Amazon Recommended Product Links

are they reasonable, or better stick to books selected by myself?

[Borek]

I have a niche educational site with small, but not too small traffic and I am thinking about signing for Amazon affiliate program. However, living far from English speaking world I have no idea which books from my niche are good and worth promotion. Yet I am pretty sure that many visitors will be interested in textbooks.

How good are Amazon recommendations, and do they convert well? Or is it better to select books by myself (even if I can only use 2nd hand opinions)?

[hunderdown]

I've been an Amazon Associate for several years, with a small niche content site. I've consistently found that detailed, personal reviews, with text links to the book reviewed, do the best. When I have tried the Recommended Product Links, they have done as poorly as generic Amazon banners, and that's pretty poorly.

Spend some time reading the Amazon reviews in your area, and look at sales ranks. Feature newer and/or best-selling titles, as a starting point. Solicit reviews from your visitors (offer a monthly contest as an incentive, or something).

If you want more opinions, there is an Associates discussion board at Amazon, and if you browse through old posts you'll find plenty of complaints about Rec. Prod. Links. Apparently, they serve up generic ads when there is a connectivity problem, for example.

Good luck!

[berto]

Another problem with Amazon Recommended Product Links is that under heavy server (their server) and/or network load, Amazon serves up a garish orange generic banner ad. UGLY! Seeing that once too often is what compelled me to remove ARP links everywhere and forever.

[Borek]

Thnx for both of you, I have made my mind :)

[Beagle]

The garish orange generic ads also show up at high traffic times if you use direct product links that are hosted by amazon. The difference is between ads that are hosted on amazon's server and ads that are hosted on your own, not between direct product links and recommended product links (that said, of course, the only option for recommended product links is being hosted on amazon's server, while with direct product links you have a choice).

Although I mostly use direct product links, I throw in some RPL for variety - usually on more "general" pages that don't talk about specific products. They do convert, although not as well as direct product links; from the things that are purchased through them, I'd guess they're getting mostly impulse buys. ("Oh, that looks interesting.") I certainly wouldn't use them instead of direct product links.