Increasing Our Amazon Associate Commissions

Amazon Associates has been out for years- going past 1998. So you would have thought, by now, people would be raking in the cash with Amazon?

I thought that too.

Then I noticed through my online travels that people are not really earning money as an Amazon Affiliate. I then started to look at why…

Was the program poor
Were people doing it right
Is there BS
Is it old now…do people just go to Amazon to buy and forget about everyone else?

What you find is a mixture of the above- apart from the program being poor. At the percentages given out in commissions for Amazon to do everything for you, as well as promoting a product at generally a bargain price 4-8% commission is not bad at all, especially for hard goods.

So what is going on with the Amazon Associate then?

Most people are not doing it right, many are actually believing in the myth that was 20 years ago.

Amazon is not new anymore, it is a well oiled machine that is very business-like. You fail to recognize that, then you fail at being an Associate.

You have to treat your online venture as a business

There is plenty of BS online.

Most of it coming from people earning $10k/month. For the amount of sales you need to require that type of income on a regular basis is very dubious to say the least. If you are selling a $200 item at 6% commission then you get $12 per item.

To generate $10k/month you have to be selling 833 items at $200. The increase in product price lowers your target sales. So if you get $20 commission all you need is 500 sales per month to generate $10k/month. The only problem is finding the people or converting those people to buy something.

Its a numbers game...to a point

Being an Amazon Affiliate is a numbers game. To get commission and an amount per month you can call “worthwhile” you have to:

Increase the product price you are selling
Increase the amounts of products that you are selling
Increase the conversion of traffic to your webpages to buying traffic that clicks on links
Increase the traffic to your webpages

Thats it. There are really only 4 main components to increase your Amazon Income. Everything else is just clutter. So:

Adword promotion- thats point 4
Write longer content- point 3
Advertise on Pinterest- point 4 again

What I decided to concentrate on is how do you increase the conversion of anything that touches your pages to become buyers of the products you advertise.

So even though it is perceived as a numbers game, you still need to convert well.

You can influence the 4 points

I figured out that there are 50 different ways that you can influence point number 3. Now I am not one to like traffic generation (I find SEO techniques painful) and the other 2 are pretty obvious, but converting traffic more effectively is what is lacking.

Research has found that regardless of your website (it still needs to be professional) people will buy from you if you have a link that people recognize as Amazon’s. These people are not internet novices, they are regular users and buyers of products. Newbie users of the Internet buy through their known brands- but when they start to become more experienced, they too will go away from brands.

So Amazon, through its Amazon Associates capture these people initially and in the long term.

Multiple articles one topic

This is just one of the ways to influence your Amazon Affiliate conversions. It is also an evergreen topic because it is related directly to content.

When you see an anticipated movie come out most people will go to see it. The marketing was planned years in advance- those people just never showed up by accident. And those people were specifically picked to show up.

This is exactly the same for products. There are people that will anticipate the launch of a new title, new version, extended version, bonuses, extra online content etc. So you have to build up momentum to those products.

But how about if you just have one product? Well most movies are one product and what they do is market the living daylights out if it.

So they:

preview of a preview trailer (dont you just hate those)
the preview trailer itself
TV spots
Documentaries and actor interviews
Behind the scenes footage/ pictures
etc

This "offline" method can be replicated

This can be replicated with products, and it has been time tested as being effective.

if an item is coming out, write an article about its up and coming release- its features, who is testing it, initial reactions
Then when it comes out,
peoples reactions
how does it compare to other similar devices
what people have started to use it for
anywhere in the media it is being used

That’s 6 articles about the same product building up tension to a hungry audience who wants this type of information. Where do you send these articles? To your email list which then has to jump onto your site to view the articles giving you the possibility of social spreading and additional traffic.

Have you seen many websites doing that to products? Or do they just hire a freelancer to create articles about one product and then just move onto the next product?

When you take a step back, you tend to find the fog of Amazon Affiliates are quite obvious. It isn’t easy- especially when people tell you to make product reviews all the time. Many don’t work and others are written like someone who hasn’t tried the product.

Check out the other 49 ways that you can improve you Amazon Associate commissions.