Amazon recently annouced a new program aStore (Beta) for it’s affiliates to have their own virtual store. The one thing that really works out well for Amazon is that they have a site that sell almost anything! Finding a product that shares the same frequency as your niche is easy.
The concept is very good in my opinion. For example, I posted a list: Top 25 Romance Movies, now what I did was have a online store with the movies that I recommended. It’s a win-win situation for me and my visitors who might be really interested in buying the DVDs.
Check out my Romance Movie Store at Amazon if you wish to buy Romance movies in DVD and enjoy with your GF/BF/Spouse: Ashwin’s Romance Movie Store.
Let’s get into the pros and cons of the program…
Pros:
1. It’s FREE!
2. Very easy to set up. Very simple and straight forward. It took me only 30 minutes to get going (It should take only 5-10 minutes, but I added product description and other jazz)
3. It’ll compliment the niche of your site if properly made use of. Best example is that of books, jewelry, DVDs items complimented with your content.
Cons:
1. Hosted by Amazon, so it might not look as if it’s part of your site. (You can use iframe to set this right. Check DuctTapeMarketing’s article)
2. You can’t link back to your site.
3. A limit of only 9 features items can be listed.
4. Even you can’t change the feel and the look of the page. Customization is limited to
5. Only one store per affiliate (or rather affiliate ID).
6. The products in the widgets (sidebar) is not in your control. No matter how well you define keywords to filter out, products might not be cohesive as your site’s contents.
Other than that Amazon’s Affiliate program itself got some limitations like the 24 hour cookie, used items sales gives only 1% commission, and the quarterly payments only even if you make 100$ within 3 months.
Let aStore compliment your site’s content
Amazon’s affiliate program sounds very useful - especially for sites that don’t have much text content. Targetting to someone’s real interests rather than the site content is an interesting phenomenon. Take for example.. I love movies, so when I visit one site with some review of a particular movie I look for and then if I see a movie DVD, then I might be tempted to buy the DVD. So unless your site has any specific interest, then it’s going to good, otherwise it’s not worth the space in your web page.
Associate-o-matic is the still the best way to have your own online store. It creates 1000’s of pages in a jiffy and adds your amazon associate IDs (Free Version makes every 5th link associated with their ID).
aStore is not bad considering how easy it can be to set a shop up. Imagine a person like me set up with half an hour! They need to fix a couple of things, but on the whole good going by Amazon. It’s upto the publishers to make it for their sites.
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6 comments ↓
let me start noob’s questions.
the visitors for your online store ,how they gonna buy the dvd ? I mean it’s sold by Amazon or by you ?
duno, thats my cookies problem or wht , but when cheking right pannel of “browse by catagory” I see DVDs like “Bad girls doing bad things” , “The boss’s bedroom” .
huh,btw offtopic, will you organise your invite thread aka private torrents thread into some separate thread , it will be easier ( god it having 400+ comments)
Answering your questions:
1. It’s sold by Amazon. I don’t handle anything but to drive traffic there. If you’re interested in buying, it’s going to be the usual procedure that Amazon follows.
2. Hmm… that’s keyword filtering. I get to choose only 9 products. Anything in the widgets is NOT in my control. Amazon needs to fix that. I mentioned this in the cons as well.
OT:
I don’t know how to have pages for comments. I have seen in some blogs, but either it’s theme associated feature or some freak coding which I won’t be able to do.
aStore is really intresting thing. But commission of amazon programs are not very lucrative. I have not much experience with amazon affiliate program, but I think to become successful with this program you must require US or european traffic. It will be really intresting to know that how much click will be required for generating a sale.
^^
Yeah I know Amazon programs doesn’t convert into sales (with low CTRs) but no harm in giving it a try. As of now, we don’t loose anything. Do we? It’s free and moreover I don’t actually use my web page space in banners and ads to promote the program.
If I had to choose between Chitka Shoplincs and Amazon aStores, I would surely go for Chitka because its CPC unlike Amazon’s CPA
Very interesting. How did you get the google ads on this? Was it automatic or did you have to set it up?
Is there a search anywhere showing other people astores?
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