I gave up on aStore a looooong time ago. If you have ANY coding knowledge, or can whip something simple up using, say, Mr. Rat's Amazon Product Feed and Dean Marshall's APF Joomla Bridge then you are better off than with aStore. It's just so limited. 1) the size is fixed, and it's just about impossible to fit it in with an existing site, especially a 3 column design 2) it's displayed in an iFrame so is not indexed by Google, at least not as part of your site. Using a more advanced Amazon-based app you can host all the content yourself and gradually build up a SERPs presence. Astore I guess would only work for content-rich sites that already have a lot of targeted visitors...
You can make some little money from an astore, but you sure as hell won't be able to brag about it. The aStore format itself is too bland and basic and not much you can do to improve what it is. You can only do some SEO work to it also, but not much of anything at all. Granted if you're able to drive people to your store you may be able to pull some sales a week. I was doing that with a sub-niche for a little while but then it just got too tedious for a couple dollars a week. Pretty much a waste of time.
~ 2 weeks and 10 stores. now, I get $20/day from aStore commission ($5) + adsense ($15) I use adsense + aStore. it's work! How to do? 1. Find the niche market (Low search results < 50,000 but there are more search) and Play only high CPC keywords (if you want money from adsense) then make the aStore with that keyword. example: if niche keyword is "cheap xbox 360" I will make store as "cheap-xbox-360-20","cheap.xbox.360-20" Tool to find niche keywords: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal 2. Use basic SEO, put target keywords in aStore title 3. Use aStore+adsense tool 4. Find backlinks, this step is very important because (more traffic = more money) and ( Good store but no promote = no money ) 5. Page was indexed by SE, now you have a small money maker. Leave it like that or create new store Don't trust me!! you have to prove it by yourself. Just do it, every step is FREE!! nothing to lose