Amazon a waste of time?

If you are unaware, in my last What’s Up Wednesday article, “Building an Amazon Affiliate Website to Strike it Rich”. I reasoned why being an Amazon associate (affiliate) was a waste of time. Because they pay out a very low commission percentage for all the effort needed. And how difficult it is to keep up with Amazon product changes.

But then I read an interesting comment left on last week’s article post about a new plugin launch. That enticed me to investigate further (I’m a sucker for WordPress applications).

So I ended up getting it! I reasoned if Amazon products can be automated effectively and updated efficiently, it could be worth it. Along with running a series of profitable Amazon niche sites. I know, Amazon affiliate – have I gone insane?

Yet another Amazon automated plugin release

I searched online for this latest plugin offer, found it and bought it to see if it will perform as promised. Unfortunately, it only pulls Amazon products (it would be awesome if I could find an application that pull products from other affiliate program vendors without having to pay a fortune along with it).

To function properly, this plugin also requires Woo commerce and is set up more like an e-commerce site (a turnoff) instead of a review site.

Side Note: I have had communication with several top Amazon associates who regularly make consistent big money commissions with Amazon. And I’ve investigated what makes them stand out from the rest of us.

I even bought a done-for-you Amazon niche site last year from one of them and found that they all have this in common; every one of those sites are setup as product review sites, not as e-commerce sites.

They choose products that are in the 100-600 dollar range and have at least 4-star averages with plenty of reviews. They don’t load down their site with 100s of products, but stay focused with the most popular products.

Getting back to this plugin. When I examined two of their demo sites, I discovered the plugin had also pulled in a few products that do not pay commissions if bought through their link (which sucks!). It also left products listed on the site that were no longer available (another pet peeve of mine).

But to be fair, at least those products were marked, “Out of Stock” which other Amazon affiliate plugins don’t do. The problem I have with this is that some out of stock products never return and should be removed (always can be added back later when available).

Plugin advantages

A beneficial factor I found with this plugin… it regularly keeps current listed products prices updated, a fault other Amazon based plugins fail to do that irks me.

The plugin also has an “add to cart” button feature when selected gives you a 90-day cookie rather than the normal 24-hour one. However, if a visitor clicks the “buy now” button option instead, it still is a 24-hour cookie, Yikes!

Another issue I have with this plugin is it did not pull reviews from Amazon onto my site. It’s a feature l like about another Amazon plugin I’ve used that pulls in a few excerpts from actual reviews.

It is still too early for me to say if this plugin is worth it. And if it will change my mind about promoting Amazon products, again. I already picked out one of my sites to test this plugin out and I still need to finalize the setup to see how it will work. I will keep you updated once it is operational and runs for awhile.

A buried Amazon video training course

I would like to share a related coincidence that occurred a few days after I published last weeks article. I found a complete training program (I forgot I had). It happened when I was looking over my laptop files to get rid of accumulated garbage.

Ironically, it focused on how to make the most profits from Amazon called, Rapid Retail Profits. So I began watching those videos to find out what methods this guru used and suggested to make money with Amazon.

If you remember, I stated last week – in order to make money promoting Amazon products even remotely worthwhile, you would need to focus on finding products that were at least $100 just to make four bucks.

Key point

Interestingly after watching a few videos, this Amazon guru showed that in order to make Amazon worthwhile as an associate, you need to focus on products that are at least $150 or more to make it profitable to bother doing, which confirmed what I had said.

He continued on to suggest putting together a grouping of products of at least five (each priced at a minimum of $150) that have at least a 4-star rating with each product having a minimum of 20 good reviews. Also there needs to be enough information provided online about the product to write an effective review.

When I compared his recommendations with the actual pre-made site I had purchased from another Amazon expert last year, I found that the products listed on my site and how they were listed (5 of them) were consistent with what the Amazon guru had stated in the video only with one except… the products preloaded with full reviews on the site were under $100.

My results from this pre-made site have not been spectacular with sales. But it’s made some sales and still ranks #1 on page one of Google for the main targeted keyword even today. The biggest issue about the site is the fact that it is too narrow a niche market, only generating about 75 visits (on autopilot) each month, with a 6% click-through rate.

One Final thought

Before I go, I would also like to mention a powerful Amazon system that I had bought over a year ago but failed to understand (rather complicated) how to set it up completely to get the most benefits from it.

It’s called the Fresh Store Builder, which uses WordPress as a base, but has its own store admin dashboard. FSB is great at updating prices, even shows discounts from original prices, updates hourly and provides a 90-day cookie (if visitor uses the “add to cart” button option). It even automatically removes “out of stock” items off the site and places them on an inactive list (to reactivate when available). It quickly pulls items off of Amazon and quickly builds a site.

However, and this is a big deal for me, it is setup like a store. It’s an e-commerce site and not a review site. The appearance can be changed by buying different skins (not cheap). But still it’s more a store look than a review site look. Also hate that it is not responsive which means not really viewable from a mobile device (important!).

Have you ever been involved with promoting Amazon and would like to share your experience? Or maybe use an application that works for you and can let us know about? Have a question or had an observation about anything you saw in this article? Then please leave a comment below! 🙂

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