6 months with the iTunes affiliate program 02 May 2005
6 comments Latest by gerardo
So just how much $ can you make through the iTunes affiliate program? AsianMack Super Filter, our friend Jamie’s MP3 blog that points to the iTMS, has reached the 6-month point and he’s posted the results. He writes, “I wouldn’t base your business model on making money from Affiliate links, but it is fun to see some sort of revenue generated from authored content.”
In this span of 6 months we have written 409 recommendations. That’s about 2 music recommendations per day including weekdays, weekends, and holidays. We’ve provided 15,275 click-throughs into Apple’s iTunes Music Store so far. There have been 617 orders of 1,698 items (albums and singles) which translates to a little over 4% conversion. People definitely buy way more singles than albums. I wish I could tell you exactly what people were buying, but unfortunately that level of detail is not available through the Affiliate Reporting Tool. The total sales figure so far is $3,345.40. Not too shabby for us talking about our collective music collections eh? From this total we receive 5% which equals out to $167.27. To put that in perspective, that equals out to about $0.93 a day or $0.47 an article or $339.45 for the year if we keep up with this trend. Right now that puts us at the break-even point when you factor in hosting costs.
6 comments so far (Jump to latest)
Dan Boland 02 May 05
Wow, that’s pretty cool. That’s a nice alternative to printing Google ads on your site.
It’s funny… reading this made me think about the AllAdvantage bar craze from about five years ago. =D
Taco John 02 May 05
Nice breakdown. I think they’ve avoided one of the major traps of AdSense, Amazon Affiliate, iTunes affiliate, etc.: thinking that you’re going to be able to retire off the earnings. Too many people get that one big day (like maybe $30 in earnings in one day) and get greedy. Like Jamie said, it’s not about making a ton of money, it’s more about recouping some small costs and the appreciation that you get.
Fin 02 May 05
Exactly. Supporting the site and the creation of new content is my primary reason for publishing ads.
Brian 02 May 05
I was all over the DesktopDollars or whatever it was called back then too. Me and a roomie made something like $20 per month. I just can’t imagine why so many brilliant dot com era ideas like that failed. ;-)
As for me, my site is far from popular and I’m managing to pull in a pretty good daily amount from AdSense. I have a theory the amount of click-throughs I get is inversely related to the intelligence of the browser. In other words, I think I make a lot more money from the 12 year old Googlers coming in looking for Mandy Moore photos than I do from friends and regular readers.
I think most of us reading SVN etc know a Google Ad from a mile away and would only click it to intentionally support the site we’re reading.
gerardo 24 Mar 06
naza