Using blogger/squidoo to market amazon?

by peteJ
8 replies
I was wondering how you feel about using a blogger blog or a squidoo page to market amazon products? I was thinking about setting up a few pages in a review format and then posting an affiliate link on them. I'm personally leaning towards squidoo as I have heard the conversion rate is pretty decent although this is yet to be confirmed from a second source. I feel using ppc traffic might be the best here. I realize it's not good to relie on these free platforms to build my business as I don't own them and they can be shut down, but I plan to use this as more of research to find items that sell well and build a website around a few (the items Im thinking of promoting are all in the same general catagorey). So what do you all think, is this plausible or should am I going to see mch better results with my own site?
#amazon #blogger or squidoo #market
  • Profile picture of the author TheArticlePros
    The catch here Pete is that you would end up competing against yourself once you built out a site. You can do the research on your own without wasting time with Squidoo/Hubpages/Blogger etc etc. Amazon has a great thing called Amazon Best Sellers (Google it) so that they can tell you what's already selling.

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  • Profile picture of the author brunom
    There are some reports of people finding some success with it, but personally I haven't. I see much better results with my own website.
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  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
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    Originally Posted by peteJ View Post

    I was wondering how you feel about using a blogger blog or a squidoo page to market amazon products?
    I feel it would be a serious misjudgment, and just an unnecessary mistake.

    Blogger and Squidoo give you nothing that you can't get for yourself with other, better, free hosting and without all the unnecessary risks of using Blogger or Squidoo.

    Originally Posted by peteJ View Post

    I realize it's not good to relie on these free platforms to build my business as I don't own them and they can be shut down
    It's not the fact that they're free that's the problem, Pete.

    Weebly and Yola and Blinkweb and 000WebHost and Byethost are all free, too, but none of them has the same problems and drawbacks that Squidoo and Blogger and HubPages have.

    You can read about plenty of Warriors' experiences with Blogger in all the many threads like this one.

    Originally Posted by peteJ View Post

    am I going to see mch better results with my own site?
    You're not going to see different results, either way, in principle. The results of a site don't depend on where it's hosted. They depend on content, how you attract traffic, what you do with the traffic, and so on. It's about safety and security, not results.

    Don't imagine that "Google will prefer a Blogger site 'because Google owns Blogger'," or anything of this kind.

    Here you go - a careful read of this one thread is really all you need: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...y-website.html

    But if you want more, these posts/threads may also help ...

    Too Much Advertising on Squidoo??
    Is Squidoo still okay to post article to?
    How to subtly advertise on Squidoo and Hubpages?
    How do I Use Squidoo Effectively?
    Advice on Squidoo
    What's the value of a Squidoo Lens?
    Using Hubpages, Squidoo, and Tumblr to generate backlinks
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  • Profile picture of the author cooler1
    Originally Posted by peteJ View Post

    I was wondering how you feel about using a blogger blog or a squidoo page to market amazon products? I was thinking about setting up a few pages in a review format and then posting an affiliate link on them. I'm personally leaning towards squidoo as I have heard the conversion rate is pretty decent although this is yet to be confirmed from a second source.

    I feel using ppc traffic might be the best here. I realize it's not good to relie on these free platforms to build my business as I don't own them and they can be shut down, but I plan to use this as more of research to find items that sell well and build a website around a few (the items Im thinking of promoting are all in the same general catagorey). So what do you all think, is this plausible or should am I going to see mch better results with my own site?
    Squidoo is pretty good, but they have quite a lot of ads on the lens so there is too much potential to lose traffic instead of the reader clicking to Amazon. You'd probably be better off using Blogger because you don't have to have any ads on your blog, it can be as clutter free as your own site.

    Also, with Squidoo you're lens can become non-featured so it's no longer in the search engines, which is annoying because then you need to add more content which is a pain if you have a lot of lens.

    Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

    Don't imagine that "Google will prefer a Blogger site 'because Google owns Blogger'," or anything of this kind.

    I have to disagree there. It's evidently clear especially from the recent Penguin update that Google prefers Blogger. For example, blogger blogs which contain zero original content (all copied from Amazon product page) are ranking on page 1 for decent keywords. This isn't just a one-off either, I've seen it loads of times.
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  • Profile picture of the author lisakleinweber
    I don't think you can send PPC traffic to a squidoo lens.

    Also, "review" in the title doesn't work that great, in my experience. Just do straight lenses or pages.

    Instead of Nikon 520 Camera Review do Cheapest Nikon 520 Camera or Buy Nikon 520 Camera or Best Nikon Camera
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  • Profile picture of the author TheAdsenseGuy
    You said you were concerned about relying on these platforms (Squidoo,Blogspot) for your business. That concern is certainly valid. However, if you want to get traffic from SEO, this may be the best way to go.

    Since Panda/Penguin, it's just getting too risky to build your own Amazon affiliate website without Google penalizing it somehow. If you promote your website wrong (according to Google) your website could get penalized and lose rankings for the next 3 months. (By the way, what damm business is it to Google HOW we promote our websites??)

    But by piggybacking off an authority site like Squidoo you're pretty much imune to Google slaps. Since the Google Penguin update i've seen lots of Squidoo Amazon review lens's ranking in google.

    So here's how i'd promote Amazon. Build and rank a Squidoo lens for your primary keyword and rank it in Google using SEO. Next, find a list of related long tail keywords using Google suggest.

    Then, optimize the following authority sites for each longtail keyword and link back to your Squidoo lens. Then, build backlinks to them.

    1. OLX Classifieds
    2. Yahoo Answers (Go to Fiverr and buy some Level 2 accounts - Then you can post answers to questions with a live link back to your squidoo lens. (Have you noticed that Yahoo answers is ranking in Google for any kind of "how to" type keyword now?)
    3. The top 2 are the best but you could also use Slideshare, Scribd, Youtube and Blogspot.

    When building backlinks to these sites it's almost impossible to get them penalized in Google. And they will rank in Google much faster than a traditional website. Sometimes in less than a week you can get 1st page rankings. While a traditional website could take months.

    Good luck
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  • Profile picture of the author wolfmmiii
    Although I recommend building out your own sites, I do occasionally own 3 to 5 of the top 10 listings for a given product because I use multiple avenues. I wind up competing against myself but that's OK. I'd much rather compete against myself than someone else.

    That said, my Web 2.0 preference is actually HubPages when promoting Amazon products.
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  • Profile picture of the author Gaz Cooper
    Well I think those platforms have a place in your Amazon marketing but should not the main focus but as a supplementary avenue for extra sales.

    As for competition I think many of us that are successful with Amazon use multiple platforms to grab multiple listings on page of Google and it really does not matter which one is clicked on as they are still directed to our sites.

    Build your own sites that you control and then work on the other platforms to support your sites.

    Kickin it on Amazon

    Gaz Cooper
    Amz Training Academy
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