col, can we have your site URL plz? i have used amazon for sometimes but later decided to remove it as it din convert.
Remember, build traffic first -- before you worry about how much you make with Amazon or any other affiliate program. You can't evaluate performance of an affiliate program until some volume of traffic is coming in.
I started with Amazon in January 2003. Here is what I earned: Jan-03 - $37.87 Feb-03 - $133.52 Mar-03 - $921.52 Apr-03 - $1334.33 May-03 - $2982.62 Jun-03 - $3577.31 Jul-03 - $2307.93 Aug-03 - $6307.92 Sep-03 - $6996.82 Oct-03 - $1890.92 Nov-03 - $1697.90 Dec-03 - $2715.81 2003 total - $30904.47 Jan-04 - $1835.90 Feb-04 - $2003.27 Mar-04 - $2726.52 Apr-04 - $2527.61 May-04 - $3510.83 Jun-04 - $10667.09 Jul-04 - $3357.68 Aug-04 - $4311.12 Sep-04 - $2885.93 Oct-04 - $3172.07 Nov-04 - $3760.18 Dec-04 - $9527.55 2004 total - $50285.75 Jan-05 - $5349.29 Feb-05 - $2619.12 Mar-05 - $3254.11 Apr-05 - $2044.58 May-05 - $2329.79 Jun-05 - $1641.13 Jul-05 - $2161.21 Aug-05 - $2058.34 Sep-05 - $2945.14 Oct-05 - $2367.99 Nov-05 - $2239.34 Dec-05 - $6131.56 2005 total - $35044.60 Jan-06 - $1577.25 Feb-06 - $1647.42 Mar-06 - $2457.96 Apr-06 - $977.51 May-06 - $1746.90 Jun-06 - $1105.42 Jul-06 - $820.28 Aug-06 - $1149.59 Sep-06 - $1013.57 Oct-06 - $1717.05 Nov-06 - $2360.35 Dec-06 - Approx $5000.00 2006 total - around $21500.00 I run a deal site. Some of the spikes in earnings are the result of being mentioned on TechTV, being linked to by a popular newsletter, the referrel bonuses that were offered for a couple quarters, and newspaper articles. The December number is approximate because I no longer have access to associates central to look at my stats. As you can see over the last year my earnings have dropped off on Amazon. This is because at the end of 2005 I realized that I was earning nearly half my income off of Amazon alone. I started promoting other affiliate programs more and Amazon less. On December 15 I received this: Dear unvaluable affiliate, At the end of the year Amazon.com will be changing the pay structure that it has in place with you today to one in which we pay you referral fees only on items that we send to you (and result in a sale on our website) on a regular basis. To incorporate these new payment changes, we have attached an amendment to the existing Associates Operating agreement that you have in place with Amazon.com today. To migrate to the new pay structure, please print out, sign, and fax the amended agreement [fax #: (206) 266-1352] by close of business on Thursday, December 28. Alternatively, if you prefer to not continue as an Amazon Associate, there is no action required on your part because our existing agreement will be terminated as of Friday, December 29. Please note that if you choose to discontinue with the Associates program, you will still be paid standard referral fees up through December 31 of 2006. Amazon.com values our business relationship and we certainly hope that you choose to continue as a member of the Amazon Associates program. We recognize that transitioning to a new business model may have its challenges, which is why we are open to your feedback on this new payment structure moving forward. Thank you for your time, Amazon.com Associates team So I called up the Associates team to clarify some questions I had prior to signing this agreement but was told they would not talk to me about it over the phone and I should reply to the email that I received with my questions. So I sent off an email and never heard from them again. I sent in the agreement but have not posted any more Amazon links. I spent over 7 hours one evening trying to wipe my site clean of the mention of Amazon.com. Just as soon as I get the $10,000.00 they owe me I'll decide what if any future I have with Amazon again. I talk to the affiliate managers at Buy.com, Overstock.com and a dozen other programs on a weekly basis because they value the relationship with my site. I create less revenue for all those programs than I did for Amazon but Amazon never called to discuss their program with me. I did get a call from someone at Amazon at the end of 2004 wanting to do an affiliate spotlight story on my site but when I said I would rather not promote my site to other affiliates and have them copy what I was doing the guy hung up on me. Amazon has some of the poorest communications to its affiliates of any program I have ever worked with (around 140). So you can make some money with Amazon but don't make to much or they will send you packing. Cheers, BloggingAffiliate
Sorry, could you put that whole thing in layman's terms! What was their problem? You were selling too much?! (not that I'm in any danger of that just yet )
Amazon is changing the commissions for coupon sites (I believe only coupon sites are affected). Because coupon sites focus only on the outrageous deals that Amazon was already losing money on Amazon was losing alot of money paying affiliates 8.5% for these sales. I don't exactly agree was this decision but I can understand why they did this.
My site is a deal site. They are doing it to Deal sites and Coupons sites for now as a good percentage of their larger affiliates are in this category. They will eventually get around to other segments as well. The way I look at it is that I should be able to promote any item on their site and they should be able to make a profit off the sale. If they can't then they have problems on their end. They are aware of their costs associated with selling items including associate commissions. Over 50% of the items that people were buying from my links were not even the item I was promoting. I was selling tons of stuff in the tools, kitchen & bath and sporting goods categories. As for the comment above about focusing on outrageous deals I disagree. They did the first round of these changes for the 4th quarter and nabbed sites like Slickdeals, Fatwallet, Techbargains and Spoofee. At the time I thought well good for them as those sites do on a regular basis list what I consider to be price mistakes and coupon codes that are not meant for the affiliate channel and cause a problem with customer experience when Amazon would cancel orders and such. These sites all have forums and I understand it is difficult for the site operators to moderate all the activity going on (fatwallet probably moderate their boards the best). I have no user forum and don't even allow comments on my site and made sure I didn't post what I though were price mistakes or codes that couldn't already be found on their own product pages. So when I got the email from them mid December I realized it doesn't matter if you play by the rules and follow their agreement they just don't want you to get to the top tiers. It's all good though as I have committed more space to several Amazon competitors and they have given me a higher payout and in the end I will still make a living at this and Amazon will just not get the sales from my site visitors. BloggingAffiliate
Yeah, cheers. I think it is a problem companies get themselves into sometimes. They promote a "loss-leader" (a product which does not make them profit, even makes a loss, but helps promote the company as a whole), but the loss-leader gets too popular! The famous case in the UK was Hoover, who offered a flight to America with every Hoover vacuum cleaner you bought. They sold a LOT of vacuum cleaners, but lost a fortune! Sometimes they just judge it wrong...
I disagree that they will do this to other segments. If they did that it would permanently kill their affiliate program. You have to admit that coupon sites would promote a deal that Amazon might lose 25% already and to pay 8.5% on the affiliate sales too would really cost alot of money. Your figure of 50% sounded right to me but that still means that you were selling 50% of the coupon type that Amazon was losing money already. I get almost no commissions on coupon type sales. Amazon makes at least 6.5% on 99.99% of my sales.
Exactly, but for some reason we have some dumb webmasters replying to these threads. Who cares if someone makes $6,000 or $25, we want to know how much you make in relation to your traffic! Get it now?!
Well I assume I'm a dumb webmaster since I answered the question the original OP asked. Why don't you start your own thread asking what folks make in relation to their traffic and ignore this one then and you can revel in your intelligence. By the way my traffic averages around 3000-6000 impressions per day. But that doesn't tell the whole story as lots of people never actually visit my site as they pick up my posts via RSS. BloggingAffiliate
$11,095.18 since I joined, but then BigG dup-content penalty came along. I am just waiting for my domains to expire and take the sites down with them.