In the last article, I mentioned how the Amazon Associates Central provided a range of tools to help affiliates promote products. Let’s look at some of those:
Product Links and Banners
Once you’ve selected a product on Amazon, you can choose to promote it through either links or banners.
With product links, Amazon creates a link with your unique affiliate ID embedded in it. You can then choose ‘text only’, ‘image only’ or ‘text and image’. Then Amazon generates the HTML code for you to embed on your website.
With product banners, you can select from a range of categories – DVDs, music, books, clothing, etc. – and Amazon provides a selection of related banners with various size options. You just need to choose the banner you want and copy the required code to paste onto your website. Then every time a visitor clicks on the ad and buys, you earn a commission.
Widgets
You can select from a wide range of widgets to embed in your website. Widgets are interactive mini-applications that can add useful functionality to your site. Affiliates are given different widget options:
Deals widget – shows the latest deals and offers on Amazon.
- Favorites widget – lets you comment on and recommend products on Amazon.
- Slideshow widget – lets you make product slideshows for your page.
- Wish List widget – allows you to share your Amazon wish list on your website.
- Self optimizing links widget – this is similar to Google Adsense where Amazon automatically brings products to your page based on your content and what your site users are looking for.
- Search widget – this widget allows your site visitors to find products on Amazon without leaving your page.
- Carousel widget – lets you hand-pick favorite products and add these to an online spinning carousel.
- Product cloud widget – a cloud of product titles that visitors can click on.
- Recommended products widget – lets you feature products automatically based on keywords or categories – no coding necessary.
- Search box widget – this lets your visitors search Amazon’s entire catalogue through your website.
- aStore widget – if you have an Amazon aStore, this widget can include links to products there.
As you can see, there’s a pretty huge selection. No doubt Amazon will be adding more from time to time, so it’s worth checking back regularly to see what’s new.
Just a word of warning about widgets. It’s tempting when promoting for the first time to grab as many “bells and whistles” as you can possibly cram onto your web page. But that isn’t usually a good idea. You’ll just end up confusing your visitors. If you’re planning to use these promotional tools on your site, try one or two at a time, and test the results, before adding any others.
Amazon aStore
Amazon aStore lets affiliates create a fully customised store for their websites or pages using products that are tailored for their online niche.
For example, you run a website about organic gardening; you can add gardening DVDs, tools or books to your shop. If your niche is fitness, you can customise your aStore to feature fitness related products like exercise DVDs, ebooks, exercise machines, etc.
You can embed the Amazon aStore under your site banner to make it look like it is a natural part of your site.
Of course, while the tools within Associates Central can be useful to affiliates, they aren’t the only way in which Amazon helps to drive sales. If you’ve ever bought anything from the Amazon site, you’ll know how effective the cross-sell process is. Before you get to the check-out, you’re presented with a range of related product suggestions to encourage you to add to your basket. Amazon has this down to a fine art, and it helps to maximize each customer’s total spend.
The good news for affiliates is that we get commission on the whole transaction – even if the extra products purchased are completely unrelated to the one we referred.
Another way in which Amazon helps affiliates is with the customer review system. This is particularly helpful for affiliates using review sites, as it endorses the reviews on our sites, as well as providing some useful content to inspire our own reviews.
<If you’d like us to show you how the reviews on your site can be used to practically compel your visitors to click through to the Amazon product page, you should sign up for your own Amazon review site now. Our team will build your site, select the hottest products and create the sort of content that will have your visitors primed to purchase.
Hire Amazon Site Building Service Now
