Amazon affiliate program is one of the most popular among publishers and bloggers around the world, but conversion rate isn’t always what we hope for. Once the click is obtained, user lands on Amazon website and the game moves there. One of the ways to optimize conversions and earnings is to choose the best products to recommend in our articles.
The success of Amazon affiliate program is undeniable. Analyzing the backlink profile with SemRush, right now we can detect 1.2 billion backlinks from 121 thousand domains to Amazon.it and 8.3 billion backlinks from 3.3 million domains to Amazon.com (warning: the number of backlinks of such a large site that uses affiliation could change very quickly). Many people link Amazon hoping to make money, but fewreally succeed – not everyone is able to get traffic (thisSeo guide for journalists explains how to do it) and many of clicks to Amazon obtained vanish into nothingness because user doesn’t buy.
The purpose of this guide is to explain how to improve conversion rate (the number of items sorted by the number of link clicks) that appears in the Amazon Associates dashboard. The goal is therefore optimizationof the last phase of the funnel that leads to the purchase,what apparently seems out of our control because it takes place outside our site. So let’s see how to read data and choose the best products.
Orders through direct links or indirect
A premise is a must: to understand how to choose the best products to promote on your blog, it must be clear how to assign conversions.
Items ordered through direct link are the conversions obtained from the product I linked on the site: for example, I put the link to product X and you buy just that. Indirect orders ( “all other items” in the Amazon Associates dashboard) are those ordered after further browsing on Amazon: for example, you click on the link to item X, but in the end you prefer to buy item Y. This is also the case of products added to the cart: order that includes both product X (direct) and product Y (indirect).
For many categories, link-generated direct order fees are higher than indirect orders’. If we think in terms the pure conversion rate, indirect orders are as valid as direct orders. If we consider the value of commissions, orders through direct link are the most valuable ones. When posting links to specific products, it is therefore advisable to point to products that generate a direct order or to those that involve the purchase of other products. An example of the latter case is the printer: in order to use it I will also have to buy toner, cartridges and white sheets, so the value of my cart could be greater.
Bestsellers on Amazon
Amazon Bestseller section is the most used source for publishers to choose products because it is immediate and very simple to use(click here to see it). It shows the most desired products based on sales volumes and is updated every hour. You can look at the rankings for each category.
By this category, Amazon helps us a lot because it is telling us what works best in terms of sales. The data can be influenced by many factors such as internal and external promotions, but basically if an item is very sold, it means that for some reason it is appreciated by users.
Now a little trick. Amazon’s ranking data is given in the details of each product listing. Here Amazon shows us its ranking for each category in which it is placed. By clicking, we can see the full ranking and discover other products that have a higher sales volume.
Products of the moment and the most interesting news
Amazon catalog is huge and constantly updated. Keeping up to date with emerging trends is therefore a good practice to push the most current products and to find new ideas for our blog articles.
Among the products of the moment (click here), for each category we can find those that in the last 24 hours have had a strong growth in sales. Often there are products that do not appear in the bestsellers top positions, but this figure indicates an increase in interest in some products that may be due to seasonality, specific needs or promotional activities.
This section can help those who post articles intended for Google Discover or social media and might therefore follow trends more than those who post Seo evergreen articles.
Most desired products and gift ideas
In the list of most desired products (at this link) Amazon lists the products that are most often placed on wish-lists or wedding-lists. This is a user interest signal, but the adding to the cart may not be immediate.
It is very interesting instead the most gifted products section (at this link). These are clearly the products that are most often gifted from Amazon. This ranking is useful when making blog articles with gift recommendations for holidays or anniversaries.
Reviews and stars
Users usually watch reviews before buying, andbest-selling products are also the ones with the highest ratings. Careful review consultation is therefore essential to select a product with good chance of conversion. You can set a filter based on your rating when you search on Amazon.
Prices and offers
Commission from a more expensive product is higher than that from a cheaper one belonging to the same category, but there is also less chance of success. This does not, of course, apply to those products for which other values that are decisive for choice come into play.
In most cases, the advice is to propose two or three products from different price ranges. It is usually advisable to choose a very expensive one, one cheap and one of the mid-range but closer to the economic one. If no other factors come into play at the time of choice, the average user is more likely to choose the intermediate product.
Another decisive lever is the promotion, clearly visible on Amazon. This triggers a perception of saving and a sense of urgency at the same time. User is more likely to buy immediately.
Analysis of received orders
This is one of the most analytical and data-driven approaches and it refers to our readers specific behavior. In this case, comes into play Amazon dashboard whose reports can also be downloaded in xlsx format.
Let’s carefully look at which are the best-selling products from direct link to consider whether to replace some of the ones we’ve entered that don’t work.
Another interesting fact is that of indirect orders. This data tells us which products our readers are interested in. In this way we can decide to include these products in existing articles or in new articles suggested by this information.
Reading Google Analytics
By Google Analytics we have the opportunity to understand what are our users interests, thanks to affinity categories and in-market segments. This information allows us to build an image of our audience and buyer personas. Indeed, it becomes easier to cross them with a list of potentially interesting products.
Product knowledge and experience in the industry
The best requirement to be able to sell a product is specific experience of the writer and the knowledge about that. I like swimming and every week I train several times in the pool, so I know that when a swimmer has to buy goggles he wants them not to fog in the water, to adhere well to the face so as not to let water in, and that they allow them to have a peripheral view to control the opponent. If I have to recommend buying a model of goggles, I have more authority than a person who has never swam in his life.
In these cases, the direct experience, argued in the article where the link is inserted, certainly has precedence in the choice of products over the other aspects previously seen. A reader who trusts will take all our recommendations with him even when he is on Amazon’s product listing.
Amazon plugins with auto search: pros and cons
Many plugins allow you to select articles almost automatically, proposing bestsellers according to category or a keyword filter. Personally I’m not a big fan of this mode.
Surely it is a very quick option that allows you to simplify the linking of products. The downside is that this automatic selection is not always accurate and there may be errors. In my opinion, a thoughtful manual choice is always the best choice because it is more authentic and consistent with the context in which the reader gets the information he is looking for.
How to make money with Amazon affiliation
We have seen how to choose the best products to do affiliation marketing and optimize the last stretch of the purchase funnel. It’s like the shot of kidneys before the finish line. Following these indications, we can improve conversion rate, that is the number of conversions obtained at the same click volume.
This part of the funnel might be placed in a broader context that includes a structured editorial plan and various activities such as Seo, social media marketing, advertising and so on. It’s like a single mechanism of a car: it’s fundamental, but it only works if it’s well integrated with all the other elements.
