How I Made $66 From One Link

It’s time for story time. Hopefully you won’t mind that I’m dealing with $66 instead of $6600. Yesterday, I checked my mail and I saw what looked like a check through the cellophane window on the envelope. I thought to myself that this was likely the result of me being included on some sort of Publisher’s-Clearing-House-esque mailing list somewhere, somehow. I opened up the envelope, $66. There wasn’t any catch, there was no void, and the check certainly didn’t say that I might already be a winner!

I scanned the check, and it turns out it was from Commission Junction. Big surprise (no sarcasm here).

Months ago, I applied to some affiliate programs, GoDaddy was one in particular, on CJ. I figured I was flogging GoDaddy naturally, I might as well include an affiliate link. I eventually ignored my account as there were limited advertisers that targeted my niche that I talked about without intentionally hawking the affiliate. The last thing I remember doing is setting my payout rate to a low $35.

Flash forward to now. I search around my site and it turns out that I had a single Commission Junction link on my entire website. That one link made me $66, in one sale. Incredible. One link!

Is there anything to learn from this? Certainly. Every little bit counts, you don’t need to have 125×125′s up and down your right navigation or huge AdSense skycrapers to get a little cash from your website. Affiliate links are discrete and don’t take away that much from your blog’s credibility.

Hope that helps.

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