Two Links for Amazon.com / .ca?

[globay]

Lets say I have a site with reviews and information about product A, with the goal to get money from the leads to Amazon.com.

The site is in English and most of the visitors come through Google. At the end of the information page they find a link to buy the product at Amazon.com. But what about the visitors from other countries than the U.S.

How do you solve the problem of incoming traffic from Canada and Britain? Do you have a link saying "Buy in Canada"? Or are you just letting the money pass by thinking that it is not worth optimizing?

Or is there may be a solution provided by Amazon (for example connecting the Afiliate programs of different countries)?

Thanks for your replies

globay!

[1Lit]

We link to all the Amazons. Its very time consuming as products can often be available in Amazon in one country and not another, but might increase sales. I have no stats. to back this up, but I find it hard to believe that somebody in, say, Germany would order from Amazon.com when they can pay far less postage by ordering from Amazon.de

What you could do is have small flags linking to other Amazons...

Check the logs for your site to see what proportion of visitors come from the UK, Canada etc. Then decide if it is cost-effective for you to link to bookstores in these markets.

[onlineleben]

On one Site I have seen something like this:
"Buy at the Amazon Shop nearest to you" and then he listed the respective amazon sites. Have tried it with .de and .co.uk and it works.

[globay]

Yes, good ideas. I am thinking of a popup where users can choose the amazon store of their country, to catch the big percentage of people who are from Canada, Germany, and UK.

The problem is that different stores offer different products, the ASINs are not the same, and perhaps some users might get distracted and just close the window.

I personally think that people won't order a product from an amazon store outside of their country, if they can buy it for no, or little shipping cost in their home country.

In the next time I will do some testing and I will let you now, what worked best for me.
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globay

[adamas]

If your setup will allow server side scripting you could always look at Geo IP targetting.

I can get traffic to the three English 'speaking' Amazons. Now I just need to do something about my awful conversion rate ;).

It does sound like your site is rather better targetted than mine though.

[firstmark]

Everyone is aware that the different Amazon programs do not combine their payments right?
So to be paid from Amazon Uk you need a means to deal with UK currency for example.

Same holds true with the other Amazons. Its inefficienty and burecratic stupidity at its worst but its there with Amazon's various country programs.

[adamas]

...and by the same token each one will only pay out when you reach the minimum for that program.

[globay]

...and you won't get any money if you lead someone to amazon.com and he buys the very same product at amazon.ca!

[1Lit]

I don't think it is unfair of Amazon to have different programmes for different countries. Each Amazon is run as an independent entity. Just as BOL, which had operations in nearly 12 countries, have closed down some of their bookstores in some parts of the world and left them open in others, Amazon might have to do some chopping and changing one day. It may even have to sell off (parts of) some of the Amazons. Therefore it makes sense for them to keep each Amazon independent.

Try to look at it from their point of view.

Going back to the original subject, I have to warn people contemplating linking to individual products on different Amazons that the admin. can be a nightmare.

I run a website for an author it is a headache adding and removing links as his books become available and unavailable in different territories.

Therefore, it is only cost effective to set-up a series of links with the option to purchase a title from different Amazons if you hope to sell large volumes.

[linkshark]

There are amazon affiliate scripts that offer amazon.com .ca .uk .de .jp .etc.. links on the "buy" page of amazon XML feeds so in effect you can allow anyone to purchase regardless of geo location.

One such script supports:
amazonid.ca
amazonid.de
amazonid.fr
amazonid.jp
amazonid.uk

But as said above this involves joining all the individual programs and currency issues, etc.... But, at least with the XML script it eliminates having to do the edit thing as noted above.

my2cents

[globay]

That sounds great. Where can I get that script? Is it offered by Amazon? I thought Amazon.de did not have an XML feed?

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globay

[linkshark]

Globay -- check your sticky mail