Among my favorite marketing mentors, whom I have followed right from the very beginning fall 2007 is Andy Williams. Andy is a soft spoken marketer from the other side of the pond (love his accent) and he also is a quiet genius with software whose unassuming manner makes him rather charming. So, when he writes, I listen, as it were.
So when I read through one of his recent newsletters that he was giving a thorough go at the Amazonian Profit Plan I perked up. I was already looking at tangible and Amazon, so when he mentioned that he was implementing these solid techniques, well, I bit and bought! Thanks Andy!
Overview
A bit of a disclaimer here: APP is definitely more of an advanced beginner course. A really smart beginner could do it with some help either asking at the Warrior Forum. With diligence, anyone can tackle this. Be aware that it will be helpful to have a good handle on building a WordPress website as it is assumed that you are familiar with hosting and then getting around WordPress. ‘nuf said.
Right off the bat I like these gals, Wanda and Paula, of http://affiliateblogonline.com. For one thing, the report is one comprehensive pdf – no videos (though I hope later that they will perhaps do one or two to make the Competition step more understandable). I really dislike courses that are all video or audio. And I am one of those who skims a document, then if it is worth it, I print it up and bind it so I can make notes, dog-ear, sit in my reading chair to digest… my eyes are just not what they used
to be and reading a monitor for many hours is hard. Can’t do that with video.
For another, if you read through their blog, you are treated to full out marketing lessons. Of course it is a little here and little there so you have to be astute to piece it all together, but basically everything that is in APP was already written in some form on their blog. So they have already shown their salt this way. Now I have only just discovered them so I don’t know their track record but they have been at this since 2004.
Objections to price?
You won’t hear any from me. I, for one, know value when I see it and as I have already confessed, will refund a product if it doesn’t suit, no matter if the price is $27, $47 or $97.
So why do they charge $97? Because they can. And frankly it’s for our good, too. Somehow (and this is human nature), if something is free or cheap, we tend not to appreciate it as much.
Now I don’t condone what most “gurus” do, charge insane prices for peanuts worth of information. But for those who really have something of value and then just give it away tends to devalue it.
just as an aside – My own kids appreciate their toys/games that they saved up for and bought with their own money far more than those gifts that tend to get neglected.
Speaking as a business person, I realize the worth of my time. Sure I could get much of what they share in the report for free on their site but then I’d have to wade through lots of pages and posts. My time is worth more than that. They have written a detailed blueprint of how they make thousands of dollars monthly all in a well organized manner in a nice neat package. That is worth twice that much to me.
Best of all (affiliate) worlds…
Anyway, as I mentioned in an earlier post, Amazonian Profit Plan brings together what I feel is the best of all worlds of affiliate marketing with Amazon. You probably are already aware the Amazon does billions of dollars every year in sales. Some marketers argue that some consumers just don’t like Amazon but on the whole most online shoppers do, as the figures bear out.
Just for future ease of writing, I will refer to Paula as the writer (I sort of picked this up on the blog, so forgive me Wanda if you feel uncredited – just call me lazy)
Another problem folks say against Amazon is the 4% payout. While that may seem small, there is a sliding scale that increases to 8.5% which Paula points out that they regularly get the higher 7.5% commissions even before the middle of the month. While other affiliate programs pay more, because the majority of online shoppers do trust Amazon, this has proved to be unimportant. Sheer quantity of conversions makes up for the lower pay-outs . If what Paula says is true, that their own site conversions went up when they exclusively turned all their sites over to Amazon affiliate links, then there is something to that.
Another thing that they point out is that fully half of their sales are not related to products they sell. By that I mean that while folks might start out on their review page and end up on Amazon, they got commissions on items that folks bought while they were on Amazon (love those cookies). So if they were initially looking for a camera, found their website, clicked through to Amazon, whether they bought what they started out wanting to buy, the consumer ended up buying something else while they were there. Nice!
The thing that shocked me, and I will talk about it more later when I review Step 4, is that once they made a radical change in their reviews, their conversions skyrocketed.
And when you find out how they get traffic (we are not talking shallow traffic generation here), you’ll probably faint because it involves – hard work – but work that pays off BIG time. It was right here that they gained all my respect. But that is not till step 6.
But let’s get started.
Starting with Step 1…
…which is how to choose your niche/product. This is pretty standard here. But I love the 5th criteria on choosing a product and the point is well taken. Oh BTW, we are not doing keyword research yet. Just going through Amazon departments, perhaps of your own interest, looking for certain price level and product info which is useful later when you write your in depth review. As well as customer satisfaction. You note these 5 criteria for later use. Then look for up to 5 products to review. All of this is fun and may I say easy.
Note: They recommend going for 5 products to start with but beginners don’t need to take on that many. They just recommend you take on 2 – 5 products and get them to making profit before moving on and creating more sites/pages.
Let me back up a sec here… did I tell you that they only really have maybe a dozen sites/pages that are making them a living? That right there caught me attention. Here we have heard all over the ‘net that we need to have all these microsites all making a bit here and a bit there. But these gals only have a handful! That right there sold me on their program. And the kicker is that some are on bigger general product sites, not EMDs. That’s not even the best part but then I am getting ahead of myself…
It is helpful but not necessary to pick an item that you either have a personal interest or are shopping for a friend/family member. This will come in handy when you write your reviews later.
Whoa! this is already over a twelve hundred words so I’ll break this off for now. Next time I dig into step 2 which is on Keyword Research and maybe how they figure competition in Step 3.
