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Amazon Associates Please Respond

by wolfmanjack
12 replies
I have been reviewing my Amazon "teachings" that i have purchased and found on blogs. Some plugins put the price in the post which updates daily or more often but some of the information I have been reading suggests that you don't put the price in your review. Instead you put a call to action to get the peep to click to go to Amazon to see what the current price is.

Now i know that one theory is that Amazon is an expert on on converting browsers to buyers s the objective is to get the peep to Amazon as quickly as possible therefore having them click to Amazon to find out the price is useful.

The other side of the coin is to try to pre sell the peep before they click to Amazon in which case having an updated price would be useful.

My opinion is that sometimes Amazon (or the person selling the item on Amazon) has done a good job of explaining the product on some items and a really lousy job on others.

Therefore my response would have to be it depends on the item.

What is your opinion?
#amazon #associates #respond
  • Profile picture of the author StunningWarrior
    Does Amazon offer the same price to every website visitor?

    Historically there were plenty of rumors that it did not do - for example see CNN.com - Web sites change prices based on customers' habits - Jun 24, 2005
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    • Profile picture of the author Matt Ward
      Originally Posted by StunningWarrior View Post

      Does Amazon offer the same price to every website visitor?

      Historically there were plenty of rumors that it did not do - for example see CNN.com - Web sites change prices based on customers' habits - Jun 24, 2005
      You know, I don't know exactly what is causing it, but I have different prices showing for commissions on the exact same Amazon-sold (not 3rd party) item.

      I don't know if it's price fluctuations or actually different prices showing for the items, but from the few I looked at, the price was only +/- about $10 either way.

      I hadn't really thought about it, but that's maybe why they don't like people posting item prices in their promotions.
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    • Profile picture of the author wolfmanjack
      Originally Posted by StunningWarrior View Post

      Does Amazon offer the same price to every website visitor?

      Historically there were plenty of rumors that it did not do - for example see CNN.com - Web sites change prices based on customers' habits - Jun 24, 2005
      Very Interesting article.

      I knew about split testing prices but i did not know about offering different prices due to searching behavior which brings up the issue of when and when not to clear your cookies.
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      • Profile picture of the author mrdomains
        I don't. Testing shows that my clickthroughs went down whenever I displayed prices. Might be the specific products but the result was the same in several different unrelated niches.
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        • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
          I don't like showing prices, mainly for the reasons already listed but also because Amazon's Associate agreement requires you to keep prices up to date, and I'm too lazy/busy with other things to try to do it manually and I don't trust the automated means.
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          • Profile picture of the author Curtis2011
            I would say since Amazon prices change all the time simply do not state the price in your review.

            Have your product review be more helpful and friendly, and less in-your-face hard selling.

            Hard selling usually requires you to state the price and use it as a selling point (ie "get a $97 value for just $37!!!") whereas soft selling is just like "hey this thing is good, check it out here <insert affiliate link>" and let the visitor mosey on over to Amazon.

            I think the soft selling approach works better with Amazon Associates, simply because you don't actually have to sell the item that you're trying to sell. You just need the visitor to buy anything from Amazon once they get there, and you still get paid. So the focus of your review pages should be to just get the visitor to Amazon and let Amazon do the rest.
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  • Profile picture of the author Gaz Cooper
    I personally like to use the price as a call to action and only put a basic price guide and then something like click here for current lowest price available.

    This works well especially if you have written your review naturally and flowing it naturally calls and pushes them to click through.

    Kickin it on Amazon

    Gaz Cooper
    Amz Training Academy
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    • Profile picture of the author jan roos
      Amazon shows different prices for different visitors. Not sure what they base it on or if its just testing.

      Getting ppl to click on to Amazon or other stores to see the price is a good option because then amazon can do their magic and convert.

      As affiliates we want people to click onto the merchant's page asap and let them do the selling.

      On the other hand, I think if one relies on Google for traffic it might be best to show prices for a lot of different retailers on our sites as it takes care of the Google bridge page issue which I know is being enforced on their Adwords Ppc platform but not in their organic search results.

      Cheers

      Jan
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      • Profile picture of the author wolfmanjack
        Originally Posted by jan roos View Post

        Amazon shows different prices for different visitors. Not sure what they base it on or if its just testing.

        Getting ppl to click on to Amazon or other stores to see the price is a good option because then amazon can do their magic and convert.

        As affiliates we want people to click onto the merchant's page asap and let them do the selling.

        On the other hand, I think if one relies on Google for traffic it might be best to show prices for a lot of different retailers on our sites as it takes care of the Google bridge page issue which I know is being enforced on their Adwords Ppc platform but not in their organic search results.

        Cheers

        Jan
        I have been thinking about what you said on putting prices for a lot of different retailers.

        Does Amazon like when you do that?

        It seems like it would be handy to be an affiliate for several places and put all of the links so the visitor could check all of the current prices but some places would think that you only became an affiliate so you could show price comparisons?
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  • Profile picture of the author wolfmanjack
    Gaz, Jan, Matt and Stunning Warrior,

    Thanks for stopping by and posting.

    You all make good points and I have learned a lot already. I hope the information keeps coming in.
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  • Profile picture of the author stephenwaldo
    Honestly, I've always just included the price in the my review because I have those automated plug-ins to make that easy to do, but reading through this short thread has definitely given me some second thoughts to chew on.

    I think it's true that Amazon will probably do a better job of converting a given customer and than I will, but the question is whether or not a visitor being surprised by a different price than they were expecting would lead them to do further research outside of your review site, thus costing you a potential commission.

    I guess that is part of designing an authoritative review site. Certainly warrants further research, unless some fellow Warriors have already run the numbers and done the tests?
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  • Profile picture of the author wolfmanjack
    Good Point John. i have too many pages to manually check to make sure the tools are updating the prices correctly.

    Plus the fact that Amazon shows different prices makes Stephens observation that the visitor may be surprised by the different price and then continue to investigate even more pertinent.

    Has anyone tested the best phrase to use for high conversions?

    Gaz already mentioned --- "click here for current lowest price available"

    Any one have a better phrase that they use or have tested?
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