Sometimes it is important to tell everyone when you totally screw up. Especially when it is a lesson that others can learn from without having to experience it for themselves. Just before I started my Squidoo challenge, I could not figure out why I wasn’t making any sales from one of my Lenses even though it was receiving a good number of visitors each day. I had similar content elsewhere that was converting well, so what was going on?
The Lens had been earning around $1 per month from text link ads for five months straight but not a single product sale. Wait a minute! Text Link Ads? Why am I getting money from Text Link Ads?
That’s right, folks. I forgot to turn off the text link advertising in my Squidoo settings. Therefore all of my affiliate links were competing with advertisers’ links. As I have mentioned before, I try to limit the number of available links to readers when I am attempting to make a sale, especially those links that I am only going to earn pennies from when I could be earning dollars.
Squidoo payments were sent October 12 and that is also the date I turned off those text link ads. The remaining 19 days I earned $16.04 in affiliate commissions. In November, I earned a little over $86 from product sales through Squidoo.
Should you expect immediate sales the moment you turn off third-party text ads? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean the lesson isn’t still there. If you are trying to make money from everything at the same time, there is a good chance you are making money nowhere or making less than you could be if you focused on one money-maker per piece of content.
Are you running third-party text links while trying to affiliate market?
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About Angie Nelson
Squidoo is on my goals list for the year. Do you have a tutorial somewhere?
I just finished up a series on Squidoo, Tabitha. You can find all of the posts at http://theworkathomewife.com/tag/passive-income-business-challenge/.
Best of luck! If you have any questions along the way, feel free to ask.
this makes me wonder why I am not making money from my amazon affiliate marketing ads on my blog. I get a lot of traffic from them and a few purchases but it’s not making me much money. I am on blogger and have no idea how to check for third party text link ads.
Text links like this are things like Infolinks, AdBrite, etc. You would have to install them on your site for them to be visible. Squidoo has them available to users as a money-making option.
btw…how do I get that ugly monster off of my comment icon?
You can create a Gravatar at http://en.gravatar.com/. That will create a profile and image viewable in comments around the web.
I finally did turn off text link ads on my primary site a few months ago. While I still have ads in my sidebar, etc. I try to keep ads out of my actual content completely. Great advice!
I still have a few sidebar ads also, and there is no way to remove those from Squidoo. I really don’t know that those hurt too much. I know they usually don’t convert well anyway.
I’m about to put advertising on my site for the first time! Right now it all seems quite complicated, so thank you for your help. Off to browse and see what other relevant articles I can find here
Thanks for stopping by, Fiona.
Hi,
Thank you so much for writing about this issue. I didn’t consider it before and I was wondering about the same thing that why some of my lenses are not making any sales while I’m getting sufficient traffic on these lenses.
Thanks,
Terry
I hope it helps, Terry!
This will not intimidate me. I will do some advertising on my blog this year. I will probably be in heavy research on your blog Angie, I’m SO confused, but I will make this happen!
If you have specific questions Whitney, don’t be afraid to ask. Best of luck!
I’ll be working hard on my squidoo, I am glad someone asked if you had tutorials on it. Just in time for my setups today. I have to get it done before I have another rush website to build…
Best of luck, Alan.
Wow… I didn’t consider it before and I was getting paid for Text Link Ads but that amount is so little. Thank you so much for reminding me of these third-party ads. I’m going to switch em off and I hope it will help me increase my affiliate sales on Squidoo. I am beginning to love your blog. Keep writing more cool stuff. Thanks.
Thanks, Diana. Best of luck!