Chekhov's Mistress

Thanks

by Bud Parr

Speaking of getting rich with your blog, I recently cashed in my Amazon payment for referring buyers there with my links. I made about $26 bucks over the past year (off of about 1100 click-throughs, 42 items bought and a bit over $600 in revenues for the Amazonians). Firmly but happily in the C-list.


So thanks all you clicker-throughers! Here’s what I got myself:


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“Melville : His World and Work” (Andrew Delbanco)


I’m not a big reader of literary biographies – as DFW said, why would you want to read about a guy who sat around writing all day – but I bought this one on the strength of Delbanco’s conversation with Philip Gourevitch a few weeks ago on WNYC. I’ve only read about 50 pages, but I will duly report back here when I’ve finished.

posted February 14, 2006

comments

in the spirit of shameless self promotion allow me to tout my own conversation with Andrew Delbanco soon (2/21) to appear at the Morning News.

If you are going to read about a writer, it seems that Melville is the one...Delbanco tells a good story

    – birnbaum (02/15  at  07:25 AM)


I look forward to it, Robert. I was being a little glib there, and in fact have wanted to read something on Melville since reading Olson’s “Call me Ishmael” a long time ago.

    – Bud (02/15  at  09:09 AM)


Wow, $26 on 1,100 clickthoughs? That’s some really cheap advertising for Amazon. Google Adsense typically pays about ten times that rate per click. Granted, you probably wouldn’t get as many clickthroughs on Google ads, but I’m a little shocked that that’s all Amazon pays.

    – Dave (02/15  at  05:09 PM)


On a dollar basis, it’s about 4%. I don’t think that’s so bad, considering that this is not something that I put any time into. Also, I don’t do anything that alters the aesthetics of the site (i.e. ads) and sometimes enhances it because the amazon book covers (I use Ecto, by the way, which makes adding those links a snap).

In fact, if you divided my annual TypePad fee by the number of sites I have on this account (CM, 400 Windmills, budparr.com, sonnetmedia and a whole bunch of photo albums with my kid-picks - let’s count that as one), then the amount I earned on amazon pays for this site’s share of the fee.

I don’t know what Powell’s pays, but so often when I’ve tried to buy books from them they don’t have them in stock, so I would imagine my “conversion” rate (click-throughs to purchases) would be worse.

Anyway, this isn’t something I wring my hands over. I’m just delighted to get a free book.

    – Bud (02/15  at  10:31 PM)


Oh, sure, if you don’t like ads, then you certainly shouldn’t have them on your site. I’m just impressed that so many people have signed up for Amazon’s program when it really doesn’t pay very much compared to other outlets. PZ Myers also recently published his Amazon figures (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/02/as_long_as_im_feeling_sick_let.php, in the comments—depressing post, btw), and it looks like he makes about the same rate.

    – Dave Munger (02/16  at  06:26 AM)


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