
I make $10k per month with the Amazon Affiliate Program - danso
https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/6lmotf/i_make_10000_per_month_with_the_amazon_affiliate/
======
dperfect
I've been burned by the Amazon Affiliate Program on three separate occasions,
and as a result I would not recommend it to anyone else. All three cases were
for completely legitimate, high-quality websites that I created (all original
content, decent traffic, good conversion rates, no gimmicks). Each time, I
would be approved for the program, generate a few hundred dollars in referred
sales over the space of weeks or months, and then Amazon would send me a
message that my account had been terminated (and of course, no way to get any
of the commission I had earned).

Each time, they pointed me to a part of the agreement that says you need to
have "original content" that isn't primarily just ads. In each case, I know
the content was original (I created it: mostly articles about DIY electronics,
3D printing, etc), there were no other ads on the sites other than a few (2 or
3 per page) affiliate links where I mentioned products that I had incorporated
into my own DIY projects.

I wasn't able to get any further explanation from Amazon in these cases, so I
don't even know _why_ they kept shutting down my accounts - and I guess that's
what concerns me the most. Even if they _hadn 't_ shut me down when they did,
the fact remains that they could, at any point in time, shut down or
significantly alter the terms of our "agreement" at their (seemingly
arbitrary) will.

~~~
cgb223
If you lost enough money from this it sounds like it might be worth getting a
lawyer involved

~~~
matt_wulfeck
No reason to get a lawyer involved. If Amazon owes you less than $5k then file
a small claims case against them.

~~~
amzaffiliate
In some states, the small claims limit goes up to $25K. They closed my account
in the past and I took them to small claims for the five figures they owed me
and I won.

I know of two other people who also took them to small claims and won as well.
(both in states with five figure small claims limits)

------
danso
Some interesting takeaways further down in the OP's answers:

\- Has "zero" web dev experience; everything is built on Wordpress and
plugins.

\- Gets "a couple hundred thousand PV/mo"

\- He picked an broad niche that he himself doesn't particularly care about.

\- Amazon's change to their commission rates last month hurt his income by
about 25-30%

I found this part amusing:

> _I filled my site with a few dozen high quality pieces of content, then
> started outreaching to other bloggers in my niche, either asking for a guest
> post or asking them to check out a piece of content /infographic I just
> created and asking them if they'd "share" (link) it with their audience (aka
> the skyscraper technique)._

I get these goddamned emails every week, sometimes a dozen from the same
person asking me to mention their blog post about SQL because I happen to have
a page that ranks fairly high for some general SQL info apparently. Never
thought the SEO actually paid off (these request emails look like they're
generated from a template that can be easily automated(.

~~~
carbonmachine
I'm interested in getting started with Amazons affiliate program. Whenever I
go to research things, I find many stories like this one. But I don't want to
pursue this track. I have dev experience, don't want to pay for views, want to
write in a narrow niche I enjoy, and I don't care about the lower commissions
to boot. I'd be beyond thrilled if I made made more than a hundred bucks a
month.

Where can I find information about this path, versus the substanceless course
this person took? I haven't had a public website in a decade and just want to
know how to do things decently well and not get into trouble.

~~~
downandout
One tip for not getting into trouble is to _not_ use SSL on the site you are
sending traffic from (or use a referrer policy meta tag so that the browser is
authorized to pass the referrer from your SSL page). SSL results in blank
referrers by default. A friend had his Amazon account banned and earnings
confiscated because his traffic had blank referrers.

~~~
Flimm
This is not correct. SSL only blanks referrals to non-HTTPS links, the
referrer _is_ passed _by default_ to all HTTPS links.

Since HN is using HTTPS, this should be very easy to test by just clicking on
this link:
[https://www.whatismyreferer.com/](https://www.whatismyreferer.com/)

Note that HN includes this line of HTML which affects the sent Referrer
header:

    
    
        <meta name="referrer" content="origin">

~~~
cpach
Interesting! Any idea why HN sets the referrer to origin?

~~~
yahelc
The HackerNews repo is gone (and thus the issue), but at one point this was a
Github issue I successfully filed to get HN to add it so their referral data
for non-SSL pages wouldn't be lost:

[https://github.com/HackerNews/HN/issues/68](https://github.com/HackerNews/HN/issues/68)

(Background:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7197520](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7197520))

IIRC, I think the developer was open to adding a referral, but not have it
leak any on-site information, so this was a compromise.

------
GuiA
So he's making $10k a month, and his trick, he says, is to have "high-quality,
exceptional quality" content. But he does not write this content himself;
rather, he pays $700 to "an expert copywriter in my niche [...] (he's a
superstar)".

Seems like the real trick is to find someone talented but unaware of how much
money they can generate on their own, and use their work to make money.

Now clearly, he's adding value, since that writer alone wouldn't know how to
turn their writing into $10k a month. But I wonder if that writer is aware
that their work is generating that much, and that they're only seeing 7% of
it.

~~~
justinjlynn
The core tenant of getting ahead massively in a capitalist society --
arbitrage. Exploitation of inequality of knowledge and/or opportunity is
always a faster ticket to success than actually producing anything of value.

~~~
ice109
>tenant

tenet

~~~
cal5k
A true capitalist would make them pay rent!

------
SCdF
> consistently does between $10,000-$11,000 per month in revenue.

> an expert copywriter in my niche who I pay about $600-$700 per month (he's a
> superstar).

> we're talking about $9,200-$10,200/mo in pure profit

Honestly the only thing I get out of this post is that to me it seems like his
superstar copywriter is being ripped off.

Clearly I'm not cut out for entrepreneurial side hustle!

~~~
Trundle
Dude could have just as easily (probably far more likely) have paid his writer
for 6-8 months and ended up with a dud site. Writer is free to take that risk
as well if he so chooses. Instead he's taking the less risky fixed payment.

~~~
SCdF
That is a good point, and at the end of his post he did say that he paid the
writer a bunch upfront at the start as well.

------
bhartzer
If I was going to spend this much time and effort creating content and
building a site, I'd certainly not be sending the traffic and sales over to
Amazon.

I'd most likely be drop-shipping products or actually carrying some inventory
and then doing the shipping myself.

In the long run, it's much easier to sell a profitable business than sell an
affiliate site. With the traffic and search engine rankings, I'd do a few
things:

\- Transition out of being an Amazon affiliate and start selling your own
products, even if that means drop shipping or carrying inventory

\- Change the overall look and feel of the site so that it's a real business
with brand

\- Use alternative methods of getting traffic to the site, other than Google
organic search results. Develop an email list/email newsletter, test out FB
ads and other paid search alternatives.

If you build a brand and actual store (rather than being an affiliate), it's a
lot easier to cash out later on.

~~~
SyneRyder
I was going to suggest maybe the guy involved wasn't interested in flipping
the business & was happy working 5 hours a week and being able to run the
business from anywhere.

However, the OP replied to this same comment over on Reddit [1]:

"Great feedback, and I agree. eComm is Phase 2."

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/6lmotf/i_make...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/6lmotf/i_make_10000_per_month_with_the_amazon_affiliate/djwhndj/)

------
bluedino
This seems like a cheap way to make money. You're basically filling Google
search results with garbage. If I'm looking for recipes I want to be directed
to Kitchn or Serious Eats or Chowhoud - no some blogspam site with tupperware
container links.

Searching for things on Google is useless when the first 3 pages are just
pages full of affiliate links and no real content. I don't know why they don't
eliminate those pages from their rankings, or at least score them lower.

~~~
rthomas6
What if the site is genuinely useful, though? I like The Wirecutter for
technology opinions, and affiliate links are the only way they make money. It
seems like a win-win(-win) to me, if the products are actually things the
visitors want to buy. They're a more informed and more satisfied consumer,
Amazon (or whoever) gets another sale, and the blogger gets a commission.

~~~
bluedino
>> What if the site is genuinely useful, though?

I'm perfectly fine with that. Serious Eats uses affiliate links (and also has
other advertising on their site). I have a ton of respect for the work it
takes to do what they do.

What I'm not okay with is someone building tons of Wordpress sites and filling
them with stock photos of food and recipes they found online, and linking to
Amazon.

~~~
rthomas6
Yes, hopefully those sites will not be successful because they do not provide
any value to consumers. I don't see how sites like that could get high
rankings on search engines, though. Who actually wants to see those? Then
again, I know nothing about SEO.

------
rewrew
I'm sorry but I call bullsh*t on a lot of aspects on this story. I think this
may have been true 5-10 years ago, but not now, not the way the Web works now.
Everyone ignores those cross-link e-mails. Getting the amount of articles he
says is NOT enough; you need more. You just don't get high-quality content for
.05 cents a word. And that's just for starters. I know, why would this person
lie? But really, for those of us who do the Web day in, day out, there's a lot
that just does not ring true in this post.

------
NumberCruncher
Bragging about the revenue of the own affiliate site is part of the affiliate
marketing scheme. I read it on the internet, it must be true...

------
nudiustertian
i find this very disgusting

~~~
rnprince
This is just another form of marketing, and marketing does create value. It's
true that some marketing is dishonest and harmful, but I don't have a reason
to think this is one of those cases.

This person is providing a service in reviewing products for people making
buying decisions. As a result, they waste less time being unsure about their
decision, and less money is spent on purchases they regret.

~~~
the_cat_kittles
i really disagree that marketing creates value, at least the current state of
things. to me, marketing looks like a big prisoners dilemma that i have to
actively ignore and filter in order to make good decisions.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _i really disagree that marketing creates value_

Have you never found a product you wouldn't have heard about had it not been
for an ad or something like it?

~~~
BoiledCabbage
If marketing were really about "product discovery" there would just be a
yellow pages for all products and we'd call it a day.

It is a zero sum game of trying to get a manipulate a consumer to like your
product over another.

~~~
quadrangle
spot on. Do people need McDonald's ads to inform them about McDonald's
products? Maybe in a few rare cases. It's not about information, it's about
manipulation.

------
rmason
Makes you wonder if he's netting $8-9K per month for 5-10 hours a week why he
doesn't just quit his day job?

~~~
encoderer
Thought 1: Wow, I've replaced my income

Thought 2: Or, I've _doubled_ it.

It's easy to go for 2 for a while and then go with 1

~~~
Mathnerd314
or just wake up one day and decide to retire early

~~~
vorpalhex
Early retirement (significantly early that is) does not tend to do well for
folks who take it. The loss of mental faculties once you have a reason to stop
using them is astounding. The ones who are most successful tend to "retire"
and then switch to low paid or unpaid volunteer work full time.

------
rb808
Is Amazon still the only real large-scale affiliate program? I'm surprised
Amazon is so unique in this when lots of competitors are trying to break into
that space.

Any other affiliate programs recommended?

~~~
corobo
Amazon does their affiliate program in-house (It's just the &tag=affiliate-id
on the regular URL. Many (most?) others use third party affiliate providers.

Adblockers often block third party affiliate providers.

------
antoaravinth
Nice article. Does anybody here tried Udemy (or other online course affiliate)
affiliate? Any success stories for the same?

~~~
bespoke_engnr
Just an average Udemy creator here, but maybe what I've learned is useful.

I started doing Linux tutorials on YouTube a few years ago (
[http://youtube.com/c/tutorialinux](http://youtube.com/c/tutorialinux) ) and
then created a course on Udemy about a year ago. Affiliates make a decent
percentage there (75%) but I suspect they have the same frustration that I do:
Udemy has sales EVERY FEW DAYS.

Every few days there are sales that offer 90% off all courses, $10 courses,
etc. etc. So a course with a $200 price tag will have an average sale price of
$10-15, which leaves everyone (including affiliates) with pretty slim margins.

The simple problem is that they have the power to re-price courses as they see
fit, and an incentive to do so (Udemy gets 50% of the revenue, possibly more
from their promotions).

As it is, I make about the same amount of money from YouTube revenue (40k
subscribers) as I do with one of the highest-rated Linux courses on Udemy (a
few hundred dollars a month). It's really just a blip next to my salary; I
can't see it replacing full-time tech work anytime soon.

~~~
jermaustin1
I would second what Dave said, and have you look at this front pager from
yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14711492](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14711492)

~~~
bespoke_engnr
Yeah, I'm not sure why I haven't started running AdWords campaigns yet, but I
need to get on that. I'll try that; thanks for the kick in the pants!

------
bshimmin
I can't even begin to imagine putting in this amount of work and effort -
while he may "only" spend 5-10 hours a week currently, apparently there was a
lot of upfront effort - on something that is fundamentally of no interest to
me: it really is just making money for money's sake, isn't it?

~~~
IanCal
Or for the sake of the things money buys.

------
mandeepj
I am not sure if this model will work if you develop a content aggregator
site.

------
TaylorGood
Makes me think about youtubers like Casey Neistat who post Amazon affiliate
links in every video description. He's getting around 2m views per video.
Wonder what that generates..

------
kikimaru
I'm not sure I understand, is this similar to the articles by comparison
websites (e.g. The Wirecutter), or is he wholesale copy-pasting content from
those sites & making affiliate money?

------
anigbrowl
_The trick is, it has to be high-quality. Exceptional quality. Read some
articles on Greatist.com and you 'll see exactly what I'm talking about. If
you can write (or find a writer who can write) that type of content, then
you're in business._

Describes his only employee, a writer, as a 'superstar' but pays him only
$6-700/month while keeping $10,000 for himself. Sorry, that's sleazy. Give him
more money you freeloader.

------
z3t4
I've seen several stories like these lately. But no actually proof, no links
to web sites etc. This might be an effort from Amazon to get more affiliates.

~~~
MattLeBlanc001
Publishing the website will get you more copycats. It will reveal your
backlinks and SEO strategy.

It will also get more people to find your Amazon affiliate ID and look for it
on google. Which will reveal all your Amazon affiliate websites.

------
sillysaurus3
How stable is this? Are you always one algorithm / policy change away from
disaster?

It seems to rely primarily on Google ranks. Good gig if you can generate them.

Anyone have any other perspectives on how difficult this is?

~~~
jameslk
I made $600 with some friends on Amazon's affiliate program with a couple
weeks worth of Facebook advertising, but I personally wouldn't recommend it as
more than a side business. It doesn't scale very well due to the massive
number of conversions you need, it's hard to track performance since you can't
cookie the potential buyer, any sales outside of your country is usually lost
(you have to sign up for separate affiliate programs for each country to make
money abroad) and of course you're at the mercy of Amazon's business
decisions.

It's better in the long term to set up your own store and build up lifetime
value around your own brand, which is what I'm currently doing. You can start
out that way dropshipping from AliExpress or with print on demand products.
It's more work, but it's also more stable and of course scales a lot better.

But an even better suggestion is to build SaaS products. It scales even more
and not many people know how to do it.

~~~
seibelj
Very experienced people have told me to sell my VPN routers[0] on amazon, and
I never, ever will. I own the distribution, I own the content, I own the
marketing. I'm probably leaving a good chunk of revenue on the table, but
overall I think it's the better longterm solution.

[0] [https://easyvpnrouter.com/](https://easyvpnrouter.com/)

~~~
voltagex_
Offtopic, but it says you use OpenWRT and LEDE so - is there a link to the
source somewhere?

~~~
seibelj
I say it in the FAQ, but it's just vanilla LEDE, and the mobile app uses the
JSON-RPC API to communicate. The mobile app isn't open source, but the
everything on the device is in UCI, cron, and /etc/openvpn.

The magic isn't in the device, it's in the flashing and configuring it for
non-technical people.

~~~
voltagex_
I'm pretty sure you still need to provide source to the version of LEDE you
use, at least to your customers.

~~~
seibelj
opkg can give current release and package info.

But I think you are missing the point here - people who are asking the
questions you are asking aren't my typical customers. It's some random guy who
has never heard the word "linux".

~~~
gjjrfcbugxbhf
No the op's point is that to comply with the licence you need to provide the
source to customers that ask for it. She's trying to save you some potential
trouble.

~~~
ewanm89
If his customer asks, he doesn't need to do shit if his customer doesn't ask.
My recommendation would be do what the likes of Toshiba do for their TVs
include in the product an offer with an email address on some hidden copyright
page.

~~~
icebraining
That offer is in fact mandatory, if one doesn't want to include the source.

------
stefanwlb
Making money through deception and lies is nothing to be proud of son.

~~~
ValleyOfTheMtns
Perhaps I've overlooked the obvious, but where is the deception and lies?

