Amazon aStore Update

One of my readers left a comment asking for an update on The HDTV Shoppe, an Amazon aStore I created last October as an example of integrating AdSense with other embedded content. The premise of the aStore model is that you build a little “store” consisting of Amazon products. Amazon manages most of the store for you, and you can choose to host it on your own site (by embedding it within a page) or to let Amazon host it for you. You send traffic to the store and get credit (through the Amazon Associates affiliate program) for any sales made through the store.

I set the store up both to use as an example and as a way for me to play with the aStore concept, which were in beta at the time. As an ecommerce play, the aStore is fairly limited in what you can do. It's very easy to set up, but if you have any programming experience at all I'd spend some time looking at Amazon Web Services and build a better-integrated storefront using Amazon's E-Commerce Service.

One thing I didn't expect from my aStore was to make money with it. Not a lot, mind you, but since it went “live” I've managed to sell these items through the store:

• Sony KDS-55A2000 Grand WEGA 55″ SXRD 1080p Rear Projection HDTV (twice — once at $2249.99 and once at $1949.98, obviously there was a price drop at some point)
• Panasonic TC-26LX60 26″ LCD HDTV with HDMI Connection ($806.92)
• Philips 23PF5320 23″ Flat Panel Widescreen LCD TV ($497.99)
• Sony STR-DG800 7.1-Channel Home Theater Receiver with HDMI Passthrough ($279.99)

I also sold a few cables and movies through the store — likely as incidental purchases to the above.

Not being a big seller of Amazon products, I garnered just a 4% commission on the sales, but that made me over $200 for what was essentially a couple of hours of work to setup the store.

Now how did I sell these things given that I've essentially done no promotion of the store? (Remember, it was just a case study.) I haven't really dug into it. Maybe the hdtvshoppe.com domain I purchased was actively in use by someone who let it expire before I purchased it — residual traffic? Or maybe some of my readers happened to be thinking of buying an HDTV and after browsing decided that Amazon's prices were pretty good. (And then one of them changed their mind. In January, the Philips HDTV was returned to Amazon.) Whatever the reason, I'm sure Christmas season was a factor, as there have been no sales through the store this year as of yet.

I guess if I was smart I'd be promoting the store more. But the HDTV market is very competitive. Sure, I rank #1 on Google for “hdtv shoppe”, but ranking for a non-competitive keyword/keyphrase is very easy to do with standard search engine optimization practices. Actually getting it to rank for “hdtv” or “hdtv shopping” — that would require some hard work, and it wouldn't be overnight. Although there are backlinks to the site, most of those are from scraper sites that republish this blog's content. (Now you know why I don't get all worked up about those sites. Since there's no real way to beat the scrapers, might as well make sure my content's full of nice links so that their scraping benefits me somewhat. Not hugely, but it helps.) I can't really say it interests me that much, which is why I haven't pursued it. Plus I generally have too many things on the go already!

Now all the fuss over Day Job Killer may make sense to you. The first money-making method described in DJK, Direct Linking “X”, involves placing ads for consumer electronics and other higher-priced products sold on Amazon. Do it right and you can definitely make money. Well, you could make money. I suspect that at this point that it's much harder to do simply because so many copies of DJK have been sold and so many Amazon affiliates are trying their hand at it. Do a quick Google search for “Canon Powershot SD800″ in the US, for example, and you'll see an Amazon affiliate — “gaw5-20″ — using the direct linking method in the very first ad spot. (Amazon affiliate IDs are easy to spot, for Amazon.com and Amazon.ca the affiliate IDs almost always end in “-20″. Only the older IDs like mine, “ericgiguerecom”, don't follow that rule. The European Amazon sites use affiliate IDs that end in “-21″, BTW.)

Here's a tip for you, though: if you want to try setting up your own Amazon store, don't put any AdSense ads on the pages. I did it on HDTVShoppe.com because I was trying to prove a point: with careful page design you can always get well-targeted ads even on pages that consist primarily of embedded content that the AdSense crawler can't see. But if I was really interested in making money with the site, why would I use AdSense to send my traffic away from the real money-maker, Amazon?

Some people don't get this distinction. AdSense is about monetizing content. If you have something to sell, think long and hard before adding AdSense to any of your pages. It may end up stealing some of your sales.

Sponsored Link: This affiliate stuff may be
interesting, but if you're an AdSense publisher looking
to do better with your sites, why not give my book
Uncommon AdSense
a try?

Eric Giguere is the author of Uncommon AdSense and the award-nominated (that just means it lost!) blog Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense.

Comments