My First Amazon Associates Store is Live – and I’m Not Sharing It!
In the past a few of my readers have told me that they could not believe how “transparent” I was when it came to sharing my money making ideas, ebook titles and other sources of income. After all, wouldn’t I just want to hoard all of these money making ideas and keep them to myself? I have always wanted to help others make money online and in most cases simply sharing my information won’t hurt me. I guess after I informed everyone about my ebook entitled “How to Start a Limousine Business” – someone could write a similar ebook and put it for sale alongside mine. Realistically though, who is really going to take the time to write a 30 page ebook, buy a domain, build a webpage and go through all the steps involved in creating a competing ebook? My guess is that no one will do this. Maybe if my sales were off the charts there would be a few people emulating me – but this is not the case! (as you will can see in my March earnings report.)
Like I mentioned before, I have been very interested in the earnings some people have made via Amazon associates and I never really knew how to get started building Amazon stores. I seem to have scrapped together enough information to build my first affiliate store and to be honest; I was surprised how easily I put this store together. I can see how someone could put together twenty Amazon affiliate stores in no time at all. This is why I am not sharing my new Amazon store with my readers – or anyone for that matter. This is exactly why I had a hard time finding examples of people’s Amazon stores online. The fact is, these stores are so easy to build that it would be simple for someone to copy your idea and have a store competing with yours almost immediately.
Everywhere I looked, people were boasting about their great Amazon earnings but not divulging exactly what they were selling. Now that I have built my first store – this all makes sense. I found a product and keyword that seems to be a good start. Here is a breakdown of my store’s product…
- This product’s two main keywords get approximately 9,000 searches a month.
- The #1 website on Google for this product’s terms has only 9 inbound links.
- This product typically sells for between $250 and $450 per piece.
When looking for my first product to sell I wanted something that I could easily top the search engines for as well as something that was fairly expensive. Obviously, if I am getting 4% of the sale, I would rather sell products with a higher price tag.
I got unlimited hosting set up through HostGator so that I could build as many stores as I wanted – all for $7.95 a month. I am planning to have twenty stores built by the end of 2010. I am using ArticleRanks to build inbound links to my stores and I can have over 100 inbound links within one month to any given store. I am eager to see my first sale on my Amazon associates account!
You can join Amazon associates by clicking here: Amazon Associates
If you are having luck with you Amazon associates stores and you care to share some of your secrets – please let us know by commenting below. I am hoping that these stores turn out to be a great way for me to make money online. Only time will tell!
Best regards,
Michael-John Wolfe
Tags: make money online, residual income, royalties
10 Comments to “My First Amazon Associates Store is Live – and I’m Not Sharing It!”
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I have not actually created a unique “store” for Amazon products but I have referred some sales through eHow articles as well as Squidoo lenses. I plan on branching out into an Amazon store also I just need to figure out the best way to build it. But as you mentioned, everyone seems tight lipped about everything concerning Amazon except the earnings!
Hi DJ – I think I misworded my post title – I am not actually using the cookie cutter “stores” that Amazon provides for associates. I have a Wordpress blog set up and I am linking to the Amazon products on this blog. The only bad thing is that my URL has “dashes” in between the keywords, because the main keywords were not available in .net, .com or .org – I have heard good and bad things about using dashes in a URL.
MJ
Hey Michael,
That’s pretty cool there! I set up an affiliate site and a niche site. The affiliate site is barely 3-4 pages and by using keywords alone, it now ranks on page 3 of Google. Obviously, that’s not good enough and I need it to rank on page 1.
I’m using Ezine Articles for this. While my writer finishes these articles, I have spent an hour today and an hour yesterday to create framework for another affiliate site.
I am hoping to see some sort of success in a month or so.
For this affiliate site, I will be using Amazon links (as an Amazon Associate). I am really interested in this project of yours.
Perhaps I need to test this myself next. My problem is finding true niches. Do you use Google Adwords to find them?
Hi Moon! That is good that you are already on Page 3 of Google – I am still in the “Google sandbox” and I am guessing that it will be a while before I am let out! I used Amazon bestsellers – it is a great way to choose a niche and to see what is hot! There was one product that I wanted to do a niche blog for called the “Ripstik Caster Board” – but the top listings had too many inbound links, I don’t think I would have ever got to page 1. Keep us posted on your progress Moon!
MJ
MJ
Hey MJ,
Let me know how it turns out – glad I could help you out with the questions
Chris
Michael, how do you know your site is in the sandbox? Hopefully you’ll see my progress soon regarding the affiliate site.
Oh, thanks for pointing me to the Amazon bestseller page. Can’t believe I haven’t looked at it yet!
Moon, yes – the bestseller page is a great place to get ideas! I am assuming my site is in the sanbox because I have built over 50 backlinks and I don’t see my site listed at all for my main keywords. In fact, it is not in the top 50 pages of the Google search. My URL contains my exact keywords, I have the keywords in my meta tags and plenty of times thoughout the site – still not listed. Not sure how long it will take…
MJ
Hey MJ
I currently have a “store” on my blog because I’ve recommended so much gear over the course of my posts that it seemed fitting.
I’m happy to disclose my earnings. I make roughly $30 – $100 a month using Amazon Associates.
It’s not a whole lot but because I’m already talking about particular equipment, I go ahead and link them over.
It’s really great to have this trickle in without doing any additional work
Nice! Those are some pretty good earnings. I checked out your Beginner DJ blog — looks good!
MJ
MJ,
When you set up the product stores, do you write your own articles about the products or do you usually farm that out?