I am an Amazon affiliate and I promote their products quite heavily. The payout out for me is usually 7.5-8% and considering that the conversion rate is high I can get past that. Well, except for maybe at years end when I see that I directed over $24,000 in sales to them and I compare that with my cut.
I made some big boo-boos in regards to properly tracking where my sales come from though. Until very recently I never really took advantage of their tracking codes so that I can see which sites, Squidoo pages, blogs, etc are pulling in the sales. Depending on the product I can pretty much guess some of the time but not all. The need to use these tracking codes became really apparent after I received several offers to buy one of my sites. I am not ready to sell for personal reasons but I realize that since all offers were nice 5 figure sums I would need to demonstrate the site’s ability to turn a profit and it is kind of hard to do that when all of your sales from your large network of sites all get pooled together. So I have started using Amazon tracking codes and will begin the tedious task of replacing existing links very soon.
It is actually pretty easy to do. When you log into your Amazon affiliate control panel you will see a blue box at the top that shows you are logged in under your affiliate ID. Beneath that it says Tracking ID and hyperlinked next to that it says “Manage”. Click on that and you will see a listing of all your tracking codes. You should have at least one. Then click on Add Tracking ID and you will get to add a custom tag that describes whatever site, page, blog, etc you will be creating links for. I just created one recently for my Squidoo pages so it had the word Squidoo in the tag.
Once you have your new tracking code you use the drop down box (inside the blue box) and you select you select the tracking ID of your choice and start building links with it. Easy as pie….if only I had done this from the beginning.
Technorati Tags: Squidoo, Amazon, affiliate marketing, tracking IDs
Share This
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
When I want to netowork with other Internet Marketers I usually always go to Mom Masterminds. Partially this is because the wise and wonderful ladies that congegrate there have helped me boost my business greatly during my time there. But there is another reason why I love Mom Masterminds AND the ladies who network there….because there is no BS, no get rick quick schemes, and no black hat advice. They are all ethical marketers.
Another forum I occasionally visit is the Warrior forum and I am usually disappointed by the “type” I meet there. A few weeks ago I dropped by and saw a popular thread about making money on Craigslist. I read through the thread and I was disgusted. Basically the concept they were promoting was too pretend you have a dog to sell, then when people email you about buying your dog they get an automated response from you that thanks them for writing but the dog is gone…but hey check out this awesome dog training book. The idea is that you can make tons of sales from people who buy the dog training book you offer instead of the dog that never existed. This tactic might very well work but the thought of making money doing a bait and switch just leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. The marketer promoting this dog training book probably doesn’t even know if it is any good. Money is all that matters.
Just a few days ago I visited again and ran across a post that promoted spamming blogs with trackbacks as an effective method of traffic generation. What??? Those trackback spammers have got to be the most annoying people out there. I spend a lot of time deleting their handy work when they spam my blogs. Yes you may get traffic and your Alexa ranking my be improved but this is really just the lazy marketer’s best method for traffic generation. Thanks but no thanks.
Another post that caught my eye on that same day was from someone asking how to build incoming links to his web site. ALL the responses he got suggested spamming with comments or trackbacks or buying links from link farms. No one (except me) suggested adding quality content and useful information to his site that visitors would want to link to on their own. Am I naive? Am I destined to only be half as much as I could be because I won’t buy into these practices that I consider shady and underhanded?
I would like to think that time will prove I am building my business’s foundation on rock and they are building theirs on sand.
What do you think?
Technorati Tags: Internet Marketing, warrior forum, mom masterminds, black hat, Craigslist
Share This
There is a brand new article pack being offered at Natural Moms PLR! The article pack, All About Breastfeeding, is…you guessed it….about breastfeeding and the benefits, challenges, and joys that come with it. I think our natural mom niche group will love this information but I think any web site that caters to moms and babies will love to add this information to their web sites. There are 10 high quality articles with lots of information, tips, and support for moms that are breastfeeding or those that want to.
Get more information and order YOUR breastfeeding plr article pack!
Share This
