Last week I was traveling in Mexico City without my laptop, so I didn’t write an update since two week ago. I didn’t make much progress on the blog anyway besides writing the newsletter before leaving and gathering content during the trip. This week I returned home and sadly fell sick with a flu. However, since it doesn’t take a lot of energy to write about my trip while lying in bed, I ended up having a pretty productive content week. The best part of the week (as you may have guessed from the title) was I received an email from Viator about my December partner program summary — it turned out I had two bookings and made a total commission of $6! 💸 My first affiliate income!!
One unexpected thing I discovered was that my own Mexico City bookings also appeared in the report, even though I used the same email for both my personal and partner accounts. Viator seems to set a 30-day cookie when an affiliate link is clicked, so I’ll need to use incognito for personal bookings in the future to keep the tracking clean. Since I hadn’t set up my payout method yet, it’s also possible Viator will exclude my own bookings once I do get paid.
Content
- Wrote several posts about my Mexico City trip (things to do, tips, Expendio de Maiz, hot air balloon tour) and shared on FB.
- Created IG post and reel for Mexico City and shared to FB.
Stats
Overall
| Cost | $67 (Hosting $60 + Domain $7) |
| Posts Published | 80 (+5) |
| Views | 1100 (+100) |
| Revenue | $12 (+7) |
| Profit | -$55 |
Affiliate
| Bookings | 2 |
| Commission | $6 |
Search
| Impressions | 181 (+62) |
| Clicks | 23 (+1) |
| Average Position | 26.8 (+7.4) |
IG / Facebook
| Metric | IG | |
|---|---|---|
| Posts Published | 30 (+2) | 14 (+3) |
| Followers | 32 (-1) | 23 (+0) |
| Views (Last Month) | 490 (-560) | 350 (-290) |
Substack
| Metric | Amount |
|---|---|
| Posts Published | 3 (+1) |
| Subscribers | 13 (+0) |
| Views | 160 (+8) |
High / Lowlights
- ✅ Made my first affiliate income and hit double digits in revenue!
- ✅ Wrote my first tour review and restaurant post.
- ❌ Got a reminder from Amazon that I have 90 days left to refer 3 qualifying purchases before my account is closed 😱.
- ❌ Saw a drop in IG/Facebook views and lost one IG follower. Makes sense since I didn’t post for an entire week 😅.
Final Thoughts
I can’t believe I made more from just two Viator bookings than three months of ad revenue! I am curious to see how my new tour and food posts will perform in search given it’s more niche than my usual things to do/tips posts. It’s possible they’ll rank higher and bring in more clicks/ad revenue as a result.
Next week I’m back to my full-time job, so probably I’ll only have time to share past blog links to Facebook.
Let’s see how the Mexico City content performs next week!
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