First Quarter Results
Overall I sold 149 things for $3,986.25 with commissions of $186.39 in the first quarter of 2007. In January I had my best month with Amazon ever with $93 in commissions. But a big part of that happened when someone bought an XBox for $400 and instead of getting the 4% electronics commission, I got the full 6.5% allowed for computer and video games. That's $26 on one sale, the most I've ever made. I also sold one movie through Amazon's Unbox movie download service, which they are offering a promotional 10% commission on (so I made $1.50). The most unusual thing I sold was a book, Federal Prison Guidebook, which sold at the same time as a guitar pick, guitar bag, and several CD's. I guess someone was planning a trip. That was good for me because the $80 book and other things all got 6.5% commissions.
I messed up and bought a couple of items for myself for which I don't receive a commission. One time it was accidental, but the other time I remembered once I had the items in my cart. Although I visited the Opossum Society website before checking out, the items still showed up as my sales. Next time I will have to make sure I don't add things to my cart before visiting. I also found that the American Cetacean Society, whose whale fact pages I linked to on my Baja trip web page, are Amazon Associates. So I will probably send some commissions their way in addition to the Opossums.
The biggest sellers this month were the Maxell iPod battery pack with 37 net sales (two were returned). The EZgear Powerstick sold 12 (after one return; these three returns were the most ever); the JAVObooster charger and flashlight sold 8; and people were able to scrounge 5 of the discontinued Belkin battery pack. My Sony car stereo page sold 16 of the PAC aux-in enablers.
The other change this quarter was Amazon now pays every month instead of each quarter. I received my deposit for January's sales this week. The rumor mill says Apple will wait to introduce a new widescreen iPod so that it doesn't conflict with iPhone publicity. I won't get an iPhone, but I would really like a 60-80 GB widescreen iPod that works a lot like the phone. It might make some sense for Apple to release the iPod with the phone to take advantage of the phone hype by selling to people like me. But if a 4 GB phone is $500, an 80 GB iPod might be $800, since the phones are usually subsidized by selling a new cell contract. That might keep me away. Meanwhile I've still been watching TV shows from DVD on my Palm on the way home from work, so I don't know if I really even need a video iPod. No, that's crazy talk. Of course I need it!
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