Affiliate marketing is still as popular as ever; With the huge number of people looking to work from home, the demand for sites to offer affiliate systems is high in demand.
I’ve been doing affiliate marketing for as long as I can remember and have learnt a huge amount along the way and from time to time I like to offer some advice. Now, you might ask me to prove that I know what I’m doing – Now, that’s not a problem, here’s a screen shot of my Amazon Affiliate account last night:
That’s right, $375.28 yesterday.
Are you ready for those tips now?
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Spend time looking for the right affiliate site. Not everyone can just place Amazon adverts on their site and make money. Explore your Analytics stats closely, see what keywords are driving people to your website.
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Put up some test posts. Once you’ve found a couple affiliate sites, put up some test posts about their products and see which products your audience is most interested in – At this point, don’t determine who’s most interested by sales, but rather by incoming traffic, you can work on your sales pitch (landing page) later.
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Be honest about the products you review, there’s no point lying and saying that a product is something that it isn’t, anyone who does affiliate marketing will tell you that reoccuring customers are the most powerful. Tell the truth and your customers will return.
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Don’t just push products, nobody wants a plain old post about a product – Take your time, plan your post and add some value to the product, my studies prove that a product review sells better when it’s written by a blogger who actually owns the product (or at least has used it before).
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Follow up on products which perform well. By this, I mean keep track of which products are selling and blog about them again, not to try and place more links, but to rather add even more value. This also creates some authority in the eyes of search engines for your original post.
These tips might seem obvious, but I can tell you right now, I ran into affiliate marketers who have a lot of experience, but have not taken all the tips above into account, and when they do, their commissions increase nicely.
Take care affiliates :)
Awesome earnings, hard work paying off! I tried my luck with specifically amazon but soon realized that you would need an international audience to actually make sales. Sad to say but we are lacking real online opportunities in SA to make a decent income online, I’m talking about people starting online. Due to PayPal not available for S.A users, bad service from S.A online companies etc.
It seems that every third person in the U.S.A are earning an extra or decent income online. Only a few people in our country are able to be successful online, I guess that can also be seen in a positive light, plenty of opportunities still exist that needs to be developed. But fact is we are far behind when it comes to opportunities or making it easier for entrepreneurs to start a online venture.
Ye mate, Amazon is darn hard to master and takes a great deal of practise to see any earnings. I’m not a huge fan of Amazon to be honest, I prefer going after private advert sales, and if not that, good old Adsense is fun – It’s more about fun for me than the actual money though.
I do agree with you about the set up here, what I can tell you is that companies such as iVeri are working bloody hard to make things easier. 2010 could be the year that we see things change, a lot has been said and people will have been listening :)
That’s impressive Chris, as Wouter mentioned cracking it on Amazon is a serious mission to achieve. Are you using this blog only for your Amazon affiliate?
Hi Chris,
These earnings will be a little on the high-side though owing to it being xmas time. This time of year always sees earnings shoot through the roof as traffic and conversions jump.
So people seeing these earnings should keep in mind that this amount will typically be around a third of that throughout the year, if not less.
To give an example, one site I have makes around $300 p/month during the year, but in Nov-Dec it easily hits $2500 p/month
Marc, I hear your point, but I don’t agree that earnings spike that much; Yes, it’s almost Christmas and of course people are looking to buy, but not to an extent where commissions bounce up that much. Sure, they do bounce over any period that “requires” people to shop, but that much? I don’t think so. That being said, a bounce from $300 to $2500 is incredible, I’d love to know which site performs so well ..
Hi Muzi,
Thanks mate; @Marc mentioned a good point about it being Christmas and conversions spiking, which definitely does play a bit of a role, however, it’s not as bigger spike as he mentioned. Anyway, I’m using Amazon links on iMod (very hidden) as well as another site, but most of the commission is from iMod though..
Amazon is probably one of the trickiest affiliate systems to crack and it’s definitely not my fav!
Hi Chris,
I suppose it does depend on what you are selling. Almost all my UK sites experience massive growth in traffic and commissions in november-december and these range from gaming products, mobile phones, laptops/netbooks, consoles, travel items, etc.
If you are selling gadgets…then the money is as good as in the bank during xmas.
RE: Amazon. I have found it is actually one of the easiest ‘systems’ to crack.
Go to amazon. Find a popular product. Build a site around that product (product range). Put amazon products on the site. Wait and collect commission.
Yes it does depend on competition, but that has nothing to do with amazon but the specific market. No other affiliate program in the world is as easy to use as amazon.
@Marc – I don’t disagree with you mate, I think my comment was a little rushed and perhaps not well explained.
I guess you have a good point in your approach, it’s something I have done before on a few domains. I watch the popular products quite closely on Amazon and sometimes deploy mini sites around that product and it’s proven to work quite well, but ends up being quite a bit of work changing products when you rely quite heavily on the domain name. If you have a well ranked site already and can switch the product easily, then it’s a dream. So ye, I hear what you mean about it being easy in this manner.
Awesome to talk to someone else who has experience with this!
Hi Chris,
Its not Amazon thats a challenge but converting the $ cheque into Rands and cents. Do you have any suggestions here? Are you working with the Amazon USA market or the UK market. Really need some help here? Good to chat to someone from the same town. Regards