hekke's Amazon Affiliate Journey

[BeatDaBest]

Wow very nice! I'm almost in the same boat as you except I started affiliate marketing when I was around 16 but didn't start working hard on it and researching until about 4 months earlier... If I started earlier and took it seriously I think I'd be banking hard by now!

Thanks for the detailed info and I'll be sure to follow your journey to learn some new stuff to use on my sites! (I currently have 4 Amazon Affiliate sites, but most of them are still in the baby stages so I'm only making $$ a month from them.)

Also, how much do you pay for your content and where do you get it if it's not a super secret source?

Thanks!

 

[hekke]

Wow very nice! I'm almost in the same boat as you except I started affiliate marketing when I was around 16 but didn't start working hard on it and researching until about 4 months earlier... If I started earlier and took it seriously I think I'd be banking hard by now!

Thanks for the detailed info and I'll be sure to follow your journey to learn some new stuff to use on my sites! (I currently have 4 Amazon Affiliate sites, but most of them are still in the baby stages so I'm only making $$ a month from them.)

Also, how much do you pay for your content and where do you get it if it's not a super secret source?

Thanks!

My best of-articles tend to land at about $20 each, yes, this is a bit pricey but the writer who writes them does an excellent job writing them so I don't mind - it's a one time fee. The review-articles cost me about $3-$7 depending on how many words I want it to be (500-1000 words).

The current cost of the articles:

RED
$115 - 16 articles published - 5 more on the way

BLUE
$20 - 1 article published

I do not want to promote what services I am using but one of them are from BHW and the other one isn't.

Thank you for following!

 

[braindebug]

Hmm, that's a lot links. Aren't you afraid of penalty?
I liked the review link to amazon that you put on the table.
When I add such links I write sth like "50+ positive customer reviews. Click here to read them". But I have a feeling that a simple "product review" would convert better.
Do you make it link to the product or to the customer reviews page? Does it convert?
And I guess I'll use some sidebar image links too to test them.

Ok, so as promised. Here is how I went from a 30% CTR to 70% CTR:

Checklist:
*Homepage
*Comparison chart
*Sidebar image

Homepage
Having a homepage is a great way to include both a lot of links to Amazon but also to add a lot of buyer keywords. On my first site I get almost 50% of all the traffic to the homepage and on my homepage I got 32 links to Amazon. 15 in the comparison chart, 15 on the reviews, 1 above comparison chart and 1 in the sidebar.

So how do I insert 15 links in the reviews? Well, I review 5 products per "Best of"-article - so 3 links per review.

This is how I format the reviews:
__________________________________
Hamilton Beach 2 Slice Cool Touch Toaster Review
-Review here- -Review here- -Review here-

Find the best deals on the Hamilton Toaster!
__________________________________

To explain it in words - a link on the product image, a link after the mini-review and one on the product name above the review.

Comparison chart
This is another great way to put a lot of links naturally into the homepage. I put the comparison chart exactly after the introduction (look above on the best of-article template and you'll understand where).

This is how my comparison charts looks like:

As you can see on my comparison chart, I got a column with "price". I usually just put $-$$$$ depending on how much the product costs. So if it costs 100 USD I would say "Price: $$$" and if it costs 10 USD I would put "Price: $$" - this is the only way to do it unless you can get the price from their API or change it manually every time the price changes.

I put my own rating on the comparison chart, I hope this is allowed by Amazon - otherwise I need to switch this on all of my niche sites as soon as possible.

Sidebar image
This is something that I added quiet recently as I saw that almost 20% of all traffic on my page comes from a non-monetized article that I wrote about 3 months ago. I simply made a image where I showcased a product I chose - put some text above it saying "Best *PRODUCT* 2015" and then made a simple button under it saying "Check out current price!".

As I always do when I add a new thing to my site that is questionable to Amazon's ToS - I contact their support chat. I had a version before the one I got currently that had 5 yellow stars above it instead of "Best *PRODUCT* 2015" which apparently isn't allowed by Amazon. If you are going to include stars it got to show how many stars it got on Amazon, not just a random number of stars.

I use the Image Widget plugin to add a image to my sidebar - you can easily add a link to the widget.

And that's basically what increased my CTR with about 40 per cent!

I want to give a HUGE shoutout to antichrist as he was the one who originally gave me these tips. I want to spread them with you as I've seen a big increase in earnings as well as traffic since I added these things.

Hopefully this post was helpful!

Until next time,
hekke

 

[Jesse Custer]

Hi Hekke,

Thanks as always for the great information. I have a question as above.

In your template you wrote:

"PRODUCT Reviews (2015) - one more great buyer keyword

Review 1

Review 2

Review 3

Review 4

Review 5"

I am just wondering how you / your copywriter sources the review material??

For example, right now I'm just writing a single review for a product. I go on Amazon and take a few sentences from a product's review page and re-write them.

But I don't know how to do 5 separate reviews as it's against Amazon's TOS to copy their reviews. Any help greatly appreciated.

 

[hekke]

Hmm, that's a lot links. Aren't you afraid of penalty?
I liked the review link to amazon that you put on the table.
When I add such links I write sth like "50+ positive customer reviews. Click here to read them". But I have a feeling that a simple "product review" would convert better.
Do you make it link to the product or to the customer reviews page? Does it convert?
And I guess I'll use some sidebar image links too to test them.

I've not had any problems with the links - whatsoever. Although, I use a WP plugin to no-follow all external links. I've heard mixed opinion about no-following them but it doesn't hurt to use it even if it wouldn't help at all. Better be safe than sorry!

I always link to the product page. I don't know if it got any benefits at all. I think that the product pages are more compelling to people than a boring text-only page. That's the main reason why I link to product pages instead of the review page. Also a bit because of laziness as I would need to have different links, now I can just copy-paste it, heh.

Definitely use a sidebar, it doesn't seem to have the same conversion rate as other links but I've gotten an extra 1500 clicks to Amazon through it so far this month. A sidebar also helps you monetize your informative posts so that you can squeeze some sales off traffic that isn't interested in buying anything from the start.

Hi Hekke,

Thanks as always for the great information. I have a question as above.

In your template you wrote:

"PRODUCT Reviews (2015) - one more great buyer keyword

Review 1

Review 2

Review 3

Review 4

Review 5"

I am just wondering how you / your copywriter sources the review material??

For example, right now I'm just writing a single review for a product. I go on Amazon and take a few sentences from a product's review page and re-write them.

But I don't know how to do 5 separate reviews as it's against Amazon's TOS to copy their reviews. Any help greatly appreciated.

Well, I cannot really answer that question as I don't really know how my writers do it. But I will try my best! I've analyzed some of their product review articles. What they tend to do is to have a generic introduction about what the product is and how the product is useful, in general not just that product but how the products in that niche can help you. After that they list pro's and explains why it is good to have a certain feature.

Here's an example of what I mean:
Pro's
Child lock
This toaster got a child lock so that your toddler cannot start the toaster without your help. Other toasters without child lock is really easy to turn on and if you toddler get a body part in there - they will be seriously hurt.

Temperature changing automatically
Will there be different types of bread in this toaster? If you live in a big family, you know that it is hard to remember to change the temperature back from when someone else toasted a different type of bread. With this new revolutionary toaster that changes the temperature automatically; this won't happen again.
___________

Ok this is all really bad and pure BS. But I hope this gives you an idea.

EDIT: Ok, I just realized that you meant the mini-reviews on the best of-article template. Well, here you can pretty much just write whatever.

Here's an example:

Hamilton is back with yet another great toaster. The Hamilton Beach 2 Slice Cool Touch Toaster is perfect if you want evenly toaster bread slices to the coffee in the morning. Have you ever had a problem getting the bread slices out of the toaster and tried to stick a fork in there to get it up? That is really dangerous and that is why Hamilton have a great feature which makes the slices pop-up - no matter how small slices you got in there.

With the convenient crumb tray you can easily remove all the crumbs from the toaster. So that your bread won't stink of burnt crumbs. Having burn crumbs in your toaster can also cause a lot of damage to the toaster - so it is important that you remove it every once in awhile.

Click here to find the best deals on the Hamilton Toaster!
___________

Hopefully you understand with these small examples! Also, I recommend looking at other niche sites in your niche and re-writing their content - this is often way easier than trying to base some content from the weak information you get on a product page.

 

[Wolfz]

Any suggestion for theme ?

Thank you

 

[hekke]

Any suggestion for theme ?

Thank you

Personally, I just go with a really clean magazine theme. I am using Genesis from Studiopress and have installed one of their child themes, Magazine Pro. I like the simplicity in the theme as I want the theme to look good from the second I install it. Any of their child themes look good, this is just the first one that I saw so I went with it.

If you don't want to illegally download it nor buy it, there are tons of free magazine themes on Wordpress.

 

[hekke]

UPDATE
Last night I wrote an article myself actually, 700 words. It was an informative article targeting a keyword with 200 searches/month. I know that this is fairly low to actually target but my main reason was to publish the article on Reddit actually, the results (so far) is alright - 430 unique visitors.

The site have already started showing on some search terms I am tracking. 100th spot, but it is a start. Still waiting for the articles from my other writer, he haven't replied in a long time. Oh well. I will order another best of-article today, so I am currently gathering keywords to use in that article.

UPDATE
Yesterday I published a new best of-article, soon, all of my best of-articles for each type will be done! I also ordered 5 more review-articles yesterday from my writer. But as I said previously, he is not responding. Once I receive all the articles I will have more than 10 articles to post to this site.

Also, yesterday the third product shipped. Another $1.6 earned, the total commission is $12.07 now.

Sorry, I know that these updates are boring but I cannot really update about anything else other than this for the time being. I want you to be able to follow step-by-step so that's why I am still posting these updates.

Until next time,
hekke

 

[clockhouse]

Following along while I build my amazon sites. Best of luck, hekke.

 

[hekke]

Following along while I build my amazon sites. Best of luck, hekke.

Thanks dude! Good luck with your sites!

 

[galaxier]

hi, gl on your journey..

just one qn.. are you using emd or brandable domains?

 

[hekke]

hi, gl on your journey..

just one qn.. are you using emd or brandable domains?

For these sites I am using brandable domains. The domain for RED is a domain I picked up about 8 months ago and stumbled upon this niche when I was looking for a niche to build a site upon. The BLUE domain is a domain I picked up 2 days ago and I think it is really catchy!

Although, for my smaller niche sites I usually go for a EMD domain - no idea if it is helpful anymore but I want the user to know that on this site they will find the best***reviews.com or the best*products*.com!

 

[Goofy454]

hekke you are awesome! Thank you for all the info, now I'll really have to jump in to amazon too after a few days of reading through everything
Good luck on your journey dude

 

[semiprodota]

I had a quick question regarding semrush. How are you able to tell if they are powered by a PBN?

Great thread, following and GL!

 

[Jesse Custer]

I have another question about article submission.

I wrote a 1,750 article this weekend. It has embedded YT in and I like to think it's well researched. However, I stuck it on Reddit (my first time) and it has tanked. Not one view in about 6 hours.

Any tips on how to share this kind of article (with videos embedded).

Cheers / Skal!

 

[hekke]

hekke you are awesome! Thank you for all the info, now I'll really have to jump in to amazon too after a few days of reading through everything
Good luck on your journey dude

Thanks for the support! I really appreciate it!

I had a quick question regarding semrush. How are you able to tell if they are powered by a PBN?

Great thread, following and GL!

Well, by looking at the backlinks the site got. You'll often see that sites got links from "*** Blog" and if you click through to the site you'll often see that it is a PBN-site. You'll see that almost all the posts is linking a different niche site, mostly with "best ***" & "*** reviews" anchors.

Thanks for the support!

I have another question about article submission.

I wrote a 1,750 article this weekend. It has embedded YT in and I like to think it's well researched. However, I stuck it on Reddit (my first time) and it has tanked. Not one view in about 6 hours.

Any tips on how to share this kind of article (with videos embedded).

Cheers / Skal!

Well, there are a special type of article that usually get some attention - before & after results of the niche and funny information. This was the first post that I wrote specialized for Reddit, because I sorta knew that this is something that you'll laugh at - just by looking at the pictures.

If your niche doesn't have a subreddit, I try to fit my post in on /r/TodayILearned - people share things they have recently learned. I've found this subreddit really good as there is constantly 10k people on it, and most niches have some cool information that people doesn't know about.

I've also heard that top-lists works well too, but be careful, there are often a lot of experts in most niche-related subreddits, they won't agree if you list some cheap/beginner products.

As always, you can't predict viral posts. So you just have to stick in there and one day you'll probably hit it big. Although, if you are working with Amazon this type of traffic is usually pointless. Some of my friends have gotten 25k unique visits in a night but then they have looked at the click-through rate, and got disappointed. Most redditors aren't interested in buying anything, same with Twitter, Facebook and any other social media.

 

[Jesse Custer]

Thanks Hekke for the great advice. You're right. I mainly wrote the article to get more words on the website and for google search. Still, a few upvotes would have been good for the ego! Guess I'll have to get used to that and be more Zen

 

[hekke]

Hey guys, I've been up for about 24 hours now so sorry in advance if I have some errors in this post, haha. I am trying to reset my sleeping schedule and the only way for me to do it is by staying awake for a whole night + day and then pass out about 8-9pm - when I wake up the next day my sleeping schedule will be just perfect.

UPDATE
Yesterday I ordered a big 3.5k best of-article from my writer. The article covers 10 mini-reviews and almost everything there is to know about this type. I felt like this type were too big to cover with 1-2k words, so I decided to order a longer one.

One of the other reasons is because I saw some weak articles on the Wikipedia page about this topic - so if I write a better & more detailed one I can put my site on there as well. I also found out that one of the authority sites in my niche links out to an un-updated & hit sites' article about this topic - so I am going to try to snatch it from him, heh.

The site is already showing up on some great buyer keywords such as "best ***" and "*** reviews". My competitor also said that he earned $200/monthly with his site that ranks of 6th spot with 6 weak links. I should be able to beat him in a month or two probably.

I will be building a multi-niche site, while he only covers one type of this product. He also only got like 10 000 words on his site, so this will be an easy match. The ones above him are a big tougher, so the real match will begin once I bet this first guy.

UPDATE
I got an update from my writer. He was in hospital and have recovered fully by now. He told me that all of the articles should be delivered by tonight - now I will have 15 articles to schedule & post to my sites. I think that 10 of those are for RED and the other 5 is for BLUE.

As you can see, there are not many keywords that have popped up. This niche is slightly harder from site BLUE. I will start to build links next week to RED, so I expect some movement in SERPS after that.

Until next time,
hekke

 

[hekke]

New little update about BLUE.

UPDATE
I realized that the 10 products I reviewed & talked about in the long article weren't as related as I previously thought. So I decided to split them into two pages. I ordered a new introduction for the 5 reviews and I created a new page.

Now I got 3 best of-articles on this site - around 2-3 types left to cover. Will order atleast one of those tonight and publish it tomorrow. I will also order 10 single review article talking about the products I've covered in the best of articles and schedule out those that I receive tonight.

The total price that I've paid for my 3 articles (7683 words) is around $60.

Until next time,
hekke

 

[catonkeyboard]

Good luck, keep working hard it will pay off.