Does anyone make money from amazon?

Is it worth listing their books on your site?

[Rightz]

Out of curiousity what are peoples experience of being an affiliate of theirs?

Have you made much money putting links to specific amazon products on your site?

Opinions?

[wrgvt]

There's no easy answer to that question. I sell over 1000 books a quarter, but I have a long-established site with good search engine traffic and a ton of back links. The site is over 1000 pages long with a page of content for each book.

Depending on your site traffic, how targeted that traffic is for the book or books you'll have on your site, how much content exists for each book (you have to put them in a buying mood to click that amazon link), your mileage may vary greatly. Over on the amazon discussion boards, the general rule appears to be to make one sale through amazon for every 1000 visitors to your site.

[FourDegreez]

It's not easy getting big numbers with Amazon. That said, if you see an opportunity for the perfect book promotion on some of your pages, why not go for it?

[LifeinAsia]

It's very, very doubtful that you will ever create a first-time visitor to Amazon from your site. Why? Because they are so well known.

It's much more likely that you will make sales by showcasing products directly related to content on your site. People come to your site, read the content, and then decide they need the product that you are showing. It's very easy for them to click the link and buy in just a few clicks instead of going to amazon dot come themselves and searching.

[Rightz]

yeah I was thinking about selling specific books directly related to the suject covered. ie travel website. info on moving to that country... book for sale on amazon about moving to that country. info on setting up a company there - book about that etc

that kinda thing.

[hunderdown]

Very good comments so far in this thread! Specific, detailed recommendations, in my experience, do the best. And you may find, as I do, that a page on which you review a book is also a good place for ads from Google AdSense.

[Teshka]

When I use books for research, I'll list them as sources below the articles (with links to Amazon, of course). I make about $500 a quarter. It's definitely not big money, but it's enough to be worth the trouble.

[gamiziuk]

...I was thinking about selling specific books directly related to the suject covered. ie travel website. info on moving to that country... book for sale on amazon about moving to that country. info on setting up a company there - book about that etc...

I have done this with my travel sites (enhanced product displays). I have sold a *few* books this way - not enough to get me all excited about a few sales, but the books help to dress up my pages with a splash of color without hunting for photos.

You might want to look into AllPosters.com for another product line to add to your pages.

[Rightz]

Great suggestion. Thanks guys

[ska_demon]

The only success I have with Amazon is using Adwords direct to merchant. I target brand new releases, items yet to be released and ancient but popular stuff.
I have yet to make any sales directly from my websites even tho the books I list are very relevant.

Just my thoughts

Ska

[shrimp]

Another Amazon opportunity is if you have a site that is very useful to people and you offer something at no charge, you can ask people to use your Amazon search box for ANY purchase, just to help support the site. And they will. It is especially great if they are leading a class and order 25 copies of a book thru you.

I found that someone even ordered a Segway thru my site once in the very early days of that device's introduction. It was subject to the Amazon 'cap' of something like $25 or whatever, but I was thrilled they used me for order.