Amazon's affiliate program! Worth it?!

How many actually generating revenue?!

[ideavirus]

Hello,

My previous experience with amazon affiliate program for one of my sites almost 2 and a half years back generated no revenue.

However, i am considering to spend more time and have the affiliate links for my sites from amazon. will be spending a lot of time getting this done for all my sites and i plan to use the XML feeds which they have.

I would be interested to know, if any of you webmasters are generating any kind of good revenue? Is it worth the time at the end of the month? Some actual numbers as to how much amazon affiliation generates for you would also be very helpful.

If it is working for you, could you please share some strategies as to whats works and what doesn't?

Thank you for your time.

Cheers

[robinponty]

hi,
whats that you exactly want to do with XML feeding. Can u please explain?
thnx

[ideavirus]

Okay, its something like this :

Have more than a couple of sites wherein, one can affiliate with amazon for selling books, each site with a different theme.

Now instead of getting individual links for the books under each theme for each site, i have found script, which when installed generates the XML feed of books, neatly categorised & linked to amazon with ur affiliate ID.

My question rather is, how many webmasters are actually generating any kind of decent revenue from being an amazon affiliate? and possibly, if you can share how much? is it really worth the time of webmaster to spend time putting up those links.

Thanks much

[Trisha]

I'd suggest you go to the Amazon Associates message board and hang out there for a while. You may have to be an affiliate to get in though. You can always sign up, ask around at the message board first, then decide if you want to pursue something with Amazon or not, before you put a lot of work into it.

While there must be some people making money with Amazon, from what I can tell most people aren't making a whole lot. But then that goes for most affilate programs. IMO, it seems that people who are really good can make money from most any of program. How much though, is a different issue.

[PatrickDeese]

I would say in most cases, Amazon affiliates is an excellent way to supplement a site that has an alternate revenue stream.

Not many people can make bank w/Amazon - there are definitely exceptions, but there's a lot of competition.

[ThomasB]

Competition is high - revenue is ok, but not worth starting it if you don't have a lot ressources. (My experience after fighting 1 year ;)

[mcavill]

i guess it's OK, and would cover hosting etc, my monthly amazon earnings are about the same as my daily earnings with adsense.

[bluedevil]

Amazon Web Services is the way to go if you want to put Amazon links on your sites.

But Amazon affiliate has disadvantages. 24 hour cookie, maximum affiliate earnings on some expensive items and payments once a quarter.

[ideavirus]

Thank you for all your feedback.

I am now off to amazon associates message board to read more about the prospects of generating revenue.

bluedevil - do i have to signup seperately for web services and affiliates? or if i have signed up for affiliates, i can use webservices option also. Okay i am using MrRat's APF script.

But Amazon affiliate has disadvantages. 24 hour cookie, maximum affiliate earnings on some expensive items and payments once a quarter.

Whats it with the AWS? if its 24 hr cookie with affiliates?

Cheers

[ThomasB]

You will have to sign up separately for AWS to get your developers token.

AWS is just a way of generating content for their associate program. Earnings are absolutely the same for associates using AWS and the rest. So everybody has just the 24h cookies which are really a little bit frustrating over time.

[BwanaZulia]

Funny, I have been running Amazon for years now (since 1999) and it has always brought in "some" money. I used to consider it a good use of excess banner rotations.

In the last couple of months I switched to used the fancy Amazon graphics and placements for my sites. The revenue has gone way down and I am at the point where I am considering dropping Amazon and just putting all my focus on Adsense (I make more in 7 days on Adsense than 90 days on Amazon).

I went over to the discussion boards on Amazon to see what other people are doing and BINGO, it seems like most people are losing money (drops).

Now, I have limited my rotation of banners to 1/5 of the Adsense.

BZ

[bluedevil]

BwanaZulia - I agree. Most sites will make more money with Adsense than Amazon.

You need to do something creative with Amazon Web Services to make decent money with Amazon. If you have a travel site, generate targeted travel books using AWS etc.

[Yidaki]

bluedevil is right. If you allready have a content, informational site, you can make some good income through targeted/relevant items related to each page's topic. AWS is great to do this. Running just the standard amazon graphics is useless - absolutely useless imo. But with targeted products i make a big portion of my hosting fees.

BTW: you can set up your AWS scripts to only retrieve products with the higher commision (15%). ;)

[rogerd]

Sounds like my experience is similar - on most sites, you won't get rich off Amazon, but it can drop a few bucks to the bottom line if you are making money via other means. It may even be a customer service - if you write a book review, your visitors may appreciate a "buy now" link. Don't book that South Pacific cruise yet, though... :)

[universetoday]

People typically earn 1-3 cents for every click they can send to Amazon. Some people do better, some worse, but that seems to be an average. So, if you're getting a 1% CTR, that works out to be a CPM of $.10 - $.30. You'll have to decide for yourself it that's a good or bad number.

[1Lit]

Aside from all the reasons given above, Amazon make a big effort in pushing their second-hand stuff (such as books). This is beginning to have a noticable impact on our revenues as second-hand books on pay 2.5% commission.

24 hour cookie, maximum commission per item, an unwealdy jungle of a website, Google links, tons of non-paying stores, measily commission rate - all doesn't bode well.

There are HUNDREDS of affiliate programs which anybody can do far better with than Amazon - apart from in the American online book arena which Amazon dominate.

[BwanaZulia]

Just did a little number crunching and it turns out that over the last 4 years (Oct 18th 1999 - Oct 19th 2003) I have been getting a CPC of $.033 which is pretty low compared to other programs.

Again, I think Amazon is a good filler, but is no way to survive.

BZ

[div01]

I don't use any Amazon banners, just individual items or their "browse based lists". Every once in a while, I see sales that have nothing to do with my site - sales that were probably impulse buys.

[ideavirus]

Thanks for all the feedback!

Well, i went over to amazon associate message boards and read all the important threads in the AWs section, also some documents related and also checked out some stores based on AWS.

As i can read there, some of the AWS merchants seems to be maing quite a bit of money in fact in 4-5 figures(quarterly stats). I don't deny that their must be an effort of last couple of years. But then again AWS was rolled out only an year or so back, if my memory is correct?
If i am to believe some associates stats, i guess, i another 6 months down the line, i should see some decent revenue, provided i put in effort to promote!

And yes as most of you mentioned, its always more beneficial in terms of making a sale only when targetted content is associated with a amazon diplay item. Infact thats what, i intend to do. All of my sites have their own individual theme and quite a lot of content too.

So, i guess AWS coupled with targetted links on the content sites should be a winner in atleast the long run?
Okay, let me add some luck to it!

Any thoughts?
Cheers

[universetoday]

The people claiming to make big money through Amazon are using XML datafeeds to create literally hundreds of thousands of pages on their website which are then served up to Google. They get enough random Google traffic that turns into sales that they're making big commissions. You can be sure Google/Amazon will figure out a way to eventually make this unprofitable.

[ideavirus]

You can be sure Google/Amazon will figure out a way to eventually make this unprofitable.

Why would amazon want to make their own associates life miserable unless they want to scrap their entire webservices initiative?

Well, with Google, they might just add a filter and remove all those pages from their index, we never know.

Cheers

[royalelephant]

Why would amazon want to make their own associates life miserable unless they want to scrap their entire webservices initiative?

It's always been my belief that programs like amazon are more about branding than making money for affiliates, so if they can squeeze a little more blood from the stone, so be it. If the affiliates cry, they can always leave, and the program will replace them with someone or something else. They're not in the business of making money for affiliates. They're in it for #1.

If affiliates are factories, there will always be a few high-powered suppliers (of buyers), while the majority of affiliates are comparable to piece-rate workers in the third world working in mud huts.

[universetoday]

Amazon should really be your last choice for website revenues. They use their massive brand as leverage against their affiliates - it's the worst affiliate arrangement out there. 5% commission, 1-day cookie... 1-DAY COOKIE. The only benefit is the fact that people know and trust Amazon, so they're more likely to order from them.

Amazon will decide how important their affiliate relationships are shortly with Adsense and other competitors offering more money for similar venues.

[ideavirus]

It's always been my belief that programs like amazon are more about branding than making money for affiliates,

This might be true with amazon's traditional affiliate system, but with webservices, associates are almost like their sales mean. while most of the decision about a purchase is made on the affiliate's site and only the card swipe is done on amazon.

5% commission, 1-day cookie... 1-DAY COOKIE.

This is soo very true and i'll agree to that.But do we have a choice? Adsense is very fine...addiditnal to that is what I am considering.

Cheers

[danny]

There must be several hundred "book information" sites out there now, with a page for every book, reviews and blurbs pulled from AWS or elsewhere, maybe some other auto-generated content, maybe a bit of original content. Some of them just link to Amazon, others offer a price-comparison service. Some of them are actually useful, some of them are spammy (e.g. cloaked redirects to Amazon), most of them are just redundant.

They're all fighting over spots in Google search rankings, along with Amazon itself and newspaper or independent review sites (like mine). So it's not an area I'd recommend if you're building a site just to make money. (And it's not a high-paying AdSense area, either.)

[robinponty]

Ideavirus,
why Google will put a filter and remove all the pages. I think when Amazon structure is not good enough to present all its content accessible to the visitors, looking for their product. Though i understand, this can raise the issue of duplicate content being displayed, but then it becomes the point of who all to filter out. Ideally, everybody except amazon ..but again they are not friendly..ideally all these affiliates are making the web better and Google as a place where good things are displayed ..Please comment
thnx

[ThomasB]

I think we come back to this discussion:
[webmasterworld.com...]

I think Associates Program is definetly worth a try if you already have visitors. I would not recommend building new sites because there are too many people out there.

[ideavirus]

Danny - Thats true. Infact, i do not want to compete directly with already established amazon associates using AWS. What i actually want to do is i have a few pure content sites, and i would like to have aws running on just one domain, while i collect links from that domain and have them on each relevant article of my original content site(s).

robinponty - don't get me wrong. Google might never infact add a filter to scrap out all the amazon affiliate pages if theose pages are improving or aiding the users search experience. But do a search for any term looking for just information abt atht topic, unfortunately, i get tons of amazon associates links to related books, but what i am looking for are sites offering some information on my search term. may be Google does something different to seperate books listing and information sites listings or just leave it as it is.

Cheers

[hypermark]

I have had very limited success with the Amazon Affiliate program over the past couple of years (from a monetization standpoint), but am currently testing out a product (it’s a download) that uses the Amazon Web Service (AWS) to enable me to save, organize and share my favorite products, lists of products (e.g., home office starter kit) and supporting online content (e.g., articles, reviews, manufacturer's data, price comparison) via email. My hope is that I can use the software to capture dollars of visitors doing product research for their holiday purchases.

The software is pretty cool in the sense that it integrates with my web browser, email and email address book to make the process pretty brain dead easy (I am not a technical person so that’s my litmus test for products I will consider). I was even able import my entire Amazon Wish List into the software.

[snip]

[edited by: Drastic at 5:38 pm (utc) on Nov. 7, 2003]
[edit reason] no self promotion please [/edit]

[Small Website Guy]

I don't think that anyone is making big money with Amazon. Everyone already knows about Amazon. If they are going to buy a book, they'll just type "www.amazon.com" into their brower address bar. You'll only capture a few dollars of impulse buys.