Amazon?

[dustyorange]

Hi to the forum!

I am new to affiliate programs although have been playing around with websites since the late 90's and do some freelance web development apart from my day job as a Web/Publishing Manager for a large NZ firm. I thought it would be nice to supplement my income on the side - have a 16 year old son who is eating me out of house and home and has an expensive sport!

I have signed up with Amazon as they are the biggest one I know of, so thought it would be a safe start. Has anyone here has used their program, if so, how have you found it and any tips?

My Amazon website is www.worldofhorsebooks.com (I am pretty keen on horses), and it only just went live - I am using Google Analytics to track visitors (only me as yet!) and have one Google verticle banner on the home page. I did an e-Marketing course through the NZ Marketing Association so plan to put the skills I learned on the course to the test.

I have also signed up to Commission Junction, although not too sure yet how I can use their products. There is SO much information out there, so quite a lot to sift through.

Looking forward to meeting everyone and getting some tips and helping out where I can with my knowledge.

Cheers.
_________________
Dusty Orange
http://www.dustyorange.co.nz
http://www.worldofhorsebooks.com

"Whether you think you can or whether you think you can't, you're right."
- Henry Ford

[kotitihaere]

Hi dustyorange and welcome!

I used to use Amazon years ago and found that it took ages for sales to reach the minimum threshold and therefore payouts about 18 months for the first cheque! As I have a NZ site, I looked for a bookstore that was for NZ and changed to it and then started getting payouts about every 2 months - that site had the same minimum payout as Amazon, but higher commissions

Sadly that site closed, but a few years later, fishpond.co.nz came into existance and is still around today.

This is my prefered book ap because:

* they pay straight into NZ bank account (Amazon will not pay into a non US bank account)
* They pay 10% commission on books regardless of how many products are shipped (Amazon will pay about 4%)
* payment threshold is $20NZD (Amazon is $100USD - it used to be lower!)

Hoever, having said all of that, if your target audience is global you may want to stick with Amazon, although alot of my customers through fishpond.co.nz are not in NZ and each month there are international shipments.


If you know code and stuff you can create tables in your database for adding in products - if you do not want to have to edit your pages all of the time. To see examples of what I mean - http://www.maori.org.nz/hokohoko is written in asp with a mysql backend and http://www.maorimegamall.com is written in php using the same mysql db. I just find a product I like in which ever affiliate program I use, add it once into the database and choose to show the product in both places or just the Maori Mega Mall. If you are looking at using more than one affiliate program (and maybe later on expanding into another website) this may be the way to go

In case you have not found it, My guideline for good affiliate programs to sign up to is a post I did a while back that is still relevant today and may help you sift through all of the programs!

If you want to know about any other affiliate programs, just post here.

Good Luck!