Amazon.com offers a great affiliate program, if you know how to market it properly and optimize your commission tiers. There are 2 basic complaints that come about in the popular webmaster forums when it comes to the Amazon affiliate program, which is it's short cookie duration and it's low commission payout. While there is not a whole lot we can do about the cookie duration, there are actions affiliates can take to help reach the highest levels of tiered commissions and maximize their commissions once they get there.
The Amazon affiliate program commission tier is unique, because it does not focus on dollar sales, rather on the number of units sold. The Amazon commission tier has 8 different levels within the General Products category. However, there are fixed commissions for items being sold in the CE Products, Kindle, and Endless.com categories. Please review the Amazon commission tier below.
As you can see from the chart, it gets real easy to increase your commission tier at the lower levels, mainly because it only takes 7 items to hit 6% which can be on par with other similar affiliate programs. CE Products are a little bit more tricky, typically eletronics, these items are at a fixed 4% commission rate, no matter how many you sell. But I've found a way around this and it works on popular electronic items where many companies are thrown into the mix.
It's possible to get a higher than 4% commission rate from Amazon on electronics, if you focus on selling items from other 'stores' within Amazon and not just Amazon.com products. When a CE Product is out of stock at Amazon.com it other companies products will be shown and on popular items this can happen a lot. What happens is that Amazon applies the General Product tier to those purchases, instead of the CE Products category.
Back before Wii's were removed from being eligible for commissions I was selling Wii's on Amazon for 7.5% commission...every month. My strategy was to focus other websites on lower priced items, which would typically sell better, to drive my commission tier up. Then I would focus selling Wii's that were out of stock on Amazon, and sold at 3rd party merchants within Amazon, for a higher General Products commission. Because of the attention to detail I was making a full 3.5% more commission per sale on items over $200. Up until removed my commissions were going even higher because people were selling a used Wii bundled with games and other accessories.
Now the above example is no longer applicable because the Wii was added to the 'No Commission' list. However, there are plenty of products and niches still available on must have items that quickly go out of stock and rely on other vendors. The double payback comes when these in demand items are priced above retail value. Obviously the higher cost means more commissions in the pockets of affiliates. So in closing, experiment, find work arounds, and good luck maximizing your Amazon commission tier.
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