Consider Amazon Context Links Affiliate Program For Product Based Sites

Posted on August 26, 2008
Filed Under Earn money online

I’ve been positively surprised by the Amazon affiliate program last month. When Chitika average CPC dropped a few months ago (now it’s back up!) I was looking for Chitika alternatives.

While I kept the main Chitika ads on my site, I saw that the Chitika Linx was not earning well.

So I tested the Amazon Context Links affiliate program. Since I use SBI Includes on my site I can change the javascript code for all pages of my site with only one upload so I simply replaced the Linx code with the Amazon Context Links javascript code.

I selected the option where Amazon automatically links to their products if it detects the name of the product in the text and I chose 3 links per page.

After a few days I saw that the orders started to come in. I used to earn from Amazon around $200 to $300 per month with a few links that I manually included in my pages.

But now I would get days like this:

So last month (July 2008) was the first month that I left Amazon Context links appear on my site and here’s the result:

As you can see I got 8915 clicks, 194 orders (2,18% conversion) and I earned more than $800. My total from Amazon in July was $1010.

A very cool thing about Amazon affiliate program is that when people land on Amazon, they know where they are. They have probably ordered something in the past, they trust the system and they often order many other items besides what you are promoting.

There are more than 50% of orders in my case, when people ordered other items than I linked to from my site. This is also very useful since the more items people order the higher overall commission you get.

Here’s the Amazon referral-fee rates chart:

The Amazon Context Links program works really well for me and it’s very easy to install if you use Includes files. All you need is one upload and the Amazon affiliate program takes care of the rest.

Share and Enjoy:

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Related posts:

Comments

13 Responses to “Consider Amazon Context Links Affiliate Program For Product Based Sites”

DR on August 28th, 2008 6:31 pm

Your results make me want take a closer look at the Amazon Beta program…and to revisit the “includes” post you made some time ago.
Best, Don Roberts
adam on August 29th, 2008 2:43 am

wow i never thought amazon would perform that good. thanks for the information

have you ever tried infolinks

all the best
Tomaz on August 29th, 2008 3:03 am

Hey Adam,

You’re welcome. I haven’t tried infolinks but I read good results from the SBI forums especially when people changed from Kontera to Infolinks…
Tomaz on August 29th, 2008 3:05 am

Hi Don,

The SBI Includes are available only if you upload your own HTML and they are a great time saver.
Paula on August 29th, 2008 9:27 am

Hi Tomaz,

Due to your good results I tried the Amazon context links. However, first I got really stupid, unrelated links, then I made sure that I mentioned products on the pages that are sold by Amazon and tried checking the box for only product names. Now Amazon don’t produce any link at all…

How did you go about to get the Amazon links to be relevant?

Any tips would be great!

/Paula
Tomaz on August 30th, 2008 1:56 am

Hi Paula,

Yes, I occasionally get unrelated links too but I don’t see it as a big problem since they don’t get clicks so no big deal. I believe it also takes a few days for Amazon to “read” your pages and serve relevant ads.

What you can do is to select “Match exact product names” in the Context Links Settings. You can also select the appropriate category in the Advanced Settings which should help narrow the choices Amazon has to make…
Jeremy Hier on September 5th, 2008 12:05 pm

Did you use any of the display selections,
or did you uncheck them all.

thanks
Tomaz on September 5th, 2008 1:29 pm

Hey Jeremy,

Yes, I use the default display which pops up whenever the visitor hovers over the link.

You need to install special javascript on every page of the site for that to work. SBI includes does wonders with just one upload.
Mark on September 9th, 2008 7:36 am

Hi Tomaz,

Is it possible to use sbi includes if you are using the block-by-block builder

Thanks
Tomaz on September 9th, 2008 8:13 am

Mark,

No.

There are suggestions in the Wish List forum for this so see if you can find that post and add your wish too…
Jeremy Hier on March 13th, 2009 5:01 pm

Hi Tomaz,

Where on Amazon are context links.
I know I commented before, but never tried it because can’t find it, where you can place one code.

thanks
Tomaz on March 14th, 2009 1:18 am

Jeremy,
Amazon has stopped offering Context links; maybe they didn’t work for them best…
Amazon Affiliate Program And How To Make The Most Of It | Financial Freedom Ideas on June 4th, 2009 6:22 am

[...] already shared my experiences with Amazon Context links before, but this program has been cancelled by Amazon and now you have to build links [...]