Amazon Associate Program

I'm somewhat new to the Amazon program, but am managing to make a small profit in month 2. Has anyone been with this program for awhile and been able to make consistent $?

 

I've been an Amazon affiliate for a while now. Be sure to take advantage of the Associate forums is my first suggestion.

Amazon is not a good business partner, but there's not much serious competition, at least in books (which is all I do). They long had a 15% commission for (most) new books if your visitor bought direct from your link--that is, did not paddle around on the Amazon site for a while first after going there from your site. They even had their link pages set up to strongly encourage sent visitors to paddle around (like breaking off review comments mid-sentence with a "More" button). But when enough of us went to enough work--and for most, it was a lot of work--to be sure we were selling direct, bingo! the commissions were unilaterally cut in half.

You still get a bit more by selling from direct links, but--at least for me--if I weren't already set up that way, I sure wouldn't bother now.

Amazon's AWS interface to its database is supposedly long since a production product, but it's wankier than most people's betas. And Amazon seems to have Lily Tomlin's telephone-lady attitude down pat: we don't care, we don't have to. They talk nice, but take days to respond to sluggish or down situations.

You can certainly make money through them: some big operators seem to be doing very well. It depends, of course, on your site. Most affiliates are, I think, like me, niche players. I make a few hundred a year from Amazon (including the non-USA divisions, of which only the UK one returns me anything worth mentioning), but am putting more work into the thing than the money justifies (it's a labor of pride, I guess).

If one has a high-traffic site naturally focussed on one or more of the product lines they carry (which are expanding explosively--books seem almost a sideline now), it's a good fit. If you have a moderate- or low-traffic site, it's worth doing, but only on the low-effort end: generic searches and the like.

Incidentally Amazon's book database sucks toxic waste. Based on a nontrivial sample (circa 1200 titles), I reckon that 10% to 15% of their actually available editions (they list a lot of stuff that one can't really buy) are unfindable by any reasonably likely search--grossly mis-spelled titles, or, worse, author names. No one looking for a book by James Blaylock will find it if Amazon has the author's name as Baylock. I found the "hidden" 13% by tedious back-and-forth automated searches from author to title to author to title, picking up variant forms along the way (that part was manual, and unspeakably tedious).

Meanwhile, by providing a simple ABE link through Commission Junction, which is a lot less work--just the title and author--I make as much or more than through Amazon, despite a lower commission on a lower price.

 

Acronym Question! What is an "ABE Link"?

Answer: An ABE Link is "Affiliate Banner Exchange" I think. Just posting this because because I did a google search on it and it took me a few minutes.

Thomas.

 

I think ABE could be ABE Books. http://www.abebooks.com

 

Sorry, yes, ABE is ABE Books. They are a service for bookstores large and small selling used books; they are, I'd guess, the most comprehensive such listing service (that is, very few booksellers list items that are not exclusively or also listed through ABE).

If you sell books on your site, they are a good link for used copies (I use Amazon for new, but never for used). You can look all the details up on the Commission Junction site--I don't have the URL to hand, but it should be easy to find. (CJ handles affiliate tracking and payment for ABE and a zillion other affiliate programs.)

 

Amazon takes some work but it dose pay in the long

 

It's not consistent, I hope one day it gets to a point where it's a lot of money, but as it is, it's few and far between

 

I hope amazon associate. Rather use google adsense.

 

I prefer Amazon Associates over Adsense due to the category of books I'm selling. The potential of my readers clicking on amazon ads is much higher than that of Adsense.

The trick is to have lots of variety and new stuff in a very focused niche.

 

I don't know how anybody makes any money with Amazon with their one day cookie.

 

never heard of somebody making money with it

 

I make around $50 per month, its not that high paid.

 

Really I have a problem with Google ranking - it is not consistent for me - when i have a traffic, earning is stable, but traffic is not consistent for me...