
Earning Money as an Amazon Affiliate, A Small Experiment - bad_user
http://alexn.org/blog/2011/11/29/earning-money-as-an-amazon-affiliate.html
======
hello_moto
I don't quite understand the argument that some people made here.

This person wrote a blog post with a few Amazon links under his affiliate
code. Some people read his blog post, click the links, (and probably read the
reviews), and decided to buy the book.

The person gets the kickback, the interested readers get the books they want
to read, and everybody is happy.

But why am I reading stuff like "getting away with murder", "purity", and etc?

Why such negativity/hate?

~~~
eli
It's a pretty simple argument: having affiliate links creates incentives that
may not align with faithfully serving your readers. It does not automatically
bias your writing, but it can certainly create the appearance of bias.

A concrete example would be writing an especially glowing review of the new
Kindle because you have a vested stake in people buying them. Or, perhaps, NOT
writing a glowing review because you fear it will be perceived as shilling for
affiliate cash.

It's the reason why most reputable newspapers do not allow their ad sales
staff to communicate with the editorial staff about content.

In fact On The Media recently did a story about the Washington Post struggling
with whether or not to include Amazon affiliate links in its book reviews. I
think it presents both sides of the argument:
[http://www.onthemedia.org/2011/nov/11/web-links-money-
makers...](http://www.onthemedia.org/2011/nov/11/web-links-money-
makers/transcript/)

~~~
tjr
Understandable concerns, but shouldn't the content speak for itself?

If someone writes a meaningful glowing review of the new Kindle, then there
should be information and details in the content of the writing that explains
why they think it is so great. If there is no such information in the article,
then the article probably isn't very helpful, and neither the presence nor
absence of affiliate links will change that.

But what if it is an awful fluffy review written for the express purpose of
making an affiliate sale? Is this wrong, per se? If something in the article
either directly or indirectly prompts a reader to click on the link and they
make the purchase, then what harm has been done?

Newspapers likely disallow such practices in order to maintain journalistic
integrity, but a blog author who is writing posts on purpose to sell things is
probably not interested in maintaining journalistic integrity. The blog author
is just interested in selling stuff. Maybe the blog posts are well-written and
interesting, or maybe they are not. If they are not, then readers who care
principally about content will likely avoid the blog on the lack of merit of
the content itself.

~~~
eli
It's not just about preserving this abstract, ivory tower concept called
"journalistic integrity."

A product review is close to useless if you have no trust in its author. The
crux of a review is the author's opinion about something. Whatever verifiable
facts are contained in the review are still only those facts the author
chooses to highlight. Consider: if authorship doesn't matter, why is a review
different from a press release? In short, a review cannot speak for itself
because context matters.

Let's set aside the ambiguous case of adding affiliate links and talk about
out-and-out payola. If a blogger takes a secret cash payment to write a false
product review, then I believe that is dishonest and wrong no matter how well
written or useful the review may be. (And not to confuse what's legal with
what's ethical, but taking cash for reviews on your blog might even be
illegal[1].)

[1]
[http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/ftc_votes_to_end_blogger_payol...](http://www.cjr.org/the_kicker/ftc_votes_to_end_blogger_payol.php)

------
chollida1
I've always felt that blogs that have Amazon affiliate links should be held to
a higher standard.

I've seen way too many poorly thrown together blog posts about the top 10 CS
books to read, that I have my finger on the back button when looking at those
types of links because past experience has taught me that 90% of them are just
put together so they can put Amazon affiliate links on the books.

The rule of thumb I use is that if each blog post I see on the site has an
Amazon affiliate link then the blog is probably trying to spam me and they'll
have a harder time of keeping me there.

Some blogs do succeed via their tremendous writing.

Is it just me or do others feel this way? Does anyone else care at all if
affiliate links are all over a blog page?

~~~
bad_user
That's the same as saying that ad-supported products in general should be held
to higher standards, which in general is not true - my feeling is that we are
spoiled by free stuff, enough to make us get picky about the _purity_ of the
content viewed (supply and demand).

Personally, I never install ad-blockers. If a website or a mobile app is too
obnoxious, I just close the browser window (or hit back, just as you). Ad-
blockers, IMHO, solve the wrong problem. However, in general I tolerate such
attempts, as content authoring can take a lot of time and trying to make a
buck or two is not a sin.

Disclaimer: I'm the author of this article.

Originally I wanted to write a blog post about my adventures in learning how
to draw, however feeling that my experience isn't adequate, I settled for a
summary of the books I've been reading, plus I always wanted to experiment
with either AdSense or Amazon's Associates, basically to see what happens
(what the conversion rate is and so on).

~~~
mattmanser
Without in any way whatsover implying that you did, in some countries you
cannot present an advert as an article or editorial without clearly marking it
as such.

That's why on TVs you get the 'infomercial' warning and the 'this is an
advert' banner in papers (certainly in my country anyway).

Having an affiliate link makes the article an advert as you are selling the
book. An article such as yours can be interpreted as a shop front masquerading
as free advice as soon as you put affiliate links in it, regardless of whether
it affected your article or not.

Bloggers are getting away with murder right now compared to print advertising.

I realise this is not your intention, but that's why it is not the same as
_ad-supported products in general should be held to higher standards_ as their
adverts are usually clearly marked where yours was not.

~~~
bad_user
I'm not disagreeing with what you say, however:

    
    
        Bloggers are getting away with murder right 
        now compared to print advertising
    

I think this is a little blown out of proportions. Print advertising may be
clearly marked as such for obvious advertising, however articles planted by PR
firms are not.

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rick888
You can make money with amazon affiliates, but it's such a small percentage of
the sale. It's much better to come up with your own product or dropship
something.

You take on more responsibility but you can also make more money.

~~~
vaksel
not only that, but Amazon is pretty much the only company whose affiliate
program cookie lasts a mere 24 hours. All other companies give you at least a
month.

~~~
IanDrake
Wow, I hadn't done the affiliate thing with Amazon for a while and missed that
change. That's a big deal and I bet it immediately cut the commissions people
were getting by 10-20%.

~~~
vaksel
I think the change was more like 50-60%. A lot of people shop on Amazon for
other things, if you had a 30 day cookie like it used to be, you were more or
less guaranteed a sale in that 30 days.

~~~
robryan
I did some analysis[1] on this for 2 merchants we send traffic to, admittedly
it's not in exactly the same space the buying trends would probably be
similar. The merchant with a longer history of data has 59% in the first 24
hours meaning you would be missing out on 41% of sales.

This is a trend I have noticed with affiliate programs, the closer a company
comes to market saturation in a space the worse the terms get. It makes sense
has had the blog post not provided links there is a good chance people will
head over to amazon anyway.

[1][https://www.affclicks.com/blog/commission-percentage-and-
coo...](https://www.affclicks.com/blog/commission-percentage-and-cookie-
length/)

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AznHisoka
You can make as much as $1 per visitor by targeting specific keywords in your
titles. Things such as "Canon T2i Amazon Coupon" or "Canon T2i Amazon Discount
Code". Yes, coupon and discount code related keywords are highly competitive,
but not when you add "Amazon" to it... that's because no Amazon discount codes
really exist, thus not a lot of content for those keywords...

but you still funnel visitors to Amazon and get paid when they buy it... And
since they're searching for Amazon stuff, they most likely will buy it from
Amazon.

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cervlean
Personally, I have a strong preference FOR affiliate links / referrals over
other kinds of advertising, simply on the basis that they're more targeted,
and more likely to be relevant to me at that point in time. If I click through
to a store based on your content, I'm generally pretty happy if my referer
gets a little piece of the action.

That said, it's also pretty obvious affiliate links can be done badly, and
there's a nice slippery slope in there somewhere. I actually like how Tim Bray
does it on his blog - when he posts affiliate links he points it out
explicitly (I think they're usually his partner's) and provides non-affiliate
links as well so you can opt out if that's how you feel.

In general, more transparency is better, as usual.

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robryan
Sure if you can pull that kind of traffic to your content day in day out you
can make a good return from Amazon affiliate links, the reality is though,
this is unlikely to happen.

What I look for in products to promote is something more like a $10 average
commission per transaction and a conversion of more like 8-10%. Promoting of
the kind done in this post only really works as an aside if you were going to
mention these products anyway.

While much less invasive than AdSense in general the same amount of traffic
would make you more (although probably not in this case given the large
proportion of HN/Reddit traffic that are either blocking of ignoring AdSense).

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spc476
A few years ago I ran both Google and Amazon ads, and I made more from Amazon
than I did with Google. I dropped Google and kept Amazon. On the right side of
my blog (<http://boston.conman.org/>) is an Amazon block. The books that are
listed (and they're always books) relates somehow to the top post on the page
(I did my own Amazon targeted advertising).

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rorrr
I had quite the opposite experience with the Amazon affiliate program. I ran
very targeted ads (think photo equipment ads on a photo enthusiast site). I
got around 20K views, 6 clicks, zero buys. Shut it down to not annoy my
visitors.

