Where do people go when they buy a book, amazon, where do they go when they want to buy a game, amazon... Why? It is dirt cheap... Now, if I drop a cookie on someone and get 5% of that sale and then they return 15 times and buy 15 other things through out the year, I would take that any day over 10% on some un known site and slim chance of repeat sales.

Edit: Amazons beauty is unrelated products to your initial sale plus, everyone trusts it.

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I would suggest to drop ship products. It pays much better than Amazon for the exact amount of work.

Steve

Consider the difference between the 6% they pay and the 10% you want as the price you pay for capitalizing on the trust THEY built over the years.

Sorry, Ernie, you're an alright guy, but all I hear is one big whine. C'mon, man! If you don't like it, don't use Amazon.

Would you rather get something, or nothing?

You are obviously using them for a reason. Focus on that.

If you continue to focus on the crap you don't like, then you will keep getting crap you don't like.

The above is meant with all due respect and not a personal slight.

All the best,
Michael

Sell a few books on Amazon and you'll see how the numbers
shake-out. Sure, Amazon takes their pound of flesh - but
part of that goes to paying affiliates.

Amazon has a lot of overhead costs too. It ran at a
loss for years before getting into profit not too long ago.

Yup...one day cookies. But as others have said, sometimes you get someone to clickthrough to Amazon and they but something unrelated and expensive - it's a nice surprise when it happens. It's a volume thing with Amazon, you need alot of traffic.

Personally, I dig Amazon. Do I make a million bucks a month as their affiliate? No. Do I have a few sites that bring in a couple hundred without me lifting a darn finger. Yup.

Sounds good to me!

Like others have said... everyone trusts Amazon. I'm not sure how you're promoting them, but you can probably get more Amazon commissions by setting up your own Amazon store (as opposed to a tiny widget).

I can think of a few niches where an Amazon store would be PERFECT...

I'm not sure any of you have thouhgt about this...

Well maybe a few of you

But physcial products do not have that much room in their margins to pay out huge commission rates for obvious reasons.

Frank Bruno

I love amazon commissions...

The higher price the product, the bigger that percentage works out in real cash terms

Think bigger in your amazon promo's.... I happen to focus a great deal of my time on amazon product sales.

They are a trusted site, with a wide selection of products on offer, and a sliding scale commission structure to benefit the affiliates who can really work it. Perfect

Peace

Jay

WOW, amazon RAISED it again!? I could have SWORN it was 3-5%! They USED to have like a 15% commission. It just got ridiculous though. Their funds went down, competition increased, many used their API to make MORE sales, OF COURSE they lowered the rate! So if you want them to pay YOU 10%, do you think THEY should make less? Should the distributer? Should the manufacturer? Should the author?

Of course, the 15% was about when they were a BOOKSTORE. Like others here have alluded, they are now basically an ecommerce infrastructure. They sell a LOT more, and even 1% of a computer can be a good amount.

Steve

I used to be really down on Amazon too, but since I started building micro niche sites and getting more Amazon sales, I really do see the power. When people get on there, they just buy up a ton of stuff!

Plus, the other products they buy give me ideas for other niche sites.

That swingset has a nice commission - I bet some enterprising entrepreneur is registering that domain name right now to build a site around it

Lee

yes...you have a point. Thats why you should only promote high-value stuff like big screen TVs

Without looking at above answers I will point this out, Jeff Bezos' whole strategy from the beginning was to get big fast, he did this by slashing prices everywhere he could.

When he brought out the commissions they had to be small simply because otherwise it wouldn't have been the cheapest place to go...the whole point is getting people to come again and again.

Amazon is now the #1 trusted site on the internet (and the most widely known which means its reputation is above question) when it comes to buying anything, I would much rather have 5% commission with one of the most trusted brands in the whole world than a random store that gives 10% but which no one has ever heard of.

The 5% commission may be small, but people keep coming back to Amazon, if you have a site that people keep visiting the chances are you are going to get a majority of those commissions and then all the adds on top.

Amazon didn't bring out affiliates on day one, no one ever can since you need the infrastructure first...but the whole strategy of giving people ordinary commissions was what got Amazon noticed everywhere since you didn't have just a few random people spamming the occasional link here or there but many thousands of sites all with the name seeping into the sub-concious.

Besides, they don't need to give 20% or so and probably couldn't even if they wanted to since they now allow anyone to sell on their site, how would they convince those people to hand over 20%?

Regardless of whether it is high or low, they have such a towering reputation that if anyone did see the link they would more than likely go to it rather than another of their competitors....

I got accepted as an Amazon affiliate with a squidoo lens.

Think about your own seasonal spending habits and map it all out in your diary ie. you need to be working on your Christmas sites in September.

Research niche hobbies I know I spend way too much on some of my hobbies.

Go into Amazon books on a topic in the niche your researching click bestsellers
and you find loads of sub niches look for ones with the most customer reviews.

With Amazon get lots of sites out there.Take ACTION and learn from what works
dont flog a dead horse.

Your obviously just picking the wrong products to promote with Amazon, sure it's only %4, but let's say you sell a product which costs $500, that's a nice $20 commision for a single sale, Amazon converts like crazy because it's one of the most well known websites to shop for games/books/films/etc.

Their commission is low, but if you choose your products wisely you can get a great conversion rate on Amazon products because of trust and name recognition. Whether that makes up for the low rate, I don't know. But with Amazon if you're making any sales at all then all you have to do is scale it up and you will sell more. I have some of the worst autoblogs on earth with content all written in autospun gibberish and they still make a few sales because they have Amazon products on them.

We make over $10,000 a month on Amazon commissions. They pay up to 8.5% if you sell enough products.

When we were promoting CJ merchants we weren't making as near as much. It was only when we started adding Amazon links that our sales sky rocketed.

People trust Amazon and they will buy all sorts of products even though you might only send them there for one thing.

Well I like Amazon - as a newbie its the first half decent money I have made. Its easy to get from 4% to 6% and they do the selling for you. I love the fact that you can sell stuff you don't even sell...last month one person bought $100 worth of coffee through one of my sites which sells stuff not even remotely related to coffee.

It may sound like peanuts but last month I made $60 from 2 crap sites and a hubpage. I was pretty happy with that as I reckon I can make far more when I improve my sites and make more of them. I have tried so hard with clickbank but can't seem to sell a thing. I think Amazon is a great place to get started.

amazon is low cost, got credibility, and they have a bunch of things you can sell. it all balances out in my opinion

I just started promoting Amazon products and have sold over $300 worth of stuff. In my opinion it is a lot harder to sell ClickBank products because of the trust factor.

what products are converting for you.

The most funny in Amazon is that I never sell products I promote. They have such big database of items to offer that people spend there hours by browsing it and buy totally other things that they have started browsing from.

I personally have been trying to thing of a way to get over the one downside thing about Amazon which is the fact that they don't pay on recurring commission.

if they would just pay 1% or even 0.5% on referrals for life then no other affiliate program would come close for many niches. I am thinking of obsession niches in particular where people just buy and buy again.

I am wondering if the solution is to build a list in one of these niches then mail regular bulletins when a new product hits the best sellers list or when Amazon does a special offer.

In the right niche you could even have a newsletter which reviews a product once a week or so

This way you would have your list going thru your link rather than to Amazon direct

You might want to actually read the thread.

We should have a 30 day challenge who can sell the most expensive Amazon item here's one for starters
Gibson Custom Jeff Beck 1954 Les Paul Oxblood Aged Signed Electric Guitar this goes for just under $25,000 4% of that's not to shabby.

Can anyone find any higher paying items better still can you sell them

It surely is pathetic

First of all if you work hard at it Amazon does pay more than 6%. If you're only getting the 4-6% commission chances are you're not selling enough products to make being an Amazon Associate viable. Second, depending on what you're selling a 4-8% commission might be just as substantial as selling something off of Clickbank. I've regularly sold items garnering $30-$50 commissions. Some people sell items that cost $1000s and thus could have commissions of over $100. Third, your volume of sales is going to be much higher than a typical affiliate program because people love stuff on Amazon and everything on Amazon is designed to get people to buy more products. You as the affiliate barely have to do any selling at all.

In my very first ten days of becoming an Amazon Associate I earned a little over $1000 with no list and a few shoddy websites. Not many people are banking that much on their first week with other affiliate programs.

I think that depending on how you use Amazon, it can be great. If you go after the low commission rates, if you have high volume you will make good money. The sites I have setup are automatic, so do I care, not really, they just work.

Personally, I love Amazon, especially for their marketing traffic. That is where I make the really money.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts though.

There's nothing wrong with selling phyiscal product over Amazon, but why not actually create a secondary income stream and warp information products around some of them? Yes the affiliate commissions on physical products are low, but once these people have purchased things, you might see a trend of purchases that you can serve with an info product for higher margins.

I just took on a position as sales manager for a wholesale gift operation to better understand the physical market. There really isn't much margin to go round. Granted reps make 10-15% in this industry, but with a powerhouse like Amazon which has a TON of other products, you get random sales (like swingsets) and getting paid 4-6% commissions to find buying trends isn't half bad. Don't forget a back end for your list as you build it up. (You are Building a list PRIOR to forwarding them off to Amazon right?)

You are talking as an affiliate - what if you publish a POD book on Amazon or open an Amazon store ?

I make amazon sites, and personally, it's the best money I've made and I'll tell you why. I review the product, all info is right there on the Amazon page, and I do not need to sell them a product. On Clickbank, you need to sell them, and I am no copywriter. So, if you are good at that, more power to you, but Amazon works without those skills and pays me every month.

Yeah, not too impressed with the program over there myself. Unless you are able to push out either serious volume or big ticket items it is a very slow trickle in my experience. Mileage may vary of course...

I think there's a product in this thread for someone - "How to make money as an amazon affiliate."

Not that I could write it, currently. Of all the affiliate schemes I have been a member of, Amazon has been the worst performer in every respect. For some reason, no-one buys amazon stuff off my pages. Perhaps it's because I have added Amazon products as "incidental" to the page, rather than focusing on creating a page with the main intention being to push the visitors to Amazon. Could any of the successful with Amazon shed any light on this?

Also, one more question. If someone clicks through from your page and then buys an alternate Amazon product, do you get any aff. commission?

For someone like yourself who is used to higher commissions per sale but wants to use a merchant like Amazon to make money, the answer is to focus solely on sending laser targetted, presold traffic to items in the $300+ range.

I keep seeing people say that Amazon sells their stuff, but they don't. People buy it. If you find a product on Amazon and click on it to get a description, you get a graphic and the name and that is just about it. People know what they want and they go there and find it and make the buy. If you are lucky enough for them to have gone through your site first, then you get the commission on what they sell.

Depending on how you set up your site, you probably do more selling than Amazon does. That is how much trust Amazon has. People know that they will get good prices there. Maybe not the lowest price available, but pretty low. And they know they can trust Amazon.

And the number of people that list their products on Amazon is got to be in the tens if not hundreds of thousands. Mostly the highest cut Amazon takes out of that sale is 15%, so if they pay the affiliate 4% to 8.5%, that doesn't leave a hell of a lot for Amazon to run their infrastructure on.

Lots of people are making lots of money on Amazon, so bottom line, if you don't like the commission, then go sell Clickbank or something. That way there is less competition for those that do like it.

i totally agree that amazon commission is absolutly horrible. You barely get anything and its hard enough to sell there products. I have always just stuck to clickbank commission is way better and it is just easier and better overall

Amazon is easy to use, they have a great reputation, they offer a great selection of banners, a huge product line,,,,. With all of that in consideration, I think 4 - 6 percent is good.

And, the scale is performance based - the more you sale, the more higher percentage you get.

To answer your question directly, I'am fine with the way amazon pays its commission.