Despite my recent issues with Amazon, I still shop with them and they have some pretty good deals. I was updating my iPod Battery Pack webpage, with some new battery packs and information and noticed I was linking to Amazon a lot for some of the commercial offerings. Why not see if I could get paid for those links? I soon found that Amazon had a referral program and signed up. Now I have links set up for all of the commercial battery packs I had listed that Amazon sells (plus a new one I was going to add anyway), only now if people follow the links and buy anything, I get some kind of commission. I don’t know that it will amount to much, so for now I am asking to be paid in Amazon gift certificates which they will issue when I get to $10 (they issue payments quarterly). I can also get paid in cash, but, like AdSense, only when it reaches $100 (found out later that $100 is for payment by check only and they charge $8 for the check; with direct deposit you can also be paid as little as $10 at the end of the quarter with no fee so I switched to that). We’ll see how this goes.
Unlike AdSense, users not only have to follow the link, they have to actually buy stuff. I think that will be a bigger challenge. Apparently I can get 5% of the cost of items that are ordered and shipped. I wonder if Amazon sells houses?
Well, yesterday apparently I sold two items. They were the same thing, so I’m thinking one person bought two of that item. They weren’t anything I was linking to directly, so apparently I get something even if they buy something else. I get an extra percentage if they buy something I link directly to.
Right now, I haven’t made any money because I don’t make money until the items ship (and we know that can take a while). Plus the items were only $10 each, so it looks like I will get $1. They update their statistics once a day, so I will wait a few more days and give an update.
I checked my Amazon account this morning and had been credited the $1 from yesterday because Saturday’s items shipped (Amazon must ship quickly for everyone but me) plus on Sunday I had gotten 4 more purchases which should give me $3. This could really work out!
Meanwhile, my AdSense revenue has dropped to nearly nothing. I’m not sure if that is related, or just a statistical problem going back 3 or 4 days. I’m still getting about 300 visitors a day so the traffic is still being sent by the search engines.
Ted, you wrote you get a 5% commission, but went on to write that you will receive $1 for a $10 sale. I don’t want you to get mad with those people and think you got short changed when you receive $.50. Engineers don’t make good accountants. Dad
It was two $10 items so the commission was $1. Accountants always need an engineer to check their work.
Monday nobody bought anything, but Tuesday I sold two more things for $50. I found out I only get 4% on electronics instead of 5%, and just about everything people buy will be electronics. Even so that gets me up to $6 earned in 4 days which is way better than my AdSense revenue. I can get an extra 0.25% on all purchases by selling 21 items per quarter and 0.50% more by getting up to 91, which is possible (not this quarter which ends March 31). Also I get 2.5% extra on anything someone buys via a direct link, but so far no one has done that.
Amazon has a new type of product link, called Link Enhancer, where links show up with a dashed underline. If you see the dotted underline you can just have your mouse hover over the link and it brings up a small window showing a picture of the item and a price (plus a BUY NOW button). So I re-wrote all of my links yesterday to take advantage of that. Hopefully that isn’t too obnoxious. Because it is a test program, Amazon only enables the feature for 50% of the visitors, but I added a script that will turn the feature on or off (I called the function that turns it on “amazon()” and the one that turns it off “amazoff()”). The product preview is pretty neat and may help me get more direct link bonuses.
Things continue to go well. Today I reached 21 items shipped and total revenue so far is $25. I had my second biggest day yesterday selling a battery pack plus 4 bass strings (could that have been Nicole?). Last weekend Jeb bought some CD’s by clicking on the ad on this post which gave me the regular 5% commission plus an ad-click bonus of 1%. With the new product preview links, most of the battery packs (almost everyone buys the Belkin battery pack) are direct links, earning 6.5% commissions instead of the regular 4% for electronics.
Really it is working *too* well. If things continue at this rate I could potentially make $600 in a year (not this year which I missed two months of, plus the last quarter of 2006 will be 2007 income) meaning they report the income to the IRS.
I wasn’t going to write until the end of the quarter, but today I made $14.49 after some older orders all shipped. I don’t think I’m supposed to get commissions for things I buy, but I bought some DVD’s and a CD by clicking the ad above and earned a commission of 6.25%.
You are just raking it in. That’s great and also fun for you to keep track of. Have you actually received any money, yet?