Clicky

The Highs and Lows of Affiliate Income | The Trading Travelers
The Trading Travelers
Sharing is Caring!

The Highs and Lows of Affiliate Income

On Sunday we will be wrapping up the house sit, saying goodbye to Rocket (noooooo 🙁 ) and heading south to Dunedin to continue our exploration of the South Island. That means we have been at this house sit for over 3 weeks now and do you know what we’ve done?

Work.

We left the house for two days out of the entire time we were here, one day to see the Moeraki Boulders and the another to visit the lakes. Other than that, we’ve sat in the house with our sweatpants and laptops and only left for the gym and food. The necessities, of course.

moeraki boulders new zealand

Granted, it is bloody cold and we are wimps just trying to keep warm. We are also respecting Rocket’s wishes. He doesn’t appreciate when we leave for any reason. But mostly, we have to take advantage of having the free Wifi (rare in NZ) and a steady base to get as much work done as possible while we can.

FullSizeRender-2

The annoying part is we’ve been slaving away at the laptops instead of exploring this gorgeous country, and this happens to be one of the slowest months of the year in terms of affiliate income. It sure is frustrating putting in all of this overtime and not seeing the results in my bank account. I’m sure many of you have been there before. In fact, our income this month is about 1/4 of what it was during the peak months over the summer. But that is the nature of this business model. As with most businesses, there are highs and lows with niche sites too. And there are drastic highs and lows depending on your niche and the seasonality of it. Some of our niches are very seasonal, something we didn’t consider when we first started building sites. Now we tend to stay away from those, but even still, some months are just slow across the board and October happens to be one of them.

lake pukaki

During these slow months its easy to get discouraged. You start questioning everything, “Is it not working anymore? Should we give up? Move on? Game over?” It sounds dramatic, I know. But these are real thoughts. You never know when Google is going to decide “game over” for you. But we have to motivate ourselves to work harder and remind ourselves this is normal. And temporary. And this is also the beauty of this business model.

It was just a few months ago that we were making more money in a month than we ever thought possible all while traveling Europe and not working much at all. Just a few weeks ago we were traveling around New Zealand in a camper van and hardly cracked open our laptops, yet we were still checking our sales every night from our iPhones. And when we leave here in just a few days, we will spend another month traveling around the South Island followed by a month back home with our family for the holidays. That means we probably won’t be back to work until the new year when we are settled back in Thailand. It’s pretty amazing that we have that kind of flexibility. So although some days it sucks to be sitting inside on the laptop rather than spending the day here…

lake pukaki

I know that its really worth it and it pushes us to keep going and growing. So does the fact that Black Friday and the holidays are just around the corner which is pretty much THE BEST time of the year for anyone in the affiliate/e-commerce/FBA business!! 😉

About the Author Charlie and Brittany

We are Brittany and Charlie - we traded the 9 to 5 and the so-called "American dream" to live our own dream and see the world. We sold all of our belongings and left the US in August 2013. For 5 years, we lived primarily in Thailand and built our online business and location independent lifestyle while we traveled to over 30 countries. We’ve had house sitting gigs on 3 different continents and we’ve even appeared on HGTV’s House Hunters International.

Related Posts

21 Jul, 2016

5 Businesses We’ve Tried & Failed in the Past 3 Years
09 Dec, 2015

Hacked: The End of Our NZ Road Trip
Previous Post Diversify or Specialize: The Future Of TheTradingTravelers Next Post Hacked: The End of Our NZ Road Trip

Leave a Comment:

5 comments
Danielle says October 29, 2015

Glad you guys were able to get out a little bit! The photos are stunning! It must have been such a test to focus and be in such a beautiful location. I’m sure that it will reap it’s returns when the season kicks back up for you guys. Cheers!

Reply
    Charlie and Brittany says November 9, 2015

    Thanks, Danielle!! I sure hope so! And at least we have great office views so I guess we can’t complain too much 😉

    Reply
Tricia @ The Adventure List says October 31, 2015

Like you said, it will get better. There are ups and downs with every business. And you get to experience the down in New Zealand versus wherever you are from. 🙂

Reply
    Charlie and Brittany says November 9, 2015

    Exactly!! I can’t imagine prettier office views 😉

    Reply
Rob and Diane says November 23, 2015

Hi guys
Hope you are well
We are in Chiang Mai for two weeks and was hoping you could let us know where you lived and possibly pass on the names and contacts of a property agent or any reliable contacts that could help us find a place. We are thinking of leaving Penang in 2016. We wrote an email also. Hope to hear from you and we love your site !!
Best
Rob and Diane

Reply
Add Your Reply