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Amazon Associate vs Other Networks

by Yourself
2 replies

Hi everybody,
I'm Confused I had to choose between start with amazon affiliate (low commission) or other networks with high commission.
#amazon #associate #networks
  • Profile picture of the author BradVert2013
    I can only give you my own experience: when I started my first blog I used Amazon Associates. I actually made some good money with it (enough to pay my hosting fees and make a tidy profit - this was just a side hobby at the time).

    Then my state passed an "Amazon tax" and Amazon cancelled all the associate accounts in my state. I tried a lot of other affiliates like Amazon (Overstock, etc) and a sale. It was awful.

    Amazon is by far the best, in my opinion. The commissions might be low, but if you can get someone to click on your link to Amazon's site, they do an great job of getting people to buy. I also found that people rarely buy just the product they clicked on, they also buy other stuff too.

    Hope this helps!
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    • Profile picture of the author kilgore
      I think one of the biggest mistakes people make is choosing what products to sell based on the commission rate of those products. A similar mistake is choosing the products based on their price. But you should keep two things in mind:
      1. In general, the reason companies offer large commissions is not because they are generous -- it's because what they're pitching is hard to sell. Part of this is due to the nature of the product (how many people are willing to part with $100 -- or $1000 -- on a digital "information product" of nebulous value from some unknown person?) and part of this is because with high ticket items repeat buyers are harder to find (how many $1000 information products does someone need?). This also makes it hard to build relationships with your customers, which are the foundation of any successful affiliate business.

      2. It's not the amount that you make per sale that matters, but the total amount you make on all sales that matters. And just because selling one of one product pays 10 times more than selling one of another doesn't mean that you won't sell 100 times more of the other product than the first product. Answer this: would you rather make $1000 on one sale or $10000 on 10,000 sales? Even though in the first instance you'd be literally earning 1,000 times more per sale than in the second instance, you'd be crazy to choose the first option.

      I'm definitely not suggesting that high commission or high ticket items are in and of themselves a bad idea. But I certainly don't think they are always a good idea either. It all depends on who your customers are, your relationship with those customers, your niche, etc.

      So what should you do? Should you go with low commission Amazon or with a higher commission program? Only you know the answer to that one. The only rule is that you pick your products -- and you pick your affiliate programs -- based on the needs of your customers. Trying to build a website based on how you can maximize your income on a per sale basis is a recipe for failure. So if Amazon is a good match for your customers, go with that. If it's not, go with something else. It's that simple.
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