Fridays with Vicky 145
Doing affiliate marketing I like keeping track of my numbers. Recommending products online and getting paid without having to deal with the shipping or any other product related issues works great for me.
One of the reasons I chose to do affiliate marketing is that I can work hard to create content and spread the word about my sites on my own terms. I work on MY schedule and when the content is out there, it can generate income for a long time.
To be honest I’m not a huge fan of the phrase “passive income” because the setup work is far from passive. BUT when you have your work out there, sure it can be considered “passive income”.
One of my favorite tasks is to check my affiliate accounts in the morning, see how much money I made while sleeping… It’s a pretty good feeling waking up to new commission sitting in your affiliate accounts.
In the beginning of doing affiliate marketing, I know I spent way too much time checking my empty accounts. Sure check your earnings, but don’t take time away from doing the stuff that needs to be done to create the income in the first place.
There are many different ways that you can track your income. You can track when you first get the sale or when the money is actually in your bank account. You can track sales for different projects or websites in different time durations, daily, monthly, yearly and so on.
I will share how I track my numbers, now I’m no financial advisor this is just how I keep track of my affiliate income.
4 Ways to Track Affiliate Income
1. Monthly Affiliate Sales
My monthly income I track by affiliate program and even in some cases specific products within the affiliate program. Nothing fancy I use an excel sheet and add in the sales as they come.
Let’s take Wealthy Affiliate as an example. Monthly I track:
- New commission $8 x sale
- Recurring commission old price $22.5 x sale
- Recurring commission new price $23.5 x sale
- Yearly commission $175 x sale
This I add daily when I get a sale coming in. I specify each item and tally it up in monthly affiliate sales.
2. Monthly Income – Cash Coming In
I also track all the money, cash coming in. This I track by affiliate program on a monthly basis.
So I have a list of all my affiliate partners that I work with, Wealthy Affiliate, Amazon, Amazon UK… and so on and add in the numbers when I receive the payment.
This allows me to keep track of all the money coming in from affiliate partners, but also the total amount monthly.
3. Project / Website Income
I also track income for my different websites. Throughout the year I add in the income number for each website. That way I can keep track, compare with last years numbers and make sure we are growing.
If you want to see more specific numbers feel free to take a look at my case study site, where I share monthly income numbers and other stats:
4. Total Yearly Income
Throughout the year I keep track of the total yearly income. It’s nice to see how things grow over time. I also break things down into yearly affiliate program income and website income.
This is a nice way to keep track of the yearly income and compare to previous years.
Make Sure You Get the Money You’ve Earned…
While doing a review for a product that was sent to me, I also made a deal with them getting a better commission, additional commission. I had to track the sales and send them the update. Well, things went on and I kind of forgot about it until about a year later.
I contacted the affiliate partner, I sent them the details and they sent me a check for $100+ in addition to what I had already made. Nice little extra commission for a few minutes work.
Now, this was my own fault, but I’ve also had to remind affiliate partners about payment. Most legit affiliate programs are really good about paying on time though but you do want to keep an eye on it.
Make sure that you track your income, make sure you get paid from the companies you are supposed to get paid from and hopefully watch the money grow.
How do you track your affiliate income? I would love to hear your ideas on this, feel free to leave a comment below.
Vicky
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