Sticking my foot into the water of "professional" blogging.
Signed up for Amazon Affiliates. Built a site The Resentful Chef on Wix. Placed Amazon Affiliate ads and Adsense (Google) ads on my site.
I am on a launch campaign to populate the blog with content and spread the word. So far, honestly, the project is disappointing. Might even say frustrating. Did I expect money to fall from the sky? No. But did I expect to make a few pennies by now? Yes.
Initial impressions fyi.
Amazon Affiliates program. Easy to register. Easy to create links or category banners. I'd say, worth it for any blogger to get involved in this because of low hurdle to entry. But it's not going to pay the mortgage on a casual blog. I think this is more suited to deals and shopping sites. Something where your site visitors are already in the mindset of shopping. The odds that someone reading a blog will suddenly be struck by the impulse to shop on amazon and result in buying something...approaching zero.
AdSense program. Also low hurdle to entry. Wix, and I presume other website building tools (wordpress?), have AdSense modules that you can easily add to the site. Money is made here by "impression" (site views) and "conversions" click throughs. This seems good for a site with a huge readership = lots of impressions. I wish Google would serve ads that were irresistibly tempting to my readers, but I guess this depends on their own browsing habits and the campaigns of advertisers which is out of my control. (Vs amazon affiliate ads where I can determine the content of the ad)
After barely a few weeks blogging professionally I can only claim disappointment. I need to keep working to build readership on theresentfulchef.com, but I also hope to build up my Reviews and Deals site and my Deal Sifter site to capitalize on the affiliate angle more.
Good luck to me.
