I started promoting the products at Amazon a few months ago and now have seen great results - well not that much great, just $100 a month. Hopefully I can hit the $500 mark soon cause' I'm going to build more niche sites. These two are what I built yesterday, before yesterday all I did was posting articles and reviews on my webmaster blog. So I wrote a review of the Amazon associate program, I would love to know what your ideas regarding how you are doing with Amazon affiliate program and what you like about them. BTW, 4.66% conversion rate is not high, is it?
I love the Amazon affiliate program and it makes up over 1/2 of my online income at the moment, from Amazon US and Amazon UK mainly. The main problem I see with your sites initially is the lack of original content. The same product content is used on Amazon as it is on your sites (as well as on other sites). Google will pick one of the sites as the "original author" for that content, and penalise the rest. You would do very well to beat Amazon in this case. A better methodology is to write your own content - a review or guide to the product. Your review is interesting and the negatives are mostly accurate. I don't think the comissions are low (especially in US) and it depends on the products you are promoting.
I agree - you absolutely, positively need to write your own content. It's what Google loves, and you don't want your sites to get lost in the next update. And I love Amazon - people complain that the commissions are low but Amazon converts WAY better than any other online retailer I've played around with, and its commissions are actually higher than much of the competition. Amazon can also be trusted - I get a lot of my revenue from stuff I don't even promote.
Like some one suggest above, creating you very own content is the key to standing out and making it to the front page. Most people here like Amazon for their programme and it pays well if done correctly.
Depends on the type of site, some people see 15% or more, but in general it's a really good conversions rate, the out of the box autoblog or shopping script site would be more like 0,xx-1%, so it's fine.
I'm doing well with collateral sales with Amazon. Conversion rate for linked items is sub 2%, but that does not tell the whole story. I happen link to a narrow niche of relatively inexpensive products, but people often buy many other things to pad their order for free shipping or because they figure "since I'm here, I might as well..." That's something many other affiliate programs can't match.