donate)
2. Highly loyal/fanatical readers who love the blogger a lot
3. Very unique information that can’t be gotten somewhere else
Many bloggers have tried that route but only a handful make much off it.
I haven’t analysed the stats, but I did not notice that Amazon.co.uk, for me, really soared during the first three weeks of November by a factor of 10 to 20 times. I went from 1-3 clicks a day to anything between 10 and 50 with plenty of sales. Amazon.com was starting to produce results too, having been almost dormant. I’d put this down partly to the excellence of the aStore operation but there are clearly major seasonal effects. This is further shown by the fact there has been a noticeable tail-off since the third week in November.
Paul
Hi Darren,
It’s a good question you’ve asked.
Since I’m new to the online marketing I’m not sure how to measure what I’ve
accumulated so far. I have both AdSense and Affiliate ads working and have seen more revenue return from the AdSense so far.
This is only my 2nd week of marketing though and the money amount is small, but I’m taking it slowly and trying to learn along the way.
I appreciate your article as always, Take Care !
Lots more orders via Amazon Associates starting around the end of November. Yippee! I always get a chuckle seeing what people are buying. Usually not anything I’m recommending. Nuts.
Hi Darren,
Holiday season and launch of Vista is a bonus. I have had some good sales on Amazon – with the likes of watches, x-box consoles and quite a few Sandisk Cruzer memory sticks 9since san disk supports ready boost technology in vista).
Fingers crossed ;-)
Cheers!
Alpesh
Hi Darren,
Amazon is performing very well actually, but Adsense’s CPM decreased remarkable. I have no explanation for this, maybe it’s topic-related.
Stefan
My amazon affliliate earnings skyrocketed starting the day after thanksgiving. Adsense clicks are up but I haven’t seen an overall increase in earnings. I’ll know more at the end of the month.
chitka was up 60%, ypn was up 50%, amazon much less on my paddling and photography sites during last month or so
AdSense has picked up on my blog, still waiting for that very fist sale tru Amazon associates though. Still, the Christmas season isn’t over yet.
I agree about Amazon, I have used it though in more places, maybe that’ what did it :)
By the way, Adam, love your site at Men in Aprons, very well done!
Amazon is up 60% and counting, Adsense is way up but I did rework my ad placement as well. I don’t use Chitika and haven’t checked my BlogHer stats. Text link ads are about the same or even a little less though. Of course my actual business is up at least 4x because of the Christmas card ordering, crazy!
I really wish I can say that my earnings are going up. This month has been a real disaster for me. I’m basically new to blogging and last month I started a blog on video games. I would post my reviews on games and even include posts with cheat codes. Results: my traffic went from 40 -50 visitors a day to over 900 the last 2 weeks of the month. Then December came….
My numbers have been abismal. I was beginning to average $3 a day in earnings, hoping to double that this month…. numbers are just terrible at about $0.25 a day.
I don’t understand… Google had certain posts ranked #1, now they’re no where to be found…. I just feel like giving up.
Well, after hovering around the $98.66 level for 2 years and never receiving any payouts from Amazon .. I can finally say that I broke the threshhold with $100.67 .. earning that elusive $2.01 commission for 2006 Xmas! WooHoo.
I’m just not good at the Amazon promotion I guess. I said I would go out after hitting $100 .. but, I’ll wait until December 31 to commit myself on this .. as it was always hypothetical that I would ever reach $100!
I only have AdSense on my current blog, but interestingly, revenue is a little up of late, even though I wouldn’t think that the ads served are really holiday shopping season type buys.
Adsense only here and it’s up. Haven’t worked out %, but I’m smiling.
This is my first year in retail so i have nothing to compare it too. Sales seem good for a first year business. Happy holidays everyone
aStores are performing especially well at the moment! AdSense hasn’t gained any significant growth!
I only have a few affiliate ads on my non-b5 blog. I will actually increase them throughout this month and January, because most of my sales come right *after* Christmas…women buying their own gifts with their Christmas money. Up until then, traffic is brisk but sales are small, and affiliate sales seem to keep pace.
I’ve received a few commission certs. from Amazon, but I’ve never been able to figure out the secret to really generating a profit.
I’m happy with what I do make from them. It’s just enough to keep me in supply of the books I want, but I’m certainly not planning on retiring from it.
Oh, and I’m with Hsien on that one! No one ever buys what I recommend. And that’s all I’m gonna say about that! :D
I think not only majority of the online store’s sales are up for the holiday season, conventional shops are doing pretty well too…its seasonal for everyone
most people have more time and spend budget more in holiday
just enjoy up the earning……..many people spend more time for browsing at home