Amazon Affiliate Program

Hey Goldy,

BlogWheels.com uses Amazon.com’s Context Links Beta program. It’s very easy and requires no maintenance and I don’t have to manually add product links. Context Links Beta scans the content on my site and automatically links relevant words to products being sold on Amazon.com

Context Links - You create the content.

“Context Links are a quick and convenient way to add links to your page and help you monetize your content. Context Links automatically identify and link relevant phrases within your page content to Amazon products.”

- Amazon.com

There is a lot of money to be made using Amazon.com. It’s a great stable way to balance out the methods of how you can make money online.

Here are two cool examples of a pages within the site:

http://www.blogwheels.com/mercedes-benz-slr-mclaren/

and….

http://www.blogwheels.com/dodge-viper-srt/

Here is an example of a blog entry:

http://www.blogwheels.com/ferrari-599-gtb-fiorano/

Yes. Disadvantage would be that all links are up for grabs. So if you have a post that you wrote maybe to place a little weight towards selling paperback books, yet you mention the word CD, the program might link up CD instead of paperback books.

But in the position I am in, I have to deal in what is most efficient. Also, you can manually plug in links just using a standard Amazon product HTML code. So really, you can do both… but you can always count on Context Links running on auto pilot.

Mark,

I am sorry to hear about your experience with Amazon’s affiliate program. Your comment does allow me to raise a great point. I think what you said in your comment, you have easily spoken for hundreds of other people.

A few weeks ago… I think ruffled quite a few feathers here on the site when I was talking about search engine marketing versus social niche marketing.

Your comment gives me a great opportunity to illustrate why I choose to use search engine marketing rather that social niche marketing. (Minus this site… I do both) But as far as my career goes, I build dot Com sites that make money online. Period. That is my business. Most of my money is made via Google Adsense. Secondary to that is Amazon.com.

You said this:

Guess a lot has to do with the amount of traffic and the audience.

No man… it has nothing to do with traffic or an audience. I make money with my sites because if someone is looking for something to buy… my goal is to have a page built and ready to present to that person.

GarryConn.com could have one million visits per day and it still wouldn’t make as much money as a site of mine that has 10,000.

Why… because my audience doesn’t make me money. My audience is interested in learning how to make money or how to be a better blogger. My audience doesn’t click ads… because they are trying to figure out how to get people to click their own.

If someone wants to buy the Boeing 787 Dreamliner Legos Kit and happens to Google it, I have a page ready for that.

The other day, I wrote an article here on GCDC titled, “Tutorial Books For Bloggers”. Why did I title it like that? Here is the reason why.

Your comment couldn’t have come at a better time. When I updated my site to ProSense… I wanted to test to see how much money I would make on GCDC from my audience and compared that amount to the money I make via search engine traffic.

Creatively I have balanced out SEM and SNM on GCDC so well that you might have over looked it. A few posts I have written have two purposes. The post titled, “Tutorial Books For Bloggers” is a prime example. I am tracking how much money I make on this page and how it’s generated. Do my regular readers pay any attention to my Google Adsense ads? No!! Nor do I expect them to…

Do bloggers who are looking for books click my Google Adsense Ads? Yes!!! They are not regular readers… they are people who want to buy books about blogging!

Now, imagine having 10 sites online that do nothing but pull up in the search engines when people look for things… imagine now, having Amazon.com links on these pages… imagine also having Google Adsense on these pages…

It’s not about traffic… I have sites that get less than 100 visits per day and they make money.

Traffic is very hard to get. So, my job… is to make money using as little traffic as possible.

If you want to make money online, search engine marketing is the way to go. And in order to gain that, you have to comply with the rules search engines set. I don’t participate in blog memes, I don’t participate in link exchanges for the purpose of helping increase Google PageRank, I will add people to my blogroll without expecting them to link back to me in return. When I design sites, they follow strict personal guidelines that assure me that they will comply with the guidelines Google, Yahoo, Live and Ask have posted.

GCDC is my only site that has a group of regular readers… the other 99 are designed for one thing…

Sorry for rambling… and thank you so much for commenting.

Mark, if you build it, people will find it…

PageRank or no PageRank… link backs or no link backs… regular readers or no regular readers… if you build it, people will find it. And when people find it, what are they going to do next. Ideally, they then click on something that pays you money.