2008 has been a very prosperous year for me. I'm averaging $1500-$2000/month with various forms of affiliate income. I was predicting around $1800 just from CJ for March alone. All things were looking good until the last five days. Suddenly my sales have dipped to less than 10 / day, which is very unusual. I usually average around 30-50 sales per day.
Paying attention to the eBay Forum as well as Digital Point, I'm not seeing the usual chatter about low sales all or tracking issues. Could this be related to the eBay EPN switch? Could I be a part of a small subset of tracking errors? I'm not sure. But it could be a reflection of overall market trends. One of the decisions I try to focus on when creating a niche site, is to NOT focus on seasonal sites, but sites that generate throughout the year. With that said, what could determine the change of events?
Trying to find other clues, I've noticed similar issues in other areas as well. My YSM PPC campaigns have seen a dip in clicks. My Google AdSense revenue has also dipped in the last week or so. I'm starting to wonder if this could be associated with April 15th tax deadline. Are people feeling the squeeze. Looking at their current income situation and knowing that they may need to pay additional taxes could be tightening the purse strings? I was involved with Affiliate Marketing during Mar/Apr of 2007, but my earnings were much less compared to today, and I had way less sites to notice trends at that point.
I'd love to hear your thoughts. Are any of you noticing a change in sales?
I'm seeing also a big drop since March 20. The traffic is steady, but not the income, neither the clicks. I think the change of ebay it's part of this problem, and i'm sure this is only temporary
Ah.. I was glad to see someone else noticing a dip. Now I'm wondering if it's a tracking problem. Here is the thread at digitalpoint forums.
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=774692
hanji
Nice to hear your 2008 is going well. Last year ended on a great note for me with nice increases in both November and December. January was so bad it was unbelievable but since this is my first new year in the affiliate business I figured my niches are just sensitive to people spending less after the holidays. Sure enough the end of January started picking up and February was stellar so I thought all was good. Unfortunately March is a lot like January for some reason, no one is really buying. Contrary to what you're experiencing. I'm starting to think people are holding back purchases in my current niches because of the economy and maybe the price of gas. A caveat: I'm not getting a ton of traffic on my websites so my experiences may not be representative but I've heard others on DP bemoaning the lack of March sales too.
One of the items that helps is PPC for consistency.. do you do any PPC? Today's batch came in and I was closer to my normal days.. still off.. but closer.
hanji