Using Amazon on a movie website is one of the primary ways you can successfully monetize it. Your audience likes movies, especially on the home formats of DVD and Blu-ray, and Amazon is a trusted vendor. Combine the two along with the other ways you can monetize your website and reap even more rewards than you currently are with your other affiliate programs. When using the Amazon Associates program, here are some things I have learned and items you should consider when becoming a part of Amazon and using their affiliate services.
Sign-Up
This is obvious and is also your first step. Go to Amazon.com, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Join Associates under Make Money With Us or click here. Fill out the application form. Have your Social Security Number or Tax Identification Number and banking information handy.
Cookie Length
Just get buyers to Amazon’s website. Shuttle as many potential buyers to Amazon as possible and let their plethora of wares do the rest of the work for you. Amazon cookie length lasts 24 hours. Within that 24 hour period, if someone comes to Amazon through one of your links and buys something, you get credited with that referral and get a piece of that sale, no matter what they buy. Somebody bought at stainless steel grill after going through one of my links, others have bought texts books. It didn’t matter. I received a portion of all of those sales.
Amazon’s Percentage Program: Your end
The more you sell on Amazon, the higher the percentage you get to keep of that sale. You start at 4% then when you make the per-described amount of sales you get bumped to 6% then 6.5% and on and on. The highest I have ever gotten was to 6.5%.
If you want those high percentage points, you have to move units. The best part of Amazon’s percentage program is that when you do hit that percentage point, all of your percentages for your sales (for that month) get readjusted to the new percentage point meaning you take home more of the sales.
Once a higher referral fee is achieved within the calendar month, the higher referral fee rate will apply to all Qualifying Revenues earned from Qualifying Product units sold by us during sessions initiated through Special Links on your site during that calendar month, including units sold before the new tier was reached.” – Amazon Associates Operating Agreement
Your percentage take resets to the beginning percentage of 4% at the beginning of next month.
Banners and Widgets
Amazon offers a gaggle of pre-made single item banners, customizable, multiple item linking banners, rotating banners, and widgets (Tip: stay away from the Carousel widgets).
Here is an example of one (the Favorites widget):
Every time the page is reloaded, depending on how many films you have loaded into the widget, new films are displayed.
Some people chose to use banner ads to advertise Amazon products on their movie website. If you read How to Set Up a Movie Website Sidebar: For Profit, I am against banners but in some cases I guess they can be fruitful if your traffic level is high enough. One example of a highly trafficked movie website with good Amazon widget placement is FirstShowing.
FirstShowing have kept that widget going for about six or seven months now so it must be converting (fyi, that is the Favorites Widget in the above picture). From my personal experience, do not bother with them. They do not convert well. The rotating and pre-made Amazon banners are worse, far too generic to be effective. I see them on many beginner movie websites. They will take up space on your site and will yield very little, if anything. Linking to Amazon within your content is far more effective.
Sidebar Send point
Trying placing individual movie ads above the fold, on the sidebar (s), right next to your content, near the content’s beginning. Look at this film website for instance. See how the Amazon content is at the top of the page and when a post is clicked, the Amazon 125×125 ads (I personally cut those images and uploaded them into my site) are right next to the top of the content. That is one of my movie websites. I try to practice what I preach. Because of this, I have had far more click-throughs and conversions than I had before employing these techniques. If you have the UBD Block Ad Plugin discussed under The Gold Standard within the How to Set Up a Movie Website Sidebar: For Profit post, place your cut ads in it, Amazon does not provide 125×125 ads for specific films, more’s the pity, and wait and see what the sales result are. Once the results are in, adjust your Amazon Associates sales strategies accordingly.
Content Send point
It is the content on your website that will be Twitted, it is the content that will be Facebook shared. That is where you should be placing a large portion of your Amazon links. If you are writing a post and are referencing a movie or a book in the post and are not linking to tags or applicable info on your movie website, you could hyperlink that referenced movie or book to the appropriate Amazon webpage. Ex. http://film-book.com/let-me-in-movie-trailer/ and look at “book this film is based on”.
If you are writing a post about a DVD or a Blu-ray, and are displaying cover art for it in your post, hyperlink that cover art to the DVD or Blu-ray’s buy page on Amazon.
If your post becomes popular or goes viral (an example of that phenomenon), you will get many more click-throughs on that Amazon link than usual. Remember what I said earlier: “Just get buyers to Amazon’s website…and let their plethora of wares do the rest of the work for you.” When I referenced FirstShowing in Banners and Widgets, I didn’t mention that their Amazon widget is within their posts, embedded and centered in their single post php. file on the back-end of their website. Every time one of their posts gets clicked, that Amazon widget shows.
In Conclusion
Advertising Amazon products in your post, on sidebar (s) or in both at the same time is your option. Choose the one that works best for you, your goals, and your site design. Now all you need is the traffic.
In the rest of this series, we will discuss advanced tips and strategies for making money with Amazon on a film website. If you do not want to miss out on those posts, consider subscribing to us. If you have any tips about monetizing through Amazon Associates, please share them below.
The remaining posts in the Making Money with Amazon Associates on a Movie Website series:
1.) Making Money with Amazon Associates on a Movie Website: The Deal Post
2.) Making Money with Amazon Associates on a Movie Website: Automate
4.) Making Money with Amazon Associates on a Movie Website: Conclusion
