It has been one year since I earned my first commission from Amazon. Let me share what I've learned so far. When I first wrote my "Tips on using Amazon affiliate links effectively for blogs", it was in January 2008. I was shipping 116 items at 7% commission rate. This month I've shipped 327 crossing over to the 7.5% rate. During the time, I've also switched over from Blogger to paid hosting. Here are some statistics. The numbers are items shipped, conversion rate of items ordered, clicks, website visitors, earnings Aug - 327 items - 10.49% (3376 clicks from 22613 visits) - $511 Jul - 262 items - 8.38% (3495 clicks from 23478 visits) - $369 Jun - 188 items - 7.7% (2779 clicks from 19115 visits) - $287 May - 297 items - 8.23% (3996 clicks - 20418 visits) - $476 Apr - 241 items - 7.91% (3238 clicks from 30985 visits) - $425 Mar - 166 items - 7.76% (2589 clicks from 11020 visits) - $242 Feb - 158 items - 7.47% (2435 clicks from 2822 visits) - $244 Jan - 116 items - 6.78% (1918 clicks from 12532 visits from old blog) - $169 Dec 08 - 91 items - 4.5% (2269 clicks from 14231 visits from old blog) - $114 Nov - 31 items - 3.78% (767 clicks from 7479 visits from old blog) - $62 Oct - 36 items - 6.35% (363 clicks from 6936 visits from old blog) - $51 Sep - 3 items - 4.59% (523 clicks from 5650 visits from old blog) - $2 Aug - 6 items - 4.26% (141 clicks from 3870 visits from old blog) - $4 Growth There are ups and downs. It's hard to actually predict sales number. I've no idea why there are only 188 items shipped in Jun 08 after two months over 200+ items. If you want to grow, focus on getting related traffic. By related traffic, I mean people looking for information on items that interest them. Let's say you reach the magic number of 100% conversion rate on your site. After which, your earnings will be totally depended on your traffic. My suggestion is to focus on ways to improve related traffic. There's a limit to conversion rate. There's no limit to visitor count. Conversion rate I attribute the rise of conversion rate to the type of visitors visiting my site. Basically, I know exactly the demographics of these visitors, their age, interests, etc. I hang out at related forums and blogs posting related comments. People with the same interest will reach my site or link to my site eventually. If you know these demographics, your conversion rates will be better. That's because you'll be able to recommend items readers like easily. It's like recommending items to your friends. Paid hosting Now I can put whatever code I want on my website. Paid hosting is inexpensive. Spend some time to come up with a good domain name. Internet Marketing I pretty much suck at Internet marketing. Just look at my traffic count and you can guess. Visitor count is not increasing as much as I hoped. Maybe I should try some contests and giveaways in the future. And work with other blogs. Niche I see a lot of people asking what's the best niche in the forum. The best niche is something that you're knowledgeable about. If people think you're bullshitting them, they'll leave. Probably if you think I'm bullshitting you right now, you'll leave also. Many people neglect the business aspect of affiliate marketing. There are competition in every niche. If you want to have digital camera site, what's going to differentiate you from other sites? What's your strategy of growing? How are you going to manage your earnings and expenses on the website? All these are business questions. Affiliate marketers should think hard about business strategies. Niche is just a product you're selling, and if you're selling the same product as everyone else, you have no niche. E.g. Ikea is not just selling furniture. Starbucks is not just selling coffee. Apple is not just selling computers and iPods. How much do you think coffee is worth if you're just selling coffee? By the way... The best niche is internet search because Google is earning billions from it. But are you going into Internet search? Why? It's because of business factors. But a lot of people are into it, trying just to get a tiny slice of that big pie, and they are doing well (e.g. SEO companies). But you have to ask yourself from a business point of view, how would you sell this product and what product are you really selling? In the end, it's all about executing and how unique your site is, compared to others. Competition Since I've started doing reviews, I've noticed some websites starting to compete with me in the type of books I'm reviewing. It's very clear because they are following the style I'm using. Honestly speaking, they will have a hard time competing. Simply because that's not their main niche. I'm doing book reviews daily, and they are doing book reviews only when related to a topic they just written. But I never underestimate them and always try to see how I can learn from them, be different and better and faster than them. My niche has a barrier to entry. You actually need to have the product before you can review the product. If you're just starting out, it's going to cost and you won't know for a few months if the money you spend is actually paying off in returns. This hesitation prevents people from going into certain niches. Prior to my first $4 Amazon earnings, I've actually spent a few hundreds on books. But I didn't buy those books just for doing reviews in the first place. Whenever there's a cost associated, there will be less competition. Whenever there's a cost associated, there's a knowledge gap because people didn't buy and cross over to owning that knowledge. In my case, it's that knowledge of knowing what the book is really talking about. Authenticity You've probably seen tons of websites just promoting products within them owning the product. You know straightaway, and the impression you get is one of them just wanting money from you. There's no authenticity in these sites at all. Visitors can detect insincerity instantly and leave. Products to recommend If you have already a sizable number of people buying stuff from your website, the tip is to look at what they are buying and if you have anything written for that. Under the Orders Report on the affiliate page, there's a small section called "Items with no orders". You can expand that section to see what visitors are looking at. These are typically related products for your website. I usually write stuff and promote pre-orders based on those items with no orders. On your website, look at what keywords readers are typing. Know where your visitors are coming from You should have analytics program installed. Find out where your visitors are coming from. You can visit related websites and hang out with them. Understand your product Let's say I want to put an Amazon link here in this post. What kind of product should I link here? Not every product works well for Amazon Affiliates. Work with other people in the same niche I met a few friends through my website and they are now providing me books to review. Basically, I have more items to promote. And they earn 100% for any of their books that I review and is sold. I don't mind giving them 100% commission because I get more content. It creates variety, and traffic as a result. Everyone gains. Be helpful If someone is looking to buy a basketball, they will look for reviews. If your review is useful, they will click through that Amazon link. My tip is I never ask my readers to buy but always refer them to more reviews on Amazon. If you're asking your readers to buy, that's not helpful. If you're referring them to more information to help with their purchase, that's helpful. It just happens that the helpful place you're referring them to is Amazon. Use criticism to improve As with reviews, there will be people who have different viewpoints. You can read their opinions and find out what's lacking in your reviews. E.g. Let's say you're reviewing oranges and readers have responded that they like to have skin textures reviewed as well. Then do it. Works for other product attributes you might have missed. It's impossible to cover everything. Recommend items to specific readers Just because you find a product useful doesn't mean other people will find the product useful. Vice versus. Recommend the product to the type of people who will most enjoy it. E.g. Slippers to people who like to tan their feet OR slippers to people who prefer not to wear shoes. Two very different type of people. Conclusion My advice for you is really to focus on the business aspect when you're making decisions. If you want to run your website like a business, then think of the business aspect. You'll be able to compete effectively and differentiate your website from the millions in the same niche as yours. What's my website? It's irrelevant. And you should probably understand why after reading all these.
Allow me to be the first to compliment on a very good job, insights and sharing. You spared no effort on this thread. Thanks !
Looks as if you had a interesting year. I hope you have one better this year and continue to grow. Never stop learning and never stop sharing. Cheers
That was some of the best advice I have ever read. You have certainly found your niche and you are right when you say being knowledgeable about it is a big plus. It makes writing about it a pleasure rather than a chore and it really puts a stamp of sincerity on everything you do. Not everyone has that luxury I'm afraid.
Wow..thanks a lot! It's really helpful and the most complete advise I've read about Amazon Affiliate. It gives me the idea about reviewing handicraft book since I'm really into it Good luck with your next earnings
Parka, yours is a real success story, thanks for sharing. You`ve made some excellent points about how to get quality traffic with a good conversion rate.
Thanks for sharing. Very useful information. Good to see this info from another perspective. thnx, PuReWebDev
The best advise I had ever encountered. Will try to follow your tips and hope to get along well. You had inspired me more being new to this stuff.
A great Article. You don't many good articles about Amazon around because normally many just cry that Amazon pay low. I get around 7% conversions (clicks/sales) So I think Amazon is a good niche if you know what you are doing. I like to know how did you move your Blogspot traffic to your new blog hosted at paid hosting provider.
I see. so did you remove your blogger blog and left only a Banner there or kept both blogs ? I guess you have plenty of return traffic which is great when it comes to Amazon affiliate. Do you get lot of "Other Items Ordered" ? what is the % other item sales from your total ?
I didnt remove the old blog. Google doesn't penalize duplicate content. I don't get a lot of "other items ordered". Mostly people will buy related products in the same niche and not crossover to other niches, eg mp3 songs.
Parka do you ad a Amazon ad unit for every post you make ? Because Google seems not very much fond of Affiliate links. Happened to one of my blogs.
How do you know Google's not fond of Affiliate links? Your Page-Rank is mostly determined by the number of incoming links. I use only the normal iframe (Enhanced Display) and text links. The iframe convert well at 15%. There's one picture link, one iframe, and 5 text links to Amazon (different countries) on every review I write.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66361 This is what I meant.It seems changed again and they have added something at bottom of the page telling there is no problem with unique product reviews, ratings, and product comparisons. How your other amazon accounts apart from Amazon.com converts ?
There's no point in creating the sites mentioned by Google in that link. Visitors will just ignore those pages anyway. From a business point of view, if you don't create value for readers, readers won't come back. Those duplicate pages full of affiliate links are just that. In fact, if you search for products using Google Blog search, you'll see a lot of such blog with just product descriptions from Amazon and then an Affiliate link at the bottom. A very easy way to create value is to ask yourself what problems are the readers trying to solve. Then see if there are any competitors trying to solve the problem with their websites. My other Amazon country accounts together is about 20% of my total earnings. Basically, those numbers are in the first post above is 80%. It depends, of course, on where your readers are situated. My bulk of readers are from US. E.g. If they are from France, you're can help them by providing a Amazon.fr link (in addition to Amazon.com link where they can read more reviews.) I think people usually go to the US site because there are more reviews there, but make purchases locally since shipping is in their favor.