Forum Moderators: skibum
But if you have some specific questions about what you're thinking of doing, someone might be able to give some insight.
[edited by: Beagle at 6:59 pm (utc) on Jan. 15, 2007]
They take a resonable percentage and we just ship the orders with the rest of our orders.
So, overall we are happy and our sales continue to increase every year with Amazon.
It is worth the effort, unlike a few other shopping portal type sites we have mistakenly been in involved with in the past.
However, and it's a big however...
I recently started using their aStore and the results have caught my attention.
In the previous three years I sold a grand total of 77 items at Amazon UK. During the past 8-9 weeks since I first started using it, I've sold 67 items.
It's too early to accurately assess the performance of my Amazon.com store because sales increase during the holiday season, then level off.
It cost you nothing to become an associate so it wouldn't hurt to give it a try. The aStore is easy as pie to configure.
Here's my experience, for what it's worth. Their commissions are comparable to Barnes and Noble and other competitors, but they convert better, because so many people already have Amazon accounts.
Generic links to Amazon or banners don't do well. Reviews of products that I recommend and that are targeted to my visitors DO do well. And as a bonus, I can put AdSense on my review pages.
My site is very part-time (you will find it in my profile. Feel free to visit). I make about $500/quarter selling around 500 items, mostly through links to specific products. It's worthwhile for me. Some people also seem to be able to make it work with very focused PPC campaigns built around high-value products (like Wii), but mostly it's a good supplementary earner for content sites.
Check out the Associates area at Amazon--there's a lot of information, it costs nothing to join, and there's a discussion board where you can post questions.
The commission rate is relatively low (I generaly get 6.5% or 7%) but the conversion rate is generally higher than for most other merchants, because Amazon has a very high trust and comfort factor for most people.
I earn more from Amazon than I do from Google AdSense for the same web site; I have other affiliate merchants who pay me more for traffic driven from the same site.
what else you joined?
What other affiliate programs have I joined? Who pays me the most money? What am I doing that you can copy and profit from?
I'm sorry, but that's definitely data I'm not comfortable sharing -- I'm not going to raise a white flag so others can poach my business.
The key is that my top-paying merchants are those who offer a product that is closely aligned with one of the content web sites I maintain. Once I've found success, I often augment the site-driven sales with CPC AdWords campaigns, carefully monitoring and optimizing the campaigns to retain a high ROI (generally, I don't spend a dollar on AdWords unless I reasonably expect $3 in commissions to result).
The key here is that everything I do requires a substantial investment of time, careful analysis, close follow-up, and consistent monitoring and adjustment. I've spent hundreds of hours on "affiliate site" projects that generated less than $100 in earnings; I once spent less than 10 hours on a site that generated thousands of dollars in income in just a few months, but then it abruptly stopped getting "natural search" traffic and now generates only one or two sales per month.
Nobody is going to jump in and tell you their secrets, and those who do so are probably trying to sell you something.
Hello, Exxon-Mobil Oil company?Yes, I just started my own oil company. Can you tell me where are the best places to drill for new oil?
i have a site where books sell well. (aStore is also a big improvment).
Although I consider it secondary income. (Primary is adsense in the case of this site.)
The big advantage is I just have an index link to the bookstore, and a couple of book reviews.
I like amazon because you make money without wasting page space that could otherwise be showing google ads. The link to my bookshop takes up very little page space. The books are directly related to be site content, so are intersting to users.
Keep in mind, you need the right traffic. For example have you ever bought a paper book about the topic of your site? In my case, yes I have heaps of books on the topic, and I would say that most of my readers have at least one book on the topic. Often they read the reviews to find out which books are worth buying.
Hope that helps. Keep in mind, although I think it's a good programme it is only a secondary income source.
