I've been using Agent DVR for recording, alerts and local storage though the alerts rely on a non-local MQTT broker (HiveMQ) due to the double-NAT setup my ISP imposes, otherwise I would have used a local Mosquitto broker. Here is a diagram I put together about my setup. https://i.imgur.com/mAmP9rA.png
I was hoping this article would be about "The Hail Mary" which is an amazing book by the author of The Martian that involves a starship. I listened to the audio book and basically binged the last quarter of it. It's rare to find something so good I prefer it over streaming TV shows & movies.
My site made over $20k last year from Amazon. I've always known I could lose this income at any moment due to a change in Amazon's policies or a change in Google's algorithms.
Luckily this change shouldn't impact me too significantly since my primary niche will be in the 7% bracket and I was making 7-8% previously.
My site makes a couple grand per month from Amazon commissions. You have to sign up for each different Amazon program separately (.com, .co.uk, .ca, .de, .fr, etc). There is a program for India.
Sorted by revenue only seven make more than my Amazon affiliate site. I'm not sure if that type of site would fit in there but I did develop quite a bit of code for it. It's not a review site but rather a searchable product catalog.
I have an Amazon Associates website and I've considered trying to use ads to generate traffic. This adds another step in the process vs what the article describes. Users have to click on the ad, click on my affiliate link, then make a purchase.
Users of my site click on an affiliate link about 40% of the time and those that do make a purchase about 2.5% of the time with an average commission of $5. This means I make about $0.05 per visitor so I would need ads with a CPC less than that. In my niche this does not seem remotely possible.
Luckily I'm getting over 1,200 visitors per day without paying for them.
I have had some success in affiliate marketing using an approach that I think many on Hacker News could duplicate. I launched my Amazon affiliate site about a year-and-a-half ago and its earnings have increased by about $100 per month with December being the first time I earned over $2,000 in a month.
The approach is to find a type of product where Amazon has thousands of listing but the specifications are not very accurate and the filtering criteria are limited, and where there are highly active forums with people talking about and asking about these products. Then you build a proper searchable catalog for the products. Include lots of search criteria, sorting criteria, side-by-side comparison, recommended accessories, anything that would be useful for people looking to buy them.
Once my catalog contained over 1,000 models I started replying to posts on forums with a link to my site that provided what they were looking for. People loved the site and it wasn't long before they were posting links to it to answer each others questions. That's all it took to start ranking on Google which is now responsible for 3/4 of my traffic.
Initially this is not passive income. The first few months are a lot of work for very little money. Eventually the balances shifts to the point where additional work is only needed if you want to keep growing. Amazon's product advertising API allows you to get current prices, availability and popularity (sales ranking) to keep everything fresh.
Yes it did. I have spent a lot more time researching and documenting specs than I have writing code. The good news is that I don't mind that type of work. I often build spreadsheets for fun to compare things I'm thinking of buying so I just took that to another level.
I never noticed before that this site doesn't seem to have any way to send private messages. I guess if one wants to be reached they have to share a way publicly.
There are lots of people telling others to write reviews without having purchased/used a product. Did you have to do it too? I mean, is your site only side by side comparisons or do you also post reviews?
My site does not have any reviews. Each product overview is just a description of the product and its specifications. Rather than telling people which one to buy I give them the ability to find the one that best fits their criteria. I rank all of the products by how popular they are and I think many people trust this more than they do a review.
