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| The Facts from Amazon
Disclaimer: This information was correct at the time of writing but you need to refer to the Amazon sites for the latest information.
- Amazon is an on-line book store which also sells CDs, DVDs and Videos.
- You need to have a website and fill out a short form to become an Affiliate member. It may take day or two to have your membership confirmed.
- You earn referral fees from products actually purchased as a result of a link from your site.
- Links can either be directly to a specific product, to a particular section (eg Business Books) or to the main page of the site.
- Fees are paid at the rate of 5% to 15% of the selling price of each item. Links to specific products can earn the highest rate of 15% whilst general links to Amazon earn the lower rate of 5%.
- Depending on which Amazon company you are signed up with (eg Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk) the statistics for your referral fees are available either online or via a weekly email. Payments are made quarterly providing you have earned more than the minimum (in the UK it is £10). In the UK book vouchers are also available instead of a cheque payment.
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A Case Study
- Homeworking.com joined Amazon.co.uk in March 1999 and joined both Amazon.com and Amazon.de in July 1999. The process is similar, if not identical for all three, so it was much quicker to sign up and implement after the first time. It took some hours before our membership was confirmed.
- Reading through the terms and conditions of membership takes quite a while and the HTML codes initially seemed quite complicated and daunting.
- I downloaded all the information and support pages so that I could read them off-line. You also need to select which which Amazon banners you want to display and download those.
- In all, it probably took a few days (12 hour days!) to sign up, find the books (with their ASIN [or ISBN] numbers) I wanted to recommend and to get a book page up and running. This involved producing the HTML page together with scans of the book covers and writing our own reviews.
- Homeworking.com is a special interest site which means that visitors are here for a similar reason. Recommending specific products gives the highest return which went well with our policy of only promoting products we would be happy with ourselves. Virtually all of our referral fees have been from specific products and very little from people just using our link to Amazon for other products.
- Each week Amazon.co.uk send out an email detailing the number of orders, which books have been clicked on and a running total of your quarterly fees. See below for an extract from one these emails just one month after joining Amazon and when the number of daily visitors to Homeworking.com was about 40 each day.
- The email also contains information to explain what all the statistics mean as well as news to keep us updated on the latest developments or special offers at Amazon.
- Since starting the book page with about 6 or so books this increased to about 12 but has gone back down to about 8 books because I found there were more 'sales' when there were less books! However, I have some books on Business Plans that I am currently reviewing and these will be added soon.
- I would not underestimate the work involved in putting together the book page but once done it doesn't need any further work except to occasionally check the links are still fine, and of course any updates.
- No-one would know the book page existed unless they came to our site. Promotion of Homeworking.com by submitting to the search engines and appropriate messages in newsgroups and the like is a continual process.
- So far we have only had purchases from Amazon.co.uk. A couple of our books are also available from Amazon.com amd Amazon.de but no-one has purchased from these Amazon Companies so we have not received any fees as a result.
| Date |
Quarterly Fees Earned |
Payment Made |
| Q1 - 31 March 99 |
£4.31 |
Less than £10 so amount was rolled forward |
| Q2 - 30 June 99 |
£22.98 |
Cheque sent promptly |
| Q3 - 30 Sept. 99 |
£31.84 |
Cheque sent promptly |
| Q4 - 31 Dec. 99* |
£18.04 |
Cheque received 10 Feb 2000 |
| Q1 - 22 April 2000 |
£41.64 |
Cheque received 16 May 2000 |
| *This quarter includes Christmas and the run-up period to that. I guess the last thing people want are books for themselves. Now if I had a site that promoted suitable Christmas books this might have been a busy period! |
- As the traffic increases to Homeworking.com (before Christmas '99 a daily visitor total of 250 to 350 visitors, in March 2000 we were seeing a daily average of 900 visitors) so does the referral fees received.
- Once again they do not hide any information, but I wonder if everyone bothers to read ALL the information provided.
- You are not allowed to purchase books through your links and obtain a commission on your own purchases. Doing so may mean Amazon will cancel your membership.
- You have to earn £10 before you are paid, but the amount is rolled over each month until you reach £10.
- Although you get the weekly and quarterly totals there is always some adjustment for customers who purchase products but then cancel the purchase or return books. You will not get paid for books that are returned so these amounts are deducted from your referral fees.
- Payment has been reliable with no nasty surprises.
- I know of one person who runs a special interest newsletter who puts her weekly recommended books, with their links and even a picture, in that and gets referral fees on those purchases.
- I know of another person who runs a series of highly specialised sites which does not have many visitors but they are very interested in the books on that topic and provide some good referral fees as a result.
- The Amazon website provides some excellent resources which means you don't have to do as much work as I did! They provide reviews and images of a lot of the book covers and show you how to set up your own store.
Please feel free to use any of the links below to search for any particular books or music, or just click on the icons to go to Amazon to find out more about becoming an affiliate.
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