I am an Amazon Affiliate and have been promoting their products via Google Adwords. One major issue with being an Amazon Affiliate is their tracking, you’d think the World’s number one eCommerce Store would try and help their hard working Affiliates as much as possible.
Unfortuntely this is not the case, one headache is Live Tracking which they do not offer. So, for me using Google Adwords I need to track my sales live to make sure I’m getting the best ROI (Return On Investment) and using the best converting Keywords but I cannot. I will only find this out 24 hours later and then I may have lost a lot of money.
You see Amazon track(s) sales over a 24 hour period, so I can only see If I sold that product 24 hours later which is a bit of a guessing game.
November 20th to December 27th earnings. Cost (spend) $1000 (profit 100%)
Luckily I have found some great products this month and got lucky with some others based on popularity. But this is not ideal, and I have lost money of broke even just to see if a keyword and product is going to be profitable.
The next issue I have is CashFlow, Amazon decided not so long ago to pay all of their Affiliates Quarterly. I mean Quarterly! this is a killer with PPC Affiliates – with organic guys its obviously not a problem but for the majority this is hard and can put you under unless you have a good budget. I missed out on sales because I was making so much on one product my budget ran out and I had to wait to get paid three months later!
This only happened once and now I am looking at other ways to promote Amazon products. Just some points for you to consider if you want to promote products using PPC with Amazon.
I have tried to get a programmer to work on Amazons API to get Live tracking which would mean I could make a lot of money but it still seems we cannot do it.
I will try and get around this as you really cannot lose with Amazon because of their monster brand power and loyal following. Once a consumer see’s it’s Amazon they know they are safe to purchase which ultimately leads to high conversion ratios.
For now I have to guess and hope after I spend say $100 I sold enough products to make my 100% back or even 50% I am quite happy with. With live tracking I could really tweak my campaigns and make even more money and more importantly not loss money…
8 Comments
Add your commentIt is nice to read about someone actively using amazon. seems most people don’t bother because of their low commission rates. I too am an affiliate but I don’t do any PPC or active pushing, pretty much just widgets on sites and such.
I would be interested in reading about your amazon experiences more, without you having to divulge which products your promote of course :)
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I second Robert’s request. I always thought the Amazon commission rates were too low, especially if you were paying for traffic with CPC campaigns. I’d definitely like to hear more about your strategies.
Thanks,
Justin
fbappdevelopers.com
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well, I am getting 6.5%, remember, if you selling $100+ items, I am getting decent commission. my range of commission is $15-$40 which is not too bad however, Amazon takes $15 for check processing, no fees if I am getting Amazon certificate..kinda sucks and it is net 60 which is really sucks..but they have so many items you can start sell..
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Are you using a Astore or have a site setup for this? I currently have a site setup using associate-o-matic with amazon, but my biggest problem is knowing whether a sale came from my Adwords ad or from another traffic source. Is there anyway to track sales with adwords and amazon?
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http://www.handyzon.com
This is how http://www.handyzon.com website’s home page starts…
Handyzon = Amazon General + Deals + Steals + Bestsellers + Most wanted + New addition + Chat zones + Hidden discounts + Product Details
http://www.Handyzon.com also popularly known as handy amazon is amazon’s biggest and highly paid associate. One single website has changed an old online shopping trend.Instead of using amazon’s homepage, visitors are going for http://www.handyzon.com for shopping on amazon.For all the amazon fans and shoppers, handyzon provides you with amazon’s handy shopping catalog with special features like chat zones,bestsellers,my selection,shopping rooms for searching products with upto 99% discounts for all the nations.Handyzon’s latest search engines for US,uk,Canada,Germany,France,Japan enables users to search for products with discounts of their choice, plus you get to choose categories like bestsellers,top ranked, most wanted,most expensive,cheapest,best rated products.Latest deals are daily updated in ’steals’ showcase.
Besides shopping for products handyzon provides you with links to all the amazon pages including discussion forums,products tagged,latest news,associate programs thereby giving users a handy way to reach every inch of amazon shopping world.
What started as Earth’s biggest bookstore has rapidly become Earth’s biggest anything store. Expansion has propelled Amazon in innumerable directions. The firm’s main Web site offers millions of books, music, DVDs, videos, auto parts, toys, tools, electronics, home furnishings, apparel, health & beauty aids, prescription drugs, groceries, and services including film processing. Why pay regular prices when you can buy discount items online from Handyzon? For those of you having all the knowledge of the best and the worst ( products, brands, offers, rates, latest…) handyzon provides you with search engines, for others there are handy catalogs & chat zones,chat widgets,product reviews so that you don’t miss even a single deal.
In reference to its popularity,handy amazon is one of the biggest earning affiliate.Using amazon widgets and its own search engines in the best possible way handyzon is a complete website in itself for shopping, giving amazon shoppers a new home page to shop on.With thousands of unique clicks daily handyzon is the talk of the online shopping world.It is the one of the few websites that covers six nations for shopping facilities.Handyzon is based on showing biggest price cuts, newest sale items, and the big cost savers among popular items at the great big Amazon market.
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Thanks for the useful content. I too think that the commision rate they pay is too low.
I mainly use methods to get into page one of Google organic searches as it pays off after the initial hard work.
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I see that you are earning quite some money with the Amazon affiliate program. I wonder how much you are spending on Google Adwords to get this kind of return.
One thing you could do is create different Amazon tracking IDs to track your sales. It is a bit cumbersome but it can help.
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The hard part to find the buyer keyword.
I by chance have one which brings me 4 USD on average per day, but its not stable, somedays I got 50 USD, in the next days I got zero.
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