Most niche site operators assume their conversion problem is traffic. Jared Bauman had the traffic. His case study site was under-earning on Amazon Associates relative to sessions, and his team had no page-level view of which URLs actually drove revenue. He switched product displays from AAWP to Lasso in July 2023. Affiliate earnings rose 106% month over month.
That lift held at 88% even after stripping out a few Prime Day spike days. The site picked up roughly $700 per month in incremental affiliate income. At a 40x monthly multiple, that single infrastructure change added about $28,000 in site value.
Updated 2026.
1Snapshot
| Metric | Before (June 2023, AAWP) | After (July 2023, Lasso) |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly affiliate earnings | $639.88 | $1,317.98 |
| Month-over-month change | n/a | +106% |
| Adjusted for Prime Day | n/a | +88% |
| Incremental monthly income | n/a | ~$700 |
| Estimated site value impact (40x) | n/a | ~$28,000 |
2Who is Jared Bauman?
Jared Bauman is the CEO and Co-Founder of 201 Creative, LLC. The agency serves several dozen clients. He has built and sold several companies in the photography and blogging space while growing a portfolio of successful niche sites.
Beyond SEO, business strategy, and marketing, Jared is an accomplished photographer, author, keynote speaker, host of the Niche Pursuits podcast, and a long-time board member of The Alabaster Project.
Jared Bauman, CEO of 201 Creative and owner of several successful niche websites.
He spends time away from work hiking, camping, and traveling with his wife and two young children. He builds his company so his team gets the same flexibility.
3The problem: traffic without conversion data
The site in this case study is one Jared and his team have grown for several years. On paper it looked healthy. In practice, affiliate revenue did not match the traffic profile.
In Jared’s words:
“Compared to other sites, the website converted very little of its ‘affiliate’ traffic into affiliate sales. Or, so we thought…”
Two issues drove that gap:
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“We did not make much money from Amazon Associates each month from this website, especially when you compare it to how high the traffic is.”
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“We did not understand which URLs drove the majority of affiliate earnings.”
That second point is the operator trap. You cannot prioritize content or placements when you do not know which pages and products convert. Lasso works with every affiliate program in the world, and Lasso Performance gives you a page-level breakdown of affiliate earnings. Jared’s team needed both: broader program support and analytics that AAWP could not provide.
4Why AAWP was the bottleneck
201 Creative had already been testing affiliate programs beyond Amazon. Higher rates and better earnings per click were on the table if they could run non-Amazon offers cleanly.
AAWP is built for Amazon displays only. That constraint capped experimentation. Combined with conversion rates below what traffic suggested, the team started evaluating alternatives. For context on how Amazon-only plugins compare in the WordPress stack, see our roundup of best Amazon affiliate WordPress plugins.
The testing loop was familiar: try a program, watch the numbers, move on if nothing moved.
“We would try one affiliate program, see if it moved the needle, and move on. We decided to give Lasso a try, to see if it would boost conversions and revenue.”
Before you swap plugins site-wide, run an Opportunities Scan on pages that already rank. Most operators find product mentions sitting unmonetized in URLs that already get traffic. Fixing those placements is often the fastest path to higher earnings.
5The results: 106% in the first month
Jared ran AAWP on the site for June 2023 and switched to Lasso for July 2023.
“Lasso was a great solution as in the first month after switching, the site saw a 106% increase in earnings!”
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June 2023: $639.88
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July 2023: $1,317.98
The increase in revenue of 106% from moving from AAWP to Lasso is shown here. Each day here is Jared’s site income across the month.
The revenue line tells one story. The workflow tells another. Jared’s team found Lasso easier to use, which made the whole content operation more productive.
201 Creative’s Content Coordinator, Gabe Goyo, said he preferred Lasso over AAWP and hoped the agency would roll the system out across other portfolio sites.
“Lasso’s system is more intuitive, easier to use, and overall a better way to add affiliate links”. – Gabe Goyo
Jared wrote a detailed breakdown in a Twitter thread from August 2023. He also published a longer version in his newsletter.
An example Lasso block Jared created:
6Lasso Performance: closing the analytics gap
One of Jared’s early complaints was missing data on which products and pages converted. Since he started with Lasso, we shipped Lasso Performance, our affiliate analytics tool for a complete page-level breakdown of how your pages and each link on your page performs.
An example page-level breakdown in Lasso Performance. You can see how much revenue each page makes on each day, as well as which affiliate links and products drove each sale.
For operators building at scale, that visibility is the difference between guessing and prioritizing. We’ve seen the same pattern across large portfolios, including Niels Zee’s $1M+ affiliate operation in the Netherlands. The bottleneck was never traffic. It was conversion per click and knowing where to fix it.
7What Jared tells niche site owners
“What advice would you give niche site owners looking to earn more?”
“Keep going!
“Most quit long before their project has had a chance to produce measurable success.
“Stay at, constantly learning as you go. Never assume that your process is as good as it could be, but never get too bogged down with questioning your process. It’s a delicate balance.
“It’s important to try new things, take (evidence based) chances, and do lots of experimenting and testing. This includes searching for and partnering with new affiliate programs.”
“Your best course is to do the research, learn from others, and don’t be afraid to partner with an expert!”
Jared runs multiple businesses, hosts a top podcast, and still grows niche sites in his portfolio. The 106% lift here came from changing link infrastructure, not from publishing more posts.
8The implication for operators
AAWP solved Amazon display boxes. It did not solve multi-program monetization or page-level revenue analytics. Jared’s team had traffic and content. They lacked tooling that matched how modern affiliate operations actually run.
At Lasso, we built the link and display layer so operators can test programs beyond Amazon, ship better product boxes, and see which URLs earn. Jared’s case is evidence that the switch pays off quickly when the site already has demand.
If you have pages that already rank, start with an Opportunities Scan. Then see how Lasso fits your stack. Get started with Lasso and run the scan on the content you already have live.
Jamie I.F.
Jamie heads up marketing at Lasso, runs a portfolio of niche sites, and tweets a lot about affiliate marketing and SEO.