berto - 10:26 pm on Aug 5, 2005 (gmt 0)

I make money from selling books at Amazon.com, not as much as I would like, but some. Here is my experience.

Site #1: Entertainment site. Besides books, sell (or try to sell) also CDs, magazines, videos, and other Amazon.com stuff. About 6% of visitors click on Amazon ads. On average, each visitor clicks on 1.4 ads. Over the course of a year and a half, the average conversion ratio was 2.2%, although for the current summer quarter, it's a very disappointingly low 1.0%.

Site #2: Technology site. Sell only books. About 2% of visitors click on Amazon ads. On average, each visitor clicks on 2.0 ads. Over the past year and a half, the average conversion ratio was 2.2%, was 3.5% last quarter, and is 0% this quarter. (Amazon-wise, summer stinks.) (I owe much of last quarter's stellar conversion ratio to a single site visitor who bought over a dozen books on just one visit.)

On both sites, I run Google Adsense. On the entertainment site, I also sell sheet music (doing relatively well at it), and try to sell (with limited success) posters and art prints.

On the entertainment site, Amazon ads line the left and right sidebars. On the technology site, Amazon ads tend to run on one sidebar only, with the opposite sidebar devoted to Adsense skyscrapers. On both sites, I run horizontal AdLinks.

My preferred Amazon ad is a home-brewed combination of image above, title just below. Oftentimes, I will show a "vertical banner" of two, three, or more such combos. I have tried "recommended product links," but with limited success.

On the entertainment site, I have many text links pointing to Amazon products interspersed throughout the site.

I do about equally well with the Amazon image ads as I do with the text links. I have a plan, soon to be implemented, to display another home-brewed Amazon ad type, much like the vertical and horizontal AdLinks types. This will be great for placing Amazon text links in each page's "heat spot".

I should do product reviews, but I don't have the time for it. I plan to do reviews in the future.

NOTE: Ala Google AdSense, I make sure to match displayed books (CDs, magazines, etc.) to each page's theme. So, for example, on a page about "reggae", I show only books about "reggae". Matching Amazon products to each page's theme is key. When I began matching products to page keywords (which I specify for each page in my CMS), my CTR shot up by 10X.

I maintain a database of books (and CDs, etc.). Books are selected at random from this database (but again matching the page keyword(s)), so from day to day pages show different books.

I also keep track of what books (CDs, etc.) get clicked on, and how many clicks. I have had good success with giving prominence (more frequent, and better positioned, ad displays) to "bestsellers" (i.e., books with the most clicks). But matching books, etc. to page theme gives better success than displaying "bestsellers". I repeat, contextual sensitivity is key.

I don't yet have an automated mechanism in place to track click popularity. Until now, I have done this by hand. The keyword matching and randomization of ad displays is all automated, however, a feature of my home-brewed CMS.

It's not as easy as Adsense, but--yes--I make money from selling Amazon books. (On the entertainment site, books outsell CDS, etc. by a significant margin. My best revenue earner is sheet music.) It takes creativity and hard work, but it can be done.