Do the AMAZON GURUS have it all WRONG!

Do items less than $150 sell well on Amazon? Sure they do. However, tell someone brand new to do a site on $20 items and you set them up for a potential melt down. When they make their first sale and see a commission of $0.80, they lose steam and don't feel appropriately rewarded for their work.

Does it take exactly the same amount of work to sell a low dollar item as it does a higher dollar item? No, not exactly.

Assuming similar levels of competition and search volume for a low dollar item and a high dollar item, setting up a site and building backlinks IS going to take about the same amount of work for either product, though.

The difference would be in the amount of time and content necessary to generate a sale of the higher dollar item. A short landing page might be enough for a pair of cheap earphones but you'd need more content to outline the features of an elliptical machine. Let's say it's one hour to set up the earphones landing page vs. eight hours for a well researched product review on a $500 elliptical machine. However, creating the landing page for that particular item is a one-time event.

You'd have to take a lot more math into account to truly say if working a low dollar item was the same as a high dollar item - search volume, conversion rate of lower dollar item to higher dollar item, potential daily sales volume, commission, potential to hit higher Amazon commission tiers based on volume, etc. That's too much for someone just entering the business model to try to understand. Far easier to give them a starting point that's going to generate commissions that encourage them to keep going.

Originally Posted by wolfmanjack This tells me that teaching new associates only to make sites for items over $100 is a bit misleading. My advice would be to make a site or two selling low ticket items to get the sales numbers up so you can make the higher commissions on items you may only sell 1 or 2 of in a month.

I would disagree that it's misleading. Some of that can be attributed to that recommendation being taken out of context. Many of the Amazon "gurus" who talk about product selection of over $100 mention this in conjunction with the creation of Amazon product review sites because, in general, people search for reviews of more expensive products more often than low dollar items.

The distinction is important because I don't know any Amazon expert who would say you should never do products with lower dollar amounts. The selection of products is often aligned with the overall Amazon business model - review site, ecommerce site, etc.

TIP: Want to do low dollar items but leverage even more volume and higher commissions? Look for items that are bought in multiples - chair cushions, towels, outdoor chairs, napkin rings, table settings, etc. Each piece may not cost a lot but when they buy 6 or 8 of each thing, it really adds up!

Originally Posted by wolfmanjack These are okay for items that have been around for a while but what about new items that have only been on the market for a month or two?

Another reason that the number of reviews is given as a guideline is that it shows the product's propensity for being purchased online. Not a lot of reviews? Then the product might be something people prefer to buy in person and your hard work may go to waste.

The guideline is often meant to help someone new choose the product that has the best chances of success - not as a trick to keep them away from profitable items.

New products can certainly be very profitable and there are Amazon experts who focus quite successfully on targeting new products. However, it would be wise to look at the number of reviews of previous models or comparable products to gauge the online purchasing trends.

If you're building a site around a niche and this is a new entry to the niche, it will fit nicely with the other products that have a longer history of being accepted by consumers.

If you're building a site around a single product that's new to the market, you would be running the risk that the product doesn't perform well. This is something an experienced marketer may be able to deal with but not the best move for someone brand new to affiliate marketing.

As someone who has several sites that have products with lots of reviews AND products with low numbers of reviews and similar rankings on each, I know from experience that I get more traffic and sales of the products with more reviews. As a result, it would be misleading of me to advise someone to ignore those more profitable products.

Originally Posted by wolfmanjack What about 3.9 stars if the item meets all of the other Golden Rules? Is it still worth your time or should you skip it because it is not 4 stars? Again don't close your mind off to items that are less than 4 stars. Look at the reviews and the replies to the reviews. Also take into account the number of searches the item has. There are plenty of items in the Best Sellers list that have less than 4 stars and they are in the Best Sellers list for a reason.

There are a number of ways to use those lower star items and I agree absolutely with your suggestions. I do think they should be incorporated in a site but, then, I build sites that attempt to cover the niche from top to bottom.

Those lower star items can bring in traffic that you can convert to a better performer. Or, in some cases, the star rating is unwarranted and - if you really know your niche - you can explain away the lower rating.

However, some strategies have you cover only the top performers and move to a new niche. In my experience, the the lower star items don't bring in as many sales as the higher star items so those who suggest sites that cover a fewer number of items would - and should - suggest covering the higher star items only - in order to ensure the highest returns (on average) for their customers.

Originally Posted by wolfmanjack The reasoning behind this is the 4% commission cap on electronics and the assumption that the models on many electronics are changing every year. I don't agree with this at all.

The other reason - and the more important, in my opinion - is that electronics niches tend (not across the board, but on average) to be highly saturated and very competitive. I can't tell you how many people I've personally mentored who jumped into an electronics niche and couldn't make a dent on the first page. They fully understand that 4% of $1000 is great money. It's what draws them to the niche like moths to a flame. Then they don't make any money and can't figure out why, get frustrated, and think that affiliate marketing is a sham.

Advising against electronics is another example of putting someone without extensive experience into the best possible position for success.