Amazon

Hi Matt

I do promote the amazon affiliate program through Wordpress on a site I have here Weber Gas Grill Reviews - Weber Summit, Genesis & Q Gas Grills : Weber Gas Grills.

I use a product called phpZon which is unfortunately not available to the general public yet.

The only problem with Amazon is their short cookie life of only 1 day which does have quite an impact IMO, have you tried affiliating with eBay who have a 7 day cookie or Overstock who have a 14 day cookie?

Ben

I use it. Some pros are - people are comfortable buying from Amazon and they are very, very good at getting people to add extra stuff to a purchase. They are reliable, so you're sure of getting paid. They make it easy for you to build links to many kinds of pages and products, in many different ways.

Cons - the commission rate is pretty low at the bottom end, (but it increases as you sell more, to where it's often comparable with other physical product programs through Commission Junction etc) and if you're outside the US the payout methods are a bit limited. It's also awkward to sell to more than one geographical group - you'd need different links for US, UK, and other customers.

Kevin

Hi Matt,

Have just set up a new blog to promote Amazon products. It's a review style site. No sales yet (very early days) but it's going to be interesting. Am getting bored with promoting ebook type products. At the end of the day most of it is junk. Find it much more satisfying somehow promoting physical products as you know that your customers know precisely what they are getting and are not purely led by hype.

Anyway, Amazon affiliate program is good. Easy to get accepted and the tools that Amazon provide to create images, links and so on and so forth are really easy to use. From accessing the main site they also give you huge clues in terms of what sells via the bestsellers in each category. Loads of products to promote here - you'll never run out of ideas or niches.

The big problem with the Amazon program is that the commissions are pretty rubbish. Start off on 4% but goes up to 6% after you have made more than 6 sales. Not many products here therefore that you could promote via PPC I wouldn't have thought. It's all going to need to be free (or cheap) traffic.

One thing which I don't like is that Amazon has a separate affiliate program in each country. So, if you focus on the US and get visitors from the UK you won't get any referral fees.

Thanks,

Andy

As Kevin pointed out the commission rate is pretty substandard compared to what you'd be expect from, say, Clickbank.

One huge benefit of the Amazon affiliate program is their variety...

Seriously, they stock absolutely everything under the sun... so after a little digging you can quite easily find something that NO ONE else is promoting... and there lies the gold!

I use amazons affiliate network through a number of my sites - with good success. They are simple to work with and have a tremendous following.

everything from baby car seats to enhancement products - the sky is the limit.