I setup associate-o-matic on a huge network of sites that I have. So far, I've gotten decent traffic but no sales yet. Can anyone comment whether they use associate-o-matic as a big "money site" or is it primarily just used for extra pages on a blog/site?
I would avoid AOM full stop. Primarily, it will get your domains penalised by Google meaning they are just wasted. Secondly, anyone visiting those sites are less likely to buy than if they visited a nice blog or store. Ask yourself, would you buy from an AOM store?
I checked out AOM, but it honestly looked like crap. I went with ShopperPress ($50 with coupon) and its been a pretty sweet ride thus far. My store looks like a real store, and if you change the titles of the product posts (easy) you don't need to fear being thrown into the supplemental index. I don't worry too much about product descriptions because in most of my niches everyone (and I mean everyone) uses the same damn description. As for sales with Amazon? I've actually seen better results with my HubPages product than anything else when it comes to AMZ. I am confident that once I can get my sites ranking on page 1 I will start seeing sales with my stores. It's all about traffic. The more targeted traffic you can send the more opportunity to make a sale. I only have one store set up with AMZ products and the other two feature products from a ShareASale merchant (I think I am going to love the 17% commissions at Xmas!)
Never heard that one before. With a claim like that, can you provide some proof? AOM is used by A LOT of marketers so I'd like to hear how you concluded Google will "penalize" your domains? Are you referring to being sandboxed? de-indexed? banned?
Google has many different filters, and one of them is the "Thin Affiliate" filter. This is basically where your site promotes an affiliate (e.g. adsense, amazon, cj, clickbank etc.) without providing any other value (see this article i wrote for more on exactly what, how, why etc. http://tiny.cc/b8088). AOM is a classic "Thin Affiliate" site - it duplicates a small part of Amazon for your site with the same content that everyone else is using. If AOM worked, Google would look stupid. I personally experimented with AOM and other similar sites and my domains received a -50 penalty (every search term was deducted -50 places). I submitted reconsideration requests after changing the site, but nothing - the domain was ruined from an SEO perspective. Google won't ban you or fully de-index you for this, and I personally don't think the sandbox exists anymore. What they want to do is keep you busy - a -50 penalty will make most people think that they just need more backlinks etc. and it stops them trying to come up with new ways to cheat Google. This is why you never get answers to reconsideration requests from Google. Here is a great example - http://store.math.com/ - try searching for any product on the front page and it won't come up in the listings, despite it being a $x,xxx,xxx domain and the subdomain being a PR6. Also, do a site:store.math.com and for me now the top listing is a sex book, which says it all. This also highlights how AOM can be useful - the traffic obviously comes from the main domain and they will make sales that way. But I don't think they are making the most of it, and other scripts would convert the traffic better and get organic traffic on their own.
Well, this still really doesn't answers the question if anybody is making any money with these kind of sites. My AOM is not generating anything and I tried to setup some stores with ShoppperPress, but conversion rate is real low. It can be that's because of the design, but I am getting more and more suspicious that Amazon is not converting very good... Is there anybody with a decent successtory? @freshdevelopment: you sell a front for Amazon - how is your product better than the other ones?
I started with my script about three years ago, learnt a couple of lessons and now make big money from my stores. I decided to take it a step further this year and open it up, to build a community, a reputation for myself etc. Basically Fresh Store Builder is built to work, because I built it for myself and developed it so it does work better than any other solution. I won't say anymore here because its not a forum to be advertising products, just drop me a message if you want more details.
@freshdevelopment so do you have to buy a licence for each site or just one as i am looking at starting another amazon store up again.Thanks
AOM is not the best choice for an amazon script. In the past I have had some success with them but now its not easy. The aom script everything is locked that you cant do much custom work to it and seo wise its horrible. I hear reviewazon is great for wordpress but if you rather have a different full site script. Invest your money into the new freshstorebuilder script. I have been using it for a while now and its so easy to work with. Adding items and new pages very simple and also you can add custom meta for every single page and product and link. Plus its a new script so if you get in early and customize your site with good content you could be doing well in few weeks.. Main thing is uniqe content on all pages and bunch of articles to add weekly or bi weekly to your sites and other article directories.
AOM is a domain killer! It trashed my high PR domain in a matter of weeks. I agree with 100% of what @freshdevelopment said. I also ended up creating my own product because AOM simply DOES NOT WORK! @freshdevelopment, I applaud what you have done. It's what BANS should have been. Amazing design. I build blogs and went a completely different route. I finally have a plugin that I am using to undo the damage AOM caused because it duplicates content, title, etc. Live, learn... and then do it right! I finally have blogs with Amazon catalogs paying good money. I have not cracked $1k a month on a single blog yet, but I'm close. I NEVER earned more than $10 a month from an AOM site.
You get 3 sites for the initial price, then $29 for each additional site. Contact me via the site for more details (its not appropriate to discuss in this thread/forum)
Thank you buddy, I really appreciate the feedback We have worked really hard on making it easy to use, nice to look at and most importantly - profitable.
If AOM is not recommended by most of you, then what would be the better script? Do let me know, as I am interested in starting an Amazon store.
@freshdevelopment i check out your amazon website, its really nice looking compare to my AOM's site can you tell me few things? - is it converting high? - how bout the duplicate content issues? - i am 'lazy' that's why i chose AOM in the first place, because it's automatic, i have few hundreds websites, and its not cool if you have to update it one by one, product by product, so how automatic is your script compare to AOM? - looking at your 'not-cheap-price-compare-to-AOM-subscription' do you give money back guarantee for unsatisfied customer? if you are not comfortable sharing the answer here, you can send me a pm