Hi all, I've just joined Amazon as an affiliate (through .co.uk) and have a few questions that the online resource for affiliates doesn't seem to answer. 1) does it matter through which Amazon I become an affiliate? I mean, amazon.co.uk makes it possible for me to get my money directly onto my bank account, saving money on caching checks (which is why I finally joined in). But if someone in the US clicks a link on one of my pages and buys a book - I still get payed right? 2) I saw people here saying they have multiple amazon accounts (.de .co.uk). Is that necessary? (sort of related to no. 1) 3) For my site it will likely work best if I manually pick out products. Which would be better: text-links or product-links (the latter have pictures)? 4) What would be reasons to start an 'a-store'?
This answers Question 1 & 2 only: You are now as Associate of Amazon UK only and can only display Amazon UK products on your website. You will get the referral for any purchase from anywhere around the world made through your associate links from Amazon UK. You will not be able to display product or earn referral fees from Amazon US, DE, FR, CA or JP because you are not an associate of each of them (yet).
Thanks. This means I guess that if I want my visitors to see prices in American Dollars, I need to become an affiliate of Amazon.com (US)?
dinodino, does it mean I should open account on each of Amazons to be able to earn all referral fees?
The way I understand what dinodino says is that people from all over the world can buy at amazon.co.uk, but they will see prices in pounds, not dollars. You get payed (or I get payed) for each of those sales, wherever they are made and in whatever currency they are made. Vice Versa, if you only sign up with amazon.com (which is Amazon US), your visitors from all over the world can buy books- you will get referral-fees, but they will see the prices in dollars. Which is good: since I can not show my visitors geo-targeted amazon-ads, I'd prefer the ads to show prices in US-dollars as that is still the currency people are most familiar with, after their own. I feel a bit stupid for having visitors from all over the world land on a UK-page, because they will not know how much the prices are in their own currency. On the other hand, it could be worse: the prices look deceptively low.
Amazon delivers internationally, it is the freight charges and local taxes that kills you, and your shoppers. So if you are in UK, my suggestion is to get yourself a co.uk domian, join up as a UK associate and target your site for the UK shoppers, you probably understand the market (taste, occasions, celebrations, etc..) better too. Better still is to have both a US and a regional account, one site each (cross-linked to each other) or have both products displayed on your pages for shoppers to choose where to buy from. Germans (DE) speak German, French (FR) speak French and sites in English do not get much attention from them, that's my experience. Canadians (CA) *probably* prefers to shop from US (do not quote me on this, I could be wrong). CA has a big collection of books in French while for the US, Spanish language books. Products from each of these locales (plus UK) will be shown in the local currency. An additional note: watch out for ISBN numbers when you post books on your sites, those printed outside of the US normally carry a different ISBN from those printed in the US. I have an account each with Amazon US, UK, CA, DE and FR.
Yea, i understand that if you are going to make a website that is solely made for selling amazon-stuff, you would be best off targeting a region. In my niche though that is pretty useless (other than language targeting, I mean), IMO, and it also would not work for monetizing my current website. My website has an international readership base and I was hoping to use Amazon to sell books to them. I'd prefer the US-version of Amazon, but as far as I know they don't yet forward cash to my Dutch bank account and with the kind of money I think I'm likely to make (not much) off amazon, the cost of cashing a check just makes it less appealing. Oh well, I guess I'll just try and see how it goes. Not much to loose after all. Thanks Dinodino, you cleared up my most important questions. So - anyone have any idea on my other two questions?
Yes, by all means, go for Amazon US. Can I suggest firstly to have your web pages Product Preview enabled. It is done by adding a small script a the footer of the page (as if you don't already know this). This will create a pop up window showing the products when a visitor hovers his mouse over the text link. Text links are easily integrated into the rest of your text, it can be part of a paragraph, and as curiosity always kills the cat, visitors are bound to react to links embedded in the text of your presentation more than any other method. Graphics are nice to induce impulse buyers, give your page a bit of color and if located properly can be a help to your overall page presentation. My suggestion is for you to try both initially and later on trim it down to the one that is giving you better return. Currently I am using a bookmark on my browser to pick up my associate text links off Amazon.com and I find this very convenient and easy to use. This is how it works - I visit the product page that you want, then I will go to my bookmarks and click on what I called the 'Amazon Pick'. This pick will return you the create link page on Amazon Associate where I just copy the link provided, complete with tracking code and all. I'm sure you would like to invite your visitors to visit your aStore for more of the products that you have mentioned or linked to in your text. Niche aStores, I believe, are mush easier to browse than Amazon itself, provides you with additional tracking codes (if you have more than one aStore) and you have as many as a hundred of it. Why not an aStore for each website you are managing? My bank charges me the equivalent of about US$4 (Four dollars) for every Amazon, Adsence or CJ check that I deposit through them. At more than a hundred dollars per Amazon check I am Ok with the system (CJ checks are a bit of a pinch, though, cause the payout level is $25). Probably I have not mentioned this before, but I am operating from Malaysia.
Great tips, thanks. I'll have to bookmark this page. I am really a newby to amazon (not to webdesign), so I did not know that you could get 'product preview enabled'. I would look into that. I will look at your astore-lense to see why I should be using that and whether that would work for me. As for Amazon-US, experience with another affiliate cautions me: I don't think I'll be making 100 dollars a month through this any time soon. So getting my dough in checks is really not a good idea. It might be different if I were in Malaysia. I mean, it's also based on other ways that I make money. If amazon were my best bet at making money, I would probably be willing to take the risk.
On the a-store thing - I don't think I will be doing that. The duplicate content thing scares me off.
I was referring to the minimum cumulative fees of $100 before Amazon sends the check out, so the check will always be a minimum amount of $100 (minus the $8 service fees by Amazon), no matter how long it takes to accumulate it. From where I am, Direct-Deposit is still an impossibility. This is one aStore I built as a terminating point to some of my other activities on the net. In terms of dup-content, I tend to agree with you that it might stand well on it's own existence. Well, enough said now, do keep us informed of your developments.
Well for now the amazon pictures seem to greatly increase adsense click-throughs on one of my more popular pages .