Well, I’ve done it (for the second time).  I’ve made it out of 4% commission hell with Amazon and now I’m kickin’ it out at 6%.  You have no idea how freakin’ happy I am… and will be till the end of the month, where the quarter will end and I’ll be back to 4% in January (dammmmn it!).  Well, that’s what happened the LAST time I hit the higher percentage.  I didn’t realize that they roll you back every quarter (when they pay you).  I was choked!  Anyone who has used Amazon, or uses Amazon now would know how hard it is to get conversions.  I’m not sure what it is… but it’s not easy work.

Of course they’re kicking up the marketing a notch with their aStore - and I’ve yet to really use it.  I’ve been using Affiliate-O-Matic and have had more sales using it over when I did it old school and added a product a day to my blog software (yes, I really did that!… what was I thinking!!!)   But now I’ve got it nicely automated and I can add my own content to the site, when I choose and I haven’t really been working on them since I set up those Amazon stores, and I think due to them being online for over a year now - they’re getting into the organic end of search engine results.

Of course I could do so much more to promote those Amazon stores… and I just haven’t.  It’s like I’m just praying that Google will start sending in the traffic and I’ll be able to convert the traffic into sales… through sheer will.  Of course, I know it isn’t that easy… and perhaps that can be something I can do on a more regular basis - change up the ads a bit… add new content… new images… just to show that I’m still there for the repeat visitors to the sites, and they’re not seeing the same things over and over and over again.

Well… I’m off to enjoy my 6% a bit more and then I’m back to working on my Bead Jewelry site

Popularity: 3% [?]

Does anyone know of a really good music (mp3) download affiliate program that would allow me to put songs on my site - so that they can click through to pay for the song.  I’ve seen quite a few MP3 affiliate programs, mostly banner promotions - but I’m looking to put individual songs on a site.  It just  doesn’t seem to be apart of many of the plans I’ve seen.

Apart from iTunes.

The focus would be along the lines of Dance Music.
Can you recommend any to me?

Popularity: 3% [?]

Well I’m not sure what to next with the 2 gambling oriented sites I have right now.  In case you’ve not heard the United States is doing away with online gambling.  I think it’s a money thing - they can’t tax it properly - unlike those casinos of brick and mortar.

You can read more at Shoemoney: Click Here

I personally think this is so retarded.  But money is money and the Amercian government wants it.

I’ll have to read more about it.  What do you think of the removal of online gambling in the United States?

Popularity: 3% [?]

In my quest to try to improve some of my sites I decided to automate a few of them as easily as possible (read: I’m lazy).  I found a great program that offers flexibility when using Amazon as a product generator (yes, yes… I know… crap rates).  But I’ve had some luck with Amazon - in fact it’s one of the better affiliate programs I’ve worked with.  I’m thinking that it’s because Amazon is a brand in and of it’s own.  So people recognize it and trust it - and so I make a few sales from it.  I’ve come to realize that if you don’t have tons of traffic - don’t sell the cheaper stuff through your Amazon site.

Honestly - you’ll just end up frustrated and quit.  They offer 4% to start - and then it goes up with the more stuff you sell.  So this is what I’m doing.  I’m testing the waters of product viability on the Internet.  We’ll see how these make out and perhaps expand into the world of other affiliates with delicious datafeeds of products.  I’m not there yet - but this Amazon store testing is going pretty well.

Until I realized my 30 day trial had expired.

So now I knew why everything seemed to drop off into a big black hole.

… D’uh!

So I purchased the software.  I uploaded it to a couple of sites - it worked I was happily online.

Then I checked the next day.  All my sites were defaulting back to the expired 30 day trial page.

WTF???

So I went to the software guy - told him what was happening… bitch, bitch, bitch.  Thinking did I just waste all that money on a crappy piece of software!!!! ARGH.  So mad.

But then I got an email from my web host telling me that they’d moved my sites (all sites) on one server that was crapping out to another one.  Some changes made may not be seen, yadda yadda.

So it wasn’t the software at all - it was the host.  ARGH.  I uploaded the software again - and boom.  I’m off and running again.  Easy. Easy. Easy.

I’m just a little pissed that the web host didn’t give me any warning on this transfer.  So I’m thinking stuff isn’t working.  But I didn’t see any downtime (excellent) but it pisses me off that my stats for my sites are borked…. looking back - that didn’t transfer over (yet??).  So I’m kind of running blind on my stats.  But since I’ve put my sites back up - traffic, clicks, sales perhaps?? We’ll have to wait and see.  But in the meantime - I’m happy things are back up… and realizing that I have to be a bit more attentive to those 30 free day trial ending moments :)  I think I need a calander!

If it works out - I’ll be posting the software I’ve been using that seems a million miles ahead of their aStore product (good … to a point).

Popularity: 2% [?]

When I was checking my stats this morning for Amazon - I found that they are now offering the aStore, it looks quite cool! (If the link doesn’t work - just log into your Amazon.com associate account and it should be on the tabs on the left).

Would you like to have your own store featuring Amazon.com products? And would you like to have this store up and running in minutes? aStore by Amazon is the solution.

So I think I’m going to try it out this week and see what happens - kind of nice to be able to build a storefront - with no need of progamming experience, basically it looks pretty plug and play. So with my initial view of the aStore… it looks pretty appealing. Now to take a more in-depth look at it.

Has anyone else seen this new option for Amazon?

Popularity: 1% [?]