I’ve been as busy as ever this month - and am really pleased by how much work I have done.

Usually Christmas comes and goes and I’m left thinking that I could have done a lot more to cash in on the busiest time of year as far as the retail industry and their affiliates are concerned. But this year I have managed to get key sites ready in plenty of time and I’m beginning to see the results in terms of increased earnings compared to this time last year.

As mentioned previously, I have added a number of Amazon affiliate Astores both to existing websites and to domain names that weren’t doing anything in particular. Sales have definitely increased, but not by as much as I had hoped. So far this month I have earned £152.70 from Amazon sales when I’d like £1,000 a month (wouldn’t we all!).

I’ve realised that it’s one thing building an Amazon Astore, but it’s another thing getting people to visit them. I’m actually finding that it’s easier to get a sale with some information about a product and a direct link to Amazon than it is to get people to click on a link to enter an Astore - even when I know there are books, etc., that my visitors need and want inside.

Another area that I’ve been working on is the use of discount codes where available to entice visitors to visit and buy from the online retailers I’m promoting.

Christmas aside, I’ve also been working on a niche website that has been giving me problems for a couple of years now. It focuses on a very lucrative market, but the site itself has had more false starts than you’ll see at the Beijing Olympics next year. The main reason for this is that I just haven’t been able to get my head around the subject matter and when it has all become too much I have simply taken the easy route out and worked on something else instead.

But as the old saying goes, if at first you don’t succeed, try try again. And for whatever reason, this time around things are falling into place and I’m actually enjoying working on it. It has the potential to be a big earning site if I can get it off the starting blocks this time around and for the first time in two or three years I genuinely feel I’m in with a shout of doing just that.

I obviously need to do a wee bit more work on integration and driving traffic because when you do get someone to buy from an Astore they do tend to buy more than one item.