About Amazon Affiliate Program
November 14, 2008
Amazon is one of the oldest major affiliate programs on the net. But with all the name recognition, how good is the Amazon affiliate program?
Amazon is actually a really a poor affiliate program. Late last year, they dropped the cookie lifetime from 30 days to 1 day. On top of that they only pay 4% on sales. 4% without a cookie is just downright pathetic. Most affiliate programs pay at least 10% with a cookie of 30 days. Many of your earnings in affiliate programs are going to be from purchases 10 or 30 days down the line, so cookies are an important part of making good money off of affiliate programs.
This is not to say, Amazon isn’t a good idea for some sites. Amazon has the ability to show individual products with their image and prices in the affiliate ads. This makes amazon ideal for product orientated type sites in music, electronics, or books. For most websites however, this type of layout is very poor for getting sales conversions. On most websites, visitors are unlikely to be interested in the exact product you pick to display in your ad. That is why amazon is most appropriate for producted orientated sites that do a good job of integrating these individual ads.
Another thing to consider is, Amazon often won’t send some of the products overseas either. So, for example, if you sign up for U.S amazon affiliate account, you won’t be getting many sales from a U.K visitor. The best way around this, would be to sign up for multiple country amazon programs.
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