Amazon affiliate sales

My stunning results

[longen]

Back in Q2 i did a short trial of PPC direct to Amazon UK to test possibilities. Sales were ok but two problems soon followed.
First - i hadn't realised that there was a cap on payments back then, of just 10UKP, so even though i sold some 400UKP electronics, through expensive Adwords clicks, i was left with just #10.
Second - though i made 13 sales over a few days i am being paid for just 5. Amazon tell me the others were either canceled or items were out of stock.
I doubt if this is the average experience of people on this list, i didn't expect Amazon to be out of stock of currently popular items.

[hunderdown]

I don't do any PPC advertising to drive Amazon (US) sales, as my site is focused on books. I have found that 10-20% of my orders, in a given quarter, don't ship (usually selling 400-500 items per quarter).

[rfung]

I second that impression:

Ordered items (Amazon): 13
Ordered items (Marketplace): 177

Total items shipped: 166

Understandably there's a delay between ordered and shipped, but that gap of 20+ items seems to be growing every day.

[BriGuy20]

Long: They've lifted the cap on items over here (Amazon US), I must admit that it's been a TREMENDOUS benefit to my bottom line. I probably wouldn't be profitable this month if it weren't for the cap being lifted.

My backlog doesn't seem to be too large. My shipped total is 87% of my ordered total (with a glut of recent sales waiting to be shipped as well).

If you check product availability from time to time and you keep your bid prices relatively low (but high enough to get traffic), I certainly think the system can work.

[skibum]

Another one to consider for books n' stuff might be Overstock, payouts on media are only 3% (not sure what Amazon pays) but they tend to undercut Amazon on price (maybe higher conversions), offer 14 day cookies and pay 7% on most other stuff.

[clearvision]

I agree about Overstock...you get paid sooner too!

[hunderdown]

I've found considerably lower conversions through Overstock than with Amazon. The prices might be better but people just don't know the name. Also, they only pay 3% versus a base of 5% with Amazon (to which you can add 2.5% if someone buys a book via a direct link; and the 5% base goes up with volume). If you have extremely price-conscious visitors and build your site around Overstock, you might do well, but for most book sites I think Amazon is the best option as the main choice. Offer other programs if you want but beware the distraction effect....

[clearvision]

Ahhh...my bad...I wasn't comparing Overstock to Amazon for book sales...just commissions! We do far better with Overstock for products.