Why I Am Not An Amazon.com Affiliate
written by John Chow
A few readers were surprised to find out that the Amazon.com link in my review of the 4-hour workweek wasn’t my affiliate link. Lewis Empire asked the following question in the comments.
Why aren’t you an Amazon affiliate? It looks like you could make a bunch from this referral. Any reason to stay away from Amazon?
There is no reason to stay away from the Amazon.com affiliate program. I don’t use it because it doesn’t meet my requirements for a good affiliate program. What are you those requirements? I’m glad you asked.
High Affiliate Payout
Amazon.com offers a base commission of 4% on sales and the average book cost $15.00. I would need to sell a lot of books to make any money at those rates. When I’m on the lookout for an affiliate program, the first thing I look for is the payout. Four percent of sale and a $100 minimum to receive a check would mean I need to sell 167 book at $15.00 before I can get a check (it’s $10 if you choose direct deposit).
Text Link Ads pays me $25 for signing up a new advertiser or publisher. That’s the same as selling over 40 books on Amazon. For this blog, signing someone up for Text Link Ads is a lot easier than selling a book because it doesn’t cost anything. This brings up point number two.
Free Is A Very Good Price
All the affiliate offers I deal with cost nothing to the readers. It doesn’t cost anything to sign up for a Google AdSense or Bidvertiser account. Studies have proven that conversions increases when the offer cost zero (yes, they actually had to do a study to confirm this).
When free is combined with a very high affiliate payout, the results can be amazing. My post featuring the Gold Business Amex pays $200 when someone signs up for the card. If you read the comments, you’ll see that at least four people have taken advantage of the offer. I’m sure a bunch more order up the card but didn’t make a comment about it. How many Amazon books would you need to sell to match that?
I may take on an affiliate deal that cost money to the reader if the payout is very high (like 50% or more) and is very targeted to my market.
Sell Exclusive offers
I highly doubt my review of the 4-Hour Workweek would have sold more than a dozen books because the book is available at any book stores. Amazon.com doesn’t have an exclusive on it. Because of the competition, price pressure is placed on the product which lowers the selling price and with it, your commission.
All the affiliate programs I deal with have an exclusive on their offerings - you can’t get it anywhere else. The rule to remember is: if you can get it at the local Walmart, it’s probably not worth promoting on the Net.
Passive Income Potential
I will accept a lower payout if the affiliate deal offers residual income potential. While the $25 payout from Text Link Ads is very nice, I would like it a lot more if they give a percentage of affiliate sales. My private affiliate deal with Kontera gives me a percentage of the volume generated by sites I refer to the network. The same goes for AuctionAds and AGLOCO.
Passive income is really the best type of income you can make. Once you lay in the foundation, you don’t have to work anymore for the income to keep coming in. All those sites I signed up will continue to generate money for months and years to come. If you can get your passive income to cover all your living expenses you become financially free. That’s a very good position to be in.
Highly Targeted Offerings
If you look at my Make Money page, you’ll see that every single offer is highly targeted to my blog. While Amazon.com does have books that are targeted to my market, the program fails on all the other requirements.
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I didn’t expect a full length explanation to my question but thanks for the great information!
I don’t konw why everyone seems so intrigued by this, at some point its just better business to show that you will not whore yourself out just to nickel and dime everything.
It just shows better business, that once in a while you actually provide information where you don’t want anything in return.
Sometimes good business is by not asking for business.
Of course it’s good business to provide top quality, honest reviews. It just makes sense that if you really like something and are willing to recommend it to people that you give the option for people to buy online.
If John makes a recommendation and I buy the book, I’d be happy if he made a few bucks (especially when it doesn’t cost me anything extra).
Hey John, maybe you should have an affiliate link when you like a book and no link when you don’t.
as they say “every little helps”, and lewis does have a point there.
as the link wouldn’t make you some serious amount of money, you can just have a link under BUY ME A BEER, and get a few dollars as it comes. it will add up surely…
It’s really only $0.60 though.
Amazon is not an amazing income generator afterall.
It may prove to be good for other sites. However, the bottom line is it just doesn’t meet John’s requirements and it looks like there might be no need for it on this site at all.
Yeah, a thorough explanation yet I wonder why John keeps mentioning books only?
There are a plethora of high-priced and high-quality products on Amazon other than books that readers purchase thru affiliate links.
I know Amazon shifted down the percentage earnings on electronics six months or so ago, causing anger, but there’s still good money to be made.
I don’t know.
Maybe John knows of better affiliate programs for non-book Amazon products?
He has a huge list here.
John: I make around 7% on my amazon sales.. not 4…. you have to select their performance program to get a higher commission.. from 0 to 6 sales, you get 4%, from 7 to 30, 6%, from 30 to 100, 6.5, etc..
It’s better than nothing if you ask me..
K.
But still… It’s not a lot. I think Amzon is the only one getting rich on their sales.
but that’s true for most other affiliate programs, too. if you write a lot a about books, not affliate-linking them just means leaving money on the table.
John you can’t leverage anything better than a 4-10% payout? (Like with Kontera).
Come on man show us some classic evil scheme
That actually sounds perfect for those who are seriously into capitalizing from Amazon affiliate earnings.
I was wondering too why you didn’t have amazon affs
Totally agree with you John
yeh I agree to.. being an amazon affiliate just doesn’t seem worth it.
All that is well and good, John, but I’m sat here thinking that it takes five minutes to become an Amazon affiliate, and 30 seconds to create an affiliate link for each product you want to link to and you don’t lose anything.
With that in mind, surely it’s worth becoming an affiliate, right? I know… $100 isn’t much of an affiliate payout, but it would be a decent prize in a blog contest.
Your answer was fantastic, but I’m still wondering why you’re not an affiliate. It doesn’t take much of your time, and you don’t lose anything in the process.
If you have your reasons (and I’m sure you do) I would love to hear them.
john’s already stated the reasons in the post above
He’s stated the reasons why he doesn’t want to use Amazon Associates.
I guess I’m looking for his reasons why he doesn’t want to earn some more money for very little effort.
Sure, I could understand it if it had some other negative effect, but I’m not seeing any obvious negatives from using Amazon Associates. Of course, I’m sure John has his reasons (if he didn’t have his reasons, he would be using Amazon Associates), so I’m hoping John will enlighten us and share those reasons.
Great thoughts on why not to be an Amazon affiliate. Good points also on what to look for when monetizing your blog.
Yes, I agree I actually learned a lot of what to look for when doing affiliate marketing (I currently don’t do it so I don’t know much about it, but if I decide to start I will definitely know what to look for thanks to this
)
Great thoughts on why not to be an Amazon affiliate. Good points also on what to look for when monetizing your blog.
I use amazon affiliate occasionally but really its not the place I intend on making the money I do it because I like the way they make the box look for my book reviews.
[...] John wrote and article called Why I Am Not An Amazon Affiliate in response to a question I asked in an earlier posting (Working Four Hours A Week). I appreciate [...]
You are a genious
Right you are.
You really break all the standards and rules people take for granted, or follow wihtout thinking too much about them. And that’s what I love about you…
Not being an amazon affiliate is your option, we will have to respect that, but, if you ask me, considering your huge audience, you are loosing big bucks. I believe you would reach payout time in just a few weeks…
But that’s just me.
Beijinho (kiss)
good point, rosinha
$100 in a few weeks isn’t exactly big bucks. The space is probably better spent advertising other products.
Oh, now this brings up an interesting point.
John, are you talking about links to products within a blog entry, or are you talking about a block of Amazon advertising in a side bar or header of a Web site? If the latter, it seems your logic is very solid, because there are far better affiliate programs out there that can live in that ad space.
However, if you’re talking about a basic link in a blog entry which would have been a link to Amazon whether you are an affiliate or not, I’m still a little surprised you opted for the route of no affiliation.
I think this comment sized it up exactly. To make any revenue on Amazon, what would John have to give up?
There’s only a limited amount of space on each page, so to make it worthwhile, he’d have to give up
Adsense
TTZ Media
or one of his other streams of income.
It’s not that he couldn’t make money, but compared to his existing schemes, he’d make less money for more work…
now that ain’t evil, it’s just dumb.
Indeed, good points made by Rosinha, Jarle, and Investor. John’s maximizing his affiliate space and with the way things are going for him right now, looks like he’s doing pretty well even without Amazon.
I have several books of my own on Amazon, and I agree with where you are coming from. I find that most of my sales come from bookstores…
In addition, alot of people buy the books used from Amazon. Thus they pay $7 used vs a new $15 book and you end up getting $0.28. Woo hoo!
That’s for the used-books category alone though. As others have pointed out, I understand their concern for other potentially “lucrative” categories on Amazon as well. A colleague of mine just recently purchased a pink iPod shuffle on Amazon; he could’ve found it from an affiliate link.
Well, to each his own, right?
If you are going to use Amazon as an affiliate, you must target high dollar items like electronics. But since JC already has that with TTZ he has no need to use Amazon.
There you go; good point, Win.
The key to making some profit with amazon is only to provide a way into the site.. I link to some lcd screen cleaners in one of my article, and often end up selling books, cds and even cosmetics through the link.
Someone even bought a huge compost pail on Monday
A pale? Seriously? This strategy seems to be working well for you; well done. And yes, geeks are sexy.
I don’t think thats a very good reason to not be an Amazon affiliate.
1) 4% is only the base rate
2) 4% is still greater than 0%
3) The affiliate link doesn’t effect those who purchase anyways
4) People buy all kinds of stuff on Amazon, not just books. I have sold thousand dollar stereo systems while promoting a dog brush
Weren’t you the one who wrote a post about setting cookies to catch sales? I go directly to “amazon.com” weekly to buy stuff, but I would guess that 90% of my purchases are giving commissions to someone else. Not because they referred me to a product, but because they got their affiliate cookie on my computer
One thing that does bother me about Amazon though is their 24-hour cookie. If I was going to boycott them for something, that would be it.
Derek, another great information on amazon affiliate program.
But really setting up amazon affiliate links is hard work. If there is an easy way to set up a amazon affiliate link in my blog, i don’t mind to do it.
Setting up an affiliate link isn’t hard work. It takes seconds. Just get their standard text link and replace the ASIN with the appropriate number for your product. You certainly don’t have to go into the site each time to make links.
This is very helpful information, you guys. All this time I thought it took longer than seconds to set it up.
Good article John Chow. I am becoming a die hard fan of you.You know the ad market in and out…keep the good work going
John,
I agree with your logic, but again, being in the top 100 blogs in the world I’m sure you could turn a few extra bucks through amazon. It could at least pay for your web hosting.
http://www.40hourstogo.com
[...] John wrote and article called Why I Am Not An Amazon Affiliate in response to a question I asked in an earlier posting (Working Four Hours A Week). I appreciate [...]
I guess it´s the reasson you doesn´t use Comision Junction
John I am surprised then you haven’t signed up to that gaming network you did a reviewme for a while ago for me.
The residual income is going to be phenominal.
Maybe you’re waiting for it launch as opposed to being in pre-launch, but then again you got into Agloco.
The market for online gaming is HUGE!!
Best wishes all,
G
[...] just read John Chow’s latest blog entry as well. It’s pretty ridiculous how much money he makes from affiliate marketing. He made [...]
Sorry, I don’t agree with you. After you sell I think 6 or 9 items your commision jumps to 6%, after 30 items it jumps to 6.5% (per month) and all items are retro pay. So the first item you sold gets you 2% more money when you make the jump to the 6% threshold.
Books are no longer Amazon’s major business anymore either. Sure they have a ton, but they also offer nearly everything under the sun, usually its free shipping. I’ve bought my microwave, calphalon pots / pans, vaccuum, video ipod and a bunch of other stuff from them in the last year (all free shipping). Every friday they do huge sales, sometimes 75% off. 6 months ago they had ipod wall chargers (off brand) for 1 penny + $4.99 shipping. Sure you make almost nothing on that commision, but chances are they will order something else, or better case scenario, the word gets out and a TON of people buy them bumping you into a higher commision bracket.
About a year ago they did a sale on “battery operated massagers” for 39 cents, free shipping over $25. I posted it on one of