Is the Amazon Affiliate Program Worth Pursuing?

Posted by: Adriana Post date: August 18th, 2010

There is a lot of talk about making money with the Amazon affiliate program: some people (like Paula and Wanda, who make $10K each month) love working with Amazon and promoting physical products, while others complain that because the cookie is so short, there is no way to make good money.

Which camp are you in? Have your efforts failed to produce the income you wanted? Or are you successful in your efforts to make money with amazon?

I’ve been promoting physical products from Amazon.com for a few years, and never made more than $10/month until last year when I bought Info Product Killer (also known as IPK).

Last year I created a few sites following part of the IPK model, and have had some limited success (limited because I didn’t really follow the rules), but this year I’ve been working on my sites and I expect to have a very good fourth quarter. I am already seeing improvement over last year, and my sites are climbing nicely in the SERPs.

I’ve made some mistakes along the way, and I’ll list them here, so you can avoid them:

- went after niches that were way too tight, so traffic was not enough to make a huge difference

- promoted items that were too expensive (while you want to promote items over $100, going for luxury watches, for example, you won’t see too much activity).

- got into too many micro-niches, spreading myself too thin. It’s a lot easier to promote one or two niches, as opposed or 10 or 15.

Now, here are some of the things that will help you succeed in promoting physical products form Amazon.com:

- choose products that are $100 or more

- make sure the products you want to promote have at least 10-15 good reviews: social proof will help you sell more

- write a detailed review, rather than copying the short description from the product page

- sprinkle some customer reviews in your review

There is a lot more detail that you can put into promoting with the Amazon affiliate program. My best recommendation would be the Amazonian Profit Plan, but if you can’t afford that, IPK comes is a very close second.

Now here is a small bribe fore you: if you decide to buy either one through the links above, I’ll do keyword research for your first niche for free. Just post below your receipt number, and I’ll contact you right away. Free keyword research available to the first 5 people only.