How long will your Amazon affiliate business last before sales will drop?

This article My Experience of Being a 7 Month Amazon Affiliate (Do's & Don'ts for an Amazon Associates Beginner) might help you out in answering your question...i am promoting something that is free for life and working since 1998 so not afraid of my home business dying out...

Amazon's sales numbers are exploding and every year they sell a ton more stuff than the year before.

They are the market leader when it comes to Ecommerce.

People are not going to stop buying from them any time soon.

Sure, your traffic sources could dry up or whatever but those risks are there for all online businesses.

Cheers

Ps. I have been doing Amazon full time for just over 5 years and I can tell your with certainty that if you send targeted traffic to Amazon you will make sales. Figure out how to get targeted traffic and then pass it on to Amazon. Works the same for most if not all business models.

There is no such the as the Amazon affiliate business model.

Amazon affiliates is a monetization method. Full stop. It is not a business model in and of itself. Indeed, there are countless business models that can leverage the Amazon affiliate program to great effect.

You might:

• Create a so-called "review" site. (Here's one that I dug up: Toaster Oven Reviews | The 3 Best Toaster Ovens 2015.)
• Create a more in depth review site. (I like this one: KenRockwell.com: Photography, Cameras and Taking Better Pictures)
• Create a curated shopping page. (Such as ThisIsWhyImBroke.com :: The Internet's Mall)
• Create a social network. (Share Book Recommendations With Your Friends, Join Book Clubs, Answer Trivia)
• Create a blog or other news site and include affiliate links there (e.g., Amazon reveals its 2015 Black Friday deals - CNET)
• And many, many others!

I think when you're talking about "the Amazon business model" you're referring to the first model I mentioned, where a business quickly creates a (shoddy) website, with a small amount of (low quality) content, usually geared toward one specific type of product, including a dozen or so products in the category and (poorly written) reviews for each of those products. And I agree there are countless problems with that business model specifically. (The main problem is usually that these "review sites" -- including the one I used as an example -- suck.) But don't limit your thinking about Amazon affiliates to just creating crappy review sites or you might be missing opportunities.

That said, Amazon Affiliates is only one of many, many monetization methods out there and when you do come up with a business model you may find one that works better for you than Amazon. But the key is to have a working business model -- and the monetization method is only a part of that. It's an important part, but even more important is your ability to bring value to your customers. There are very good reasons why the Toaster Oven review site I listed is ranked 3,373,564 on Alexa and Ken Rockwell's site is ranked 10,877. Most likely those same reasons would apply to any business using any monetization method.

The same could be said with almost anything though.
The key is to keep on track and always find new ways to drive traffic and keep people coming back.