Amazon Payments


Blogger has made it pretty easy for every blogger to become an Amazon affiliate. From your dashboard, just click on Monetize, Amazon Associates, copy the code onto your blog's template and away you go!

But this is the easy part. Most of my friends, and indeed Bloggers I visit regularly are now proudly advertising all sorts of Amazon products on their blogs. It's so easy, right? This means that Amazon has got millions of us advertising for them, free of charge. We pay nothing to join - and this is the way it should be. However, do we ever get paid? Ever?

I've got an immensely popular article (Top Pop Songs To Sing With Your Kids) which comes at the top of Google's searches in the UK. There are 23,900,000  results for this particular search, so you can see the relative popularity of this post. (This piece also comes up in the first page of searches on Yahoo, Bing and Ask).
Now, my Google Analytics tells me that half of the people who land on this page leave via the Amazon links with which I've monetized the article. You see, when I realised how popular this piece had become, I went back to it and embedded links (with my unique code) to the appropriate Amazon pages. I linked to each song on the list with the phrase, 'download this in MP3'. There is no ambiguity. Visitors are told that the link goes to a page from which the track(s) can be downloaded.

Reason tells me that if viewers are voluntarily leaving to go to the Amazon pages, they're doing so to buy copies of the song(s). This particular articular was posted in April. So far, there are no sales recorded in my Amazon reports. Go figure!

I've been thinking about removing Amazon ads from my blogs. Of course, I'll still be keeping an eye out for great book sales etc. My readers won't be very happy if I didn't. Besides, A Blogger's Books is known for finding fantastic deals where books, writings and jobs are concerned. What I'm saying is that Amazon ads take up quite a lot of space on my sites. I could be using this space for programmes that actually properly monetize my blog. I have one such programme in mind. I want to gauge what you all think about Amazon Associates while I make up my mind.

  • Are you an Amazon Associate?
  • Have you ever been paid?
  • Do you think you may have unrecorded clicks/purchases on your Amazon reports?
Please leave your answers below. Thank you. I will update this post in the near future and tell you about another programme which may be worth your while. 


6 comments:

Self Sagacity October 18, 2010 at 1:58 AM  

Anne, I have participated in some affiliate sites. My experience had me pondered the same as you, did the tracking links really worked? Did I get credit for the link-out? Bottom line is because there is no way I can track them, I would say, nothing I can do- which mean, I have no control = until they come up with a better system for publisher, I should not waste my time. Good topic, one that can help all of us.

Anonymous October 18, 2010 at 10:26 PM  

I've tried Amazon associate thingy before, and from my experience, I earned not even a penny, unless someone buy straight at Amazon with my associate id..

I've removed it after a year, since it's not doing any good for me or my site!

Anne Lyken-Garner October 19, 2010 at 7:49 PM  

Amanda and Icy, these are my thoughts exactly. I'm still trying to collate some reports and facts. I'll let you know what the outcome is.

DoanLegacy October 23, 2010 at 3:22 PM  

I've seen Amazon ads on a few blogs, but not many! Maybe they are not what they seem..Good luck with your investigation on this matter..

Carlo November 9, 2010 at 10:00 AM  

Hi,
yesterday I have subscribed to the Amazon Associates program. Now that I am reading your post and its comments I am really wondering if I did a good move. What do you think? Should I take it away from my blog right now? Is there any working alternative to Amazon to earn a few bucks?
I also have Google Ads but it is no paying at all. I think today Internet is a too well know territory and Internet users know what they want, where to click and when they want to buy something they go straight to the selling website.
At least I can't find for the moment any real selling subject.
Thanks for your advice,
Carlo

Anne Lyken-Garner November 9, 2010 at 12:06 PM  

Hi Carlo.
Google ads definitely pay. I've been paid by them several times and have another payment due this month. I've got a blog post on this site about that. I've also got several posts about monetizing your site and making your google ads really work for you.
I don't necessarily think Amazon ads are wrong to ad to your site. They just haven't done what I expected them to do. I hope you have better luck with them than I've had so far.

Anne's a published author, freelance writer and experienced editor. She's just signed her second publishing contract this year with 2 separate publishing houses. You can hire her or see her available books in the side panel on the right.
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