Until recently, I’d almost given up on being an Amazon affiliate. It wasn’t necessarily hard to get people to click on links but they rarely seemed to buy what I was offering them.
However, times have changed. I can’t think of any of my family, friends or acquaintances that isn’t aware of the Amazon brand and hasn’t bought at least one item from them.
What I’m discovering more with Amazon is that, while the basic rules of affiliate success remain the same — including traffic, deep-linking, compelling and relevant enticement — Amazon is one of the few big names that rewards you even if your visitors’ first clicks don’t make a sale.
Granted, you only get 24 hours from a visitor landing at Amazon from your site in order to earn commission from items placed in their basket, but there’s also a 90 day window of opportunity if users add something to the basket on day one but don’t purchase it immediately.
I used to think that Amazon had less earning potential than pay-per-click advertising such as AdSense or Chitika, because someone not only has to click but also purchase before you earn any money.
Thing is, I’m finding that if I can get people to visit Amazon, I have a good chance of earning commission on everything they decide to buy, even if it’s not something I initially recommended.
Looking a what people order, a number of items are either the exact product I recommended, or something closely related. The other items are seemingly random.
So, with decent traffic and a positive push towards Amazon from a wide variety of your blog posts, you do have the potential to earn, letting Amazon do its usual great job of drawing people further into its site and towards the “Add to Basket” button.
I know some other affiliate programs also offer this kind of deal. It’s worth looking into. If you’re transparent about your links and recommend stuff that you own, or would buy yourself, then regardless of whether your visitors buy those items when they go to a merchant site, they’ll hopefully remember your site as a useful source for genuine product recommendations.
Income from Amazon is still far more unpredictable than from other forms of advertising I run on my blogs, but I now believe it has much greater earning potential too.
Now to drive the traffic in.
What’s your experience with Amazon or other affiliate programs and indirect conversions like this?
7 thoughts on “Making money with Amazon even if you miss the direct sale”
To be honest, I would say that bulk of my sales come from Amazon indirect, I mean people know the site and they can find lots of deals on Amazon.com so they will buy if the price is right. If you send targeted visitors to their site, people buy, simple as that.
There is alot of money to be made on Amazon. You just need to use them correctly. Actiually, people feel confident buying from Amazon so that is a plus! I have been doing more with them recently.
I gave up on Amazon a long time ago, but I am rethinking it as well.
I recently listed a new book in a blog post and while I only sold a couple copies of the book, someone bought a high end GPS unit and another bought a sleeve/cover for a MAC, so my commission was more than I expected.
A hot new way to make money today is by Amazon. Build a site from scratch or buy one cheap and fix it up then resell the site for a profit. The more traffic and sales the site has the more money you can make.
I like Amazon and although I don’t get big commissions from them, I do regularly make commissions. I totally agree with you about recommending items that you would own or do own, I only ever recommend items I’ve bought so that I can give a real view of what I like and dislike about it, I think this goes towards increasing conversions.
Regards,
Karl
All i can say is that the reputation of Amazon is unlike other affiliate companies that you cannot trust for indeed. You can try Amazon if you cannot find a better one for your sites.
I’ve never done well with it. It only hits the minimum payout ceiling every quarter at best. As you noted, when iot does do well, it’s often because someone bought some big ticket item within the sales window.
I’ve mostly given its real estate to better performing items.
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