Making Money Online with Amazon

This came from the blog of a lady called Paula C, who hangs out in the Warrior forum (I recommend reading the blog, it's full of useful information).

The reasoning behind this tip is simple: you make at least $10 commission per sale (assuming you are on the 6% commission rate on Amazon, which you reach after 7 sales in a given month).

Obviously if you are on a higher commission level, you make more, which brings me to the second tip below:

This tip comes from my own experience. Amazon rewards affiliates based on volume, and lots of small sales will bump you up the commission tiers. See the graphic below for how Amazon.com's fee structure works.

The tiers are structured a little differently on Amazon.co.uk, but you get the picture - the more items you sell in a given month, the higher the commission level for that month.

Some marketers make the mistake of only targetting large items, but of course with these items the competition is fierce (it's difficult to rank), and they don't sell enough units to go up the commission tiers. Others concentrate only on low-priced items - but they may find that they need to shift stupendous amounts just to make a decent income. Say you are on the 6.5% tier of commission, and the item you are selling is priced at $35, you will need to sell 38 items to make $100 commission. But just 11 sales of an item priced at $150 will get you there. Why is this important? Well on average one in every two hundred visitors to your lens will buy something (in other words, about 10% of visitors will click through, and 5% of these will buy), though sometimes the conversion is a lot higher. That means you need 7000 visitors to make $100 with the cheaper item, but only 2200 visitors to make $100 with the more expensive item. If you have a low priced item and low traffic, you arn't going to make much at all.

The key to making a profit on Amazon is the mix of items you sell. You need the small items to get you up the commission tiers, but some high priced items so you manage to earn a decent amount for your efforts.

In order to help things out, when you are selecting your low priced items, pick things that usually sell in multiples: the classic example is deck chairs - people rarely buy just one, they'll buy at least two. Other examples of this are towels, sheets and pillow cases and pillows.

So now you have your ten products that you are going to work hard to promote. Why just ten - why not 50, 100, why not go for Giant Squid status, Super-Duper Giant status (does that status exist?!), why not crank out loads of these lenses? Well you can if you want, but it takes a lot of work to get them to rank, and you don't want to spread yourself too thin.

If you have built a lot of lenses, pick the best ten (in terms of sales) to concentrate on promoting. When you've got them ranking in the top five on Google for their keyword, then you can focus on the others.

This tip came from a marketer called Neil. Most people simply go to the Amazon bestseller lists and pick the items in the top ten. But of course these tend to be very competitive (especially if every marketer is using the same technique to find ideas).

Neil's tip is to look for items in the top 100 bestsellers by sales, but have been on the list for less than 100 days. These items tend to be new launches that are doing very well (they wouldn't be on the top 100 list otherwise), and if you catch them at this stage, chances are the other marketers haven't latched on yet, and you get an early mover advantage. If you properly backlink your lens, you'll then find that when others try to move into this territory, they'll struggle to knock you off the rankings.

Squidoo doesn't support Viddler videos, so please click this link to go to Viddler to view Neil's video on how he selects items from the Amazon bestseller lists. The video is free to view.

Use bloody great big pictures all over your lens that are hyperlinked with your Amazon id. Where people go wrong is that they use those awful little rectangle Amazon widgets where you have to squint to see the picture. People like to see what they are buying. In as much detail as possible. So you need a nice big picture.

There are two ways to go about it. One is to use the Text with Big Picture module, and have just a large hyperlinked picture, plus a text link underneath it, again hyperlinked with your Amazon ID, saying what the product is and the price, and where you are sending them (put the link in the description box of the module and Squidoo handily displays this underneath the picture). This works really well if you are comparing the product to something that is being worn by a celeb. Here's an example from my Cheryl Cole Style site:

The above is actually a screenshot of two modules, a standard text module on top and an untitled Text with Big Picture module underneath. As you can see, the reader can easily compare the picture of Cheryl wearing the teddy pendant with the Amazon UK item below, the sizing is designed so that when the reader gets to that bit they can fit both images on the screen without having to scroll up and down. Both the picture of the OMG teddy necklace, and the text link below are hyperlinked with my Amazon UK affiliate link. I like to tell people the price and where they are being sent to - it's more honest that way, and lots of readers won't even click if they are not sure where they are being sent to or if unsure about the price - so I add all this info to my text link.

The other method of using pictures is to use the Info Product Killer (IPK) method that Craig Kaye teaches. Here's an example from my Sony Digital Reader lens:

The whole thing, including the text is an image that has been hyperlinked (hovver your mouse over the picture and you'll see what I mean). Again I've used the Text with Big Picture module, but this time there is no separate text link included. It's just a clickable image which merely seems like it has some text. This method is ideal if there's no celeb involved, there's just the product being promoted. If you use this method, you must combine it by hyperlinking ALL the images on your lens with your Amazon ID, including those you've added to text modules to accompany text (again see my Sony Digital Reader lens for an example of this - all the images on that lens are hyperlinked apart from the image in the intro module, as you just never know what the customer might decide to click on).

Squidoo have now made their lenses even more flexible, which means that all you need to do is select the Text with Big Picture module, upload the image directly from your computer to the module, and then hyperlink the image in the field at the bottom with your amazon id link. Also you don't need to use "order now" or "order here" - Amazon have little order buttons in yellow (visit their site to view them) - you can copy them onto your image to make it that much more authentic.

(P.S. If you want to get Craig's course click Here to see what he offers - it's $37 and well worth looking at, there's a lot more than how to lay out a page, he has some very neat SEO tricks and tips that get the sites ranked, and it is one of the few courses on how to sell physical products that actually works).

People click on text links, especially if they are in your intro module. So put text links with your Amazon id all over your lens, ideally at least once in every single text module. The idea is to get them to click on the link and trigger the Amazon cookie, so that anything they buy in the next 24 hours gets credited to you.

One good way of doing this is to add "click here to read customer reviews of XYZ product", and have that hyperlinked to the Amazon review page for the product you are promoting. (To create an Amazon hyperlink, simply log into your associates account, and then click on the page you want to link to - on the top left will be a "link to this page" link. Click on it, select your tracking ID, and Amazon does the rest for you. If it's a text link, simply copy and paste what Amazon produces.) For an example of how I've added text links, see my Sony Digital Reader PRS 600 lens.

When people are dithering about whether to buy something or not, they will search using words such as "reviews" or they actually type specific questions about the product into the search engine. When they are ready to buy, their behaviour changes - they type in words such as "buy", "get", "purchase". Sometimes the search will have the suffix "cost" or "price". Sometimes, when they've absolutely made up their minds what to have, they will type in the model number (which they will have to hand from their previous research).

Most of the hits to my iPad lens come from people searching Buy iPad, or Buy Apple iPad. These are people on the verge of buying. So add these terms to your title (you don't have to have these words in the URL, you only need to mention the product there). If your product has a model number, put that in there too.

Thus far, you've been using your own Amazon affiliate ID links in images and text links, but you need to use the Squidoo Amazon modules too. Customers like to see prices, and the Squidoo modules display prices and ranks (those yellow stars), all of which will help the customer to decide whether to buy (your images and text links will usually not contain this info). In addition, Squidoo kindly makes their platform available to us free, and they are unusually generous about allowing us to use our own affiliate links, so give something back by using their module which shares income with them 50/50. If Squidoo don't make money, this platform disappears, so don't be a bludger, give something back.

Of course if you are selling to the UK (or Germany, France etc), you can't use their module as it is Amazon.com only, and non-American customers won't click or buy as the cost of shipping goods from America to Europe is too expensive. In that case you need to make your own ads, as I've done on my Cheryl Cole lens (which caters to UK readers).

If you don't backlink, you won't rank in Google. So many people just create lenses and then just leave them, and nothing ever happens because buyers don't find them. You've got to keep backlinking or else you won't rank and won't get traffic. And being on the first page of Google is not enough - you really need to be in the top three. The first link in the search results gets 23% of all the traffic. The next two links also get substantial traffic. But those listed further down will get about 2% to 3% of the searches. Not much. So you have to be at the top to get traffic and make sales.

Others have already written screeds on this site about backlinking, so I won't add to it - use the search function and put the advice to action. In my opinion you need links from at least ten different sources to get anywhere, and for the more competitive keywords, you need more. Don't stop till you are at the top.

Ok, so you've got a product lens that is converting into sales, and it's ranking well in Google. What next?

Well there are ten spots on the first page of the search results, and you've got just one. So try and grab the others as well. Make a hubpage with the exact same title and URL - However, you must make sure your content is different and completely unique. Look for a different angle for this page. The idea is that if the searcher hits the first page in the SERPs (your lens hopefully), and doesn't find what they want, the next page they hit (your hubpage) will provide the answers. If it says much the same as the first page, they'll backspace again, so you need to offer something different that answers their questions. Click here to join hubpages

Hubpages arn't as generous as Squidoo. They only allow two outgoing links to a single domain per hub, so you will only be able to have two text links with your own Amazon ID. They also don't allow you to hyperlink images. The HubPages Amazon capsule shares income with you in a different manner to Squidoo - instead of splitting sales 50/50, what they do instead is display your Amazon ID 60% of the time and their Amazon ID 40% of the time. You get to keep everything that is sold when your Amazon ID is displayed.

Here's a screenshot of how I laid out a hubpage called Eat Smart Precision Pro Digital Kitchen Scales:

The picture in the top right of the hub is Half Width, and I've entered a caption with the description (which automatically displays in grey). Underneath is an untitled Text Capsule, and the only thing in it is a Hyperlink with my Amazon ID. I've included information that I think the customer wants to know (free shipping), and I've bolded it, so it stands out. Below that is Hubpages standard Amazon capsule, and there I've listed the product in all the other colours that it comes in.

Finally, on the left is a product description, and at the bottom I've linked to Amazon's customer reviews page, again with my Amazon affiliate ID there.

As you can see the customer has six places to click out, two of which will always have my Amazon affiliate ID, and the other four will have my ID 60% of the time. Some people like to leave off the Hubpages Amazon capsule altogether, but I always include it as a) I want to give something back to Hubpages in return for their free platform, and b), it gives you the opportunity to display prices, plus other product models, which in turn results in more choice for the customer.

My Hubpages are always shorter than my Squidoo lenses. Because Squidoo allows you to place so many links, you can afford to have a lot of detail and a lot of length as you can place links all the way through so that there is always an opportunity for the reader to click out. If the hub length is too long, the reader can go too long without seeing a link to click out on.

As always, make sure you backlink your hubpages. Hubpages are rather good at providing internal links to support your hubs, but make sure you make some external backlinks too. No backlinks mean no listing in the search results. No listing=no traffic=no sales.

Once you have proved that a certain product sells on a Squidoo or hubpage, leverage your sales by buying a domain. Don't buy domains with product names in them (you get into trademark issues). Instead buy a domain with a generic name. So if you have been selling "brand x blue widgets", then buy a domain with "blue widgets" in the url and title, and then make a page on brand X. You can add pages for other brands with products in this range, and also update brands as new versions come along.

The chief benefit of having your own website is that you can control how it looks. I find that both Squidoo and Hubpages can be too "busy" with lots of ads to distract the reader. On your own site you can just focus on the product with links to Amazon - you will find your conversions increase sharply.

You can get fairly cheap hosting from Hostgator, and cheap domains from Godaddy. Hostgator allow unlimited hosting on your account, so for about $10 a month, you can host as many websites as you like. Obviously in order to cover costs, only buy domains for niches where you have proven with your Squidoo lenses and Hubpages that there are buyers.

To strengthen your new domain, send links from your related Squidoo lenses and hubs to the new website.

I also sell stuff through AffiliateWindow, which is a UK affiliate manager, who handle the accounts of the major UK retailers such as sainsbury, Marks and Spencer and PC World. The main advantage of becoming an affiliate of these companies rather than just selling Amazon UK products is that they tend to have 30 day cookies (though watch out if they do last click tracking which cancels the benefit of the 30 day cookie). Which means that if someone clicks through and then decides to buy a few days later, you still get credited. In my experience this happens a lot for larger ticket items, and I make more from my Affiliate Window account than I do from my Amazon UK account.

One caution though - when you join AffiliateWindow you have to pay them £5, which they refund when your commission level reaches £25. However, if they decide to decline your application to join, you forfeit your fiver. It's designed to deter those who are not serious. Therefore, before you apply, make sure your your website, or Squidoo lens is at least three months old and has both pagerank and traffic. When applying, advise them of your page rank, search engine rankings etc for your main keywords, and make sure your site is as good as it can be so it passes the visual inspection. Create a document ourlining the selling points of your website and upload it to the "Darwin" section of Affiliate window so that potential retailers can read it. My personal experience of Affiliate Window is that they are professional and their tracking is the best I've come across.

Being an affiliate isn't the only way to make money with Amazon. They now allow you to self-publish Kindle books (you don't even need a separate account - scroll down Amazon's homepage, click on the "self publish with us" link and sign in with your normal account details).

Amazon allow you to self-publish whatever you want - fiction, non fiction, short books of 3000 words, and massive books of 100,000 words. And they pay well too - you get 30% of the taking if the book price is between $0.99 and $2.99 and 70% if the price is above. Rule of thumb is that short books go for $0.99 and longer books go for more - you should be able to establish the pricing by looking at other books in your niche.

But first you need to write your book. Make sure it is unique and original. Choose a subject that you are passionate about, it really comes through in the writing. Take some real trouble with this, your success depends on producing something of genuine value. Perhaps you love cooking and have a lore of fine recipes that you've created. Or perhaps you have information to help someone who has been in a difficult situation. And if you are a fiction writer, here's a chance to write that novel you have always had in you.

Once you've got it written, get someone to proof read it and edit it (try to get someone who will give you real feedback - family are better than friends for this in my experience as they arn't afraid to say what they think).

Next you need to upload your book. First save it as a word document (a .doc file). Before you submit to Amazon, I recommend that you submit to Smashwords. Smashwords is stricter about what they accept, and only accept original works. Best of all, they issue free ISBNs. This will help you no end when you come to submit to Amazon.

Read the Smashwords style guide before you proceed - they like you to have a proper copyright notice at the start of your book, and everything spell-checked and proofed. Once you are ready, all you need to publish your book on Smashwords is your word document, and they do the rest, producing pdf files, kindle files, files that are compatible with the Apple store and Barnes and Noble. They will then distribute your book to Apple and Barnes and Noble, as well as allow you to earn direct sales from the Smashwords site.

Once you have published on Smashwords and obtained your ISBN, you now need to submit to Amazon.

First convert your Word doc to html (simply re-save it as an HTML file). Next, download Mobipocket software which is free. Mobipocket are owned by Amazon. Click on "create a blank page" and upload the html file and any html image files associated with your book.

Mobipocket will then create a prc file and this is what you upload to Amazon. When setting up your Amazon page, add your ISBN, confirm to them that you are the sole owner of the material, upload your bookcover (which you can have professionally made or make yourself in Paint). and then publish. They will review the material and within 48 hours your book will be live in the Kindle store.

Amazon have a kindle publishers community where you can interact with other authors.

Of course true success comes with promoting your book. Why not make a lens, hubpage and blog about it, linking to the book.

Book publishing can be more rewarding than affiliate marketing and if you have an area of expertise that you think others will benefit from, I urge you to give it a go.