Becoming discouraged with Amazon Associates

[polishprancer]

Started using Amazon Associates and Tumblr/Pinterest just to test the waters for the past 4 days. I know its only been 4 days but my stats are as shown.

I do have patience but today i saw the product im linking to in one best seller category and i have to wonder, are people buying my product through my affiliate link more than 24 hours later or are amazon not giving me my proper commission?

 

[Conor]

I think it has something to do with Pinterest dude. That's not the best traffic for buying things imo. Perhaps try your luck with Adsense or something similar? I made a bit of cash that way but I haven't tested it out fully.

 

[VinceC]

This is always the case when one promoting amazon products. Not everyone buy things immediately after clicking on your links. I agree 24hrs cache is really disadvantage to us the promoters.

 

[polishprancer]

Yeah my next plan is to learn Adsense for sure bro. Im currently working on an Amazon site. Pinterest is not the problem since 95% of my traffic comes from Tumblr. It might just be the age group that uses Tumblr can't buy anything off Amazon without their parent's permission lol. Going to put this on the backburner for now.

 

[Conor]

Yeah my next plan is to learn Adsense for sure bro. Im currently working on an Amazon site. Pinterest is not the problem since 95% of my traffic comes from Tumblr. It might just be the age group that uses Tumblr can't buy anything off Amazon without their parent's permission lol. Going to put this on the backburner for now.

Good luck dude I'm looking forward to seeing what becomes of this project ^^

 

[Gogol]

Well that's perfectly alright with Amazon.. Are you driving twitter traffic to your amazon? If you are, then change it because it seldom converts...

EDIT: I see that you are driving pinterest. Sorry I have no experience on pinterest + amazon but it should be the same as twitter... Also do remember that most of the pintesest users are female. So make sure that you have something interesting for them..

 

[polishprancer]

Well that's perfectly alright with Amazon.. Are you driving twitter traffic to your amazon? If you are, then change it because it seldom converts...

EDIT: I see that you are driving pinterest. Sorry I have no experience on pinterest + amazon but it should be the same as twitter... Also do remember that most of the pintesest users are female. So make sure that you have something interesting for them..

Nope no twitter.
Definitely plan on pushing pinterest harder when i finish my site, since Pinterest strips your direct affiliate links. Tumblr is (or was) the main go to for this. My 2 tumblrs are becoming pretty popular, too bad there are no tumblr bots for Mac would make the process much quicker.

 

[Gogol]

Can't you use VMs on your Mac?
What kind of niche do you have by the way? I don't need the exact niche, but did you research the conversion rate for your niche?

Nope no twitter.
Definitely plan on pushing pinterest harder when i finish my site, since Pinterest strips your direct affiliate links. Tumblr is (or was) the main go to for this. My 2 tumblrs are becoming pretty popular, too bad there are no tumblr bots for Mac would make the process much quicker.

 

[Pow-Pa-Plow]

Those are some really poor stats, you should give up with your current method and find something else.

These are my earnings to date with Amazon, they are very low but i am getting conversions every now and again.


I use an authority site which i add regular content too, reviews and the likes. Effectively i am pre-selling the product.
Give it a go!

Thanks,
PPP

Edit : Social Network traffic IMO converts very poorly anyway, i strongly recommend find another source of traffic.

 

[Techxan]

Doesn't Pinterest pull out affiliate links and substitute their own?

I remember this from when they first started, so I always link to my own site to a PHP redirect page, so that it doesn't look like an affiliate link.

 

[Paper-Boy]

You gotta keep in mind that amazon cookies only lasts for 24 hours. So if they buy anything after that, you won't get the commission for it.

My advice is to use a different network and monetize via cpa. You can even try going for PPD.

 

[polishprancer]

Can't you use VMs on your Mac?
What kind of niche do you have by the way? I don't need the exact niche, but did you research the conversion rate for your niche?

I didnt research the niche it was just an idea i got with a quirky product that i could find plenty of funny pictures of. Like i said before, the conversion rate is the way it is because i assume most of the people clicking my link arent old enough to independently purchase a product off of amazon. I have VMware fusion its just waaay too laggy for me.


@PowPaPlow .... How many days total are those conversions after? Looks like youre doing a great job man keep on going! Im building a similar site with a hot niche, so im sure i will see success once im finished.


@Paper-Boy Im not particularly keen on CPA because i always got my stats significantly shaved off, plus all the methods i tried were fairly out of date. I would just need to find a solid method to delve deeper into CPA.



Cheers for the responses guys

 

[Pow-Pa-Plow]

The majority of the conversions have been in the past 60 days or so, but i have only just started working consistantly on this website so hopefully it will pick up even more soon. I have earned around $40 or so from Google adsense off this site aswell.

Let me know how your journey goes, its always nice to hear success stories!

 

[therage]

If you must know social media traffic is not a fist full of buyers. You use the traffic for Adsense sites simply because idiots don't clear cookies and they walk into the trap of clicking your ads that were related to what they were searching for. As for CPA it is the same thing as selling affiliate products because the traffic is just terrible. PPD could work if you have a juicy enough bait to deliver them into downloading. Other than that you need quality buyer traffic, which means serp traffic or ad network traffic (PPC) from countries like US, CA, UK, etc.

I would start thinking about whether or not my niche is worth my time dealing with BANsense or a PPD program. This way you make more money with less effort, but you can't really control your earnings fully with BANsense as you could with a PPD.

 

[Gogol]

Perfect! Just do what he mentioned here VVV

If you must know social media traffic is not a fist full of buyers. You use the traffic for Adsense sites simply because idiots don't clear cookies and they walk into the trap of clicking your ads that were related to what they were searching for. As for CPA it is the same thing as selling affiliate products because the traffic is just terrible. PPD could work if you have a juicy enough bait to deliver them into downloading. Other than that you need quality buyer traffic, which means serp traffic or ad network traffic (PPC) from countries like US, CA, UK, etc.

I would start thinking about whether or not my niche is worth my time dealing with BANsense or a PPD program. This way you make more money with less effort, but you can't really control your earnings fully with BANsense as you could with a PPD.

Edit: Talking about VMs, try Virtualbox out instead of VMware. VB performed better for my Windows box than VMW, and yeah, do some research! Teens are not the best audience as I have found out. I could still sell things to them but the conversion rate was pathetic..

 

[polishprancer]

Some more great posts from what i skimmed, once again i appreciate it.
Ill keep the conversation going tomorrow.

Just also started some craigslist + clickbank methods. But they make feel like a scumbag.
Will definitely research more into PPD, seems its a bit oversaturated at least for specific video game niches. etc.

 

[TwistedSEO]

Amazon is one of the most reliable affiliate networks I work with. The commission rate is a bit low but they always pay on time and I've never had a problem with them.

As for conversions, just keep trying different niches. It varies from niche to niche. I get conversions as low as 0% to 12% depending on niche I'm targeting.

I find that the highest conversion comes when the click is from someone who is in a buying mood. If you show them a nice product, but they aren't in that mood, chances are they will bookmark it and come back in a few days when they are, which means no conversion for you. If this is the case for you, try searching up the method where you send them right to the shopping cart (90 day cookie). I don't do this myself, but it might be worth testing if you think they are not buying right away.

 

[polishprancer]

Amazon is one of the most reliable affiliate networks I work with. The commission rate is a bit low but they always pay on time and I've never had a problem with them.

As for conversions, just keep trying different niches. It varies from niche to niche. I get conversions as low as 0% to 12% depending on niche I'm targeting.

I find that the highest conversion comes when the click is from someone who is in a buying mood. If you show them a nice product, but they aren't in that mood, chances are they will bookmark it and come back in a few days when they are, which means no conversion for you. If this is the case for you, try searching up the method where you send them right to the shopping cart (90 day cookie). I don't do this myself, but it might be worth testing if you think they are not buying right away.

Whats the best way to test various niches? I don't want to spend valuable time and money making multiple amazon sites only to see them fail :/

Got another 150+ clicks this past day still no conversions Im thinking about completely changing my click through links to a different site(to actually use that traffic) or product. But i dont know any ways of changing all my click through links at once on Tumblr.

 

[polishprancer]

My site is finished. Now time to drive traffic to it

 

[polishprancer]

While working on Site traffic discovered an "automated"amazon site that guarantees $500 in 5 months for $500 good deal?
Just started trying some PPD methods