9 Reasons Why I AM An Amazon Affiliate

John Chow today posted a post outlining why he’s not an Amazon Affiliate. It’s a good post in that it gives an insight into his approach to affiliate marketing. The best point John alludes to is that Amazon doesn’t ‘fit’ with his blog. He makes more from other better targeted affiliate programs than Amazon.
However the Amazon Associates Program is well worth considering for some bloggers. I use it and this month it’ll earn me over $2500 USD – not my biggest income stream, but not the ‘pennies and dimes’ that some say it has the potential to earn.
To bring a little balance to the debate over the Amazon Affiliate program I thought I’d give a few reasons that I am an Amazon Affiliate: 1. Amazon is a trusted Brand – I surveyed some of my readers a year back and asked them to give me a list of online stores that they had made purchases from in the last 12 months. Amazon came up number 1 as the most popular shopping destination mentioned. Readers know Amazon and are familiar with it – they trust it and do spend significant money there.
2. Commissions – John writes that he’s not satisfied with a 4% commission. He’s right in some ways, 4% isn’t that much when you’re selling a $10 book – however when you’re selling a Get a Price on the $5000 Camera or a $25,000 Tractor (I know someone who does quite well out of ride on mowers and tractors) it certainly adds up. Not only that, the 4% rate that John talks about is the base rate. Unfortunately it is as high as it goes on consumer electronics – however on most other products there is a sliding scale where the more you sell the higher your commission goes to. Sell more than 6 items in a month and your commission goes to 6% – sell over 630 and you’re up to 8% (the rate I’m on). The 4-Hour work Week that John uses as an example earned me around $1 a book. Still not a lot – but I did sell 100 or so of them (after my interview with it’s author) which not only earned me $100 but also helped push the numbers of sales up for the month, moving me into the next earning bracket.
3. People Buy More than One Item – the great thing about Amazon is that you don’t just earn a commission on the product that you people to, but anything that they buy once they’re at Amazon. I did an experiment earlier in the year where I published a review of a digital photography book on my blog and placed a tracking code in the link to see how much the review earned me specifically. What I found was that the product in the review did quite well – but the sales of other products that people made once they got to Amazon was actually much greater than the sales of the actual book. People went on to buy all manner of products (other books, electronics, cosmetics etc) – I earned a commission on each one of them – now that’s passive income. You earn a commission on anything that a person buys within 24 hours of you sending them to Amazon.
4. Easily Integrated – There are more and more plugins and tools that have Amazon Affiliate integration built into them to help you easily place links in your blog posts. I use ecto for Mac which has a tool that searches for products and links them in in just a couple of clicks. WP has plugins also. The affiliate links already mentioned in this post took seconds to integrate in.
5. Payment Options – Amazon pays their affiliates in a number of ways. One of the things that I like is that they give you the option to be paid in products instead of cash. I don’t do this every month (I couldn’t spend that $20,000+ a year at Amazon… well maybe I could) but occasionally do and use it as prizes for blog readers. I recently offered DPS readers $500 of Amazon products in a forum signup competition. The prize is paid for out of my affiliate earnings.
6. Small Payments Add Up – In my early days of making money from blogs I didn’t have the luxury of picking and choosing my income streams as much as I (and other full time bloggers) now do. I needed to earn money somewhere and even the small amounts that Amazon brought in were better than nothing. Over time these payments began to add up. In the early days I didn’t even earn enough for a minimum payment amount and had to wait a few months before they’d pay me – but those pay outs were milestones that I celebrated. If I’d not gone with Amazon because they didn’t earn me a lot I might not have gone with any ad networks or affiliate programs – sometimes you have to take what you can get.
7. It’s an Investment that Matures Over Time – My approach with Amazon is to treat it a little like a savings account or an investment that you put a little into each week and which matures in it’s earnings over time. What do I mean by this? I add links to Amazon over time and find that in doing so I’m creating more and more doorways into the Amazon store. Each time I do I increase the chances of sending someone to Amazon and seeing returns on those visits.
8. The Holidays are Boom Time – While I’m really happy with the way my Amazon Affiliate income is growing ($2500 a month is so far beyond what I’d ever expected from it in the early days) it’s worth noting that things really fire up in the lead up to Christmas and the holiday season. Over the last few years I’ve noticed significant jumps in Amazon earnings in December (as much as 100%). The key is to plan ahead (make sure your links are all up to date a couple of months out) and run a few Christmas specific posts in the lead up to the Holiday rush (start to prepare as early as October/November).
9. Wide Array of Products What initially attracted me to using Amazon’s Affiliate program was the breadth of products that they had in their system. This is a great thing if you’re niche is narrow or quite obscure as many bloggers find it difficult to find affiliate programs to match their blog’s focus. Blogs like John’s and mine here at ProBlogger do have an array of options for affiliate programs (which is why I don’t use it a lot on this blog and make most of my earnings from Amazon from product related blogs) but many bloggers don’t have the luxury of being able to choose high paying affiliate programs because they simply don’t relate to our topics. Amazon then becomes one of the more attractive options.
So is the Amazon Affiliate Program for you? I can’t answer that question for everyone – I won’t pretend that it works brilliantly on every blog but I know quite a few bloggers making significant earnings each month from the program. Blogs with a strong product focus can do quite well through the program if links to Amazon are well integrated into posts (see some of the links below for tips). I would advise moderation in using the program – don’t place them in every post you write unless they are relevant. Links placed in genuinely helpful reviews do better than links and banners in sidebars. The best way to see if it converts is to give it a go.

14 Ways To Promote Your Facebook Page

Facebook has become an important communications and marketing channel for many small businesses, many of whom could benefit from having more visitors to their pages.
Unfortunately the average small business operator has neither the time nor the resources to promote Facebook pages like big business can but there are several simple things one can do to get more visitors.
Include a link to your Facebook page in your business and personal email signatures.
If you send out email newsletters to clients you should include a link to your page.
Add a Facebook link to your website’s home page and contact page and add Facebook Like buttons to your article or blog pages. Do this also for any blogs you run on other platforms like blogger.
Even printed promotional material like brochures and flyers can include a mention of your FB page.
Mention your page in any shop or vehicle signage you might have, add it to your business cards.
If you have personal profiles at sites like Linkedin or Hubpages include a link to your Facebook page.
When commenting on blogs or in online forums try linking to your page instead of your website.
Leverage your existing contacts – ask personal friends and colleagues to like the page so their friends get to hear about it. Ask existing likers to share your posts with their friends.
Offer incentives like free reports or discounts to page likers, everyone loves a freebie.
Consider running a competition and ask your likers to share with their friends. Make sure you comply with Facebook’s rules on competitions.
Use a landing page to ask new visitors to hit the like button. Tell them what benefits they will receive and most first-time visitors will become likers.
Go and find good relevant discussions on other Facebook pages while logged on in “use Facebook as Page” mode. Hit the like button for those pages then add to those discussions meaningfully, don’t spam. Now everyone who previously liked or commented on that post will receive a notification about your post, a great way to get noticed!
Mention other Facebook pages in your posts and tag them so the post appears on their page as well as your own. Not all pages allow it but many do.
Use Facebook advertising to promote your page to whatever demographic you like. You can target who sees your ads by age, gender, interest, location and many other ways.
Post regularly to your page but make it interesting so as to engage users, the more they interact with your page the more their friends will get to see your page mentioned.

Making Money Online with DonkeyMails

What is DonkeyMails?

DonkeyMails is a GPT site featuring multiple ways of making money. It includes - Paid to Click, Paid to Sign Up, Paid to Review, Paid to Promote, Paid to Read, and many more..
Here's information about each one.
1. Paid to Click - This feature is accessed through the link "Paid2Click" on the site's menu. You will be prompt with a list of banners to click, along with the amount you can earn from clicking each ad. Rates for Paid to Click include $0.01, $0.005, and $0.0025 per ad.
2. Paid to Sign Up - To access this service, click on "Paid2SignUp" on the site menu. There are many offers with instructions listed in order from highest paying to lowest paying. Most of the offers pay approximately $0.10.
3. Paid to Review - It's accessed through the link "Get Paid to Review" on the site menu. You will be prompt with a list of websites along with instructions and a text box. Read the instructions and enter whatever they tell you to enter in the text box. The average pay for this service is $0.05.
4. Paid to Promote - This is located in the link "Paid to Promote". There you will see 2 links for you to promote - one that earns you credit (which can be converted to money) and one that earns you points (used for advertising your own website). For every 1000 unique views your link gets, you will receive $0.50 or 2000 points.
5. Paid to Read - This is one of the more popular features of the website due to its convenience. Basically, this service is the same as the Pay to Click part of the website, except that the ads are emailed to you directly. Depending on what interests you selected on your profile, DonkeyMails will send out the ads accordingly.
Payment Information
Payments are sent out every 2 weeks. You can cash out using either PayPal, AlertPay, or LibertyReserve.
How much do I need to cash out?
For PayPal and AlertPay, you need a minimum of $1.00. However, for LibertyReserve you only need to have earned $0.01.
Referral Benefits
What makes DonkeyMails worthwhile, is its referral system. To be honest, you won't be making a lot of money regardless of how dedicated you are, with only yourself clicking on advertisements. You need referrals as well. DonkeyMails referral system allows for 5 levels of referral commissions to be earned. The percentages for each level are as followed:
1st Level (Direct referral) - 10% 2nd Level (Referral's referral) - 5% 3rd Level (Referral's referral's referral) - 3% 4th Level (...so forth) - 2% 5th Level - 1%
As you can see, the extensive referral system allows for an extremely high earning potential. This is why DonkeyMails is one of the best PTC sites around. With some effort into getting referrals you will be generating some nice profits in time.
Proof of Payment

Seeing as how this may seem too good to be true, here is a payment proof from one of the members of the website.
With some work you can be earning a lot more than this. Also, they have a list of paid members on the DonkeyMails website: http://www.donkeymails.com/pages/beenpaid.php Conclusion
DonkeyMails is overall an incredible and reliable site that can earn you a lot of extra money. Give it a try. You won't regret it. Sign up here