J-Walk & Associates, Inc.

Analyzing Free Money With A Pivot Table

I've been an Amazon Affiliate for many years. When I link to an item at amazon.com, I include my affiliate ID in the URL. Then, if anyone buys something, I get a piece of the action. For example, all my books have links to Amazon. Plus, I usually use my Amazon ID when I link to items from my other blog (that accounts for most of the non-book items).

Today I ran an Amazon report for the year 2009. It shows every sale made with my affiliate ID, with all of the backup data (except information about the buyer). It occurred to me that the report is a perfect candidate for a pivot table. So I imported it into Excel and create a few pivot tables. I made it available as a download, for people who want to learn pivot tables, but don't have access to a good set of data to play around with. See: Pivot Table Demo Workbook.

If you're curious, my total Amazon affiliate income for last year was $2,524.84. That's almost $7 per day! Some people make a living from it, but I just view it as free money that pays my Web hosting bills. Here are the top items sold via my links:

- Reader Comments -

Following are comments in response to this item.
The most recent comment is at the bottom.

1. By Mark Rosenkrantz. Comment posted 07 June, 2011 10:47am

   But you probably sell your books in many other ways !!!
2. By M Simms. Comment posted 03 August, 2012 5:49am

   John - are you writing a new book for Excel 2013 ?
3. By John Walkenbach. Comment posted 03 August, 2012 10:08am

   Yes, I'll be updating several of my books for Excel 2013.