Amazon Ghost Books Don't Sell!

Amazon Ghost Books

[Truegho]

I run a True Ghost Stories website, from which I advertise ghost books from Amazon. However, despite getting thousands of visitors every month, I have sold hardly any ghost books. I cannot even sell the ghost DVDs either.

Don't people read true ghost stories or watch ghost DVDs anymore?

Would my site be more profitable if I wrote a ghost stories ebook and tried to flog that for a quid a copy (I am a writer of supernatural fiction too).

[humblebeginnings]

Hi Truegho,

I doubt if your niche is the one with the golden eggs, but then again, you never know. I am more certain about your traffic. "Thousands of visitors every month" (as in 100 visitors a day?) is very likely too little to generate a decent number of sales.
In most cases one should need hundreds or maybe thousands of visitors a day to get the affiliate train rolling...

[paul2yall]

It seems to me that people who are reading free ghost stories on the web aren't necessarily looking to buy books of ghost stories. I usually find that Amazon book ads do best on pages where similar books are reviewed or recommended.

[hunderdown]

I agree with paul. Ghost stories and ghost books may seem like a good match, but the trick is either to draw people who are already shopping to your site, and refer them to what they need, or to convince them while they are at your site that they need a book, and that they can get it at Amazon. The people coming to your site are not shoppers.

Can you turn them into shoppers? Can you increase your traffic? I make less than $200/month from Amazon, with 40,000 to 50,000 visitors monthly, so it's possible, but it's hard work.

[Beagle]

I'd have a couple of questions that I don't see answered either in this thread or your other one on paranormal sites. One would be how long you've been trying the particular model that's failed - it usually takes time. The other question is what your site offers - some of the other posts indicate you publish free stories, but I don't actually see that mentioned in your own posts. If that's all you have, then, yes, you're likely undercutting yourself by offering stuff for free. OTOH, if you have articles and, especially, reviews of the books and DVDs you're advertising, you might see some growth. As with any affiliate marketing (as opposed to, say, adwords), the content may supply the audience - but then you need to sell to the audience and make them customers.

As someone else with a fairly narrow-niche amazon affiliate site, I've found that my strongest sales come from keeping up with what's new: A book coming out by someone known in the field; a DVD that everyone's talking about. Amazon's "pre-order" options are great - I probably make 25% of my sales through them. You don't get paid until the item is actually released and shipped, but it's still a foot in the door. If your visitors know they can depend on you to have things available for order, they don't have to go through the search process themselves - a reason for them to order through your site instead of going straight to amazon. Whether you're part of the niche's community or not, keep up on the online news about it and do an occasional amazon search even when you haven't heard of something specific coming out.

Making your own ebook, of course, is a completely different thing. There's no reason you couldn't do both.