Forum Moderators: skibum
Throwing up a generic amazon banner or a link that has no content associated with it generates very little traffic to amazon. Although this is true for just about any affiliate program. People who do well with amazon offer lots of different links with appropriate content to convince visitors to click the link and buy.
Affiliate marketing is more about being a hawker than a doorman.
That page will also be a good one on which to put AdSense code.
If you can manage to do a decent, original review, which could only be a couple of paragraphs long, every couple of weeks, you'd be creating content for your site that might actually draw new traffic. Over time, you'd build up quite an archive, and would get income from it months or even years after you wrote each piece.....
It is not because there are no regular sales -- there are -- but rather, you only get about 4% AND most people (in my experience) tend to buy the used books/dvd's, which means the cost to them is much lower than a new item would be.
So for example, a $40 table-top art book that is new would pay you a commission of $1.60, whereas a $20 used one in good condition from a third party gets you 80 cents. You have to sell a lot of stuff to make those 80 cent commissions add up to anything.
But again, that is just my experience -- others may be doing much better.
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you only get about 4%
You get 4% on electronics. If you opt in to the Performance structure, which you should do as there is no downside, you will earn a minimum of 5% on all other items. You will get a higher rate if you reach certain sales levels per quarter--I am in the 6% tier for this quarter. Also, you can earn an additional 2.5% on "direct-link" purchases.
As to people buying used, I think that depends on your site's focus and demographics. I would say no more than a quarter of my sales are used or other third-party sales.
On a parti-time, fairly low traffic site (fewer than 50,000 visitors per month) I've made $450 since Jan. 1, with most of that from a handful of review pages. I've also got generic Amazon links, book lists, and the like scattered around the site, and they each bring in a trickle (though it adds up). But it's the review pages that really convert. Of course, I make several times my Amazon earnings from AdSense.
Your mileage may vary, but one can earn from Amazon.
I have just started with amazon a few days ago, so don't regard me as an expert in any sense. I just wanted to mention that I partly disagree with wrgvt - the ad might spoil the website with no real benefit; however, if the ad is for a book actually useful and related, it might even be good content; although I am currently experimenting with ads a bit, I want to limit them on a long term and would expect to be truely helpful for the user, eg. a link to good guidebooks on a sightseeing-website. In that case, revenue is not your only advantage.
B.
wrgvt has a point about being a "hawker" - To get any real income from affiliate ads, you have to do some selling, which could mean reviews, comparisons, articles that tie into the products (or products that tie into the articles), whatever. That's true with any affiliate program where you need people to actually buy something in order for you to make money, not just Amazon.
A nice pair of rectangle boxes breaks up the page nicely. One box for Adsense, and one for Amazon travel books (targeted for the destination) adds a splash of color (so I dont have to go looking for photos to add to my pages).
The resulting book sales are "spotty" but enough for me to keep the boxes going.
