Amazon Associates program
August 4th, 2005 at 3:18 pm
Amazon Associates program is one of the most respected and popular affiliate programs. It’s another easy way to make some extra money with your website or your blog (beside AdSense). Starting in 1996, was an early adopter, and was able to convince many website owners to offer books for sale on the site in exchange for a share of the profits.
How does it work? The affiliate (website owner) offers Amazon’s products for sale on the affiliate website. Traffic is driven to Amazon through specially formatted links that allow Amazon to track sales and other activity. When visitors follow your links, an identification code is associated with the visit. If after that a purchase is made you can earn up to 10% of referral fees on all qualifying revenue.
Once you join the program, Amazon will give you access to Associates Central, their extranet exclusive to various tools for associates. This is the place where you will build your links, view your traffic and earnings reports, and read about the latest news and opportunities available to you through the program.
And there is even more. Associate tools are helpful if you want to build Amazon links quickly and easily. But if you would like to integrate their features and content more deeply into your website, you may want to try the Amazon Web Services program. AWS will provide you with application program interface (API) which will offer you retrieving information about a set of products to adding an item to a shopping cart.
If you want to see Amazon Associates in action take a look at my previous article where you can see an image and some text links leading you to a book on Amazon.com. I also did something with AWS in My Little Online Store.
Like this article? Post at del.icio.us or digg it.
9 Responses to “Amazon Associates program”
Post a comment
I have been using amazon links for a while, but I rarely get sales off of it. That is probably due to my lack of traffic…
Comment by Blaine Moore | August 4th, 2005 #
I actualy did make some revenue but I think it’s mainly from my family and friends. It also depends of what niche are you targeting with your website/blog.
Comment by Miha | August 4th, 2005 #
I think it’s a bit useless, but it depends on who your audience are.
I think it’s way to hard to make links to products.
Comment by Fin | August 6th, 2005 #
If you go with the stock setup and on low traffic, it’s more trouble than it’s worth; however, there’s a few simple things you can do to make it take less time and pay off more. First, there’s an Amazon Associates WordPress plugin out there that will let you easily pop up an Amazon search from a button on your post page; pick a product and a link type and it formats the text for you. Saves a minute or two every time you use it, and that adds up fast. Second, target your niche properly; I’ve never gotten a sale off my general blog, but my roommate’s movie-related one does okay for itself because he’s targeting an audience, making references to previous films in his reviews, and then offering links to those films.
Comment by Kurt | August 22nd, 2005 #
I have made 1.21 in 4 months- but that might be given my type of site.
Comment by ~dawn | August 24th, 2005 #
It’s handy to get family and friends to use your Amazon affiliate links, especially if they were going to purchase the goods anyway - I’ve also been lucky enough to get my company to buy some software through my affiliate link, which probably earned me the majority of my meagre Amazon earnings so far.
It can be time-consuming to setup individual product links though, and I have yet to come across a Wordpress plugin that works consistently for me, although I suspect there is probably something out there that I haven’t tried yet.
Comment by Rob Lewis | September 2nd, 2005 #
GoodStorm’s MeCommerce platform has gotten lots of news lately. Use this new product serving platform to sell books, music, DVD and video games on a blog or website. Two unique things about MeCommerce vs: Amazon.
1. The transaction takes place inside the product serving box; the buyer never leaves the Website or Blog page. That’s a good thing.
2. The seller makes tons more money with MeCommerce. Profit is shared 50/50 between MeCommerce and the seller. Earn 50 per profit on every item sold.
Product selection is abundant as well.
Signup to check it out at www.mecommerce.goodstorm.com
Comment by Neil Vineberg | August 31st, 2006 #
I’m just looking forward to Alexa being available with Firefox
Comment by Money Making Forum | September 3rd, 2006 #
cqkgjytmwg cqkgjytmwg cqkgjytmwgcqkgjytmwg
cqkgjytmwgcqkgjytmwgcqkgjytmwg cqkgjytmwg
Comment by cqkgjytmwg | November 26th, 2007 #