Have you read that making money with Amazon Affiliate Program is a waste of time?
The fence is high… and you will learn that the divide is definite. Affiliate marketers either love or hate the Amazon affiliate program.
On one side of the fence are those that think the commissions are so low that it isn’t worth the effort. Plus… Amazon only has a 24 hour cookie – which means the customer must buy things within 24 hours of first arriving at Amazon through your affiliate link – otherwise you don’t earn a commission.
Most affiliate programs offer cookies of at least 30 days – and the commission rate is higher than Amazon on the “first” sale.
The reason I like to make money with Amazon’s affiliate program is that it’s just “easy” – and the commissions are fine. So… I’m one of the affiliate marketers that is on the “Love Amazon” side of the fence.
Yes – you will see the “Amazon only pays 4% commission” rant – but you must remember that it only takes a few sales to bump that figure up to the 7% – 7.5% range.
Of course – the 24 hour cookie is annoying… but “thems the rules”. The cool thing about Amazon is that customers rarely purchase just one item… so you get a commission on every item they purchase that day. This fact alone accounts for over 75% of my Amazon sales… things I never promoted. 🙂
I read an article yesterday about an affiliate marketer that uses Amazon to research for great products to review and recommend. Then… he finds the product on a different site (one that has an affiliate program) and recommends the product from Amazons competition.
His reasoning is this: Amazon almost always has the lowest price for any product… if he can get the customer to purchase from a “competing” website the price will be higher – thus earning him a higher commission.
Now.. why would you go out of your way to “cheat” someone? Doesn’t it seem that you will have much happier customers if you can recommend great products at the best price?
Too… you will have to sign up to a variety of affiliate programs (which I have) – and it’s a pain in the neck to keep track of them all. I use Share-A-Sale, CJ.com, eBay, Linkshare, Google (ConnectCommerce) and others… plus all those affiliate programs for digital products (Clickbank, e-junkie, etc.).
Amazon carries almost any product you can imagine – and it’s easy to create the affiliate link right from the Amazon sales pages. One other big plus for me – Amazon and WP Robot are one of my favorite marketing research tool combination.
Now you know that I love to use Amazon to promote physical products. I know it works… because I’ve been selling products from Amazon for years.
My Big Problem With Amazon Affiliate Program
The conversion rate on my sites is downright pitiful. It’s a frustration I’ve faced for several years and have not been able to crack the code (so to speak).
I don’t mind (at all) when I sell a book and only make $1 in commission… if I could sell 20 of that book every day.
In an attempt to ramp up conversions and make more sales – I’ve tried several different approaches. I’ve increased sales because I have more sites and product reviews. But – the profit is so slow in creeping upwards that I’ve decided to try yet another approach.
I do know that I need to increase traffic to some of these sites. Most of the product sales come from just a few websites and those are the sites that have ton’s of traffic.
I’m in the process of digging in and doing a Amazon Profit Plan review. I don’t just review products… I put them into practice and talk about the results right here on this blog. You can watch the progress as I work to increase my Making Money From Home income.
Deborah: I love all of these great ideas. but have tried for a couple of years to get traffic so I can build a website and send it out but.No luck on that.I have bought several programs that didn’t work. So, I lost faith in most people that sell those sites. Plus I ran out of money. So do you know some legitimate way to get traffic without it costing me another arm and leg? I feel like I can trust you. And I feel my instincts are right about you. Please help. I would like to learn the affiliate thing but don’t know where to start. I am a pretty savvy 68 year old widow. I just want to learn how to make money cause my Social Security doesn’t go very far. Thanks for anything you can do. Doni Healy
Doni… I feel your pain. Really – I do!
It’s so frustrating to feel as if you are “missing something” when you are trying to start a online affiliate marketing business. You can learn how to put up a site, put your affiliate links on the site and yet still you can’t make sales.
It looks like you have narrowed it down to traffic. This is a big problem with most new online marketers (and even for those of us that have been at it a while).
The amount of traffic needed to start making sales is different for every website. I have several very small – micro niche blogs – that are so keyword focused that they rank right at the top of Google. I don’t need to worry about getting more traffic to those blogs… they make a sale every few days with just a few visitors per day.
Of course – my big money making sites are very old and have a ton of content. This makes it easier for me to get a lot of traffic because this site ranks very high in Google for hundreds of keywords.
You asked if I knew of some legitimate way to get traffic without it costing a bundle. You get traffic several different ways. Getting ranked high in the search engines for great keyword phrases, inbound anchor text links from out side sources will help with that. Article marketing, tweeting, guest blogging all help get traffic.
Your questions are pretty broad and can’t really be answered in just a few sentences.
I read this one the other day… and I know from experience that it works:
The Amazonian Gals Talk About Traffic