Any Amazon Affiliates have some advice for me?

pretty please ! :-)

[vabtz]

I have tried to get amazon to work on my site and I just can't get people to buy.

I run a forum on music related topics. I have tried the scripts, articles, and suggesting CD's.

Am I doing something wrong here? Does it just not work with certain types of sites?

[Jesse_Smith]

Use a script, and mod_rewrite. Then get indexed by Google, and then if you are lucky, you'll then get visitors. Or get a few thousand more back-links to the main site.

[vabtz]

I did that before had terrible time getting it to make money.

[hunderdown]

I'm not sure my experience applies, since I run a book-related site, but what I've found is that detailed reviews of NEW books of interest to my visitors are what do the best. Something they don't know about but have to have.

Try to figure out who your visitors are, and what they are looking for....

[vabtz]

Thank you both for your replies.

:-)

The low return doesn't bother you (for books)?
Do you have a high traffic site?

I have wondered about book and cd reviews because the payback on each item seems so low. I thought big ticket stuff was the thing to focus on. Is that not the case or is it just dependent on the audience?

[Pedent]

I haven't had great success with Amazon, so I'm no great authority, but:

I thought big ticket stuff was the thing to focus on.

I think the most important thing is targeting products to visitors of your site, possibly aiming to cover a range of prices. Big ticket items that don't sell don't get you any more commission than cheap products.

If you were doing PPC direct to merchant then you might have to do big ticket items so that the commission covers your ad costs. With on-site ads, though, it's not as important.

When you say that it's not working, do you mean that you aren't getting any clicks or that the clicks don't convert?

[rfung]

I have a site on textbooks and I rank #1 for one of the keyword combos - the site brings me a couple hundred bucks a month. Sicne the site's up - I'm leaving it there running - but I won't waste my time working on it anymore - if you're coming in starting from scratch - you better have some specific niche in the books/cds/dvd categories, because those are WAY saturated already.

[hunderdown]

vabtz, I'm not running my site for the money. It's a niche site, not high traffic, online since early 1996 (no, really). Until 2001, when I joined the Amazon program, I made no attempt to make money off it, at least not directly. It was a place where I posted my opinions about things, and information about the industry within which I work. It boosted my profile within that industry, and still does.

But I didn't like spending more and more time on it without any direct income. So, Amazon, and then some other affiliate programs, none of which do nearly as well as Amazon for me. Then in late 2003 I added AdSense, and more than doubled my income.

I'm not making tons of money. But I know my audience, and I have a backlog of material that I want to get up, both reviews and pieces that are primarily informational. Whenever I take the time to put up new material, my income goes up. I am now more than half way to my current goal of $1,000 per month in income for the site. I spend no more than 20 hours per month working on it.

It works for me. If you are a music enthusiast, you might be able to make it work for you....

[Fairla]

I have an impression that CDs don't sell very well online. I would try focusing your Amazon links on books. The fans of a particular band/artist most likely already know all about their CDs and songs, but people are less likely to be aware of every new book out there about their favorite musicians. So you'd be providing a real service, and that's what makes people bookmark your site and come back and buy again.

Another thing I've noticed is that people seem to love buying DVDs online, so you might want to try focusing on that too.