Internet Entrepreneurs Blog

I joined the Amazon Associates affiliate program several years ago to sell mountain biking related books on my website, singletracks.com. The program has worked pretty well for me, unlike other affiliate programs where I would rarely convert a single sale. Today Amazon third-party vendors sell every imaginable product from electronics to clothing to bike gear and lately I’ve taken advantage of this by listing GPS receivers, videos, and of course lots of mountain biking gear. My commission is anywhere from 5% to 8% on third-party products (from vendors like Nashbar and Bikesomewhere who list their products on Amazon) and my commission generally averages around 7% of sales. Some users even end up buying completely unrelated items (like baby car seats and blue jeans) once they’ve clicked through to Amazon from my site but I still get the commission!

The interesting thing is that affiliate programs from companies like Performance Bikes and Soccer.com usually offer a commission of just 5% of sales. But these same companies sell many of their items on Amazon where as an Amazon affiliate I can make a commission that is up to 60% larger on the same item from the same company. Neat, huh?

But being an Amazon Associate is better for other reasons as well. First off, as an Amazon Associate your don’t have to bother joining multiple affiliate programs to get products from multiple vendors. In general the more programs you join, the more fragmented and diluted your earning will be. Plus with Amazon you won’t have to worry about inconsistent technical requirements and confusing payment structures/thresholds. With Amazon all your sales are in one place plus your customers are more likely to find something they want to buy once they’ve clicked through to the site.

Finally, Amazon blows away all of the affiliate programs I’ve seen in their use of product data feeds. Some affiliate programs are starting to offer feeds of their product data but greedy companies like Linkshare and Commission Junction actually charge both affiliate and vendor a fee to use these. Plus the ones I’ve seen use clumsy ftp or email systems to push the latest product data to affiliate sites. With Amazon, it’s crazy easy (and free) to get data and to build effective product links for your site.

Bottom line: Amazon Associates program pays more, offers more products, consolidates sales to multiple vendors, and provides the best data feed services around. Most vendors are already selling on Amazon so check to see if yours are on the site, and if so, make the switch today!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 21st, 2005 at 4:16 pm and is filed under Business, The Internets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.