Forum Moderators: skibum
The same goes with Amazon.com vs. Google AdSense. Do your visitors buy stuff? Is your site niche a high-paying niche in AdSense? Are you able to pick out specific products that your visitors have a high likelyhood of being interested in? How much work do you want to put into it? Do you mind only getting paid once a quarter?
Why not put both up and see which does better?
There is no simple answer. If you're looking to be an amazon affiliate by throwing up a few banners and links, or creating a shopping site that looks like every other amazon shopping site, then you won't make much from amazon. If you just throw up a unfocused web site and expect tons of traffic to generate AdSense income for you, then you will probably be disappointed in that too.
This isn't a get rich quick scheme without a lot of planning, work, experimentation, and learning.
With Amazon, I feel more in control. I make a change or two, and I can usually observe "rational" effects. Amazon makes more sense to me.
Adsense, on the other hand, is like a "black box." Why it behaves the way it does is more often an unfathomable mystery.
With Amazon ads, icons, and links, I can specify exactly what, when, and where. With Adsense ads, I can specify the where, not always the when (when PSAs or blanks show instead of ads), and to only a limited extent the what.
At one of my sites, I get about ten times as many Amazon clicks (not necessarily conversions) as I do Adsense clicks. I am able to nudge the Amazon "CTR" upward, but the Adsense CTR seems to be largely beyond my ability to affect it much. I understand how and why my Amazon clicks are as high as they are, but I am confounded why my Adsense click counts remain so low.
With Adsense, I have to worry about clicking on my own ads, or about others committing click fraud. With Amazon, I don't have this constant fear that I could be booted from the program at any time.
Adsense is seductive. Its near real-time data and richer set of channel and other controls and reporting options encourage endless, real-time tinkering. With no channel options and only next-day, once-a-day statistics, Amazon somehow seems less "sexy". (I check my "boring" Amazon stats first thing in the morning, then I'm done with it. With Adsense, and like so many other people, I check my stats many times a day.) Compared to the lively and interesting Adsense forums, WW's Amazon and affiliate marketing forums are less active, seem dull.
Give both a try. But there's more important things in a lasting relationship than the "sex". Don't be surprised if over time you become more devoted to Amazon.
If you're in the right position in the serps for the right keywords the visitors want to buy.
Different set of keywords the visitors want to continue browsing.
Also depends on which engines you get the traffic from.
If your web pages do a good job of pre-selling your items to the first group or people, then they will ignore the AdSense ads and click through to amazon to buy the items. The products you feature have to be competitive and you have to have information on your site that will satisfy their needs so they want to click through and buy.
With the second group, if you have a really good deal for them, they may click through to amazon right away and buy. If they're not in a buying mood at all, they read your content and filed it away perhaps for future reference. Now they're still curious, they see your AdSense ads, one catches their eye, and they're off.
With amazon and AdSense on the same site, you can make money from both groups of visitors. If you'd like to block other amazon affiliates ads from showing up in your AdSense ads, then you can block those with the AdSense filter.
Yes, I almost earned $2k since December 2004.
Some sites do well by writing their own reviews, focusing on products of interest to their target audience. I do. Quite a few of the people who post on the Amazon Associates forum (at Amazon, not here) do too.
Depends on what you want to do.
There are people using the Amazon datafeed to earn a very nice living. But there are many more who are making pocket change.
To take this discussion back to the original question, if you are able to get good traffic, and even better if you aren't paying for it, you can build both AdSense and Amazon links into a site and do well. You can do that with the datafeed, or with a hand-crafted site....
Zygoot - if you can say, 2k on how much traffic?
My website gets about 13k unique visitors a day but the Amazon links are only placed on a very small part of my website. The bulk of the $2,000 was made during Jan-Feb. Since March Amazon sales have dropped dramatically :(
The Q1 2005 Amazon report shows about 12,000 clicks and a few percent of those bought something at Amazon.
