Selling books as an amazon affiliate?

[addz123]

I was thinking of doing some new sections on my site for reviewing tournament books. Want to know if anyone's had success/experience selling poker books as an amazon affiliate.

Save me some time: did you sell much? how much did you get per sale?

thank you.

[TheGooner]

No and Not very much.


Oh - you want more detail? OK.

The typical affiliate take is around 5%-6% per sale, that equates to 60p for a £10 book.

I focus on Sports and Poker, and on a good month coming up I would sell 15-20 books all up - wow - a whole £12 commission !!

Over the course of 5 years or so - we've made around 200 sales - and got a dozen or so "vouchers for £10-20" to be spent at their online store as payments.

(Cash payments have quite a high minimum these days)

If you do it (promote amazon books) - then you do it as a service to your readers rather than as a revenue exercise IMO.

[ih82lose]

I think The Gooner hit the nail on the head.

It is not a huge revenue source, without huge volume.
But the book reviews are a service to your visitors,
and the search engines should like them as well.

I don't know what the Min payout is, but I get $10-$20 direct into my bank account each month from amazon. I am from USA.

[Strider1973]

I make 0 to 15$ per month with Amazon. I have four in depth book reviews (of books I have read and which I would really recommend) on my site, plus I set up an own online shop (called "astore" at Amazon").
I don't think that it is worth the time, especially because I made most of my sales not through my book reviews page, but through recommendations in a poker forum (which I would not do again because that poker forum sells poker books itself).

[Unknown Webmaster]

I have a small site dedicated to Amazon books - It earns a whopping 10$/month.

If you are going to write reviews I think it will be better to recommend some of the training sites, since you have to pull massive volumes to make decent money with Amazon, or your visitors has to buy really hideously expensive stuff like diamond jewelry.

[addz123]

ok thanks for the comments. I'd probably only expect to sell around 5+ books/month, but i guess if that equated to £100 in sales I'd still only make £6 lol. - actually in hindsight £72/yr for a little review is ok.

I will inevitably do it for visitors anyway.

[imteaz]

i never tried amazon books, might give a try soon..
i make about $150/month from amazon electronics, you can make good money if you have large traffic, because it converts only 2% to 4%, also they have only 24 hours cookie.

[TheGooner]

also they have only 24 hours cookie.

Ah - Is that what the problem is ?

I'd noticed a problem with the cookies and crediting to affiliates based on my forum feedback of the number people that said they'd purchased, and had worked out that unless people purchased straight away then you did not get credit.

So if readers select the item - but leave it in their shopping cart and come back later in the week to continue to browse and finalise - then you miss out.


But a 24 hour cookie would fit that too.

Nasty little business process ...

[Strider1973]

So if readers select the item - but leave it in their shopping cart and come back later in the week to continue to browse and finalise - then you miss out.

When I read the Amazon TOC I think they stated that only items bought or added to the shopping cart during that visit will count as your affiliate sales. Items put in the shopping cart during the visit through your link count as your sale as long as they are bought before being automatically removed from the shopping cart (this happens after 30 or 90 days, don't remember it).
The benefit though is, that any sale made during the visit through your link generate affiliate revenue. So if one browses for poker books but end up buying a book for his 3-year old son, you will get there 5% as well.