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.
11 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 #
www.handyzon.com
This is how www.handyzon.com website’s home page starts…
Handyzon = Amazon General + Deals + Steals + Bestsellers + Most wanted + New addition + Chat zones + Hidden discounts + Product Details
www.Handyzon.com also popularly known as handy amazon is amazon’s biggest and highly paid associate. One single website has changed an old online shopping trend.Instead of using amazon’s homepage, visitors are going for www.handyzon.com for shopping on amazon.For all the amazon fans and shoppers, handyzon provides you with amazon’s handy shopping catalog with special features like chat zones,bestsellers,my selection,shopping rooms for searching products with upto 99% discounts for all the nations.Handyzon’s latest search engines for US,uk,Canada,Germany,France,Japan enables users to search for products with discounts of their choice, plus you get to choose categories like bestsellers,top ranked, most wanted,most expensive,cheapest,best rated products.Latest deals are daily updated in ’steals’ showcase.
Besides shopping for products handyzon provides you with links to all the amazon pages including discussion forums,products tagged,latest news,associate programs thereby giving users a handy way to reach every inch of amazon shopping world.
What started as Earth’s biggest bookstore has rapidly become Earth’s biggest anything store. Expansion has propelled Amazon in innumerable directions. The firm’s main Web site offers millions of books, music, DVDs, videos, auto parts, toys, tools, electronics, home furnishings, apparel, health & beauty aids, prescription drugs, groceries, and services including film processing. Why pay regular prices when you can buy discount items online from Handyzon? For those of you having all the knowledge of the best and the worst ( products, brands, offers, rates, latest…) handyzon provides you with search engines, for others there are handy catalogs & chat zones,chat widgets,product reviews so that you don’t miss even a single deal.
In reference to its popularity,handy amazon is one of the biggest earning affiliate.Using amazon widgets and its own search engines in the best possible way handyzon is a complete website in itself for shopping, giving amazon shoppers a new home page to shop on.With thousands of unique clicks daily handyzon is the talk of the online shopping world.It is the one of the few websites that covers six nations for shopping facilities.Handyzon is based on showing biggest price cuts, newest sale items, and the big cost savers among popular items at the great big Amazon market.
Comment by cheeky kick | January 19th, 2009 #
@ cheeky kick
Wow, surely you can’t be serious. handyzon is one of the ugliest sites I have ever seen. It goes against all common sense and design principles. Ugly convoluted layout with low res artifacted photos, terrible clipping paths, not to mention that font, wow, is that ever ugly.
We are using this site as an example of how NOT to build a website. LOL
Comment by Charles | January 7th, 2010 #