Do Amazon affiliate sites really work? Or is it just a hype?

First of all, sorry to hear about being laid off. Unfortunately, however, I'd have to say that probably the worst time to start a business (whether an "Amazon Affiliate Site" or any other type) is after being laid off. The thing is even the most successful businesses take time to develop and if you're starting a business needing to make money right away (1) you'll find that the odds of doing so are stacked against you and (2) even in the unlikely event that you're able to make a lot of money right away, by doing so you'll likely be sacrificing future growth prospects.

It's no accident that it took Facebook five years to become profitable, Amazon seven years to make a profit, and Google about five years too. This isn't to say that their founders were living in cardboard boxes until then, but rather to say that early revenues were reinvested into the company in order to drive future growth. And this sort of deferred gratification mentality -- a mentality that is essential to long-term business success -- is very difficult to have when you're trying to figure out how to feed yourself and your family. Not impossible. But certainly very difficult.

You're lucky in that you'll be getting unemployment benefits, so you shouldn't be desperate, at least for a while. But you should also know that even without reinvesting your profits, it can take quite a while just to get your gross revenue up to a point that might replace your previous salary. And most people never even get to that point no matter how long they try.

I'm not trying to tell you not to jump in to online business -- but if you do, you should at least have a realistic idea about your chances for success.

First of all, get out of your head that there's such a thing as an "Amazon Affiliate Site". The Amazon Affiliate program is a monetization method, not a type of business. It's kind of like asking, can you make money with a business that accepts credit cards. Ummmm, yeah you can make money accepting credit cards, but that doesn't tell you whether that business is restaurant, an online store or a taxidermist. And just because you accept credit cards doesn't mean that you shouldn't also accept cash.

The same is true with the Amazon Affiliate program. There are lots and lots of ways to make money with the Amazon affiliate program. As mentioned above, some people throw up crappy sites, try to skim off a paltry amount of traffic with obscure keywords and make a few bucks that way. Maybe that works -- I've never tried it -- but I doubt it pays much. On the other hand, there are sites like Good Reads, which I always bring up, because though it monetized largely through the Amazon affiliate program (at least until Amazon bought it), it's nothing at all like what most people here consider an "Amazon Affiliate Site". Which is precisely why it was so successful.

The thing is, an online business will live or die based on the value it brings to its customers. So if you don't bring value to your customers, it doesn't matter if you monetize through Amazon, Adsense, sell site memberships, use drop shipping or take donations -- you're going to fail regardless. Likewise, if your site is bringing value to your users, you should be able to figure out a way to make some money. Maybe that way is Amazon, maybe it's not. But either way, the monetization is secondary to the value you create.

As for me, yes, I do make a bit of money with the Amazon Affiliate program -- though we're far from exclusively an "Amazon Affiliate Site". But we don't do things the way most people seem to want to make money as Amazon Affiliates. We're not a "Review Site": since users can already get good reviews on Amazon, that really wouldn't be adding anything. Our value is largely in our curation and our user experience on our website -- we know our users and what they want and we're really good at (1) finding quality products that our users don't already know about and organizing them in a way that works much better than the way our products are organized on Amazon. In both cases, we're providing a service that doesn't already exist on Amazon. First, our customers can't search for products if they don't know they exist. Second, they have a hard time browsing for products when they aren't organized in a way that's specifically tailored to them and their needs.

I'm not saying that our model is the only or best model. I'm just using it as an example of how you can add value to what Amazon has, rather than trying to compete with them (by for example, trying to write better reviews than are already on Amazon). After all, if you don't add something that's not already on Amazon, even if someone buys something through you once, why would they come back to you a second time? And it's likely your ability to get repeat customers that will make or break your business.

All this is to say that yes, you can make money as an Amazon Affiliate. But you can also make money with an e-commerce shop, or by selling advertising. So if you do decide to get into online business, think of how you're going to bring value to your customers first, then worry about whether Amazon is the right way to monetize.