Amazon Affiliate Marketers - I need your Feedback & Honest Opinions

5 replies
Hello All,

A little background - I'm a Frontend Designer/Developer currently working on enhancing Drupal's Amazon's Affiliate and Store/Cart Modules.

Essentially, the application connects to Amazon's API, which means you can easily create an online store, product review website or any other website that monetizes through Amazon's Affiliate Program.

It's as easy as entering the Product ASIN and hitting Save - All of the product's information will be stored on your website - including images, descriptions, rating and reviews.

Since, I'm a designer/developer first and Internet Marketer second I'm looking for feedback and advice from the community about features, designs and enhancements you would like to see in an Amazon Affiliate Application Platform - It's Open Source and FREE to use!

Important Questions

Would you prefer an application that can handle 100's of products or niche specific "review/comparisons"? For example would you want a Fishing themed store, which sells rods, bait, lures, etc... or one designed specifically built to compare the Top 10 Fishing Rods for Under $250.

How important is Content Publishing and managing outside writers to publish unique content on the website? Do you want a review and revision process? Are SEO features like keyword analysis important?

Would video (hosted on YouTube and Vimeo) be a part of your marketing campaign?

Any third-party applications/API's you want to see integrated into an Amazon Affiliate Application?

PM if you're interested in having an in-depth conversation.
#affiliate #amazon #feedback #honest #marketers #opinions
  • Profile picture of the author wolfmmiii
    Originally Posted by KamesCG View Post

    It's as easy as entering the Product ASIN and hitting Save - All of the product's information will be stored on your website - including images, descriptions, rating and reviews.
    Frankly, the above is useless. What's the point of just regurgitating what Amazon already says?

    Important Questions

    Would you prefer an application that can handle 100's of products or niche specific "review/comparisons"? For example would you want a Fishing themed store, which sells rods, bait, lures, etc... or one designed specifically built to compare the Top 10 Fishing Rods for Under $250.
    A good site will incorporate both of the above.


    How important is Content Publishing and managing outside writers to publish unique content on the website? Do you want a review and revision process? Are SEO features like keyword analysis important?

    Would video (hosted on YouTube and Vimeo) be a part of your marketing campaign?
    Content publishing is critical since a site without any kind of unique angle or content is just a waste of space.
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    • Profile picture of the author KamesCG
      Interesting that you consider it useless. You don't think there is any value in reusing Amazon's Content. For example ToolFanatic.com | Buy New & Used Tools at Clearance Prices! is primarily content from Amazon and I would consider that a good website. No?
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      • Profile picture of the author thejfoster42
        Originally Posted by KamesCG View Post

        Interesting that you consider it useless. You don't think there is any value in reusing Amazon's Content. For example ToolFanatic.com | Buy New & Used Tools at Clearance Prices! is primarily content from Amazon and I would consider that a good website. No?
        Well there is some value in using the content provided by Amaon, but since 100's of other affiliate marketing blogs will likely be pulling content from the same product, you're a lot more likely to have issues with duplicate content with that method.

        1: having the exact same content as every other affiliate provides no value to users and does not give them any incentive to purchase the product through your affiliate link rather than just going to Amazon directly

        2: duplicate content makes Google angry. Like seriously it makes Google throw a 5 year old style temper tantrum.

        So yes, having unique content is pretty essential to a site like this.
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      • Profile picture of the author wolfmmiii
        Originally Posted by KamesCG View Post

        Interesting that you consider it useless. You don't think there is any value in reusing Amazon's Content. For example ToolFanatic.com | Buy New & Used Tools at Clearance Prices! is primarily content from Amazon and I would consider that a good website. No?
        Yes. Useless. If I stand up a website, I want to offer value to my readers. Regurgitating the same info that Amazon and a million other affiliates already show is useless.
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        • Profile picture of the author kilgore
          Originally Posted by wolfmmiii View Post

          Yes. Useless. If I stand up a website, I want to offer value to my readers. Regurgitating the same info that Amazon and a million other affiliates already show is useless.
          I generally agree with your posts, but here I have to disagree.

          One way to add value is by being a good product curator. In fact, it's what we do. We have over 6000 Amazon products on our website and we do use the API to pull in prices, descriptions, etc. Of course then we flush out each product, re-categorize them in ways that make sense to our users, then add them into blogs or product guides or other tools to make them more accessible to a wide variety of users.

          At least for us, therefore, our value is not that we can write a better product description than Amazon can, but it's that our smaller site can serve the subset of people interested in our types of products much better than Amazon can since they're essentially trying to serve the needs of everyone.

          All that said... To the OP, I probably wouldn't buy an out of the box solution to do what we do. Our software is based on open source technologies, but we've modified the heck out of it to get it to work exactly in the ways that make sense for us -- and I doubt those ways will make the most sense for others...
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