Lessons I Learned Earning $119,725.45 from Amazon Associates Program
1–10 of 46 posts
Re: Lessons I Learned Earning $119,725.45 from Amazon Associates Program
#2useful. even if you're not a blogger and your monetization strategy involves affiliate.
If anyone's company relies on affiliate fees, I'd like to know your story as well. (what works, what doesn't) We just signed up for the amazon associates program and we'll be launching in a month.
Re: Lessons I Learned Earning $119,725.45 from Amazon Associates Program
#3Not enough examination on monetization strategies on this site (HN) in my opinion. As much as these "get rich on the interweb" bloggers get a bad rap, they can teach us a lot; both overtly and by observation of their methods about how to create financial success.
I'd love to see more like this discussed on Hacker News, in place of a good chunk of the VC capital obsession.
This is real money, this is what startups should be looking to create.
Re: Lessons I Learned Earning $119,725.45 from Amazon Associates Program
#4Amazon's affiliate program is nice because you can throw in a link to Amazon in almost any article, and readers will find it useful/relevant. I'm always surprised when I see big sites linking to Amazon, but not including a referral code. They're throwing away thousands of dollars in potential income.
Re: Lessons I Learned Earning $119,725.45 from Amazon Associates Program
#5One of the ways that people are making money with Amazon is just by the cookies. I believe Amazon is a 7-day tracking cookie, so what this means is that if a user clicks on your affiliate link to Amazon if that user makes a purchase from Amazon in the next 7 days, you get credit. Of course the game is "who helped me last" so it's whoever planted the Amazon cookie on that user's browser most recently will get the affiliate payment.
A potential strategy for monetization if you have a lot of return visitors is to just send them to Amazon as much as possible with your tracking cookie. It doesn't even have to be something like "buy this product I just reviewed here, now". Just a "check this random page out" and some of your users will likely make a purchase within a week without having your cookie overwritten, and boom you get a nice affiliate fee.
There is obviously a broad spectrum of how to send people to Amazon, and how to ethically get credit for that. But fundamentally it just comes down to having a user click through and get that cookie set.
eBay is a similar cookie game.
I'm not sure about other affiliate programs/networks. It'll be interesting to see if Google uses a similar cookie approach with their CPA AdSense ads. One would hope.
Re: Lessons I Learned Earning $119,725.45 from Amazon Associates Program
#6Not enough examination on monetization strategies on this site (HN) in my opinion. As much as these "get rich on the interweb" bloggers get a bad rap, they can teach us a lot; both overtly and by observation of their methods about how to create financial success. I'd love to see more like this discussed on Hacker News, in place of a good chunk of the VC capital obsession. This is real money, this is what startups sho…
My parents taught me to not disclose the amount of money I make, and to not trust people who do -- they have every incentive to lie, be it due to ego or simply a desire to leverage an appearance of success into actual (but usually much diminished) success.
A 'professional blogger' is blogging about how to make money blogging. What does that tell you?
It tells me that what makes this blogger his money (however much he actually makes) is leveraging page views from individuals who want to know how to make money blogging. Thus, the blogger has every incentive to inflate the numbers, or simply lie outright about the expected return.
Unsurprisingly, he sells a "31-days to build a better blog" ebook here: http://www.problogger.net/31dbbb-workbook/
Re: Lessons I Learned Earning $119,725.45 from Amazon Associates Program
#7Not enough examination on monetization strategies on this site (HN) in my opinion. As much as these "get rich on the interweb" bloggers get a bad rap, they can teach us a lot; both overtly and by observation of their methods about how to create financial success. I'd love to see more like this discussed on Hacker News, in place of a good chunk of the VC capital obsession. This is real money, this is what startups sho…
My parents taught me to not disclose the amount of money I make, and to not trust people who do -- they have every incentive to lie, be it due to ego or simply a desire to leverage an appearance of success into actual (but usually much diminished) success. A 'professional blogger' is blogging about how to make money blogging. What does that tell you? It tells me that what makes this blogger his money (however much he…
My parents taught me to learn from other people's experiences - it's a lot more scalable than only learning from my own.
But absolutely read everything with a skeptical eye. People lie, people are mistaken, and every one of us is unique so what works for others won't necessarily work for you.
Re: Lessons I Learned Earning $119,725.45 from Amazon Associates Program
#8One of the ways that people are making money with Amazon is just by the cookies. I believe Amazon is a 7-day tracking cookie, so what this means is that if a user clicks on your affiliate link to Amazon if that user makes a purchase from Amazon in the next 7 days, you get credit. Of course the game is "who helped me last" so it's whoever planted the Amazon cookie on that user's browser most recently will get the affi…
The Amazon Associate web site said 24 hours of clicking through from your site, they buy something, or they click through from another site.
Re: Lessons I Learned Earning $119,725.45 from Amazon Associates Program
#9Amazon's affiliate program is nice because you can throw in a link to Amazon in almost any article, and readers will find it useful/relevant. I'm always surprised when I see big sites linking to Amazon, but not including a referral code. They're throwing away thousands of dollars in potential income.
I had links to books on Amazon before I became an Associate because I discuss sources and references in many of my posts. Being an Associate hasn't made me any money yet though; too few readers, and I've been posting too infrequently to get more.
Re: Lessons I Learned Earning $119,725.45 from Amazon Associates Program
#10One of the ways that people are making money with Amazon is just by the cookies. I believe Amazon is a 7-day tracking cookie, so what this means is that if a user clicks on your affiliate link to Amazon if that user makes a purchase from Amazon in the next 7 days, you get credit. Of course the game is "who helped me last" so it's whoever planted the Amazon cookie on that user's browser most recently will get the affi…
The Amazon Associate web site said 24 hours of clicking through from your site, they buy something, or they click through from another site.
Hmm then I probably got it mixed up. 1 day for Amazon, and 7 days for eBay.
This was a bit before my time, but apparently eBay used to have 30 day cookie tracking! Needless to say the temptation for planting cookies was pretty damn high and resulted in some clever tricks.
I think pop-unders are still used by some sites, but obviously are far less successful nowadays.