I’ve been making money online since October 2005, and never have I made money from an affiliate sale. I’ve always made money by getting clicks, whether its on Adsense, YPN, or Adbrite. Well, just two weeks after I launched my Fishing Lures website, I am proud to announce that according to Amazon, I have 9 items ordered under my referral code.

Sure I only get 6% and the average price for each item ordered was probably $3, but it just feels really good to finally make money by ’selling’ products. I won’t know my exact commission until the products are shipped, which will probably be this afternoon or tomorrow.

Something I don’t like is how Amazon only keeps your referral tracking cookie on someone for 24 hours. That means if someone clicks your product link, but then decides not to purchase the product for 2 more days because they’re waiting to get paid, you won’t earn commission because it’s been over 24 hours. Unless the click through to Amazon again from your link.

However, something nice about Amazon is that they are MASSIVE. Probably the largest online store in the world. Someone can click one of my $2 product links and end up in Amazon, but decide to purchase other products and I will get paid for all of them. The best thing about Amazon is they are trusted and offer thousands upon thousands of products. I could get commission for someone buying a fishing lure, and ipod, and a shirt all in the same order. That would be a nice $15 payout for me. Sure $15 isn’t a lot, but it’s not bad considering they only went in to Amazon originally for the fishing lure.

Over the next week I’m going to spend time researching how I can better optimize my site for affiliate sales, including adding a “Hot Deals” feature. I also want to look through my CJ account and find any good offers in there that might pay more money.