Hi all, Over this past week ive been researching various ways that people have been successful with Amazon's affiliate program. While searching for this on Google, I saw several Adword ads linking to Amazon with various affiliate id's in them. I'm asking if anyone has tried buying ads through adwords for popular products, then using a link to Amazon with an affiliate id in it? Has it worked? thanks!
A couple of people have talked about doing that in threads on this forum already. I think the consensus is that it can be done. Why not? But I can't believe anyone can make any money by doing this. The conversion rate and the profit margins on affiliate type of stuff is normally too low to make a profit. Amazon is a prime example. If a person clicks on a link to a specific book and buys it you get a 15% commission. But if they arrive at Amazon via your link and then decide to browse and buy something else all you get is 5%. How much do you think you can afford to apy for an AdWords ad that will only yield a 1% or 2% conversion rate once the person lands on the Google page? Not very damn much.
That's a good point. I've been playing around with some certain things, i.e. writing product reviews, then linking to a "Buy Now at Amazon" page. I was thinking that if I could have an ad go to, for say http://www.younghistorians.com/ww2/articles/war.html, the conversion rate might be alittle higher, because of their train of clicking: Search for "World War II Reenacting Book" on Google See ad for site listing http://www.younghistorians.com/ww2/articles/war.html Read review, and become convinced BEFORE reaching Amazon Purchase through Amazon affiliate I guess this relates to the "content is king" saying, although it's been proven wrong in regards to SEO.
I've tried this. The conversion rate is horrible. You'd need to be focusing in on expensive high demand products in order to make any profit. There are some of those who succeed but don't get caught up in the hype... because that's all it really is, hype.
You can make money doing this - I do and have consistantly for just under a year. Don't get me wrong, it's not "quit my job" kind of money but a couple extra hundred $'s a month isn't bad. It's a lot of trail and error, there is no secret forumla.
Sad to say, it's been quite a while since the days of 15% commissions from Amazon, even on direct links. It was sort of like those credit cards that used to give 1.5% cashback telling you they've "upgraded" their program to 1.0%. Now Amazon offers "tiered commissions" that, if you're lucky and careful, will let you make half as much as you used to. Amazon is your friend: __True or __ False ? Even so, with targeted pointers to particular books, you can get 25% or 30% conversions on click-ons for that book, but whether that means much depends on your basic site traffic and the interest in this or that book. As someone said, you can make enough for it to be worth while, but don't send away for the yacht catalogues just yet.
Lots of people try these with higher commission affiliate programs. In fact one person went so far as to make a company selling books about affiliate marketing through google and then getting affiliates to sell his book. I imagine you can make a buck or two, but you may very well just throw your money away too.
It all breaks down to CPC/CTR > AvgC. You need the amout of your "Cost Per Click" (CPC) divided by your "Conversion Ratio" (CR) to be greater than your "average commission" (AvgC). You will break even if... CPC/CTR = AvgC So if your CPC is $0.05 (Adwords Minimum) and your CR is 5% (0.05) then you need to make exactly $1.00 to break even. The problem is the "Conversion Ratio" is usually more along the lines of a half of one percent (.5% or 0.05) which means you need your average commision per sale needs to be $10 which is pretty hefty. The best way to up the conversion ratio is to have a very professional looking site. Somebody has used my Amazon.com webservices script to setup a pretty professional store (Much better than my own). Check it out if you desire to. http://www.amarillometro.com/shopping/ See my signature for the link to my scripts.
i tried it and it wasn't worth it. i basically broke even. i was doing it with ipods which will make you like $8 a sale
Looking at my Associate reports, I see 5% commissions on 48 of my last 49 sales. The other commission was 5.1%. I place topic-relevant ads on individual pages. For example, I have ads for books about snipers on my web page about snipers. My conversion rate is 1.37%. Overall, my Amazon revenue is approximately 2% of my AdSense revenue. And, of course, I have put considerably more effort into Amazon, because I have been selecting books individually. (I'm picky.)
I managed to break even for 3 mths using allposters.com focusing on vintage posters - no where near enough to justify the time I spent researching keywords.
I think ill just stick to Adsense. However, has anyone done well with placing affiliate links on reviews they wrote about the product?
Adsense is definitely the safe bet but I have one particular Amazon affiliate that sells the hell out of a $100 book on one page. It can work, but it definitely needs to be a targeted endeavor.
i have done it for 2 quarters now and am up about 800 bucks. Not great money but decent. The key is to find a product that keeps selling for you and ride that product for a while. Each quarter I have found 1 product and made half my money on them. I only pay .05 click too. Like everyone says, its trial and error.
Something else to think about is that AdWords tends to charge more than any of its competitors. Therefore, this business model may have more success if you use an AdWords competitor instead of AdWords itself.
Wow, here we are a year later I'm still at this and am clearing almost 3 times a month what I was at this same time last year from Amazon. Same principle still applies - trial and error. There's no secret formula.
Hi Guy; I was curious how long your successful campaigns last on average? Are they short-lived or do they tend to go on indefinitely? If the latter, then it would seem to be worth all the trial and error.