Amazon vs Other Affiliate Programs

GoldenTouch

GoldenTouch

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I was wondering if someone has switched to or started a site with another niche specific affiliate program and what is your success with them compared to Amazon in terms of CTR and orders.

I have read many threads where people complained that they got peanuts with niche specific aff programs in comparison to what they got with Amazon.
 
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Yes, amazon's commission is peanuts when compared with other programs. But sill people go with Amazon because of product variation and commission from cookies. It's the commission from cookies which helps affiliate to earn decent amount.
 
It's also the conversion rate on amazon, that keep affiliates with them :)
 
Amazon built the best customer experience. Customers expect 3 core things when they buy products online.
 
nSnoopy said:
It's also the conversion rate on amazon, that keep affiliates with them :)
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Paul Lukas said:
Amazon built the best customer experience. Customers expect 3 core things when they buy products online.
Click to expand...


People trust Amazon as a brand. As a buyer you have the protection that Amazon offer.

Also if your niche is children's shoes and you have a private affiliate offer, people come to you and buy just shoes.
If your site is based on Amazon, they buy their kids shoes, plus some groceries, a new electric can opener and a couples of books andDVDs.
 
Though Amazon commission is low, but it offers high conversion.

Other affiliate program do not have as good conversion rate as Amazon.
 
Well. Amazon competition is pretty bad for physical products most of the time.
This is quite annoying. The conversion rate is bad and many don't treat you better than Amazon which is disappointing. I have no interest in working with people who don't treat you better than Amazon.
With none physical products, it is a different story though.

Advertisements start to look very competitive on the other hand. You need more traffic but it is much easier to rank because you are not looking to rank on very competitive keywords. And it is hard to maintain a website with lots of affiliate links over the years. Besides I see more and more Amazon pages on the top spots for many keywords which make things harder.
I think it is healthier in the long run to put more eggs in ads networks instead of Amazon. Amazon can axe the program or ban you at anytime whereas you can always move to another ad network if you are not happy.
Just keep Amazon as a secondary income stream and don't be their slave.
 
Test.

Amazon has trust so it's always going to convert but smaller networks can be more profitable. It really depends on your niche. Some niches have specific products not available on Amazon or niche-specific retailers might get fewer sales but pay you a much higher commission for bringing them new customers.

An old site I used to rank ages back made about 5x with a smaller network compared to Amazon because that offer was so specific to the niche it converted well with a much higher payout than 4%.

Test it.
 
SEOMadHatter said:
Test.

Amazon has trust so it's always going to convert but smaller networks can be more profitable. It really depends on your niche. Some niches have specific products not available on Amazon or niche-specific retailers might get fewer sales but pay you a much higher commission for bringing them new customers.

An old site I used to rank ages back made about 5x with a smaller network compared to Amazon because that offer was so specific to the niche it converted well with a much higher payout than 4%.

Test it.
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Yeah, that makes sense. My next site's niche has a lot of out of stock items on Amazon. It has around 20 different items that I can create categories or silos for and each of those items has around 3-4 models that are continuously in stock and the rest are really unstable in terms of availability. My guess is not enough demand and very high price of some of the items (we're talking 4-5k plus).

There are a few affiliate programs to consider and the main advantage of those would be that they have most of the items in stock that are not available or out of stock on Amazon. They have slightly higher commision rates than amazon. I think about 4.5 to 6% while Amazon gives 3%. I'm thinking about including both the Amazon and niche specific aff program links in the articles or just placing the niche aff program links where Amazon doesn't have the product available.

Anyways, thank you for actually answering my question and for sharing your experience. This was the kind of response I was looking for, but guess people don't like to read the questions lol.
 
RedMoonVPN said:
Yeah, that makes sense. My next site's niche has a lot of out of stock items on Amazon. It has around 20 different items that I can create categories or silos for and each of those items has around 3-4 models that are continuously in stock and the rest are really unstable in terms of availability. My guess is not enough demand and very high price of some of the items (we're talking 4-5k plus).

There are a few affiliate programs to consider and the main advantage of those would be that they have most of the items in stock that are not available or out of stock on Amazon. They have slightly higher commision rates than amazon. I think about 4.5 to 6%. I'm thinking about including both the Amazon and niche specific aff program links in the articles or just placing the niche aff program links where Amazon doesn't have the product available.

Anyways, thank you for actually answering my question and for sharing your experience. This was the kind of response I was looking for, but guess people don't like to read the questions lol.
Click to expand...

If I was launching a new site around retail buyer keywords I'd probably start it with Amazon as a safe way of getting some ROI and test from there. It saves having to deal with smaller networks until you have the traffic to make it worthwhile.

However.

Based on your price point, I don't know how well Amazon will do at $4-5k+ those won't be impulse buys and the Amazon cookie might not be long enough for you there. Haven't promoted something that expensive but my gut assumption would be you might do better with a vendor who will give you a 30-day cookie and maybe handle the retargeting for you.

At a higher price point, it might be worth testing the niche out with some PPC ads first of all. The campaign might not be profitable by itself but it'll tell you if people buy this stuff on Amazon within your cookie timeframe or if the third party networks can convert it any better.

RedMoonVPN said:
Anyways, thank you for actually answering my question and for sharing your experience. This was the kind of response I was looking for, but guess people don't like to read the questions lol.
Click to expand...

Not a problem. Best of luck.
 
SEOMadHatter said:
If I was launching a new site around retail buyer keywords I'd probably start it with Amazon as a safe way of getting some ROI and test from there. It saves having to deal with smaller networks until you have the traffic to make it worthwhile.

However.

Based on your price point, I don't know how well Amazon will do at $4-5k+ those won't be impulse buys and the Amazon cookie might not be long enough for you there. Haven't promoted something that expensive but my gut assumption would be you might do better with a vendor who will give you a 30-day cookie and maybe handle the retargeting for you.

At a higher price point, it might be worth testing the niche out with some PPC ads first of all. The campaign might not be profitable by itself but it'll tell you if people buy this stuff on Amazon within your cookie timeframe or if the third party networks can convert it any better.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I'm with you on starting with Amazon initially. I didn't mention that the price of the products isn't always that high, but the majority of the "well known" brands (eg. Nike, Samsung, Asus, etc.) in my niche are in that price range I mentioned (they make around 95% of the available models in my niche). The most popular and always in stock options on Amazon are in the $200-800 range and those are what I like to call "Amazon no-name brands". I'm sure you saw dozens of these. They exist only inside of Amazon and don't sell anywhere else. They are usually the budget alternative and are almost always in stock and they have tons of reviews and orders.

I would definitely agree that there aren't impulse buys in this niche. People usually buy this product and then potentially stick with it for decades. So yeah, the longer cookie makes sense. I just did some digging and most of the affiliate programs in my niche offer a 14-day cookie which isn't ideal but definitely better than Amazon.

The PPC testing idea sounds great, I'll actually most likely give that a try when I have time. Thank you for that one! I would definitely like to go with Amazon for this project because the difference in commission rate isn't that drastic but if people end up buying the stuff after a week or two then it's all in vain.
 
RedMoonVPN said:
Yeah, I'm with you on starting with Amazon initially. I didn't mention that the price of the products isn't always that high, but the majority of the "well known" brands (eg. Nike, Samsung, Asus, etc.) in my niche are in that price range I mentioned (they make around 95% of the available models in my niche). The most popular and always in stock options on Amazon are in the $200-800 range and those are what I like to call "Amazon no-name brands". I'm sure you saw dozens of these. They exist only inside of Amazon and don't sell anywhere else. They are usually the budget alternative and are almost always in stock and they have tons of reviews and orders.

I would definitely agree that there aren't impulse buys in this niche. People usually buy this product and then potentially stick with it for decades. So yeah, the longer cookie makes sense. I just did some digging and most of the affiliate programs in my niche offer a 14-day cookie which isn't ideal but definitely better than Amazon.

The PPC testing idea sounds great, I'll actually most likely give that a try when I have time. Thank you for that one! I would definitely like to go with Amazon for this project because the difference in commission rate isn't that drastic but if people end up buying the stuff after a week or two then it's all in vain.
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If there's enough traffic to warrant it your other option might be to reach out to these brands directly.

Either you promote their Amazon listing of choice so they see a boost in organic traffic from Amazon search or work out a deal for you to drive traffic directly to their site. Again, obviously depends on the niche and the size of the brands whether or not your level of traffic would register on their radar at all.
 
Do you guys think it's worth it to say, start a website for Amazon affiliate reviews or something? Or work on another affiliate program/product?
 
It seems that other affiliate networks are a complete shot in the dark. It may work better or worse. I would like to see a case study where the income rate = (conversion rate)*(average commission on a page) is compared.
 
Cameron Field said:
Do you guys think it's worth it to say, start a website for Amazon affiliate reviews or something? Or work on another affiliate program/product?
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Right now I don't think starting a blog for the Amazon Affiliate program will be a good idea, since Amazon already cut the commission percentage again, it means you will need to send larger traffic to earn more money. If you just started since your traffic still small, then it's better to promote another affiliate program/products on Clickbank or courses or software. You can quickly earn enough money by promoting it with a small amount of traffic, while on Amazon affiliate with a small amount of traffic it's only a small chunk of money.
 
Misan said:
I would definitely say still amazon affiliate profitable... I like amazon's affiliate bcoz of their cookies feature.
here some member makes hefty cash from amazon affiliate.
Click to expand...
do you have a working system ?
 
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