Another one on the AdSense Wheel of Misfortune

[kiwiviktor81]

Weirdly, they paid me before disabling my account due to the "risk of invalid activity". I was disappointed with the AdSense program anyway - the ads were often so poorly targeted that I could go 1,000 page views without getting a click, so good riddance to them really.

I need advice regarding the next step. I am planning on becoming an Amazon affiliate, which I was thinking about doing anyway. AdSense was just easier. Have people here gotten good results from Amazon and are there any pointers that can be given? I know not to email spam people.

I'd rather not use AdBrite because I've been put off the whole contextual advertising idea. Any other advice for what I could do?

[JamesGw]

Amazon is pretty straight forward. You get traffic for a product or type of product and then refer people to Amazon. "Review," "buy," and "best ___" keywords are usually the best. Comparison ones are good too.

I get between an 8 and 12% conversion rate with Amazon.

[kiwiviktor81]

@ JamesGW: do you mean that 8-12% of people who click the ads buy something, or that 8-12% of people who see the ads click on them?

[Kevin Marshall]

Some people make thousands per month with Amazon.

The key with Amazon is to target specific product names with high volume and low competition. If you can rank for these keywords, you will get the highest conversion rates.

I like to target Amazon products that are at least $100, and I also like to target products that can drive a lot of volume.

Commission rates are determined by percentage, and the more products you sell on Amazon, the higher percentage commission rates you earn.

I agree with you on Adbrite. It isn't worth your time to make money with Adbrite unless you are getting massive traffic to your sites.

[JamesGw]

Originally Posted by kiwiviktor81

@ JamesGW: do you mean that 8-12% of people who click the ads buy something, or that 8-12% of people who see the ads click on them?

Conversion rate is the percent of people who click the ads and buy. CTR is more dependent on how you integrate the product links into your content. If you're clever, you should be able to get that up above 50%.

You can also look into email marketing with Amazon. I'm not 100% what their policies are with that, though.

[ainmohd]

Many of my websites have been serving adsense ads since 2004. My websites had also serves ads from other sources including Amazon.

Believe me, google adsense program is still the best provided your have quality contents targeted for the right eyeballs.

[kiwiviktor81]

Originally Posted by ainmohd

Believe me, google adsense program is still the best provided your have quality contents targeted for the right eyeballs.

Yeah, that's my issue with it though: I looked at my ads, and always they were things that my visitors would never be interested in, and which weren't relevant. This was for sites that had been up for 3 months and had 30 pages of content all related to one subject.

Amazon seems like more work, but less hassle, if that makes sense.

[Kurt Chrisler]

If you site is about specific products then, in my experience, Amazon earns more than AdSense. I have one site that reviews products in the electronics niche that has Amazon and AdSense on it and earns around $300 a month from Amazon and only around $20 a month from AdSense.

However, if you have more of a content site (example "Florida Golf Vacations") then Amazon likely won't work well.