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2008-12-10 13:27:41
Last author: Hedda
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<img:stuff/mood8-gif.gif> Amazon Affiliate program review


Update 2008-12-09: Amazon will not give you any money. Short explanation:
If you spend a lot of money promoting Amazon and making your visitor buy even more things there, you will get almost nothing for this. Amazon only pays you for people clicking on your links, but 99% of the ones you're promoting to will go to Amazon via a bookmark link, and then you'll get nothing. The trick site-owners have to use is a "hidden popup" (an iframe with the size 1*1) so that all their visitors get tagged with their cookie. But hidden popups is against Amazon's rules, so after some time, Amazon will say "Thank you very much for all the advertising we got for free because we will not pay you!".

Also note that Amazon is also destroying sites by trying to enforce their "one click" patent, which makes the world a worse place for everyone except themselves.

The conclusion is to avoid Amazon at all cost. Later I'll investigate:
http://www.overstock.com/
http://www.barnesandnoble.com
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/
http://www.shop-com.co.uk
http://usa.shop.com/




What I wrongly though before:
I think that Amazon's affiate programs is one of the most popular affiliate program there is. Amazon seem to not spend money on marketing like normal companies that sees it like an investment. Instead they see it as a cost per sold item and pays someone 4-10% of the value. Then it's up to all marketers and websites in the world to fight for whom gets that money.

As this method is so successful they have started to sell a lot of products from other companies that realize that they suck at marketing and want someone else to do it for them. This means even more income for Amazon affiliates.

But not everything is great though. Amazon have divided their company geographically way too much, so it's hard to an international site to refer to the site or a product without referring to USA, UK, Germany, France, Japan, Canada and China. It would have been way better if the affiliates could simply link to a product on the amazon.com site and then it would be directed to the product-link on the Japanese site if the view is there and the product exists there. Now one has to learn Japanese to earn money from Japan, and that sucks!

Site-specific stuff


All the Amazon sites www.amazon.com (USA), www.amazon.ca (Canada), www.amazon.co.uk (UK), www.amazon.de (Germany), www.amazon.fr (France), www.amazon.co.jp (Japan) and www.joyo.com (China) have a little different policies and are different to work with.

www.amazon.com


The great thing is that Americans buy a lot, they buy expensive stuff, the US Amazon has a huge variety of goods (you can even buy your everyday food, which is great for starving web-masters...) and there are plenty of Americans, at least on my own sites. This Amazon also has a big referral rate = even more money.

But not everything is good. They fail to be able to pay into a foreign bank account. BiC/IBAN works just fine everywhere, but they are apparently not interested in sending money abroad so one needs an American bank account. You can get a cheque, but in developed countries you need archaeological skills to cash in one.


www.amazon.co.uk


The UK-company www.amazon.co.uk is having lower referral rates, there are fewer Brits and they buy cheaper stuff. Another problem is that the shop simply is smaller and there are fewer things to buy there (You can't even get a fish'n chips or a Newcastle, must be because the company is actually not situated in UK, but in Luxembourg.).

But here they know what an IBAN number is, so getting the money is no problem at all. For some unknown reason, you can get a cheque to UK though, but I have no idea why anyone would want that (maybe to escape taxes and that's why it isn't allowed).

See also Stuff people bought on Amazon
Link: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com

/ [Hedda]

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2008-11-18 [Skydancer]: Sounds brilliant, you have a way of making a few more dollars and hopefully a fair bit. Make sure you set up an easy place for us to buy books and dvds through you from them. Catch the christmas sales. :)

2008-11-18 [Hedda]: So far it's making way more money than the Google-ads, and it isn't in the way of the Elftowners. All you have to do is to go from Elftown to Amazon with for example the link at the bottom of this page, and I'll get percentage on everything bought there.

And with some luck, you'll save some bucks on buying things cheaply on Amazon while I make money. Too bad it's not possible to buy all groceries there (They do have hot cocoa, but it's not hot on delivery...), but they did have a huge selection of coffee that however made no sense to me. In Sweden, coffee is mostly sold in ½ kilo (17.6 ounce) packages and it's sold for $2.50 in the shops, so these T-Discs-packages seems pretty stupid to me...

2008-11-18 [Hedda]: Oh, but they had tuna! Yammy! <img:stuff/zabuN-gif.gif>

That I would have bought if I knew the brands and could get them sent here.

2008-11-18 [Skydancer]: Brilliant, but make it a news item so we all know about. :) The american love of gadgets and super easy is more than a little insane, and I live here. :)

2008-11-19 [Hedda]: But I don't know of so many gadgets though. When Stuff people bought on Amazon is filling up, I guess I'll start to know what Elftowners want. The only thing people have bought 2 of is the wooden swords, but I think it was in the same order.

(I guess they want equipment to train to fight each other, but what is way more interesting is to use very different kinds of weapons. I've friends who say that some sort of halberd (But with an Arabic sword in the end instead of an axe and spear combination) is the shit that can beat any other melee fighter. But they didn't consider the problems with a lack of a shield and what it means against arrows, pike-phalanxes or other problems.)

2008-11-19 [Hedda]: I've heard that the Japanese people love gadgets more than anyone else, but Elftown doesn't have that many visitors from there and I kind of fail to both apply for a affiliate program on www.amazon.co.jp and to make people understand how to order stuff in Japanese... <img:stuff/br2N-gif.gif>

2008-11-19 [Hedda]: By the way: As far as I understand it's possible to sell stuff through Amazon as a third party vendor, but I have no idea if it's relevant for you.

2008-11-19 [Skydancer]: Probably not as art work is not very easy to do through third party. I either have to sell it directly as signed, original or limited editions or sell it like I do through DA where they handle the printing, sales, money and shipping for me. But thanks for the thought. :)

Oh, I mention gadgets because you spoke of coffee packs. Thats one the new things they have now is a kind of pressure hotwater coffee machine that uses individual packs like teabags sort of, which give you one cup for each pack. Really wasteful and quite dumb, but thats the american market for you.

2008-11-24 [Linn Scarlett]: I know that needing archeo skills for cashing in checks, is actually true *growls* stupid yanks -_-

2008-11-24 [Hedda]: I understand why cheques are hated by the banks, and I don't see a reason why they should ever be used.

In the EU they passed a law that said that it should cost noting to transfer money between bank-accounts in the EU (except for a tiny cost if it is different currencies), so now the problem simply doesn't exist here.

What I can't understand is why the law isn't done globally, because there is no reason why it would cost more to "ship" money over the Atlantic ocean. And it has to be a law, because there is too little money in providing something for free, and the bank-regulations stops banks from offering accounts that can be used in all countries.

2008-11-24 [Linn Scarlett]: Meaning basically, that we get charged over absolute nonesense :3

2008-11-24 [Hedda]: I guess that charging us for the service is half the cost of it...

Generally the banks don't make less money if they charge less because the money will rotate more until the cost gets too big and they'll end up with the money somehow anyway. The Euro-bank got huge income from changing Marks to Lires and so on before, but their profits haven't fallen because of the introduction on the Euro, for example (The exchange-offices have had a much harder time though).

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