We’ve mentioned in the past how a turning point for us was when we started adding Amazon affiliate links to our websites but I’d like to expand on that a little so that you can see the true potential of their affiliate program. I’d also like to share exactly how much we make on Amazon – or at least how much we made this month to give you an idea of what you can achieve.
So where did it all begin?
Last year we were struggling as affiliate marketers. We had over 20 blogs but were only making around $500US a month. After we took out expenses and the money we paid for a writer, we were left with pretty much nothing. We really needed to get to the next level if we were going to live the dream of working from home on a full-time basis.
One of the sites we were working on at the time was a website that provided reviews of products. At the end of each of those reviews we would provide links to different online merchants so that our readers could find the best price. But since, at the time, we were thinking of the money first and our readers second we never added Amazon as an option despite the fact that it would have benefited our readers as Amazon have some of the best prices. So why didn’t we add them?…because we saw that Amazon only pay 4% commission and we didn’t think it was worth it. After all we were getting around 8% from other affliate merchants.
Now Amazon do pay more once you start selling more but at the time we didn’t think we could sell that many items to increase our commission. Talk about limiting beliefs, but you have to remember that prior to this we were using merchants from CJ, Shareasale and Linkshare and to see a sale a day was quite exciting – to see 2 sales a day was amazing and 3 or 4 sales a day would have been a major celebration.
Thank goodness we started to focus on our readers because when we did we realised that we needed to add Amazon links in order to provide them with better buying options. So we did just that to about 10 pages of that site.
Two days after adding the links, I checked Amazon stats and was quite surprised when I saw 11 sales. I also realised that we had already jumped to the 6% commission level. I didn’t get too excited though as I really thought it was just a fluke. I even remember telling Wanda that it was probably just one person who went on a shopping spree. I definitely wasn’t expecting to see any further sales.
But then the next day I checked again and we had 9 sales, the next day 3 and the day after that 12…I started thinking that maybe this wasn’t such a fluke after all.
You can see the results here in the table above.
We were pretty amazed since we weren’t used to that many sales in one day, let alone continuous daily sales like that.
The Benefits of Amazon
The main benefit of using Amazon is that they know how to convert. You just have to get your reader there and Amazon will do the rest. Even so, you shouldn’t just rely on Amazon to do all the work for you. We noticed that when we reworked a few pages to provide more indepth reviews for our readers that conversions jumped through the roof. So make sure you provide value too and then let Amazon do the rest.
By far and away the best benefit of Amazon is that although you might send your readers there for one thing, they generally tend to look around and often they will buy the product and other items or they end up buying something completely different.
For instance, if your site is all about dog beds and you provide a link to Amazon recommending what you think is the best type of dog bed, the reader might go to Amazon and decide not to buy the dog bed but because Amazon has so much to offer, something else may get their attention and they end up buying other unrelated products.
And believe me when I say that this happens more often than you think. If we take our stats for instance, for November, 524 of the products we sold were products that we recommend. The remaining 1768 products that sold were products that we didn’t recommend and in fact in a good majority of cases they were for products that were not related in any way to our blog topic.
How to Use Amazon Effectively
The best way to use Amazon is to use text links within a review of a product. Don’t bother with the widgets or the banner ads – they won’t be anywhere near as effective. Use text links and your click through rate will be much higher.
So How Much Did We Make on Amazon This Month?
This is the bit I am sure you have been waiting for but since a picture tells a thousands words I have added a screen print of our Amazon stats for November 2009. The results are for four of our blogs but most of the money is coming from one site…probably about 90% of the income. We haven’t worked much on those other 3 blogs and until we do they will continue to make a minimal income.
Notice that we have hit the 8.25% commission level. This is because we have sold over 1571 items – the more you sell the more commission you get up to a maximum of 8.5%.
It will be interesting to see how we go in December with the build up to Christmas.
And Finally…
Just remember that with anything you do online, that you shouldn’t put all your eggs in the one basket. We use Amazon quite extensively and highly recommend them but we also use Google Adsense, CJ, LinkShare, Shareasale, Google Affiliate Network, Clickbank and more. So that $14,000 + from Amazon isn’t our only source of income this month.
Well we can’t stop smiling at this months Amazon earnings and here is the link if you would like to add Amazon to your website.
Update:
Due to popular demand, since writing this post we have written and released the Amazonian Profit Plan e-book. This e-book provides you with a step by step blueprint full of in-depth, highly detailed information on making money with the Amazon Associates Program
WOW! They are pretty amazing stats. I’ve tried Amazon back in the days when I first started and never made a penny. Might need to look at it again for some of my back burner sites!
Don’t think it will work as well on my main ‘build blog’ site.
Thanks for sharing.
Andrew
.-= Andrew @ webuildyourblog.com´s last blog ..Building backlinks to your blog, naturally =-.
It will work much better on product based blogs but even with a blog like your own, you could review a book related to your topic and refer people to Amazon. They may buy the book but then again they may buy something completely different.
True and good point. I shall start on my ‘product’ type blogs first, though.
Thanks.
Andrew
.-= Andrew @ webuildyourblog.com´s last blog ..Building backlinks to your blog, naturally =-.
wow it’s so super high income.. would you tell me some of your url site review for linking to amazon product?
i just want to learn by read and view your site review for linking to amazon product.
thanks before,
JEFF
We no longer give out our urls. Too many people copying the content.
Can’t you give an example of the layout you use? As in, where is it best to put the images, bullet points, affiliate links, etc.
Also in a sense, you are quite lucky with your blogs, because they already sound established to be making money so soon.
Afia.
The layout is simply a WordPress blog. We add the reviews as posts or pages. That’s it really. The site structure really has nothing to do with this method working. You simply create a really well written review and put it on a page on your website. Then you get traffic to that page…that’s all there is to it.
We usually put one main image at the top of the product review. We use the same image that Amazon has on their product page. Affiliate links are spread throughout the document – we put around 4 to 8 links depending on the length of the document. Bullet points just go where they need to go – there is no right or wrong place to put bullet points. You have to start thinking of your reader first and when you do that you will end up with a helpful review. The placement of bullet points, affiliate links etc don’t make a difference in the grand scheme of things. What makes a difference is your review. Just think about what you would want to see in a review if you were looking to buy a product.
Wow! That’s impressive. Like most, I tried Amazon Associates before but I only made a few dollars. I felt it was a waste of time so I abandoned it. But after looking at your earnings, I think I’ll go back and give it another try. But this time, I’ll follow your tips.
Paula that’s AMAZING!!! I tried this a while ago and also couldn’t get anything out of it. After reading this blog I will be sure to try it again, I just need to build some new blogs. Again AWESOME JOB!! keep up the good work and I’ll keep on reading :)
Really WOW! That is outstanding. What are some of your other blogs can you list some so we can get an idea as to how to promote the links?
I am soooo happy for y’alls success. :)
.-= Ms. Freeman´s last blog ..If You Ask Shall You Receive? =-.
We no longer give away our websites due to a few who have taken advantage and used our content. But what I might do is write up a blog post detailing how we write up our reviews.
And thanks so much for your kind comments.
That seems to be a common problem when people give out that information. I think a post like that would be very helpful. I would certainly be interested in reading it.
.-= Brad Harmon´s last blog ..How I Make Money From This Site (and You) =-.
I am writing it up as we speak. Should be up next week sometime…hopefully.
Nothing. :(
But hopefully when I start writing articles and doing a bit of promoting then things will change. :)
.-= Dean Saliba´s last blog ..I Made $50.00 Today Sitting On My Backside! =-.
Just keep at it Dean. It will start to all come together when you work at it.
Very well done ladies, impressive (I don’t say that lightly). I assume these are mostly niche blogs focusing tightly one one, maybe two topics each?
.-= Dennis Edell´s last blog ..Whoopsy Commentluv Is Busted! You Have Permission To Leave ONE Link. =-.
Yep, that’s right Dennis. Most of our blogs are purely product based. It seems to work for us.
Wow! That’s some nice earnings. I just launched amazon last week on my blog, but of course I have only used the banner ads and widgets. Keep preaching. It will sink into my head soon. ;)
.-= Brad Harmon´s last blog ..How to Get Paid by the Church =-.
LOL – well I can only tell you what has worked for us and widgets and banners definitely haven’t.
Hey great stats! Just shows what a little bit of persistence can get you :)
I will be entering the amazon affiliate world soon with another project of mine so I will keep this link handy!
Sarge | BeginnerBlogger.com
.-= Sarge @ beginnerblogger.com´s last blog ..Beginner Blogger Stats and Goals – Nov-Dec 09 =-.
Good luck with it Sarge. Hope it works as well for you as it has for us.
Paula and Wanda,
I’ve followed you for a while over at James forum. Thats amazing results I’m sure your over the moon. But, you both deserve it I know you’ve worked hard.
I got my first Amazon check for $104 the other day and I’ve never really pushed a product just added the odd link. Thanks for posting such a great article.
Jim
Congrats Jim! The first cheque is always the best one. There will be many more to come if you keep at it.
You’re so right. Amazon does a great job of converting. Although I don’t use it for Free Blog Help, I am an Amazon affiliate for one of my other sites.
.-= Gabe | freebloghelp.com´s last blog ..10 FREE killer WordPress themes in 2009 =-.
Yes, I think your Free Blog Help site wouldn’t work with Amazon just like my blog here. I am not sure what sort of Amazon products would work on this blog…perhaps book reviews on related topics.
Wow, this really opened my eyes. I had to laugh when you said you didn’t use Amazon as it was only 4%. That was exactly our thinking as well – how shortsighted! Awesome results, congratulations! You have inspired us to start using Amazon more where appropriate.
.-= Renae´s last blog ..Top Sea Kayaking Destinations =-.
Thanks for your kind words Renae. I think you will find that Amazon will make a big difference when you start adding their links. You have the perfect sort of site for it.
That’s really doing very well.
I started out around the same time last year and this month sold over 400 items. All these coming from only one blog. My conversion rate is quite well around 8%. So I’m working hard to get more related traffic to the site at the moment.
Also thinking of started another product review blog for an additional stream of income.
.-= Parka´s last blog ..Book Review: Avatar: A Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History of Pandora =-.
That’s a great conversion rate. And I agree that you should be concentrating on traffic. You are in the perfect position of already knowing that your pages convert really well so getting more traffic will do wonders for your sales.
That is really interesting, I am doing James’s Martell’s affiliate bootcamp at the moment and I have not got my website up yet. But like one of your other messages, about two years ago when I first started looking at the internet I put a very bad website up on video games linked to Amazon. I made nothing even with adwords. Of course I now understand that I knew nothing about video games other than they were a huge market and I was up against millions of sites run by “gamers”.
So clearly the message is to build relationships with your visitor and fullfill their wishes, including relevent reviews.
Your last sentence is perfect. It sums it all up in a nutshell. People need to trust you before they are going to take you at your word, so you need to build the relationship first. If you write unbiased honest reviews that will help build those relationships.
That’s amazing and inspiring! How old is your main blog and about how many pages of content/ blog posts do you have online there?
I’m stuck in the $100-$200/ month range on Amazon, but plan to keep adding content to my blogs and niche sites to increase my earnings.
Thanks for the inspiration!
.-= Maria (WriterGig)´s last blog ..eHow Articles New Approval Process =-.
The blog is a few years old now but it really only started to work just over a year ago when we started to concentrate all our efforts into it. It has over a thousand pages of content but only a handful of pages are making most of the money. You don’t need a lot of pages to make the big dollars.
Great post. Which do you think is better for products though:
a) Exclusively product review blog
b) Blog about a niche topic, with relevant product revivews
I could create a products blog. Say a book review blog. But then it would be about books on differen subjects. Would that be better than a blog dedicated to one topic instead (with regular product reviews)?
We have had most of our success with product type blogs. We haven’t really tried the second option in a big way so can’t really say that it would or wouldn’t work just as well.
I hope you won’t mind my putting my two cents in here. WonderBlogger, whether your site focuses on products or other content it should still focus on a particular niche that you are truly passionate about and either already know or really want to research.
It occurs to me that Paula and Wanda are wise to focus on product sites because people searching for products instead of information are already far more likely to be looking to make purchases.
I have never read advice that affiliate sites about products instead of information would maximize earnings but it makes perfect sense now that I think about it.
.-= Internet Strategist @GrowMap´s last blog ..Blog Outreach: 8 Compelling Reasons Why You Should Be Doing It Now =-.
You’re kidding me. All this time I’ve been using widgets and you’re saying I should be using text links? Damn. Any chance of giving us a link to one of those high converting posts so that I can see how you’ve incorporated the links?
.-= Sire´s last blog ..Why I No Longer Link To The Likes Of ProBlogger And John Chow =-.
We decided some time back not to give out our websites anymore. It was just causing a few issues with people copying content…even people we knew well!
I am currently writing a blog post on how we write up our review pages which will include how to use Amazon links so that should be coming soon.
Maybe I should unsubscribe to the comments on this post, because I get excited every time I read about this future post in my email. I can’t wait for that it. I’m trying to think of what type of product site to launch even as I write this. :)
.-= Brad Harmon´s last blog ..Are You Literally Marketing Like the Devil? =-.
Well I had better hurry up then.
No worries Paula, I reckon I can wait. Being a bloke and all we are known for out patience, not like you sheilas :D
.-= Sire´s last blog ..Giving Your Blog That Christmas Feel =-.
Wow that’s amazing! Congratulations!
I would love to hear and learn more from you how/where you choose your writer for the site. Do you give the writer a list of products? Do you ask for SEO friendly content?
Thanks!
We write a lot of the content ourselves and when we use writers we don’t give them any instruction on making the article ‘SEO friendly’. We want them to write as naturally as possible. We generally give a list of products and let them go for it.
Great stuff! Of course, I live in New York, where Amazon and the state don’t get along, so Amazon won’t be viable for me. But what a nice way to test things; thanks for the information.
.-= Mitch´s last blog ..My Top 12 News Stories Of The Decade =-.
Wow, I didn’t realise there was an issue with Amazon and New York. I had to go look it up to see what the problem was.
Paula,
Can I ask a question is all you traffic from search or are you running any PPC?
Jim
It’s purely from natural search. We’ve dabbled with PPC but never had much success.
Thats amazing just shows what can be done. I really hope this month is also going well. Looking forward to your next updated post.
Jim
How do you advertise your affiliate links? I am currently signed up with CJ’s and I am trying to start an online store and blog. Is there any way you could contact me?
Josh
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘advertise your affiliate links’.
How do you use your affiliate links? Do you just write a blog and insert an affiliate link in your blogs when you write about that product? Do you have a domain name and use affiliate links? I am new to this so I’m not sure what to do with affiliate links. I’ve just thrown them on my website for now.
Josh Thomas
Yep, that’s pretty much what we do. We write product reviews and then add affiliate links in the content of those reviews.
Stay tuned as I am working on a blog post which explains it all in a little more detail.
This is great; congratulations, guys. If someone wanted to try and emulate your success, would you recommend building a different site for each niche you reviewed or try and build one big site which reviewed many different topics/niches?
We have niche stores and big sites and both make money. When it comes down to it, you really only need one page to make a good income on the internet…assuming you do it right.
However, if we were to make a choice, we would go with the niche site rather than one big site.
Very inspiring. I am new to the affiliate marketing and still learn best way to sell amazon’s products. I have sold something but the numbers have not been able to make me smile like you.
Reading your story, I got a valuable lesson. Thank you very much.
.-= Kombor´s last blog ..All Time Bestsellers Blu-Ray For Our Collections =-.
Just keep working on getting traffic to your site. We weren’t making much either until we started getting some decent traffic.
This is a very inspiring figure. I never thought Amazon could reap so much. Very charged up now :)
.-= elaine´s last blog ..Dealing With Pregnancy Heartburn =-.
It seems like a lot of people haven’t realized just how good Amazon can be. It’s definitely worth giving them a go.
I have some old product sites that I have been neglecting. You have given me inspiration to start focusing on them again. Good Luck.
Do you use wordpress for your product based site/blog. If so any recommendations for good themes? If you don’t use wordpress please guide on selecting a good CSS based theme.
We use both WordPress and just a regular style website. The theme really has nothing to do with it so just choose whatever you like. We tend to go with something that has a white or light colored background for the posts/pages and is fairly simple in style. The theme you are looking at is the flexibility 2 theme. We use this one on a few of our blogs.
I earn around $900 a month from Amazon (with very small approx. 80 niche blogs using only SEO results) and thinking that my results was impressive. Your monthly click rate is totally amazing and motivate me to hit $2000 a month. !
.-= Murat Yilmaz´s last blog ..Vubx.com – Cool Gadgets =-.
Excellent Murat…I look forward to seeing your results. Let us know when you hit $2000 a month. You only really need to concentrate on a handful of pages from your sites – go for the ones that you know already convert and just get as much targeted traffic to them as possible.
That is a really great article. I have been checking out Amazon for some time and was wondering how to place it on my blog. Know with your help I know what to do!! I am raising five boys and love the book “He’ll be Ok”….will be using that as a link on my blogs from now on. Cheers for sharing
.-= lisa´s last blog ..The Universe Answered My Prayers =-.
Hope it works for you Lisa.
Thanks for this useful information. I’ve tried Amazon before but didn’t make anything. I’ll look into it again this week. In the meantime, I’m adding your blog to my blogroll!
It’s worth trying Paul. We have done very well with it.
wow! that’s amazing!
I am seriously considering starting a blog just for this!
thanks for the tips!
.-= Ling Tung´s last blog ..Photographic Evidence #1 : Hotty To Not-So-Hotty =-.
No problem Ling. Hope you can give it a try.
Wow – that is so cool! Thanks for sharing – I always find it interesting to see how other’s are doing, the amount of money they are making. In your case its a real inspiration for me as to whats possible – congratulations :-)
.-= Craig @ The Instant Money Code Bonus´s last blog ..About Me =-.
Thanks Craig. I always found it an inspiration reading how well other people are making it online so I hope we can do the same for others.
Hi,
I’m new here and what an incredible post to read! I’m experimenting with affiliate sales and niche site. This gives me another idea ;)
I hope sales get even better for you, but what could be better than $14k of sales in one month..?!
Can I ask how old that review blog/site is? How many readers? Or better yet, how’re you driving traffic to it?
.-= Moon Hussain´s last blog ..Clash Of The Titans: Pros & Cons of Various Types Of Passive Income Streams =-.
We get between 1500 to 2500 unique visitors a day to that particular website. Our main technique for driving traffic is by offering articles to other websites. This gives us good quality backlinks and builds our ranking in Google.
Hey Paula/Wanda, my name is Aidan and I’ve been in internet marketing for some time now but havent ventured much into Amazon. what youve written here is really inspiring stuff, did you use some course to get started promoting products using Amazon or did you just jump right into it? Can you give an example of one of your websites which does well (I understand if you want to keep this private).
Thanks!
.-= Viral Submitter Pro Bonus´s last blog ..About Me =-.
We initially started promoting products through Commission Junction but weren’t converting very well. Then we decided to add Amazon links just to help our readers comparison shop and found that it converted better than any of our other merchants.
We no longer reveal our websites. Unfortunately too many people take advantage and attempt to copy our work.
Hi and Congrats on your amazing earnings!
A few questions…
1. When you say you use the WordPress blogs – are you saying that you use the “free” wordpress themes? Also, do you purchase a domain name or are you just using the wordpress domain? Who do you buy your domain through and do you need to purchase hosting for these online review blogs?
2. How often do you post fresh, relevant content to each review blog? How highly ranked are you for the main keyword – the one that made you all the $$. Are you 1st on Google?
Thanks in advance for the info! I would LOVE to see a sample of an Amazon review store – but no one want to share their secrets. Do you know of any sample store that I could view online?
Best regards,
Michael-John Wolfe
.-= Michael-John Wolfe´s last blog ..Amazon Associates Gives Colorado the Shaft – Is Your State Next? =-.
We use both free and paid WordPress themes. The theme really doesn’t matter – it’s what you put on the page that counts.
We buy our own domain names and our own hosting. We don’t use the free WordPress.com blog system. We create our own. But again it wouldn’t matter if you used the free one. Again it comes down to what’s on the page not the WordPress format you use.
We probably only post once or twice a month to each blog just to keep Google happy.
On our most successful blog we rank for a variety of keywords. Some of those are no.1 on Google.
We’ve had so much interest in people wanting to know how we do this that we are currently working on an ebook that will explain exactly what we do step-by-step and we will also detail how to set up your blog the right way for reviews.
I’ll be buying your ebook! Thanks for the info! :)
MJ
.-= Michael-John Wolfe´s last blog ..Amazon Associates Gives Colorado the Shaft – Is Your State Next? =-.
Wow, that’s awesome! Are you still seeing results like this from your Amazon affiliate commissions now that the holidays are over?
I am just starting to get into Amazon affiliate sites that are strictly based off making money from Amazon. This gives me hope that I can make some really good money from the sites!
.-= Tiffany´s last blog ..My Online Passive Income Earnings Report for March =-.
This is great news and I love your blog!
Just a few questions;
1. In your review titles do you just use the exact name of the product or do you add extra text to make it more descriptive.
2. You mention that Amazon photo widgets don’t work and link text works better. Do you add any photos?
3. How much traffic do you drive to your blog with blog commenting, bookmarking etc. or does it come naturally now?
4. You mention in another post that just adding content did not work. So why do you think your blog took off?
5. Most important question…Could you repeat this on another blog. You shared that most of your income comes from the one blog, and that you did not have much success with the others. So is this repeatable by you and by others?
6. I recognize you do not want to share the type of product you are reviewing but what types of products would you advise others to look for?
Thanks so much! Again congrats on the success and thanks for sharing!
.-= Work at Home Money´s last blog ..Squidoo for Profit (UPDATE to the UPDATE) =-.
1. We use the title of the product and and add extra text.
2. Yes, we add photos. We just use the ones on Amazon and add a link behind those photos back to the product in Amazon.
3. A lot of it comes naturally now. In the past, we used to submit articles to websites with links back to our site. That is really the main reason why we rank so well for a lot of keywords.
4. The content worked in that it got us a lot of extra traffic but we didn’t add QUALITY content and that was the difference. When we started to improve our content and change our review format to make things really helpful to the reader that’s when we noticed a jump in our sales.
5. The only reason we had success with one blog was because we put all of our attention into it. We are currently working on a second blog with the same success. We have over 20 blogs and when we were working on all of them at once we never got anywhere. When we focused on just one then we started to see some action. But really it comes down to pages and not the blog as a whole. You can have a one page review that can make enough for a full-time income. We’ve gone past focusing on the website itself – we just focus on pages. So when I say we are working on another website, we are actually working on just five pages of that website and nothing more than that.
6. You can choose any product in Amazon. We have baby products, home and garden, tools, jewelery, pet products and so on. The product doesn’t matter so much…it’s how you choose them. We’ll be detailing our criteria for choosing products in our ebook.
PS are you still updating the site several times a day or just a few times a month
and
when is your ebook coming out :)
.-= Work at Home Money´s last blog ..Squidoo for Profit (UPDATE to the UPDATE) =-.
We update the site maybe once or twice a week.
The ebook is coming out in about 3 weeks.
Hi Wanda and Paula,
you did a great job not just on the conversions but on the whole site here, very informative, I just signed up to stay up to date.
I´ve just started a blog about wordpress and how to set it up and if I ever get this conversion I´m made my dream to work from home in my own schedule true.
All the best for your future!
Monja
.-= Monja´s last blog ..A step by step WordPress Tutorial for Beginners =-.
Thanks for visiting Monja and good luck with your website. You’ve got a lot of really good info on there.
Hi Wanda and Paula
Thank you for sharing this amazing information and ideas about the Amazon affiliate program. I am really looking forward to get your new ebook with tips and great information.
Is there a signup link or newsletter to this?
All the best
Christoffer
You just need to sign up to our newsletter (in the sidebar area) and we will let you know when it is available.
How do you select the products to promote ? One good tip I read was to go for a mix of high cost items for better commission and cheaper items that sell well to increase your number of items sold up so that you get into the higher commission % thresholds.
But finding the products is still a bit hit and miss..guess it will always be a bit of a gamble on that front.
We choose products that are over $150 although we prefer to go with products over $200. And we also choose products that receive really good reviews. You also have to do the usual keyword research to make sure you are choosing a product that has relatively low competition.
I like that tip of using both high and low priced items.
Hello,
I am really enjoying your blog. I’m new to Internet marketing and I’m interested to know how you find your products. Are you searching for products that are priced at $200+ with good reviews on Amazon?
Hi Friends,
Kudos to you ladies, well said and well done.
Any advise on how and where to get good quality
content written?
Thanks for all the tips.
.-= Rupert´s last blog ..Flatware: A wise Solution for Giving Gifts =-.
We use Elance. Generally we write our own reviews but we use Elance for the more general informational articles.
When you’ve worked for as long and hard as I have for very few results, your story is inspiring but sort of frustrating at the same time. Frustrating, because I think the biggest barrier seems to be getting over “personal limitation thinking”… the idea that it only ever happens for other people.
Anyway, congratulations!
Yes, I definitely agree with that thinking. We had the same thoughts when we weren’t making much online.
I’m a fan of Amazon so I do enjoy a post that endorses them. So many people can not see past that 4% and never see that they are surely intending to sell more things that that.
And the commenter above makes a valid point about using lower priced items to build your numbers so that you get into the higher percentage range. On one of my sites I sell an item for under a dollar! Crazy, I know, but I put the item in when I was just starting – never even noticed the price. But that little widget sells and helps to push me into the higher bracket.
Still not at the top yet but Amazon is a numbers game – each link out there is another path to lead someone into the Amazon website.
.-= Dawn´s last blog ..Constipation – Causes and Cures =-.
Yep, I like the idea of using lower priced items. It’s definitely a good tip.
Great article! How are things going for you now with Amazon?
Still the same. We just wrote up another five reviews and are currently getting traffic to them. We just keep working on the traffic until they hit the first page of Google for our selected keywords. Once that is done we will create another five reviews.
Thanks for your clear explanation. I just signed up for Amazon Associates and wasn’t sure which way to go on my website. Your answer was “text” not the widget or banner. I am hoping that I may see some results from this. I also did a quick blog related to my niche. I am going to try out your advice on both. It’s so confusing out there with a million and one people giving advice. However, going to someone who has had the same problem and been successful in addressing it is the way to go. Thanks for explaining your methods that worked!
Good luck with it Rita. Just keep adding good quality content and adding those Amazon links. But most importantly, work on getting traffic to your site.
Very impresive experience. can you tell me how much money you made exactly one year ago before this month and what kind of product are you focusing?
.-= Max Toys´s last blog ..Best Summer Toys for Kids =-.
Exactly on year before we weren’t using Amazon. We were using CJ mostly. I just went and checked my stats for November 2008 in CJ and we made just under $1000.
We aren’t focusing on a specific product. We will go with any product on Amazon that meets our criteria.
Hi Paula sorry to respond so late but I was wondering with a majority of your income in 1 site here and 57,000 clicks, can I ask what volume of traffic to your site is on this major site? It must be huge! Also what is your strategy on the best part of the market to tackle ie exact searches month as a minimum and maximum competition. Also how long do you think it realistically takes to rank in top 3 on Google? Sorry for all the questions…Thanks alot Manny
We get around 1000 to 2000 visitors per day.
We don’t really worry too much about the number of competing websites. We are more concerned with the websites on the first page of Google – they are the ones we need to beat to get on the first page ourselves so we look to see how much work it would take to beat them.
And your third question is impossible to answer. It depends on so many variables – how much work you put in, how many quality backlinks you get, how quick you get them, what keywords you are trying to rank for, the websites you have to beat to rank in the top 3 and so on.
Hi Paula
This is solid information, I’ve really enjoyed looking around your site so thankyou!
A couple of quick questions – I am also in Australia and have heard from fellow Aussies that the payment system in Amazon itself is a bit of a pain in the you know what for us (i.e. delay in postage, delay in cashing cheque, fee in cashing international cheque).. just wondering what you have encountered and if there is any way around it? It’s not going to stop me promoting on Amazon by the way I was just curious as successful Aussies are a bit harder to find :)
Secondly just wanted to get an idea on your thoughts about the 1000 word product reviews. Presumably you are targeting keywords that are late in the consumer buying cycle, and that the consumer might not want (or need) to read a lengthy review if they are already “presold” as it were?
I try to put myself in the consumers shoes but that can be hazardous because I don’t think like a lot of people :P In all seriousness, if I was going to buy a lawnmower I’d either search for the model number and probably need a few more benefits/pushes to tip me over the edge into buying. Conversely if I was searching generically for Victa lawn mowers I surely would not be sold on a particular model yet?
Then there is all that stuff about people having to be exposed to offer 7 times before they’ll buy. I guess you can always leverage the work of others so to speak.
Anyway this has got a bit long winded, but I don’t mean to rubbish your methods or whatever because it is obviously working for you in a big way.
Congratulations again, and I look forward to your response and the ebook.
Some people might see the payment system as a problem but when someone is paying me I’m not going to complain. Amazon send Australians a cheque and because it is an overseas cheque it will take 20 working days to clear (will depend on your bank of course). The bank will also charge a fee – ours is $10.50 to bank it. We have never had a delay in the cheque getting to us. It usually comes in in the first week of each month.
Consumers want to be told what to buy. They need help to choose the right product for them. Just because they have a product in mind doesn’t mean they are ready to buy. They usually still need convincing especially if they are still a little undecided or trying to pick between two products. We find the longer the review the better. Just think of those landing pages that sell affiliate ebooks. Some are thousands of words long. It’s because they work.
I think you are thinking too much into it. You are never going to know what your reader is thinking. You can only guess. Just make your reviews as helpful as possible and let Amazon do the rest.
I have recently started using Amazon as an alternative to Ebay and am seeing some great results. First I was hesitant of the 1 day cookie and the 4% comission, but the fact is that Amazon converts rather well and you easily get into the 6% and so on. And using the reviewazon plugin with wordpress is a killer combo!
I think the low starting commission keeps a lot of people away from Amazon. Most don’t realize that Amazon converts so well and you can easily get into the higher commissions.
Hi Paula, just wondering when you will be releasing your ebook about all this? I’ve been waiting to buy it! (which translates to – you’ll at least get a sale from me as soon as I find out it’s ready for purchase!)
Please hurry, could really, really use the info!
It’s coming. It’s taking up all our time at the moment as we want to get it out asap. There’s lots to do in terms of the background stuff like creating a landing page etc but what we might do is release it to our email list first for those that want it now. If that’s the case it should be out by the end of this week.
Paula, I’m definitely looking forward to it. I’ll be checking my mail closely for mails from you – I don’t need a fancy salespage or anything to convince me that I want to buy this as soon as it’s available ;)
Like many of the other comments I have to say that I am so glad that you are sharing this information as people (like me) are hungry for it. But I’m sure you already new that.
My question is do you think that the mini-Amazon site model(5-10 posts/pages) is a good way to go if you then just continue to work on backlinks to build the site up in the SERPS?
Thanks in advance!
This is the process we normally take.
1. We create 5 product reviews.
2. We work on getting backlinks/traffic to those 5 product review pages (and often the home page as well).
3. Once we see REGULAR sales start to come in for those pages we then work on another 5 product reviews.
Now that’s not always exactly what we do because some pages may start getting sales faster than another but that’s the basics of it.
Most people fail to work on the first five and keep adding more and more reviews. So they start spreading themselves too thin and never maintain any focus.
Paula,
When selecting products do you also look at how well they sell on Amazon?
If so what criteria do you use ie if it ranks 100000000 at Amazon in sales would you consider it? Or do you have cut off numbers?
Thanks Paula!
We don’t look at where it’s ranked in Amazon. We tend to just look at the number of reviews. If it has lots of reviews, then it usually means a popular product.
Hi Paula,
Just stumble your site on searching about Amazon . Do you use any
automated software for Amazon to build your blog ?
You have great content and I subscribe to your list. I want to learn
more on how to make money on internet.
txs
edsel
We sometimes use automated software like ReviewAzon and WPZon Builder but mostly we just manually write reviews.
The plugins are okay but you just have to use them in the right way. Most people just set and forget them and let the content go up automatically from Amazon. So it’s basically duplicate content. We prefer to change that content that comes over when we use these plugins.
1.Have you tried the WProbot?
2.In your coaching club
do you show us your actual blog?
3.What is the guarantee?
No we haven’t tried WPRobot. I just had a quick look though and it looks pretty cool. However, we tend not to go with the automated approach. We’ve been testing it out on a couple of blogs by automatically adding content from different sources and haven’t had much success. Mind you, we haven’t put all our focus into it so we can’t really say yet whether it’s worth it or not. We seem to have better success just sticking with a manual approach and focusing on only a few pages of content at a time.
We won’t have a coaching club. At this stage it will be just an ebook. A coaching club means a lot of work and we try to avoid work. At some stage, we may move to that sort of thing but at the moment we also need to concentrate on our own affiliate business.
There are no guarantees with this business. It’s all up to you whether you will succeed or not. I can’t guarantee anything in that respect but understand what you are referring to. The ebook will probably have the standard guarantee of 30 days but we will see. We just need to get the ebook finished first.
Hi Paula – Thanks for sharing so much information. I am very curious about not using the Amazon widgets though. Have you guys come up w/ any theories yet as to why they don’t work as well as the text links?? :)
On the one hand, I would think having some Amazon widgets in the sidebar would give your visitors more options – or ideas of things to look at – just more things to click on in general. Like you pointed out, most of the products they bought weren’t even the original things that you guys were targeting! lol
On the other hand, I wonder if it’s because the widgets aren’t very attractive – maybe they cheapen the entire look of the page/site. Perhaps it’s the appearance that they are on a ‘review’ page as opposed to a ‘sales’ page that keeps your visitors happy! ?
Also, with no widgets, how are you filling up your sidebar(s)?? I see that you no longer give out URLs (understandably) – but how about a screen shot of a page with the text (and maybe even images) blurred out? :) I’m just wondering how fancy or minimalist your pages look. Maybe that could be a last minute item to your e-book – if it’s not already in there! lol
Again, thanks for all of the info. I’m a newbie trying to decide where I want to break into IM and niche blogs with Amazon is certainly one of my top choices right now. I stumbled across your site today via WF and I’ll DEFINITELY be keeping an eye on your site. Looks like it’s perfect timing too with your e-book about ready! I’m subscribing and hoping to hear something on that real soon. :) Take care!
We can’t really tell why the widgets don’t work as well. We just know that we have better success with text links. I think it’s because the text links don’t look like an ad. It just looks like another link on our site.
I just think if there are too many things to click on then a lot of people get confused. So we don’t put widgets in the sidebar either. In fact on our product review pages we try not to have a sidebar at all. We can do that with the Flexsqueeze theme because it allows us to remove the sidebar for pages. So the review runs across the entire page and we just have the usual header at the top.
Adding a screen shot of one of our pages is about the same as revealing our url. All you need to do is type in some of the text from the screen print into a Google search and you will find the site. What we will probably do is create a new site and add some reviews so that people can get an idea of how they look and how the site is set up. At the moment though we just want to get the ebook finished so that is my priority.
All you need to know is that you have to provide detailed info to your readers. Make the review long (about 1000 words or more) and add around 4 to 6 text links to Amazon. Then add an image at the top which you can also get from Amazon and align it left or right with your text. Also use lots of sub-headings and dot-points to make the review easier to read.
Im sorry, I thought your the owner of Wealthy Affiliate. I happen
to click this on your site.
I have been looking for quality info on working with amazon for a while. Came across your blog and have just devoured all your other posts. This post inspired me and I thank you for it. I have already started building my first review site. Finding it a bit difficult to post large reviews but I will get there. Have subscribed to your newsletter and can’t wait for the ebook. You should sell it on amazon with a link ;) looking forward to future posts!
One way to get info for reviews is to search for the product manual if it has one. You can usually find them on the manufacturers website. They usually have a lot of info in them and might add to the length of your review.
Good idea! Thanks
Hi Paula and Wanda. I become a regular reader of your blog and have learned tons of great info…thank you!
I had not done much with Amazon since the commission rate is kinda low. That changed after I began read your blog. Well, this morning while on my Amazon affiliate page to get a link for an article I had just written I noticed I got my first 5 orders! You can imagine my excitement as I let out a big wa-hooo, and the items were not even for my niche! My niche is natural men’s health and the items ordered were classical music CDs. I’ll take it, thank you!
Wow, fantastic Ken!!
You will find that you will sell a lot of other stuff that relates in no way to the products you are promoting. That’s the beauty of Amazon. They so such a good job of selling.
Paula,
I love this article. It just keeps me focused. It’s a good feeling to have. It’s been about 3 years of searching for what “works for me” online. Amazon is my “winner”. It’s so fun. I can’t wait to see where I’ll be in a month, 3 months, a year.
Amazon is one business model that I am not afraid of leaving like so many other online “opportunities”.
Every time I see that “Month To Date” screen shot, I am always amazed. I’ve seen it at least a dozen times and the effect is as if it’s my first time seeing it.
Talk later,
Ron
Believe me Ron, we feel the same way about that “Month to Date” screenshot. We can’t wait for the Amazon update each night to see what we have made for the day. Its all really exciting.
Hi Wanda
I love your blog! It gives me motivation.
I just started using amazon affiliate 3 months ago and this month I already have 42 orders! is that a good start or what? Please keep adding for posts on your blog. Wanda, Do you mind telling me how much traffic you are getting to get this kind of earnings? and you mentioned 90% from 1 site only right?
Thanks!
CR
We don’t study the traffic for the whole site. Instead we look at traffic for the product review pages we are promoting.
For the pages that are making regular sales we are getting anywhere between 50 to 400 people a day depending on the page.
400 a day and you make this much money? You must have a very good review! I am planning on buying your ebook but I just have few questions. Do you only have 1 domain and have different random reviews posted there? or you have 1 domain per product? I guess my question is in 1 domain, how many reviews do you have???
Thank you
CR
We have a number of websites and reviews posted on most of them. We don’t have one domain for each product. It would be too hard to maintain plus if the manufacturer no longer makes that product then you have a wasted website.
Nice converting rate?
How you do that?
Mine just 0.24%, still learning how to increase it
You need to write really good product reviews in order to get good conversions. Read some of our posts on writing product reviews:
http://www.affiliateblogonline.com/2009/12/17/how-to-write-product-reviews-that-convert/
http://www.affiliateblogonline.com/2010/06/22/how-to-write-a-product-review-when-you-dont-own-the-product/
I also added your blogroll to my site fantastic accomplishments! :)
Hi Paula & Wanda,
Another Aussie here from Adelaide. I’ve been reading your blog with great interest as I’m planning on starting a product review site shortly. I need a new plan after 3 years of succesfful domain parking arbitrage has come to an end. And the high cost of online advertising for CPA offers in 2010 is bleeding my accounts dry.
Could you please provide a link to one of your review sites? I find it far easier to see what people are doing rather than just reading site descriptions. Obviuosly if they are sites that Google love you wouldn’t have any concerns about showing them to others.
Regards,
David
Glad to see a fellow Aussie. I am noticing more and more Australians lately who are working online. It’s good to see.
As for our sites, actually we do have concerns. Mostly because our sites are full of our past mistakes and giving them to people will only create the same mistakes for them. We only have a small number of pages on our sites that are making us most of the money and obviously we don’t want to give those out.
You can read more about our reasons for this here – http://www.affiliateblogonline.com/2010/08/07/can-i-see-an-example-of-your-website/
OK Paula no worries. I read your other article. ALwyas soem make it worse for everyone else. Anyway success in Google SERPs is only partly to do with the website and its content. A lot of it has to do with good quality backlinks. Its very easy to get indexed in Google. Harder to get ranked highly depending on your competition for each keyword.
Cheers,
Dave
Hi Wanda it’s me again. I am so frustrated because my sales are down. I changed my title, meta tag and google dropped me :(
Just wondering how long it takes you in average to be first page on google? I understand you work on 5 pages at a time. Lets say Today you start your 5 new pages, is it 1 month, 2 months, 6 months, 1 year before you get to first page?
Thanks
Canadian Reader
Sorry I meant Paula* not Wanda I just woke up
Why don’t you change your title and meta tag back to the way it was? It might take a little while for Google to reassess your site again but it should pop back to the way it was.
It can take anywhere from a day to 6 months (or even longer) to get on the front page of Google. There are too many factors involved to give an accurate answer. It depends on keywords, how much effort we put into, how many sites we have to compete with and so on.
We have been working on about 5 pages and three of them are hovering around page 1 and page 2 for a variety of different keywords. It probably took around 3 to 4 months for that to happen. Mind you, we were focusing on our ebook at the time so they could have ranked a lot sooner. The other two are still struggling but we know they will get to the first page as well – they just require a bit more work.
Hi Paula,
Very inspiring stuff. I have not found this answer so I must ask.
1. When you pick 5 products are they all the same product type? For example lets say you pick lawn products. Would you have 5 reviews of weed trimmers? Or would they be different like 1 weed trimmer, 1 mower, 1 leaf blower etc…
2. Obviously if they are all the same you could have a site called “weed trimmers” but if they are different types, do you review more than 1? Like a site called “lawn tools” would have 1-5 reviews on weed trimmers, 1-5 reviews of leaf blowers etc…
Thanks for the kick in the butt, get off the couch motivation.
If our site were about lawn products and it was a brand new site, we would probably choose 5 different products and find the best in each category. For instance, the best weed trimmer, the best lawn mower, the best leaf blower.
Then once those 5 pages were getting traffic and sales we might start adding other reviews for similar products. So we will add more reviews for weed trimmers, more reviews for lawn mowers and so on.
Hi there
Love your E book BTW its a great read and well done!
I have a question on your main site….I know you get 2000 visitors per month and thats fantastic, most of my sites promised that but deliver much less even though I have a top 3 Google ranking.
I was wondering why you think this particular site gets so much traffic and your others not? Did you know or guess that it would have received this much traffic? ie is it a very competitive keyword? Do you think you could duplicate this one sites success or are you expecting many smaller sites do try and double those sales?
I am just wondering if I should just start targeting much higher volume keywords and just give myself 6 months to get there. I am finding the mid level keywords that show all this promise of 30,000 searches month exact etc end up producing between 20 and 150 clicks a day for all that work (3-4 months) at positions 1,2,3 etc….. Its not really worth the effort. What are your thoughts? Do you have any tips for targeting majorly successful keywords?
Thanks
Manny
That site receives a lot of traffic because we worked damn hard at back linking. But I wouldn’t do that again. It’s just too hard to get a whole site ranking. Now we just focus on individual pages and those pages can be on any of our sites. We don’t focus on sites anymore or niches. We focus on products and individual pages.
People get hung up on choosing just the right niche. It’s not about the niche with Amazon products – it’s about the product. If you choose the right product you can make sales. For instance you can choose one cordless drill that does extremely well and another cordless drill that doesn’t. We have all sorts of sites on different niches and have found this to be the case. That’s why we came to the conclusion that it’s not about the niche – it’s about the product.
In terms of keywords, you need to focus on a mix of keywords. The high level keywords are generally more competitive and will take longer to rank for. So going for the easier keywords is a good way of ranking quickly and it is also a good morale booster when you do rank for them. It keeps you motivated to keep working to get the rest of those harder keywords to rank.
The only issue I have with this is that 85% of your traffic and amazon income comes from this 1 large authority site. So in fact that’s the method that’s making close to $8k pm and the other “pages” must be doing $2k pm all told. Although it’s hard work I think you should be pushing the 1 big site method as that’s the method you used to make your money.I have tried niche and have found either there is not enough traffic and or if there is it’s way too much work ie 6 months to get that site listed that might make $500 per month. Authority sites with Amazon make more sense. Get and authority domain and then use your method to build individual pages, but at least you have a main site that is already trusted by G. Will be way faster .
I
I a
I would never build a big authority site again….not in a million years. There’s no need to. On that big site only maybe 10 or so pages make regular money. The rest of the pages do nothing. It was actually a waste of our time building a site that big.
If I had to start out again from scratch I would go with one website and only 5 product reviews. Then I would spend the rest of my time getting backlinks and traffic to those pages until they started making money. I’d probably add extra content every now and then to keep the site fresh but I wouldn’t bother turning it into a huge authority site.
Do you try to rank a page on a mix of keywords (phrases) or do you create a different page for each keyword phrase, but still using the same review? In other words …. Create the review, duplicate it and then change the key word phrases.
I see a lot of sites that have multiple landing pages each created for a certain keyword.
Personally, I would like to use my keyword phrases on one single page, but I have read you need to focus on one keyword phrase.
Your thoughts?
I wouldn’t duplicate the same review on my site. Google doesn’t like that.
We create the review and try to rank for a variety of keywords for that one page.
I have been trying for 2 weeks to get traffic but I just can’t get any. I use article marketing, social bookmarking sometimes even craigslist but still nothing.. How are you getting traffic to your pages? 100% SEO? is 2 weeks a little too early? When do you usually see traffic? help Paula
Two weeks is definitely too soon. It can take months to start seeing decent traffic.
If you want quick traffic try leaving comments on high traffic blogs related to your blog. The trick is to be the first to leave a comment. To do this download Comment Sniper (it’s free) and will tell you when a blogger has left a post on their blog. Then it’s your job to go in and leave a really good comment. People who are interested in what you have to say will click through to your website. Leave about 10 comments a day on various blogs.
Leaving comments is a short term goal to getting traffic. For long term results you need to try guest blogging. It will take you longer to get traffic as it is a slow build up but it will result in really good strong backlinks and good rankings in Google.
Find bloggers or website owners related to your blog and ask them if they would like a free article. Tell them that in exchange for the free article you will add a few links back to your website. The more guest articles you send out the more backlinks you will get. Just ensure that you choose fairly strong blogs – ie good pagerank and/or good traffic.
are your traffic 100% SEO? Thanks I will look into Comment sniper
Our traffic is all natural search. We don’t use pay per click. We did try a couple of times but it never worked out for us.
We rely entirely on organic search by following the steps that Paula has outlined in her previous response.
I find comment sniper an excellent way to get your comment to be the first or near the top on popular blogs. One thing you should do is actually read the blog post and then add a comment that is of value to others.
Paula, I apologize, I’m very new to this and trying to learn! How would leaving a comment on someone else’s blog get people to visit your own blog? Do you leave a link to your blog in your comment?
Whenever you add a comment to a blog post there is a field where you can enter your blog url. When your comment is published your name will show up as a link to your website. So if someone reads your comment and they like what you have to say they might be inclined to click on your name and head over to your website.
its really amazing that you have make much only from affiliate marketting, you know I really never depend on affiliate marketting, but I am kinda interested now.
It’s a good way of diversifying Usi especially if you are already making money from another method. It’s never good to stick with only one method of making money online.
Hi Wanda and Paula,
I am new to your blog and all I can say is —Wow! Lots of great info here! and I can see that you are very helpful specially to people seeking your advise. Thank you!I am now bookmarking it!!!:)
I am newbie here in affiliate marketing ( havent started a single website)..but am sooooo excited to start..just a few questions:
1) I read that you have a number of blogs and websites. Does it mean that one can still earn money using just a blog ( meaning the free ones like wordpress.com?) OR one can earn only if you you do a professional website?
2) when do you use a blog and when do you use a website?
3) Is Socrates theme good compared to One-theme? ( am looking into Socrates because it is more affordable)..saw the flexibility 2 that you are using . Its way expensive for me.
4) in doing your reviews on a certain product/s or category ( i.e lawn mowers) and being an affiliate with amazon, does it mean that you really buy and use that product for you to review it? How and where do you base your review?
5) do you also post your comments in the amazon review section?
6) do you only promote amazon solely in one website/blog of yours?
7) where can I buy your book and how much?
My questions are really elementary but would be happy if you answer all points.
much thanks!
Suzanne
1. You can earn money using a free blog but we don’t recommend it as you don’t have the control over it that you when you have your own blog.
2. We only use blogs now. It’s so much easier.
3. Don’t know the answer to that one as we haven’t tried either of those themes.
4. Have a read of this blog post – http://www.affiliateblogonline.com/2010/06/22/how-to-write-a-product-review-when-you-dont-own-the-product/
5. No we don’t.
6. We promote Amazon products on a variety of our blogs.
7. You can view our sales page for the book here – http://www.amazonianprofitplan.com/
HI Paula,
Another question:
Can I be an Amazon Associate even if I am in Manila? Should I have a US address or a bank account in the US?
Would appreciate your advise!
Thanks!
Suzanne
I’m pretty sure you can be an Amazon Associate from just about any country in the world but you would have to check with Amazon. We live in Australia and don’t need a US address or bank account to be an Amazon Associate.
Hi Paula and Wanda,
WP recently banned plugins from their repository that cloak affiliate links. Some affiliate programs ban cloacking affiliate links, but have not read anything about Amazon banning cloaking their affiliate links.
Do you two cloak affiliate links on your websites, posts and pages. If so, which program do you use, or recommend?
Thanks, Ken
We don’t cloak our Amazon links. The only thing we do is add nofollow to them.
I think people like Amazon and actually like to see an Amazon link.
Paula, I don’t see the advantage to make those Amazon affiliate links no follow. As that Amazon page is very related to your page. You are only passing reputation and Google bot would see the link is related. Matt Cutts says a do follow link “passes” page rank, he doesn’t say you “loose” page rank.
Matt also said that if you were publishing content about a site you wouldn’t want to be associated with (eg article about spamming with a link to a spam site), then use no follow.
After watching all of Matt Cutts videos over the last 12 months and reading SEO material published by Google I think outbond links don’t cause a PR loss but just pass it on. It may only affect your PR if the outbound links were either unrelated to your content (especially lots of unrelated links) or link to a “bad” site like spam, link farms, cloaking sites.
Anyway that’s my take on some of the 200 things Google’s algo considers.
There was a concern sometime back that Google was penalizing affiliate sites. So there was a rush to add nofollow to affiliate links. But who really knows what Google is thinking – we still add nofollow out of habit more than anything else.
I agree with Paula. Amazon is an asset for you because its a household name in the US and very reliable for shipping I hear. So why cloak a reliable product source. However, if you do need to cloak them, it might be better to make the first link to a redirect page on your site. Easy to do either by the meta tag in the page header or a php redirect, htaccess file redirect. That way you would be seen for redirecting for possibly tracking purposes, not cloaking per se.
I know it’s an old post, but I love reading about other people’s success. It helps drive my success. The one thing I’m waiting to capitalize on is Mobile Affiliate marketing. Have you tried anything in the mobile arena yet? I know Amazon does not offer anything yet. The best you can do with Amazon is push people from an online app to a website in order to use the tracking. But that kinda defeats the purpose of using a mobile app.
We did try cell phone marketing sometime back but didn’t have much success. We didn’t try too hard however so I am sure it can work – plenty of people are doing it.
Hi Paula,
Thanks for the reply. I agree that people like to see the Amazon link. My only issue is other affiliates replacing my ID with theirs to steal commissions.
I think there are plugins that hide the long data string exposing your affiliate ID and redirect the link show the ASIN number.
I am thinking that most people buying from Amazom are interested in buying the product from a trusted source and not concerned with stealing commissions. Do you agree?
Thanks, Ken
Yes, definitely agree Ken. Most of the problems with stealing commissions happens within the internet marketing niche not for home based products that you will find in Amazon.
Hi there
I was wondering what your clickthru rate is from your sites to Amazon?
I am noticing a very low clickthru (i think its low)….for example I have 1 page that does 150 to 200 clicks a day unique but I only get around 25 amazon clicks to the amazon page. The site is a standard review site. The structure is shorter reviews more like a standard shopping site…..Is this low? 12% to 16%?
My amazon conversions once there get 8% clicks to sales. Seems I miss out on a lot of clicks to Amazon though….what should I expect?
Thing is the traffic is pretty generic…..an example would be something like “13 inch laptop”…. So I give the customer options in case the first one on Amazon is not right for them. I have about 8 products with 3 paragraph reviews each leading to longer reviews.
Thanks Manny
You could probably do a bit better than 16% although the CTR is dependent on so many different things that it can be difficult to determine what you should or shouldn’t expect. We have pages that get close to a 50% CTR and other pages that get practically nothing.
The 8% is pretty good for the sale rate so your goal should be to get more people there.
Here’s some tips:
1. What we found was that when we started writing really long helpful reviews (around 1000 words), the CRT increased dramatically. So think about whether you can make your review longer and more helpful.
2. Determine how long they are staying on that page. If you have Google Analytics installed you will get this sort of information. If they only stay for a few seconds then you know that they are clicking the back button really quickly. Think about why they might be doing this.
3. Remove distractions from that page. If you can, remove the sidebar so it is a full width page. Also remove Adsense ads on that page.
4. Use text links rather than Amazon widgets. People are more likely to click text links.
5. Add an affilaite link in the very first paragraph to Amazon.
6. Determine the keywords that people are using to find that page. Again you can use Google Analytics for this type of info. If they are typing in “dog training” and your page is about “dog beds” then they are obviously not finding what they are looking for and they will click the back button.
Hey Gals! WAY TO GO with the profit this month! Holy moly…okay, time to save up to get the new guide now :) Thanks for everything you do!
Actually these results were for November last year. Will be interesting to see how it goes this year.
Hi Paula, Wanda I want to say a big congratulations on your big month and i am sure santa will bring even more bounties for you this year I did notice some comments and I tot hey! In the post one thing you said stuck with me and that was when you stopped focusing on the money (yourself and what you’ll get) and started focusing on ur customers and proving value for them your income rose, which is what I will take away from this post today. I must give value first bcos that helps the buyer make an informed decision, its helps amazon make a sale and i get a commission “win win win”.
Please dont get into amazon just becos Paula and Wanda had some really amazing results only, get into it bcos like they are doin you want to add value.
at the risk of sounding like my pastor I have been blessed by this post thanks a lot Wanda and Paula U guys have a 5star rating in my book.
It works so much better when you provide value. Google loves it as well so as you say it’s a win-win for all concerned.
Wow! That’s impressive. Like most, I tried Amazon Associates before but I only made a few dollars. I felt it was a waste of time so I abandoned it. But after looking at your earnings, I think I’ll go back and give it another try. But this time, I’ll follow your tips.
Thanks for sharing!
The key with this is to focus on only a few products. There’s no need to build big sites full of hundreds of products. Choose really good products on Amazon (ones getting really good reviews) and write a well written helpful review for each product. Then spend the rest of your time getting traffic to those product reviews.
Damn, that is pretty inspiring.. That’s 27 cents per click. Very very scary. I better go on putting Amazon affiliate links in my blogs since I know Cyber Monday and Christmas is almost here ^_^
Hi , wanda & paula
I am new to your blog.
i see many inspiration here after i read other people comments
I am glad see other success in amazon affiliate. i almost already 1 month to be amazon affiliate. build my first website take much time for me as I am newbie in this things. but now my stress come just like others beginner which still waiting their selling happened which actually very hard to get.
my i ask u a question:
as u said (after read comments above) you prefer to make site review with blog type which only have have little 10 pages and put lots effort on those quality pages
is they works ? i mean is the way u are doing is better than create 1 product per site or minisite. if they are working the i guess your main blog is already high ranking too so this approach can work – the pages easily get high ranking if the main site already top position cmiiw ?
rgds,
gon :)
Our sites generally start our small but grow as time goes on. This is a natural approach to building a website. Many people automate their blogs and flood it will hundreds of posts almost immediately.
What we do is create 5 well written reviews and start getting traffic to those reviews. Then while we are doing that we also write short (300-500 words )information type articles that link to those 5 product reviews. So we might add 2 to 5 of these articles a week. This helps to build up the blog.
Also once one or more of our first 5 reviews are making money, then we might add another couple of reviews.
So over time the blog builds slowly with nice well written content.
Hi, everything I’ve read here so far sounds very exciting but one thing concerns me a little. You said…
“The results are for four of our blogs but most of the money is coming from one site…probably about 90% of the income. We haven’t worked much on those other 3 blogs and until we do they will continue to make a minimal income.”
How sure are you that the $13,200 (90% of $14,680) which came from that one site is due solely to you switching to long reviews and is not just the result of you “lucking out” and hitting one very hot product category?
I’m not trying to be negative but you seem to be discouraging people from going into several markets and instead to focus on one (to begin with) But you also state that you built many sites. It seems to me that it’s easier to focus on one site when you can look to see which of your 20 sites is already performing the best. Whereas someone just starting out and building just one site has a very big chance of choosing an under-performing market.
Again, not trying to be a downer, it’s just something that concerned me when I read how your income was 90% from one site.
Thanks
We know it was due to the long reviews because prior to writing those long reviews we weren’t making anywhere near as much. We had pages that were getting a decent amount of traffic but not making many sales – the longer format saw the conversion rate jump.
We don’t actually say to only stick with one market or niche – we say to stick with only a few products. Those products can be from a variety of different niches – it doesn’t really matter what the niche is – the trick is choosing really good quality products that people will buy. This is the downfall for most people promoting Amazon products – they don’t choose the right products to begin with – they just randomly choose products.
It really has nothing to do with the site – any of our sites could make money if we focused on them. Again it’s not the niche that is important – it’s the product. We have proven that this year by focusing on pages on some of our other sites. They too have made us money. The results you see in the blog post are from November last year. We will be posting our results for November this year shortly.
We no longer focus on sites and niches – we focus solely on pages and products. So the site we were focusing on last year only did well because we chose a few pages from it and focused most of our attention on them. Anyone can do the same thing – just stop creating more and more websites and just focus on a few pages at a time until they are converting.
Seems like I’m a little late in catching up to your blog. After following another ebook and creating some 80+ websites which recommends copying Amazon information and using very little original content, I now realize the errors of my ways. However, I have made and continue to make sales from those sites, albeit very limited.
With your help, I now realize that content is king and had my very first sale on a content rich website.
Thank You!!!
That’s so good to hear Paul.
You might also want to read this blog post that also might help since you have so many websites:
http://www.affiliateblogonline.com/2010/11/26/what-to-do-if-you-have-multiple-sites-but-are-not-making-much-money/
Your stats are amazing. I actually have 5 times more clicks but my conversions were like 00.75% I just thought that was norm. I was doing the whole autoblogging with 20+ sites and using those widgets.
Now I see I should just rework my existing sites rather than building up more niche blogs
You might want to take a look at this post as well Thomas:
http://www.affiliateblogonline.com/2010/11/26/what-to-do-if-you-have-multiple-sites-but-are-not-making-much-money/
Hi Paula & Wanda, its great and inspiring to read the articles on your blog and how much income you have generated using amazon. I would like to know are all your keywords that generate your main income ranked 1 on google page 1 or are they spread across various positions on page 1? What percentage are ranked no 1 for those converting keywords?
Thanks
Shaz
We don’t have exact details on where our keywords are ranked. We used to check constantly to see where everything was ranked and even had a spreadsheet for it. But over time we realized that it was a waste of time to keep checking.
They aren’t all ranked number 1 that’s for sure.
I just bought today your Amazonian Profit Plan ebook today. So far, it’s very impressive. I laud what you’ve achieved. I’m currently making around $2,000 to $2,500 a month in AdSense and affiliate income but want to grow that for I have the same dream as you — work from home with a five-figure income.
Thank you for the detail here.
That’s a nice income from Adsense. We have a few Adsense sites but can’t seem to get them to make too much. I guess it all comes down to getting more traffic.
Hi ladies,
I am so inspired by your new ebook. I am writing 5 reviews and plan to review a book on Amazon related to my other site. j Great suggestion you made about that to another blogger. I also read your blog about staying motivated. I think a weekly motivational quote or a comment from you both would be so great.
Keep up the great work and thank you for the inspiration.
That sounds like a good idea Leigh. We will think about adding something motivational to our newsletter on a regular basis…I just have to think of something first…LOL.
Awesome earnings !!
Hi Paula & Wanda,
How did earnings go for December and January? Isn’t December bigger than November for you, or is most of the Christmas shopping done early?
I’m currently writing reviews (first review site is very competitive electronics market and not getting much traffic) and working on content sites using Adsense/Affiliate offers. I’m also planning doing some paid adevrtising campaigns with CPA again for quick money while I work on my organic traffic sites. But I have learnt that when ads stop so does the oincome. Whereas SEO sites make passive income everyday (once established).
December is always better than November by a long shot. We made approx $34,000 and in January just over $14,000.
I’m assuming by paid ads you mean PPC? We’ve tried that a couple of times but never had much success. We just ended up losing money. But a lot of people have done quite well with it. You just have to know what you’re doing and we never did.
Paid ads cover PPC, Facebook, Plenty Of Fish, PPV etc. I did have 3 Adwords accounts but over the last 18 months all 3 have been suspended for unknown reasons. I also meant paid advertising to CPA offers. Not to Amazon review sites ….I think it may be against their TOS like it is with Adsense.
Advertising campaigns get me quick profiits, while it takes months to get any decent traffic with SEO. Plus Amazon also take a few months to pay. Whereas some CPA networks pay weekly. Just balancing things out. :)
It’s seems like most people get their Adsense account suspended. It looks as though Google is trying to rid their system of Internet marketers. Their loss I guess.
Oh great results again too. Thanks for posting as I’m interested in the seasonality at this time of year. It certainly beats a 9-5 job. :)
Those are some nice earnings from amazon. I’ve been at it for 3 months but havn’t been able to do much. Maybe I’m doing something wrong.
It can take a while to start making money with anything online. Are you getting much traffic? If not, that should be what you need to work on. If instead you are getting plenty of traffic and aren’t making many sales then you need to work on your reviews in order to increase conversions. Take a look at some of the posts on this site. You will get lots of tips on writing better reviews.
Fantastic advice here, I’m just playing with IM at the moment but will have a good look at setting something up regarding Amazon,
well done and keep up the great work :)
Chris
Hi ladies,
Sorry if you have answered this before, but I want to be clear in understanding. You are making this kind of money with only two sites? I guess it is difficult to believe, but it is inspiring if that is the case. Thanks so much.
We actually don’t think in terms of sites anymore. We think in terms of pages. The reason we do that is because we realized some time back that out of the thousands of pages of content we had up on the net only about 10 to 20 pages were actually making any decent income.
But to answer your question, at the time of this post the majority of our income came from just a couple of our sites. But that has changed for us because we have been looking at pages on our other sites and working on those over the past year or so to build them up as well. So we don’t really focus on sites but pages.
So what you are saying is what worked for you with the sites that made you so much income, you are now applying to the other sites as well? It sounds like you have developed a formula that works and so if that is the case, and you are as successful with the new sites that you have been with the others, you will be making a heck of a lot more money than you already have been making. I make this point because I am thinking about buying your Amazonian Profit Plan ebook and if it is that formula that you are explaining in the ebook, I think I’m convinced. And excited, for you and for me! Thanks so much for your quick response.
You can see a comparison between when this post was written and a year later here:
http://www.affiliateblogonline.com/2010/12/03/how-much-did-we-make-on-amazon-in-november-2010/
So we are definitely making more but not a ‘heck of a lot more’ only because we decided that we needed to diversify. We’ve been in this business (not always successfully of course) for quite a number of years and we have seen a lot of people crash and burn because they have relied on only one source of income. This is not the sort of business where you can do that because things change constantly. So we have been working on other things for a while now. Some of those things have worked and some haven’t but we have to keep looking at other things and not become complacent.
So although we have been working on our Amazon sites we haven’t done as much as we could have because of those other projects.
The method in our ebook is still sound and will still work despite the recent Google changes which is great. The reason it still works is that it is all about providing quality and that is what Google are heading towards as well. However, I can’t guarantee what the future will bring – Google seems to be a fickle organization and are constantly changing and while we rely on them for traffic we have to be constantly on the alert for what may come in the future.
Thank you so much for this. It truly helps. Just one more question. I know you recommend Flexsqueeze theme. I would like to custom my heading but am having difficulties with it. Do you custom your heading yourself within the theme settings or do you outsource to a graphics designer? Maybe the answer is in the settings but I just can’t find it. Thanks again, and best of luck on your continued success.
I actually do our own headers. I use Photoshop to do it. But you can outsource the job. You can try Elance.com although you will probably get it cheaper via WarriorForum.com.
I love this blog! Keep it up! I am about 8 months into building an affiliate marketing business and like you have said, I need to continue to develop new channels for converting sales. I also looked into Amazon, but was discouraged by the 4% figure. I’ve been using Shareasale, CJ, Zazzle, Adsense and others – but I think it’s time to add Amazon to the list. Impressive stats, look forward to more motivational posts.
We were the same Ken – we didn’t want to add Amazon because of the low commission rate. I only wish we had added them sooner. It’s worth giving them a try – you can always remove the links if you don’t have any success.
It’s good article. I have questions. Is it good for a website sell ONLY one product ? jsut like that http://www.product1.com. so if I sell 5 products, I need 5 website ? http://www.product1.com. http://www.product2.com. http://www.product3.com. http://www.product4.com. http://www.product5.com.
We don’t create websites for just one product. The reason why we don’t do that is because if the product is no longer being manufactured then all our work is lost. We prefer to create a site that covers a range of different products.
Wow, this is so impressive! I just started my own first Amazon website (HibiscusTeaShop) this week, and I have so much to learn, but I’m hoping I’m on the right track.
At least you have confirmed my instincts, that it’s better to use only text links and image links, but no banners or widgets.
If you have the time, I’d love it if you could take a quick look at my site and see if anything leaps out at you as wrong or ill-advised. If not I understand, and thanks for all the info! I’ll keep reading your other articles.
You’ve done a great job Caroline especially considering you’ve only had the site up a week. It’s nice to look at and the content is great.
One suggestion I have is to make it more personal. Use your own life stories in your post and use the word “I” a lot more. Forgot about promoting products while you write your posts and pretend you are writing the post and explaining the product to a friend or family member.
Thank you Paula, for taking the time to look at my website! I appreciate it very much.
It’s funny, I was trying to be ‘objective’ in telling people why hibiscus tea is good for you, and so on — but having read your reply as well as some of your other articles and looked around a bit more, I believe you’re right, that the personal touch matters more. I will keep working on this approach.
You’ve gained another newsletter subscriber. :-)
Great article. I have just integrated the Amazon Associate program into my new blog. I wrote a review about a running shoe that I really liked and a couple of days later (it is a new blog so I don’t generate much traffic yet) I saw a sale already. I was super excited too because I was planning on using Clickbank for a lot of my affiliate marketing, but they have very limited products. I am hoping that one day I will break the $1000 a month mark through the Amazon Associate program, but small steps first.
Anyways, great article, I learned some useful tips, keep up the good work!
Nice work Jarrett. Now you know that your review can convert so all you need is to get more traffic to that page.
Dear Wanda and Paula
It was nice of you to explain in detail how Amazon Associates work and what practices generate the best click-through rate. I am happy for your success and wish you all the best with this program.
I will follow your advice on using different affiliate programs instead of sticking to one.
Thanks,
Jim
You will find that Amazon has the best conversion rate out of most other affiliate programs but it is always worthwhile trying out other programs.
Paula and Wanda, I’m a frequent stalker of your blog! hahaha! I know a few big time Amazon super affiliates but I feel more connected with your work.
I want to THANK YOU SO MUCH for sharing your Amazon earnings. I just wish there is still some way to update us with your monthly earnings. It took me a few days to read all the comments in this particular post and I still found a lot of valuable information that I can use to improve my Amazon promotions.
Before stumbling upon your blog, I was building one Amazon website after another. Right now I adapted your focused approach and I’m now concentrating on 5 review pages. I’m earning a good income from Amazon and I already wrote a ridiculous income goal for September 2012 and glued it on my wall (one of your posts promoted me to do this) hahaha!
Again thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and I wish you more success!
We longer reveal our earnings but let’s just say we haven’t gone backwards. You can read why we no longer reveal our income here:
http://www.affiliateblogonline.com/2011/03/14/do-we-really-have-to-prove-how-much-money-we-make/
Good to hear that you are focusing on just a few reviews at a time. It really is the key to making money faster in my opinion. The more we do the more we spread ourselves too thin and the longer it takes to succeed.
This is a great testimonial to the power of Amazon Affiliates. I’m new to amazon affiliates. It’s been about 1 month and I’m starting to see some of the results you mentioned but on a smaller level. I was starting to get a little bit discouraged with the pay structure because I’ve been thinking it’s going to be too hard to sell enough to get to that 8.5%. A friend and I will be starting another amazon affiliate site here in the next week so I’ll use your blog as inspiration. I think I’ll utilize text links more after reading this one. I’m really liking your posts as they provide some good tips, I’ll be bookmarking. Thanks!
We have found that text links work extremely well. We avoid widgets and banner ads in our main reviews.
Hi, congrats on your success. Would you help me with something? I have 169 clicks on the Canon PowerShot S100 12.1 MP Digital Camera but only made 1 order.. I have 20+ clicks on other items and still no orders. Is this my fault or Amazons fault?
This post should help you Adam.
http://www.affiliateblogonline.com/2011/06/11/you-have-the-traffic-so-why-arent-you-converting/
Ok, thank you :)
i am a new bee….want to become a tech blogger…. plese tell me how should i start????? I know little html. little about wordpress, joomla….
You need to start by learning about WordPress first. That shouldn’t take you too long. You don’t need to know about html or Joomla or anything else. You only need to know the basics of WordPress first. Search in Google for ‘how to build a blog’ for advice.
The next step is to write quality content. If you want to be a tech blogger then go and check out the most successful tech blogs on the net. They are successful for a reason and usually it is because they have provided quality content that is helpful to the reader.
Focus on quality rather than quantity. You don’t need hundreds of articles on your site that are short and of poor quality. Instead you want lots of meaty articles that provide value.
Great article Paula! I had discounted amazon as well recently since I was only seeing 4% commissions and was going to stop all together. But I’m glad I didn’t I was able to get a few of my sites to position 1 and have hit the 7% mark both in November and December with an 8%+ conversion rate. I plan on turning up my amazon niche sites in 2012. Definitely a great source.
Excellent Joshua!
We did the same thing at the start – we didn’t use Amazon because we thought the commission was too low. We didn’t realize that the commission rate increased with the more products you sold and because people love Amazon they tend to buy more than one thing.
May I know,if we need any specific domain name for amazon product review web site?
No, you don’t need anything specific. We try and use a domain name that has our main keyword in it but if we can’t get one then we just use a generic type of domain name.
For instance, if our website is about cordless drills then we will try and get a domain name like: cordlessdrillreviews.com or cordless-drills.com or bestcordlessdrills.com.
If we can’t get any of those domain names then we will try for domain names like powertools.com or best-power-tool-reviews.com.
Hey Paula. Can you give us a hint as to which niches convert better with Amazon? I know you said it’s more about the product rather than the niche, but generally, which niches do you think is the easiest to convert? i.e. electronics, books, appliances.
My same answer still applies Andrew. Any niche will work as long as the product is a quality product. The only niches I would avoid are the more competitive products like iPhones, computers, laptops and so on. You can still make money from them but it is just a lot harder to get there plus the products are updating constantly so your reviews can become outdated quite quickly.
Hello. I found 27+ niche websites of yours via google. I was just wondering if your income from Amazon is mainly coming from one site. It seems as if that site must be the holy grail of your amazon income compared to the others I checked out which hardly get any traffic. Thanks.
There is this perception that we make all our money from one website but that’s not the case. Our money comes from a variety of pages from a variety of different sites. It’s the PAGES, not the sites that make us money.
We don’t think in terms of websites but pages. So one website might get a lot of traffic and it may look like some of the others don’t but looking at the websites as a whole is the wrong way to go about it. This is where we failed at the start. We had websites getting tons of traffic but not many sales. We couldn’t figure out why. However, when we started focusing on pages instead that’s when we started to see things happen.
We also have pages that don’t get a lot of traffic but it is highly targeted traffic and the conversions are excellent.
Hi, I have a very basic Amazon question. In an Amazon marketing course I followed they emphasize a lot to have a relevant domain name. But I am confused about that since I also hear that if you have the product name in your url you can get into legal trouble. So how to get a exact match domain for a buyer keyword without having somehow the product name in there? Do you have somekind of advice on this topic?
Thanks,
Demian
You probably wouldn’t get into any legal trouble. However, the company may ask you to take the site down. It’s a risk you have to take when you use a specific product name as your domain name.
We don’t get caught up in getting domain names absolutely perfect. If for instance we have a site about cordless drills then we will simply ensure that the domain name has the words ‘cordless drill’ in it somewhere. So it might be bestcordlessdrills.com for instance.
We never create sites about one product only. For instance we won’t build a complete site about the Panasonic XYZ Cordless Drill. Instead the site will be about cordless drills in general covering a range of different brands.
So do you think its worth it to invest 4K in a marketing package which includes advertising all over the internet for my amazon.com page? ROI sounds very good with Cyber Monday coming up soon!
It sounds like you have your own product – is that right? If so, we’re probably not the best people to ask your question. We promote Amazon products and make a commission from the sales. So they are not our products that we are promoting.
You probably need to talk to someone who does sell their own products. Take a look at the following blog post. It was a guest post written by someone who actually sells their own products on Amazon. You might want to contact him for more info.
http://www.affiliateblogonline.com/2011/07/11/how-to-sell-your-own-products-on-amazon-a-success-story/