Automatically Generate Amazon Product Posts

This is another great WordPress plugin I've been using to help populate my blogs with product posts. Amazon Auto Poster was created by Lunatic Studios and is available for immediate download for free or $29.99 for a premium version.

Basically this WP plugin will automatically generate posts, complete with comments, reviews, and descriptions from Amazon. Simply enter a keyword, starting point, how many posts, how frequent to publish, and hit go! It really is that simple to start adding post inventory, complete with your Amazon affiliate ID, to your blog.

The Amazon Auto Blog Poster plugin will also add images from Amazon.com to your blog. Each image is linked to your affiliate ID, so if a visitor clicks on the image they are taken to the Amazon sales page with your tracking cookie in place. Furthermore, the comments (reviews for each product) are also links to the Amazon product page with your tracking cookie in place as well.

See the Amazon Auto Post plugin in action on my Golfing Blog.
Click Here - To Download The Free Version of Amazon Auto Poster (Shows me Affiliate Commission Love)

Extend:
More Affiliate Plugins For Wordpress

Amazon Commission Tiers And How To Improve

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.

Site Stripe Tool At Amazon.com

Right now I'm marketing my Associate-O-Matic stores full tilt, trying to capitalize on the online shopping before Christmas. I'm tweaking on a daily basis, changing categories, focusing on keywords, etc and adding links to my blogs where I normally wouldn't bother. If you haven't been to the new Amazon.com Affiliate Dashboard recently then it's time you go back and check it out. Amazon has spent a lot of time updating the usability and tools to use to help make affiliates more successful and one new tool stuck out at me more than the others.

Amazon.com now offers a Site Stripe tool that embeds itself at the top of your browser while you are on Amazon.com. This 'Stripe' allows you to automatically generate an affiliate link for any page you are currently visiting and more.

List of Features for Amazon Site Stripe Tool

• Generate link for page viewed.
• View earnings.
• Visit discussion board.
• Add items to your aStore.

It's made a world of difference in time saved when viewing the Amazon website and looking to generate some quick links to throw in a blog. If you haven't had time to check it out yet, go now, you may be wasting your time with other methods.

NewEgg Mall Affiliate Program

I'm not sure about you, but I am a massive fan of anything NewEgg. It seems like no matter what I am buying, if NewEgg.com had it, it was cheaper even with freight. The only problem was that their inventory of items was limited to electronics, but now they've got a whole line of products similar to Amazon at the NewEggMall. I've been biting the bullet waiting for them to release an affiliate program and now it looks like they are offering one through Commission Junction.

NeweggMall.com, a subsidiary of Newegg Inc., is a premier online shopping destination for general merchandise. Launched in 2008, this elegant e-commerce site boasts a wide-ranging selection of apparel, accessories, auto, home living, jewelry & watches, and outdoor & garden products to meet the demands of the most selective customers.

Building on the success of newegg.com, the second-largest online-only retailer in the United States and preferred destination for technology enthusiasts, NeweggMall.com brings the same customer-centric principles to the broader market: great product selection and pricing, fast delivery and outstanding customer service. With more than 15,000 unique products available on the site, NeweggMall.com continues to seek out, evaluate and add merchant partners who can deliver the high quality e-commerce shopping experience customers have come to associate with the Newegg brand.

Looks like the NewEggMall affiliate program will drop a 30 day cookie and earn you a 4% flat commission on whatever is purchased. This is lower than what you can get through Amazon, but a much better cookie length. Furthermore the regular NewEgg.com affiliate program only offers a 3 day cookie length, so you better get while the getting is good. Affiliate programs like Amazon only offer a 1 day action period and I think we will see NewEgg drop the length of their cookie after this site kick off as well.

Affiliate Store Builder Scripts

I'll admit, there are a lot of automatic website building scripts available, but personally I am only familiar with a few quality ones, so that's what I'll be discussing and comparing. The two scripts I'll be briefly covering are AOM for Amazon affiliates and BANS for EPN affiliates. While both do similar things they are extremely different in setup and functionality, and yes these scripts cost money.

Associate-O-Matic - $99 (or Free lite version where you share revenues)

This script saved my ass last holiday by providing me with a quick and easy way to throw up a store that looked like I actually kept the inventory. I'm throughly convinced that by giving the impression to visitors that I was keeping the inventory and allowing them to add items to a cart got me the majority of my sales and commissions. Keep in mind I was very clear that when they checked out they would be forwarded to Amazon, but I think putting it off till the last minute netted me some repeat business.

Associate-O-Matic's simple, yet powerful, browser-based control panel lets you customize everything from categories, colors, fonts, custom boxes, custom pages and much, much more. Below are a few screen shots of what you can find in the Admin panel of AOM and what customization can be done or achieved.





Build A Niche Store (BANS) - $97

This is simply a beautiful script to behold and if used properly can simply rake in the cash and pay for itself in a week, even on a brand new domain. The eBay affiliate store script BANS creates an SEO friendly site, built on eBay RSS feeds and categories. But in addition to adding tons of products to a store, you can easily add individual content per page and create you own content pages through the admin panel.

Setting up one of the eBay BANS affiliate stores is super simple, but maximizing it's potential can be very challenging. If all you want is a cookie cutter look a like site, a niche store can be completed in probably 15 minutes. However, if you want to create a unique site, with quality content and products, then get comfortable because building quality BANS sites is addicting.






Now, there is no way I would recommend a product on my own affiliate blog, without using the product thoroughly first. Both scripts have been put through the paces as far as I' concerned and both paid themselves off quickly and made me substantial scrilla.

I'm happy to answer any behind the scenes questions you may have on either one of my AOM Review or BANS review.

Why Affiliates Complain About Amazon

I see it on a daily basis, affiliates complaining about Amazon.com's affiliate program. The majority of Amazon.com affiliate complaints are that they have very low payouts, but really they are above others in the same categories. While your affiliate commission for an electronics product may only be 4% that's still 1% higher than the leading electronics e-merchant on the net, NewEgg. NewEgg.com offers only 3% commissions on their entire inventory of electronics, except for cell phone plans, in which they can offer up to $25 per contract.

So, lets say you stay away from electronics on Amazon and focus on marketing other products, well then you should be earning a minimum of 6% on all sales. Furthermore this percentage will fluctuate fast, depending on how many orders you get your percentage of commission can jump up to 6.5%-8%. What's great about Amazon's commission tier is that dollars don't play a part, they simply go by the amount of items sold. That means you will increase your commission percentage if you sell 50 couches or 50 pens.

How To Get Around Low Percentage Electronic Commissions

There is an affiliate trick that I use with Amazon to maximize my commissions when dealing with electronic items. I try to focus on those sold by 3rd party members of Amazon, instead of Amazon.com's inventory. All sales through 3rd party sellers on Amazon will result in your tier commission, meaning it's possible to sell electronics and earn only as low as 6%.

Using the method above I was able to earn a staggering 8% on all the Nintendo Wii's I sold. I was able to earn that high percentage on an electronic item because Amazon did not have them in stock, all went through 3rd parties and because I was able to push more than 600 per month.

So, next time you see someone complaining about Amazon.com's affiliate program, remember the real bread winners in affiliate marketing aren't the loud ones on the forums.

Affiliate Programs I Use

I'm often asked where I get access to all my affiliate programs and generally there is no one answer. I stick with a handful of companies that allow me to build partnerships and affiliate for a large number of programs. Below is a breakdown of which companies I'm signed up with and why i use them to affiliate.

• Commission Junction - They have a crazy amount of companies signed up that you can affiliate for. I originally signed up for eBay, but since then have been accepted into the NewEgg.com affiliate program and others. Many of the programs require you to signup individually for which program matches your website content, so you are not automatically accepted into their inventory of clients.
• Max Bounty - Generally speaking, they have the largest number of affiliate programs aimed at the simple 1 form, email gathering, affiliate programs. Meaning they have the $1 to $2 payouts for leading a visitor to submit their email for potential freebies and surveys.
• ebay Partner Network - They pay some of the highest commissions of any program I affiliate for. Their lowest tier of earnings makes you 50% of whatever eBay makes off an auction that ends with your affiliate cookie attached. Plus there are a lot of plugins and scripts to make building sites easy.
• Amazon - Who hasn't heard of Amazon? Some of their payouts are pretty low, but it's easily made up with the amount of volume that's possible. They also offer plenty of affiliate widgets, feeds, and store builder options.
• ClickBank - If it's a digital download, ebook, or some sort of online subscription service you can find it on ClickBank. They offer a huge inventory of these types of products that you can affiliate for with an even larger number of payout options. While I've only had limited success with this affiliate program, the potential is there if you can find a good niche.

Well, those are the affiliate programs I use in a nut shell. They have allowed me to eliminate Adsense on a number of my sites or at least not rely on the revenue from Adsense to earn a living. But remember, now matter how good a product or service may be, if you are not focusing on quality marketing you may just be wasting your time.