Thoughts on Being an Amazon Affiliate

I joined the Amazon Affiliate program a little over a year ago as part of monetizing my blogs. This program works a bit differently in that they do pay you on a per click basis but rather give you a commission if someone clicks on your link then follows through with a purchase.  I have mixed feelings about this so here is my experience.  Take from it what you will.

I immediately placed Amazon ads on my blogs after being accepted.  The ads themselves are nicely designed and small enough to not take up too much blog real estate.  As with any affiliate I give a fair chance to see if they will make money or not so left them for 3 months.  Nothing!  I did not earn as much as 1¢ yet every visitor to my blogs likely saw the ads giving Amazon a free plug.  I decided to pull all the ads and replace them with affiliate ads that were a bit more promising.  At that time I was ready to walk away for Amazon ads but for some reason did not delete my account.  A couple of months ago Blogger added the Amazon Associates capability so I decided to try it again.

Blogger's Amazon Associates capability allows you to add a link, image or link+image easily while blogging by simply highlighting a word or two then clicking go in the widget.  The widget will then show several search results so you can click and add in the style you want.  I reasoned that this way I could use Amazon Associates without having to take up a lot of valuable blog real estate especially if I used the link feature.  I did add back a couple of stationary ads in the sidebar as well.

At the moment the verdict is still out on using Amazon Associates widget in Blogger.  I think a lot of the things I blog about really don't fit with what Amazon sells so at best I've used the link feature less than 5 times.  In checking my Amazon stats I found only 3 clicks from my blogs with no earnings after a month so will be removing the stationary ads.  I'm still debating the issue of continuing to use the link ads.  On one hand I will use so few of them that it likely isn't worth it but on the other hand it takes almost no effort and they don't take up valuable blog real estate like the picture ads.  I'll report back on my Amazon experience in another month.

Garden Gnome
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