Work Boxers

Amazon Associates

by Paul on August 11th, 2004

One of the most popular affiliate programs around, Amazon Associates allows anyone with a website to make some money. Although it is greatly frowned upon in the “professional” affiliate marketing circles because of it’s low payouts (5%-7.5%) on all items I still have found great success with the program.

Amazon provides a large number of options to link to their items and online store. These options include:

• Hosted Individual Links. Hosted Individual Links allow you to link to a specific item on your page using just a text link. I use these a lot along with the other members of Forever Geek whenever we provide a review or news of an item that Amazon has in their store.
• Individual Item Links. Individual item links display and link to a specific item from their catalog. This allows you to choose exactly which products you wish to promote based on the content of the page. Amazon has the capability to automatically display the correct pricing and product cover art along with a “Buy from Amazon.com” button. According to Amazon these types of ads have a higher conversion rate then hosted individual links.
• Quick-Click Links Quick-Click links allow your readers to add items to an Amazon shopping cart through 1-Click buttons to help make the purchasing process even easier.
• Amazon.com Home Page Links Simple graphical ads that link to the Amazon homepage. These are good if the user who clicks on the ad buys something from Amazon during their visit.
• Search Box Links This allows your users to search for items of their interest from your site and if they find something they like they have the option of purchasing the item. Good to have on sites for no other reason than to satisfy the impulse buyers.
• Subject and Genre Browse Menus If you have a site that covers a specific genre that fits an Amazon topic then you can provide your audience with a browse box that covers your subject area.
• Amazon Web Services The most powerful use of Amazon’s Associate program. I will detail this part of the program in another article.

Advantages

• Easy to use. Amazon provides a wonderful wizard helping you create links by simply filling out forms and clicking buttons.
• Integratation. Integrates easily into your website however you see fit and enhances the content of your pages and the user’s experience.
• Amazon Brand. You are integrating your site with the strong brand of Amazon and therefore increasing the chance of a clickthrough and purchase.
• Growth Bonuses. Amazon offers two different sets of bonuses. One is the tiered structure where your commissions increase a certain percentage after you sell a number of items. The second is a growth tier that is preset at the beginning of every quarter and if you meet those goals then your percentages increase even more.

Disadvantages

• Low Payouts. Some argue that there is no use putting in so much effort into a program that offers such a low payout. Amazon already operates on razor thin margins and their program is easy to use so I don’t see this as a problem. Comissions range from 5%-7.5% with a $25 cap on computer purchases.
• Quarterly Payments. The biggest disadvantage is that Amazon only pays quarterly. This way you only get paid 4 times a year instead of the traditional 12. So if you are looking to start from scratch and making a living off of Amazon (not easy) make sure you have some other source of income to tide you over.

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POSTED IN: Affiliate Programs