Like a lot of people I've used Amazon for years for buying bits and pieces, mostly books. It is said that, with any form of selling, you have to like the products. Remembering this fact, it didn't therefore take me long to sign on as an affiliate when I started my blogs twelve months back.
Unfortunately everything that 'is said' isn't necessarily true. I haven't been over successful with making money with Amazon. In fact it's mostly been a waste of time to date.
As an example for this month (29 days) I have had 1760 clicks to the Amazon website. Now that sounds good - it's around 60 clicks per day. But that's the best bit! All of these clicks have only amounted to two sales and commission of £1.29 (about $3.55).
As I'm sure we all appreciate there are lots of positive things to say about being an Amazon affiliate but first the negative and, I suppose, the reality - at least as far as my experience goes.Cons
1. The commission isn't too hot at only 5%.
2. A lot of the products are low priced (i.e. books, CD's and DVD's) and therefore the commission doesn't amount to much when you get a sale for such items. Yes, there are more expensive items but my own sales have only been books, CD's and maps - not sure why maps.
3. I'm an affiliate for the UK Amazon, but a lot of my visitors come from other countries and are therefore unlikely to actually buy from the UK website, where prices are shown in UK currency.
Trying now to be positive, Amazon is generally improving their selling aids and these make up a lot of their good points.
Pros
1. A reliable, established company.
2. Low payout figure (just £10 in UK - about $20)
3. Lots of promotional tools which include:
(a) Have your own aStore - or several if you wish.
(b) Slideshows, as above.
(c) Product clouds.
(d) Favourite and Wish lists.
(e) Context links - I use these on my celebrity blog.
(f) Banners and search boxes.
(g) Product links .... and so on and so on.
To Sum Up
To be successful with Amazon I feel that you need good traffic from the same country as per the Amazon website which you are promoting.
I'm trying out a new blog I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here which is aimed at UK residents. It's about the reality show, of the same name, which starts on November 12th. It'll only be a short run blog as the series doesn't last very long but it's more of a trial or experiment to see if I can make some money from UK products. I've got Amazon context ads on the blog.
I just wish I could say that the Amazon affiliate programme is fantastic but, based on my own experience I can't. Perhaps I haven't been promoting it properly. It might be solely my fault but I keep on thinking that 5% commission is pretty poor no matter how you look at it.
Mike's Rating: 2/5
It's always good and I suppose easy to write about money making programs where we have been successful. It's just as important though to show that not everything that glitters is gold. Hopefully you will have been much more successful with Amazon than I have.
Good luck,
Mike.
