Affiliate home
Science fiction
Get paid to surf!!
Sell your house on the web
Crosswords
Word searches
Small business help and advice
Free Internet income course
Starting out as merely an online bookstore, Amazon has expanded to include music, videos and electronic goods. They've also created an online mall for small businesses to take advantage of Amazon's fantastic web-presence and reach.
That marketing reach has come, almost exclusively, through their vast affiliate network. Webmasters can sign up with Amazon, and place search boxes, banner ads and text links on their sites, linking to the Amazon website. When a person clicks through one of these links and makes a purchase, 5-15% of the purchase price (except for electronics) is earned by the affiliate in question. For Amazon, it's pretty much free marketing; for the affiliate, it's a source of potential income.
The potential income from becoming an Amazon.com affiliate can be enormous. If you're hoping to earn a steady monthly income of $3,000, all you need is to generate sufficient clickthroughs that will generate between $20,000 and $60,000 in sales each month. But what is the likelihood of that happening?
Not everyone who comes to your site will want to purchase something from Amazon. That goes without saying. What your site is about, and the material you're linking to will determine what sort of percentage you can expect to clickthrough to Amazon. The numbers, in general, aren't pretty. If your link to Amazon is general in nature - a search box or banner - don't expect many if any clickthroughs. If people wanted to check out Amazon for a book or video, they would've gone directly to their site, not to yours. If you're going to get ANY clickthroughs, you'll need to provide reviews of the books or CDs or videos that you're linking to. And the reviews have to be reasonably accurate. You might think that you'll need to hype every item that you're hoping to sell, but discerning visitors will know if that's what you're doing. Not only will that mean that you'll lose a sale, but it also means that you'll lose a potential return visitor forever. First rule: Don't hype.
Writing up a well-written, concise, accurate review will motivate visitors to consider buying the item being reviewed. If they clickthrough the link to the specific item and make the purchase, you'll earn 15% of the selling price. Honest reviews will generate more sales and higher commissions.
But will you get enough in commissions to quit that wretched day job that you can no longer stand? If you assume a $20 selling price and a 15% commission, every sale will give you $3. That means, you have to get 1,000 people each month to click through and buy.
About 10-20% of motivated visitors will clickthrough, while people who are just surfing and not really interested in your subject matter almost undoubtedly will not. If this is the case, then you'll need at least 6,000 unique visitors to your site every month! The average personal website is lucky to get 600 in a year. You'll need to find a specific topic for your website that has little if any competition, and market like there's no tomorrow in order to generate sufficient visitors (and clickthroughs).
Though I'm an Amazon affiliate, I have to give Amazon a Not Recommended rating. With hundreds of thousands of affiliates out there, and no real reason for people to visit elsewhere before going to Amazon's website, very few people will make any reasonable amount of income. Pocket money, sure. Enough to pay the monthly fee for the virtual webserver, perhaps. Enough money to live on? Not a chance.
Back to the affiliates page.