Is the Amazon affiliate program worth it?

Echoing the experience of others above, I've seen a significant drop in income from Amazon in the last 2-3 years, and it was never very much for me to begin with. As Lynn Terry says, it may depend on the type of site and demographics of your visitors, but lately I'm lucky if I get a retunr of even $20 a month now. It used to be the featured affiliate for one of my sites - I've now downgraded it to footer ads on most pages and will probably dump it altogether in the near future. I suspect I'd make more from an additional AdSense banner in the space it now occupies.

The fact that it was better previously also reflects my growing dissatisfaction with their inventory for personal purchases. It used to be I could get pretty much any book I wanted within a week and usually found they shipped within 24 hours - more recently, it's more like 2 to 6 weeks. Whatever it was that happened to Chapters/Indigo a few years back seems also to have befallen Amazon - and that was the reason I started using Amazon in the first place (because Chapters/Indigo sucked).

I think my experience may well be the key to why the affiliate income has fallen off - and it corresponds with the other trend I see in the Amazon reports: more returns and order cancellations. I think it's an Amazon corporate problem more than anything else.

 

Lynn - good read. Thanks.

 

It's extra income for us... we have a site that is just over $600.00 for the month. I still think it could be more... so I may go try another program.

 

You're welcome

I find it interesting to read everyone's thoughts & experiences on this topic. Personally, my Amazon income is on the rise. Of course, I dont promote books (or rarely) - it is mostly physical products. Some of which are high end electronics, etc.

 

Amazon was doing very well during early to mid December, now it's slowing down again. One of the good things about Amazon is their huge inventory. This month most of my sales came from users who enter Amazon through my affiliate link, mostly they don't even buy the product I linked to but they shop around a bit and buy one or multiple other things (for Christmas I guess).

I don't earn much with Amazon (maybe $700 this quarter) but it's a nice additional income stream.

 

With my FREEBS Amazon Book Store we have been running with a consistant 11% conversion rate. It's easy income that requires no effort.

I'll keep it!

 

No, but what the hell, it's just a little snippet of code (search box or product link), and doesn't cost you anything to have it on your site, so why not? It's good for an average of $100/quarter.

 

If your site can make $100 a quarter from Amazon, you could likely make $100 - $300 a month using that same website "real estate" from another affiliate program...

 

That was my thought at first as well: "not costing me anything, why not?" As Minstrel points out, however, it does cost you in that you're losing viewers/clickers that could be more profitable were they clicking on something better.

 

See noppid's FREEBS thread under Tools.

It's an Amazon bookstore system (MySQL based I think). I got sidetracked when I started to look at that a couple of months back and never got back to finish it (server changes among other things), but some users are reporting good results with it. I'll get back to exploring it myself I think in the new year.

 

It's a miniscule amount of real estate, and wouldn't make any more than what it's already bringing in. I've just about maximized the rest of the real estate to better affect.

 

Lol I read this thread trying to decide about Amazon or not. Now I'm more undecided than ever!

 

Crazy as it reads I have the Amazon search help me generate dynmic content on a page where Adsense also resides, and if no Adsense ad appears I have a cj ad for backup on a few domains I have. If I sell a book or DVD great..if not maybe it promotes and AS click and finally if an AS ad is not served then a CJ ad is displayed. For my sites I simply need traffic

 

Hi

I am quite interested in the way this works but it's all a bit new to me. At present I have just put a few individual books onto a couple of my sites.

Could you give me a page on your website as an example of what you're talking about above?

Many thanks, Gay C

 

I am having ok sales from amazon sales, about $400 per month, but that is after spending some serious money on custom programming and having the site up for a while until the revenue started to increase.

 

You're about 4 months late there bub.

 

i am just putting links to books on web page,
really not sure what tools can help boost the revenue ?
epc is close to zero

 

Looks like I may hit $500 or so this month, and it's increasing. I do a lot of text links for specific products, which is time consuming, but it appears to be paying off. I'd be doing really well if I could increase traffic more. I just hope they don't continue to cut commissions.

 

Personally, I have not had much luck with it....I can assume it would depend your user base and products your selling.

 

off topic, but can i know how amazon ads look alike ?? size ?? do they implement javascript, content-based target advertising ??