Amazon rocks for conversions

Not exactly news to anyone and I remember speaking to Al about this when we first met but at the time I didn’t have any product based sites and had not used Amazon for some time, however with PC’s I decided to add some amazon banners/widegets and boy do they convert traffic!

OK so I am not selling high ticket value items just yet but I am working on it, PCs is just getting around 150-200 visitors per day which is fine it’s early days, I removed adsense as it’s pretty worthless at the minute and last week added Amazon so after around 8 days the screenshot on the left shows how it’s going.

116 clicks and 34 items ordered, it’s obvious from the stats some people have ordered 3 items etc so not 34 orders but 34 items, even still it’s a true testiment to what they do with your traffic when you send it across. Another plus is that it opens in a new window.

Like I said I’m probably preaching to the converted, however if your getting a few hundered visitors per day and your still using Adsense I’d recommend swapping that over if your product based in any way and getting some contextual or widgets on instead. When I logged in this morning I found out I sold 11 items yesterday most of which are still low value so I changed the main widget from showing pc games to actual desktops, laptops and netbooks to see if I could pick up higher value items, will be interesting to see how it goes and it’s a lot more fun than getting clicks for pennies.

About Scott Jones

Scott hails from the north east of Scotland and started earning online at the end of 2000 building websites for local businesses during which time he won an award from Lord Alan Sugar for Excellence in Enterprise. After having quite a bit of success with domaining Scott mainly runs educational evergreen websites which generate over 3 million visitors per month but is always on the lookout for a fresh thinking out of the box way to turn a buck. Follow on Twitter.

Comments

  1. Congratulation Scott, It’s been a long time since I gave up with amazon. It’s nice to see people get some great conversion like you.

    buchin’s last blog post..PC Tools ThreatFire Defender: Block Zero Day Virus Attack

  2. Amazon are great I find, their well-known presence and positive reputation makes it easy for surfers to click through. I look forward to any updates on this.

  3. Trusted site where many people have an account and with free postage for most orders probably pushes conversion.

    Must try to get out of the adsense rut I’m in and try other things.

  4. Thats pretty good, i have a site on heart diseases and it ranks in the top for keywords like Cardiomegaly, which affiliate network would you suggest for this? Amazon would work out for health products?

    Amit Bhawani’s last blog post..Samsung Giorgio Armani P520 Mobile Phone Review

    • Same question here. I have a few health websites and would like to try an alternative to adsense.

      I’ve heard that Casale performs well for this type of sites, but they didn’t approve my application. Any suggestion?

  5. I can only speak from experience, not done any aff sales in the healthcare game, surely worth a try - just a matter of working out which products to push or go with contextual adverts.

  6. Never had great experience with Amazon. In theory, Amazon should do really well because they have an awsome brand rating and trust, but too many people have disappointing results with their affiliate program. I suppose it will be really good for electronic items.

    You do have a great domain there in pcs.co.uk

  7. I was checking my affiliate sales this morning. I get click thru’s and purchases from Amazon links. Not as many as you Scott, but I don’t have your traffic. I get fewer, but still regular, click thru’s from Commission Junction and LinkShare affiliate ads but they never convert. Like you said, it shows how well Amazon treat your traffic.

  8. I find Amazon to be one of the best converting programs on the product sites i use it on.

    It’s also good at capturing other sales due to the wide range of products they sell, and you will often see a wide range of products appear in your reports, especially at Christmas time.

    As others have commented a trusted site, free delivery, competitive prices and the fact they sell almost anything means it’s a great site to promote and an easy alternative to adsense.

    Some of the tools and widgets they have really take away any hard work that you may get with standard affiliate programs.

    Darren’s last blog post..BetNOW Mobile Betting - Bet on your mobile - Upto £50 in free bets

  9. The only downside I saw with Amazon when I last looked at affiliates was the cookie - I think it was only 24 hours.
    So, all those people you send across who find what they want and bookmark it/come back and purchase the next day - you dont get paid for.
    Others have 7 day, 30 day, 6 month etc.
    Maybe with lower priced goods people will buy there and then but with high ticket items?
    Bookmarked, compared, returned to and bought a week later - no commission.

  10. Scott are you picking the products from Amazon yourself or is it just showing random products?

    Mikael’s last blog post..Interne links kan skade din ranking i Google

  11. Tell us what they are ordering though. The report will tell you that.

    I found that people would click on an Amazon link for a digital camera and then order toilet rolls. Seriously.

    Most of the time they click through on some high-price item and then order something worthless.

    Or they buy a 60″ plasma, and then you realize that Amazon only does 1% commission on those, so you get ripped off 🙂

  12. Charles, I’ve also had the reverse experience, where a visitor clicked on a low cost item (a book about weaving on one of my sites) and then finally purchased a higher priced item (a $600 sewing machine). Doesn’t happen often, but I’ve seen it more than once.

  13. That’s almost ridiculous! I wouldn’t expect to make jack-squat off a site with that little traffic. However, I have a very niche site with about the same amount, that I may just now try some amazon links on…

    Justin Cook’s last blog post..What is Google’s new SearchWiki?

  14. Nice result, I never had much luck with amazon myself but after reading your post I’ll give it another go.

  15. Amazon always converts well in my experience, been using it a couple of years now. Although bear in mind the time of year, everyone is starting to buy xmas gifts. My conversion is currently 4.62%, would normally be more like 3.5%. Roll on the christmas commissions 🙂

    Chris’s last blog post..Credit Crunch Who? There Is Still Lots Of Money To Get!

  16. What sort of eCPM are you guys getting on these ad units? I’d love to know how it compares with having adsense in the same ad spot 🙂

    Scott, are you beating your adsense revenue on this site by switching to Amazon?

    • Initially it’s doing better but the traffic is still quite low so not a great set of data to be making sweeping statements, looks nicer from my point of view as well.

  17. Would the eCPM be over $3? If so, I might have to give it a try!

  18. Scott, the 12 items you have in the bottom of each post, is that a standard Amazon display or have you created it yourself?

    Mikael’s last blog post..Gem dine filer online gratis

  19. Just got a weekly newsletter from Amazon and they are offering 15% VAT instead of 17.5%

  20. Scott, can you see whether you get the clicks from the 12 items section or the one in the top right? The reason I’m asking is that all theory says that the top right of a website is the least effective place to place ads.

    Mikael’s last blog post..Gem dine filer online gratis

  21. Is there any way too tell from the Link-Type report? I use mostly basic product ads and AWS built listings, so I’m not sure about the widgets you’re using, but the various reports Amazon offers seem to isolate the clicks quite well.

  22. You could create a new tracking ID for each section on your site as a way of tracking clicks / conversions for different areas.

    Darren’s last blog post..BetNOW Mobile Betting - Bet on your mobile - Upto £50 in free bets

  23. i find the amazon widgets to be of little value but direct links to products can do pretty well.

    Jeff’s last blog post..Beer Tap System with LCD TV

  24. Based on this thread I’ve now tried to implement the Amazon feature on a very specific niche website. For some of the pages it looks like the tool can find relevant products but for most others it is way off. This means that so far the conversion is below about 1%.

    I’ll let it run for a few more weeks and unless things change I’ll go back to either picking the products myself or finding something else than Amazon.

    But if you don’t try you don’t know 🙂

    Mikael’s last blog post..Terror Lego - Godt tænkt eller forkasteligt

  25. Are they still converting well for you? I’d really like to see a blog post with some metrics so people like me can compare it to other ad networks. 🙂

  26. Amazon pretty much never works for me. I have had limited success with commisionjunction. Nothing else. Hope to get better somedey….:D

  27. Amazon maybe might work on some websites, but I have avoided them since they only have a 1 day cookie and their commission percentage is low (last I checked)

    • Only a 1 day cookie? I didn’t even know that. I agree that their payout is low (in percentage) but on the other hand they are masters at converting visitors once they are on their site. And that will benefit you as an affiliate as I believe (I’m not 100% sure) that you’ll get your cut from the ENTIRE purchase and not just the product you were promoting.

      Mikael’s last blog post..Eksempler på conduit website design

  28. I think Amazon produce high conversions because everyone knows the company and once they click… they will be extremely tempted to buy!

  29. its true amazon creates a certain trustworthiness that comes with a well recognized brand. but the same could be said for adsense.

  30. Android tablet Fan says:

    My recommendation is the ebay partner program. Amazon has quite a lousy commission and I find their conversion rate is especially for nice products not the best.

  31. The problem with amazon.com now is that almost everyone knows what it is. Also, the majority of the time, you will lose that “Visitor” to amazon, as you have just converted him on buying from amazon instead of searching it on the search engine and landing on an aff site.

  32. so far the best affiliate program for me is Amazon Affiliate. they have high tier rates and great payout *’.

  33. Does anyone know if Play.com do an affiliate programme? Always preffered them to Amazon.

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