Tips on using Amazon affiliate links effectively for blogs

Great tips.Thank you.

 

Just found out that the relevant image ad I put have been getting plenty of clicks but no sales.
Maybe I should swap it out with a Google image ad and see how it fares.

 

Thanks for share

 

Really nice tips. Thank for sharing

 

Great tips. From my experience, I get the most click throughs using the Carousel Widget over any of the others, at least for my niche. The Omkase widget never seemed to convert.

 

Update #1

Here's for one of my tips, specifically Have Amazon Associates account from different countries.

I've just recently set up an associates account with the Amazon Japan. Sales are better that I expected. There have been 20 orders since I started on April 1, so that's only 14 days.

According to the daily trend statistics, I have more clicks to Amazon Japan than for my other non-US accounts. That is amazing and frankly unbelievable. I do reviews some Jap items and Jap versions of English items.

Looking at my Google Analytics, so far there have only been 105 visitors from Japan. This probably means that non-Japanese readers are buying stuff from Amazon Japan. I attribute this to my regular blog readers.

So if you haven't set up accounts for other countries, do so now. It doesn't cost anything. But remember, your links should help your readers if not they will irritate them. Always help your readers by giving them useful information.

Update #2

So far no sales for the Amazon ad block that replaced my Adsense although I have been getting decent (in my opinion) number of hits.

There's a sale for the item I advertised though, not directly linked to that Amazon ad tracking ID. Don't know if I can attribute to that ad block or not. It's an electronic that earns me US$10++ so it has already covered me for not using Adsense.

 

do you have to know a bit of japanese language?

 

Actually, no.

All Amazon webpages are roughly the same layout. On some pages there's the English translation button to translate the product page. As for customers, the checkout process is in English so it's not that difficult to buy from Amazon Japan.

I actually went through the checkout process and bought something myself just to try.

Important thing to note here is you have to know if your customers are into Japanese products. If not it might be wasted effort just to create additional Japanese links everytime.

 

Thanks alot ... Cool Tips

 

Quality info,Thank for chairing!

 

Parka, It took me 3-4 hrs to read all ur posts. Great tips and very useful info.
Only one question: I saw there are lots of pics of these books in ur blog. How can u get them? Don't you buy all these book ? How can i do these with free method? I also want to give my readers useful info.
Thank u.

 

I started out with only a handful of books. The titles gradually grew when I borrow more books from my friends and the library. Whatever amount of commission I earn, I spend it back on the books.

Start small, grow fast. That's how all small businesses do it, not just online businesses.

In my case, it's not as fast as I wish it was. But still at least it's growing and it's fun.

---

If you're going by the free method, sourcing out free materials to review is of secondary concern. On the internet, plenty of stuff is free, you just have to package them into useful content. Examples are those websites that always collect information and write stuff like "10 useful things to ..." or "10 places to find cheap ..."

The primary concern is how you can do it differently from other people? Let's say you're into niche A and you have lots of free stuff. What happens if I decide to compete with you in niche A? What happens if a hundred people decides to compete with you? For that reason, I will never review computer games. There's just too much competition out there. But reviewing computer game guides is a totally different story.

Whether you will do well will depend on your knowledge in your skill area and your passion. The first can be acquired over time, the latter really depends on individual. For example, I can learn all the techniques for golf but if I don't like golf, I'll quit eventually.

It will help if you think from your readers' perspective. It's incredibly hard if you're not the reader yourself. For my blog, I happen to be the reader and buyer personally. I know what I look for when buying stuff, and maybe people like me are looking for the same things — that explains the pictures part.

 

this is really usefull.
thanks for the great advises.

 

Question

I started this thread on 6 January 2009. So has anyone actually used the tips and profited from them?

 

Thanks You for sharing! ,It's Good

 

Thanks for ur reply. I think I can't get those book from others or shops like you .Your tips are very good,but maybe not much people can do this,So u have not received lots of 1 dollar in ur paypal

 

Now looking back, the tips are actually pretty general and can apply to a wide variety of products.

I'm speaking of physical products. If it's digital products like information, competition will be tough because there's low cost of entry to market. Physical products need to be bought or obtained in some way.

--- Updates for May first week ---

I'm projecting this month for commissions to go above US$500 (fingers cross) and items shipped to go into the 7.5% region (fingers cross again).

Going by the total amount earn for all country accounts, I've crossed US$500 in April. 25% of earnings are outside of USA.

Looking back, I started with US$50 in Oct 2008. It has been 7 months. Growth is around 20-40% per month.

 

Great tips. Thanks for sharing

 

Thanks.

-- Update for May --

Unfortunately, I didn't make it over US$500 in May. But now I'm having $400++ months. I guess the hard work now is to get more readers.

 

I've a few people sending me private messages asking for my blog URL.

Let's just say that if you do a search on "book reviews" on google.com or delicious.com, most of the websites dealing with books are perfect candidates for using the tips I've listed out here. They fulfill the basic principle of helping people, putting amazon links is just the next obvious step.