Just had my first Amazon sale last month. A reader clicked on a book link and ended up buying a boxed set of a popular TV show. My royalty was nearly four bucks. Not bad for a click.

Makes me think I should start sending Amazon more traffic…

This post was a little untimely though…. you posted it the day before free super save shipping before christmas, and 2 days before standard shipping before christmas is over…

Some good info though for year round commissions.

The Sex Addiction Workbook: Proven Strategies to Help You Regain Control of Your Life

Groom Mate Platinum XL Nose & Ear Hair Trimmer

Vintage Striptease & Burlesque Film: Sunset Murder Case (1938) [DVD]

Hmm, maybe those were all by the same person. :P

Not too shabby! I’ll have to focus more on this in the future! Thanks for the reminder!

Would be kind of strange if that didn’t exist, given this format is somehow the standard these days in the blogging-sphere, no?

Cheers,
Max

Of course you don’t want to just lace all your posts with random and irrelevant links to products on Amazon – relevancy and useful links for your readers is key – but once you get people in the door you never quite know what they might end up buying (and earning you).

I assume you wrote that line with your tongue firmly in cheek?

Great post however, and it does highlight the benefits of linking to amazon products. Looking at the history of purchases made via my site indicate that few people actually buy the item linked, but do go on to buy other things. Wish a few more would go on and buy laptops etc as the commission on those bigger items must be very nice.

Dave – yes, always start with a relevant product – for starters you’ve a better chance of them buying that product, it also increases click through and it won’t annoy your readers.

Mike – yes I find January can be good too, although there are also a few returns in Jan which can bring your earnings down.

Hair on the Brain – yes it takes time to build up. Check out this post which talks about how Amazon earnings tend to increase over time (at least that is my experience).

Jade Craven – I find that if you start late November and then increase the frequency of more product related posts that it works. You don’t want to do too many though or your readers get annoyed.

Adrian – as a publisher you can live anywhere in the world and participate in the Amazon program (I’m in Australia). Your readers however can’t always buy everything from the US store. For example cameras and most electronics wont ship outside of the USA. There are also Amazon stores in other parts of the world which have affiliate programs if you have a lot of readers from one area (for example the UK) but annoyingly they are not joined so you can’t just join once – you have to sign up for and link to each program separately so it isn’t really worth it unless you have a blog with a local focus.

“Click through” matters, but conversion also matters. And high click through rate doesn’t always correlate to high conversion rate in a lot of cases.

I think blogger needs to focus on optimizing their amazon affiliate links based on the blog content — again, the key is contextual relevance.

GeekMBA360 (www.GeekMBA360.com)

I’d be interested in hearing about how early people prepare for the seasonal traffic – especially at christmas. I was thinking I’d prepare some special posts earlier in the year, and making them a featured post for december.