Amazon Associates: Which type of links works best?

Just signed up and I'm wondering...

[wolfadeus]

Hi there,

I just added some amazon ads to products that fit well into the site I'm doing; product links are apparently sometimes changed to ugly, blinking graphics advertizing things that don't fit well into the site. Which sucks.

In another site, I have tried text-links after book reviews; they are obviously a lot less distracting, but I was wondering if they aren't catchy enough.

Any experiences? Visually I prefer the textlinks over the blinking graphics, but if I could fix the products (guidebooks), I would prefer the product links with the neat little book-cover image.

[hunderdown]

wolf, plain text links after a detailed review convert the best for me. People may ignore more in-your-face approaches.

The "recommended products" boxes you describe are a constant problem--you get generic banners if there is too much demand on Amazon.

[wolfadeus]

Thanks, this is just what I thought! Will stick more with text-ads then...pity, I like the little book-thumbnails if not too excessively used.

[Beagle]

It's not just the recommended product links. The generic ads pop up even with direct product links when the Amazon server gets overloaded - If you use ads hosted on the Amazon server. You can build ads to host on your own server and use product thumbnails if you want. Many people do this to avoid the generic ads. The one thing you have to watch if you do that is if Amazon stops carrying an item you have to be alert to remove the links yourself. Amazon also doesn't allow you to advertise the price of an item if they don't host the ad (because it can change too fast), but a lot of people don't like advertising the price, anyway. It kind of depends on what's important to your visitors. A lot of affiliates have had the same result as hunderdown, though: that text links actually convert the best. You can try testing different types and see what works for you.

Just don't come back here and ask me how to make the links ;-) . My visitors want to see the price before they click, so I'm stuck with the Amazon-hosted ones and haven't tried the other kind. If you need some help beyond the basic instructions, formatting the links has been covered quite a bit in the Associates Central forum.

[wolfadeus]

Thanks, Beagle - I just noticed home-made ads with the thumbnails and will most likely do the same. In fact, I give prices on some textads, I should probably remove them. As for experimenting: That's what I do at the moment; will keep you updated how it went! ;)