Well, AWS works

[Chris]

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=wireless%2Dg+signal+booster

I was just searching for a wireless g signal booster, check how many AWS results there are.

[flyingpylon]

Yup. Makes you wonder where this AWS thing is going to end up, doesn't it?

[GCT13]

As more and more AWS sites go live and cover nearly all of Amazon's product categories, Amazon may be looking at a future when the majority of its sales do not originate from its homepage.

[Mike]

I think it's only people from these forums who are starting amazon sites though. Like, I can't really think of many other people doing it.

It's good that it works though.

[lo0ol]

That doesn't necessarily translate into revenue though. That only means that people are getting it indexed. In the end, it all depends on the cash. That's why I was excited to read this thread, I thought you were going to post that you made x dollars in the first week of opening yours, etc etc. Oh well. :\

[Mike]

I'm sure search engines are going to be the main referrer for most, so without them there will be no revenue lo0ol.

[lo0ol]

But it also depends a great deal on how well they convert. I'm not arguing that they'll receive a lot of traffic from SE. I can throw 100k uniques at a site and still sell nothing if it can't convert well.

[chromate]

I think it's only going to get worse. Particularly in the electronic categories. That's partly why I chose to do kitchen stuff, I thought there would be less competition form other AWS sites. :) At least for now.

[MarkB]

I think the successful AWS sites will be ones stricly focussed on a topic, with the backing (and links) of a content site.

But then, what do I know? LOL

[Chris]

Well the sites on the search I linked too are horrible, badly designed, and I mean really badly. All cluttered and ugly. Since most of them share this trait it looks like it could be one person with multiple domains. In anycase they probably do not convert that well.

[MarkB]

An exception would be 'Nintendo''s sites, which are pretty much all-round eyesores, yet he makes thousands per quarter. (not enough for one to live on, but more than most of us are managing - except for the obvious;)).

I think he also has the advantage of traffic being pumped into them.

[Chris]

His are simplistic in design, but not ugly, and not so poorly done as to almost be unusable.

[MarkB]

I beg to differ - on his games cheat site, for Xmas, he had a midi playing in the background and tacky xmas-style gifs as 'decorations'.

But I'm just being picky...

[chromate]

Really? Haha. Oh dear. Oh well, credit to him. Like you say, at least he's making money off them. And I think he is making enough to live on. Didn't he make $7k last quarter? I could live on that easy, even after conversion into the great british pound :)

I think the thing is with nintendo's sites are that they have just so much stuff indexed by google. He must get so much traffic that even minimal conversion rates could result in decent revenue.

Dan (GCT13), You've probably had your site open now for the longest out of all of us. How's it going? You haven't mentioned it for ages! Is it working out? :)

[KMxRetro]

Well I'm using AWS to pull data about products into a database...it makes updating links about products on my site so much easier.

As for an AWS only site...is it still possible for these to succeed at all? I've seen hundreds of them and I know that I wouldn't buy from one as the design is usually very amateurish - no offence! :)

Design and that "professional" something is what I look for when purchasing. Not a white page full of blue underlined links :)

[chromate]

Yeah. It depends how it's presented and organised. I think accessibility is the key. If the information the user's looking for (reviews or whatever) is clearly and easily accessible, then I don't think they're going to be too concerned about the actual aesthetics of the site when considering a purchase. After all, the big button says "buy from amazon.com" so it's quite clear they're not buying from the actual AWS site anyway.

However, a professional and clear look is important just to keep the user's interest and to prevent them from thinking "Ah, it's just another one of those sites!" and going elsewhere. It also needs to convince the user that the content presented is actually credible and not just junk.

For all of Amazon's virtues, personally speaking, I don't actually think accessibility is one. I find the Amazon site a bit cluttered with "stuff going on all over the place". The one thing an AWS site can provide over Amazon is the flexibility to provide a more focused environment in which to present information and products.

[incka]

Have you had any sales yet Chris?


And if you don't make money from them, you can use them to get hundreds/thousands of backward links...

[chromate]

That's only any good if you have the PR to drive into the AWS site in the first place. Also, If you're using the AWS site just for backward links then you might as well just send the PR to the intended site and skip sending it to the AWS first anyway.

[pas]

Know of any other affiliate programs that offer web services?

[incka]

No.

You can make a bot to index argos's and index's site using tradedoubler, but it's far too complicated...

[pas]

What are argos and index (users I assume) sites? And tradedoubler?

[incka]

They are UK cateloge shops which have atleast one shop in every city here.

[GCT13]

Originally posted by chromate
Dan (GCT13), You've probably had your site open now for the longest out of all of us. How's it going? You haven't mentioned it for ages! Is it working out? :) Allow me take this opportunity to perform some unoriginal *****ing about Google's unfair algo changes and the like :) :rolleyes: :D

No, only kidding folks! Joke! :D

Portable DVD Player's been up for nearly two months; in that time, I've sold 7 portable DVD players which I consider a stunning success because I'm nowhere to be found in the "portable dvd player*" keyword (I'm not complaining, just stating facts here). I've also gathered 4 commissions for dvd rentals services (Netflix, Walmart) and sold a dozen DVDs.

This month I've been getting about 90 visitors per day (mostly from Google). I was deep crawled once back in December and am getting the deep love right this moment. I'm looking forward to the day I actually show up *somewhere* in Google for the "portable dvd player*" keyphrase. :)

[chromate]

Well, at least you're covering your costs. That's gotta be a plus :)

[GCT13]

Originally posted by pas
Know of any other affiliate programs that offer web services? No. Affiliate programs that do not offer web services this year will loose appeal. I bet the major affiliate houses are scrambling like mad to catch up and not be left too far behind in Amazon's dust.

[GCT13]

Originally posted by chromate
Well, at least you're covering your costs. That's gotta be a plus :) Definately. It's paid for hosting costs.

It's still too early to guage its success. I'm very anxious to see where it ends up on SERPs with the keywords I optimized. Taking a little longer to show up in the results than I expected, but hey it'll happen someday! :D

[flyingpylon]

I agree that many AWS sites (and many sites on the web, for that matter) are just plain horrible. But I also know that my standards (and those of most of us here) are much higher than the general shopping public, and that's an important point to realize. Many people are quite satisfied with crap. Why do you think Wal-Mart does so well?

I think there are at least two ways to go with AWS.

One is to just put something, anything, up on the web, get indexed, and know that some percentage of people will hit the site, perhaps become confused, but see that Amazon button and boom... you've tagged them for the next 24 hours. Kind of a random, drive-by approach. Sure, the percentages may not be high, but neither was the amount of work put into the site, so any earnings are a pure bonus.

The other way is to put some effort into combining the technology and Amazon's vast product catalog to present the products in a specialized way that Amazon never could. You hope that by presenting useful information in a visually appealing and user-friendly way, visitors will be impressed enough to purchase from your site rather than directly from Amazon. The amount of work involved is much higher, but you hope that it will result in increased sales and perhaps even in loyal return customers.

I don't know that we're anywhere near knowing which model is "better". I do know that because I've chosen the second route, I get frustrated when I'm reminded by the owners of the junk sites that they're making gobs of money. Especially when I can't even seem to get Google to index my site yet (it's only been two weeks, but gee whiz!).

I definitely don't agree that there are not very many people doing AWS sites. I think there are many thousands, and that number is increasing every day.

[GCT13]

Originally posted by flyingpylon
I agree that many AWS sites (and many sites on the web, for that matter) are just plain horrible.... Many people are quite satisfied with crap. Why do you think Wal-Mart does so well?Disagree. WalMart doesn't sell crap, their product selection is quite fine. I look at WalMart stores as a near-perfect vehicles for giving people exactly what they want in a shopping experience. To that end, I make the assumption that WalMart has put the same kind of attention into its website, and study walmart.com's overall layout and interface.


Originally posted by flyingpylon
[One could] put some effort into combining the technology and Amazon's vast product catalog to present the products in a specialized way that Amazon never could. You hope that by presenting useful information in a visually appealing and user-friendly way, visitors will be impressed enough to purchase from your site rather than directly from Amazon....

I don't know that we're anywhere near knowing which model is "better".Ahhh - but Amazon does. As AWS sites (Amazon shopping site laboratories) proliferate they'll acquire a fascinating data collection, data that could be utilized for large or subtle shifts in Amazon.com's overall desing/layout. Imagine the developers at Amazon, being able to pour over the AWS sites that convert the best (and maybe better than Amazon.com). Wouldn't you like to know which sites those are? I sure would! :D


Originally posted by flyingpylon
...I can't even seem to get Google to index my site yet (it's only been two weeks, but gee whiz!).Yeah, it takes a while, some of my sites took 3-4 weeks before they were indexed.

[ozgression]

Originally posted by pas
Know of any other affiliate programs that offer web services?

Alot of sites offer datafeeds (like overstock.com). But they are alot harder to implement than AWS and you need to update your data daily (or atleast weekly).

Go to http://www.abestweb.com for more info on datafeeds and affiliate programs in general...

cheers
________
F platform (http://www.ford-wiki.com/wiki/Mazda_F_platform)

[snoopers]

I'm really tempted to start an AWS site for my own. Even if I don't achieve any good rankings, it'd be nice to have all that PR power to throw around...

But don't you think they hurt the quality of search results? They're all basically cookie cutter sites siphoning sales off directly from Amazon.com. There really is no need for a middleman to take a commission.

Anyone think that Google might start cracking down on AWS sites? Maybe penalize sites with identical text?

[chromate]

Google will already penalize a site that has excessively identical content. If it gets really bad, they may try and implement something, but I think that would be some way off anyway. If a middle-man means that something is presented in a more easily understood and accesssible fashion, then I don't see it as a bad thing.

Also, as I said to Incka, you wont have any extra PR to throw around unless you source backlinks, just like any other site. Just because I site has loads of pages, doesn't mean it'll have loads of PR.

[Mike]

It's actually quite hard to get PR through backlinks on a AWS site. There are so many pages that making a link structure can be difficult in my opinion.

[r2d2]

I have a casino review site - surely if I made an AWS site which only sold Gambling books etc, and then link to my review site at the bottom of every page on the AWS site, this would give me loads of backlinks, and hence increase my PR.

Sure each page will only have a low PR, but a thousand links from pages about related content would be a definite gain.

[pas]

Originally posted by chromate
Google will already penalize a site that has excessively identical content.

They do? What proof do you have?

[chromate]

Originally posted by r2d2
I have a casino review site - surely if I made an AWS site which only sold Gambling books etc, and then link to my review site at the bottom of every page on the AWS site, this would give me loads of backlinks, and hence increase my PR.

Sure each page will only have a low PR, but a thousand links from pages about related content would be a definite gain.

It's not the number of links that's important. It's how much PR they carry. If you're going to create a secondary site only to channel the PR into your primary site, then why not just get the backlinks to your primary site instead, and skip the "in between" site which, if used, will actually result in slightly less PR for your primary site anyway.

Like Mike says, it would be hard to build a decent number of backlinks to an AWS site anway.


Originally posted by r2d2
They do? What proof do you have?



From Google:

- Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.

- Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

I don't recall any specific cases, but if you really want proof, try creating a load of identical sites and see what happens ;) It's an educated guess that google wouldn't be too pleased about it.

[MarkB]

But of course, if you don't care what Google thinks then do what you want ;)

It's amazing how tied into Google we all are :(

[chromate]

Not really considering they control the majority of net traffic and consequently, a lot of incomes. It's almost like, not wanting to piss off the boss through fear of the sack :)

I do agree it's a shame it is that way though. I intend to create a site to be promoted offline because of that very reason. Haven't figured out what yet though :( heh

[incka]

I don't get much of my traffic from google...

[Mike]

It's the way that most people get traffic though Mark.

[MarkB]

I know - but it's a pity they don't have more competition so we wouldn't be chasing our own tails trying to optimise our site just for one search engine. Just spend time creating a good site and let all the engines gobble them up.

*sigh* I just remember the days when all you'd do is try and get listed in Yahoo! :p

[chromate]

Haha. Yeah. It's kind of nice in another way though, because at least we can focus on how one engine works without having to divide our attention between several. Though it would make for a more stable environment. I'm sure the balance will be spread a bit more evenly in future though.

[r2d2]

Originally posted by chromate
It's not the number of links that's important. It's how much PR they carry. If you're going to create a secondary site only to channel the PR into your primary site, then why not just get the backlinks to your primary site instead, and skip the "in between" site which, if used, will actually result in slightly less PR for your primary site anyway.


I actually mean using all the PR power from the AWS site itself - all pages have PR with which they can vote, even if they have no incoming links. Granted it will be quite low, but 1000 lots of 'not much' could add up to 'quite a bit'.


Originally posted by chromate Also, as I said to Incka, you wont have any extra PR to throw around unless you source backlinks, just like any other site. Just because I site has loads of pages, doesn't mean it'll have loads of PR.

You will have PR - all pages start with a certain amount of PR (which is the average PR of the whole internet), this is then spread around by linking. Theres a good page which describes this better than I can, but I will have to have a search for it I think...


PS: It wasnt me who asked for proof on the duplicate content matter! Am very aware of Googles guideleines.... :)

[chromate]

Oops, sorry, I forgot to change the name in the quote :)

I understand how it works, and you're right, to an extent. You're correct that all the pages will contribute a certain amount of PR. But without any incoming links that PR will be SO slim that even having 1k+ links, it would still hardly be noticed.

My point is, if you're after PR then you would be far better off creating even a small site, that has just a few backlinks and then sending that PR on to the primary site rather than having a massive thousand page site with no backlinks.

At the end of the day, you can't "manufacture" PR effectively. I say just take the easy road and get a few backlinks. It's too easy to confuse shear quantity of pages with actual PR contribution. I used to make that exact mistake when checking out competition.

[Chris]

As of yesterday I started getting traffic from Google. Google doesn't have nearly every page indexed yet but it looks like I'm getting 1-2k a day.

[incka]

How do you get so much from google?

I'm sure there is something you are not revealing...

[Mike]

How come your getting traffic from google with no PR?

[incka]

Yeah...

Your not on the first 5 pages for discount power tools...

It must be on some items, but the ones I tried all had other sites on, but not yours (only first page tried)...

[chromate]

1-2k a day? Already? Man, you have all the luck! You're not even listed for "Discount Power Tools" yet? I guess a fair bit of your traffic is coming in through your sub-pages? Even so, I'm surprised it's that high already.

[incka]

This just wants me to set up AWS sites...

Are you applying to tribal fusion or are you putting google ads on or are you not having any ads?

[flyingpylon]

Originally posted by Chris
As of yesterday I started getting traffic from Google. Google doesn't have nearly every page indexed yet but it looks like I'm getting 1-2k a day.

I feel like the skinny guy on the beach getting sand kicked in his face (I'm sure it's not intentional). My site went live about the same time, but I can't even get Google to crawl it yet. What kills me is that I'm already picking up a little bit of traffic from some good keyword searches. If only Google would crawl my site I think I could get a lot more.

I know, I know, be patient. Maybe I need to talk to my doctor about PSEP (Poor Search Engine Performance). Perhaps he could prescribe the Google Patch.

[r2d2]

Originally posted by chromate
I understand how it works, and you're right, to an extent. You're correct that all the pages will contribute a certain amount of PR. But without any incoming links that PR will be SO slim that even having 1k+ links, it would still hardly be noticed.


Ah ok :) Yeah, I think we are actually agreeing here really... I agree it would be slim, im thinking maybe, PR0 to PR2 or 3 maybe for the receiving page....

And I definetly agree that backlinks are the way to go - was just thinking about the theory out loud really :)

With regards Chris's luck with his new site, try a search for reef club casino review (http://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&lr=lang_en&q=reef+club+casino+review&spell=1) , and check who is number 1 and 2 :) Then notice I dont have any PR even on my homepage - (havent been around during a PR update yet :) ) Im pretty pleased with that - but I guess its fresh content boost for a while.... Could be the same for Chris's site....

[Chris]

I'm likely listed now as new content, they're likely not permanent listings, and yes, its the subpages that are bringing in the traffic, as it should be.

With thousands of pages of products, even after I am fully indexed with PR, the homepage will probably only be a small percentage of the total traffic. Most traffic will come from specific searches like this (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=Above+Table+Height+Adjuster+porter+cable&btnG=Google+Search).

[pas]

Is the traffic converting well?

[incka]

Adding adverts?

[Chris]

I haven't seen any sales yet, but I don't think Amazon has updated. I will probably ad adverts if the traffic stays up where it is.

[s2kinteg916]

i think chris is hiding something....

he must be a google special agent...

[chromate]

I've just checked my Amazon reports to see I've had 5 items shipped. Get this, none of the items are from any of my "kitchen" sites. They're all weird DVD's and books from the marketplace. lol

Unfortunately, being the marketplace I only get a 2.5% referal fee. Sucks really, out of $50.76 worth of goods I've only made $1.28.

Still, 11.11% conversion can't be bad can it? Even if it is on items that I had no intention of marketing! :)

It's about time people bought some kitchen equipment! Haha

EDIT - Amazon must have been updating. I've had 3 orders for kitchen stuff today. One was a $150 cookware set. And the other 2 were about $20 - $30 worth. Good stuff. It's working out. And I still have no PR :) It can only get better.

[Nick]

chromate, how long did it take you to set up your AWS site?

[incka]

When is the next PR update... I know loads of us that are waiting...

[chromate]

Originally posted by Nick
chromate, how long did it take you to set up your AWS site?

The first one took a little while as I coded it from scratch refering to the developers kit and some tutorials. The next 2 were much faster as I made the code pretty modular and it's pretty basic anyway.

[Mike]

I submitted to google a couple of days ago, should I keep submitting?

Also chromate, what's your traffic like at the moment?

[chromate]

Not great at all. I'm getting about 50 unique users on each site a day. All three sites each have about 600 to 700 pages indexed by google.

Chris's has just short of 900 pages indexed. Even so, I still have no idea why he's getting 1 to 2 thousand uniques when I'm only getting about 50. Hmm. I guess people just search for branded powertools more. But still, that's quite a lot more.

[incka]

Because more people want power tools from google than kitchen stuff.

[chromate]

LOL... I just noticed Chris has "Complete Idiot's Guide to the Kama Sutra" indexed by google...

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&c2coff=1&q=allinurl%3Awww.discountpowertools

How did that happen? Haha

[chromate]

Originally posted by incka
Because more people want power tools from google than kitchen stuff.

That's just what I said, if you read my original post :)

I've also noticed (from looking at Chris's site) a couple of important SEO things I'm missing to increase traffic on the sub-pages.

1) In the title have the product name and THEN put the site name. If the product name's first, it'll rank higher.

2) At the moment I'm using a heading tag for the name of the site as well as the product. I'm going to change the name of the site to graphics and that will just leave the product name heading. By doing so is should increase the item's ranking.

3) I'm also going to create a few links that will return all items by a particular brand name.

[Chris]

Perhaps my estimate was a little high. On Monday I only got 800.

[incka]

Originally posted by chromate
LOL... I just noticed Chris has "Complete Idiot's Guide to the Kama Sutra" indexed by google...

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&c2coff=1&q=allinurl%3Awww.discountpowertools

How did that happen? Haha

I wonder :o

[Mike]

How do you know Chris has 900 pages indexed Chromate? Does the toolbar tell you somewhere?

Thanks,
Mike

[Chris]

I've got even more health and personal care listings:

http://www.google.com/search?q=allinurl:+kissitmakeitbetter.com&num=30&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&c2coff=1&start=30&sa=N&filter=0

[chromate]

Mike, in google search:

"allinurl: domainname.com"

[Chris]

I think one thing that would improve performance would be to list more than 10 products per page... anyone know if that is possible?

[Mike]

Thanks Chromate, no pages indexed for me yet:(

[Mike]

Originally posted by Chris
I think one thing that would improve performance would be to list more than 10 products per page... anyone know if that is possible?

I don't know if it would work, but you could try something like:


for ($i=0; $i < 5; $i++) {
//content
}


That's what I do for the homepage on my site (after chromates guidance:)). I'm not sure if it would work with page numbers though.

[chromate]

Mike, That's to display only 5 items out of the ten that're returned by amazon.

As far as I know, you can only get the standard ten items at the moment.

[chromate]

Originally posted by Mike
I submitted to google a couple of days ago, should I keep submitting?

Yes. I found submitting each of my main category links resulted in a deep crawl within a few days. This worked with each of my 3 sites.

Oh, and it also helps to list links to each of the pages at the bottom of each page. This will help the spider find them all instead of having to follow the one "next" link at the bottom of each page.

[r2d2]

Originally posted by Chris
I think one thing that would improve performance would be to list more than 10 products per page... anyone know if that is possible?

Not sure, but it would be very difficult I think. I read that it is currently hard-coded at 10 products per page.

Maybe you could show two 'pages' per page? Numbering the pages would be tricky then though I think?

[chromate]

Thinking about it, I don't think it would be that hard to show "two pages" per page. All you would have to do is make sure you skip a page on subsequent requests from "next" and "previous" links.

Request: 1, 3, 5, 7

Just divide the total page number by 2.

Still, I would wait until they release AWS4. There may be some way of requesting a different amount of items to be returned. Only about a month to wait.

[flyingpylon]

You're supposed to be able to get up to 30 results for an ASIN search if you do a lite request. Outside of that, it's hardcoded at 10 results per request.

Of course, in order for that to be useful, you'd have to have a database of ASINs found in the particular browsenode you were targetting.

The other way to go would be to separate data collection from presentation. I know some people are doing that. Have a set of scripts that request the data from Amazon and put it in a database, then another set that displays the info any way you'd like. That would also guard against AWS outages to some degree. Of course it's a lot more work and overhead.

[chromate]

I think just doing what's been outlined by r2d2 would be easier and also result in less overhead.

[pas]

Can you get the average customer review from "lite" calls?

[pas]

Yeah, I noticed the keyword search returns anything under a mode. They should limit it to a node.

[emke]

I've had great success with AWS. I started with AWS on january 6 and have already sold over 50 digital cameras and printers. Some items ordered are several thousands so the commisions are excellent. For some reasons I see CDs and DVDs sold as well. I can't wait for my other sites to get more traffic so I can add AWS to them as well.

I'll probably earn more from AWS than from Adsense this (first) month already.

[DaveM]

Does amazon have a $10 commission cap?

[emke]

Originally posted by DaveM
Does amazon have a $10 commission cap?

nope, no cap. 6.5 % on electronic items. Someone ordered Canon EOS-1D digital camera through my link. Price $3,099.88. :D

[DaveM]

That's excellent. Congratulations...

Does amazon send out an email to you each time you get a sale?

[chromate]

It doesn't no. Nice going emke! Is it only 6.5% I thought it was a 5% base and then an extra 2.5% for a direct link making 7.5% no cap?

I've also had quite a few DVD's and stuff that has nothing to do with my site bought. The cookies are doing their job. :)

[emke]

Originally posted by DaveM
That's excellent. Congratulations...

Does amazon send out an email to you each time you get a sale?

They update once a day with the previous day stats and there you can see how many items have been ordered and the traffic you sent them. I haven't seen if they can send you emails once an item has been ordered so I'm not sure but I don't think they do can that.

[emke]

Originally posted by chromate
[B]It doesn't no. Nice going emke! Is it only 6.5% I thought it was a 5% base and then an extra 2.5% for a direct link making 7.5% no cap?

On some items I've had 6.5 % and on others only 4 %. no 7.5 % commissions at all. I haven't looked at how much the commissions are for the categories to be honest.

I haven't yet looked at the difference between the tier and the classic structure to be honest. I'm working on a new site and haven't had the time to look at any stats or anything till tonight and boy was I surprised when I saw my amazon earnings.

[flyingpylon]

If your site has really been online only since Jan 6, how are you getting enough traffic already? I see Google already has 741 of your pages indexed.

Also, I noticed you have AdSense on some pages twice. I'm pretty sure that's a no-no.

[Shawn]

Yes, more than 1 instance of AdSense on a page is against TOS.

[r2d2]

Originally posted by flyingpylon
If your site has really been online only since Jan 6, how are you getting enough traffic already?

That was puzzling me too, especially as he has lots of PR 5 pages on there, and I dont think there has been a PR update since 6 Jan has there?

[flyingpylon]

I'm guessing the site was up for a while before he added AWS.

[chromate]

It was. AWS is an add-on to the existing site.

[emke]

Originally posted by flyingpylon
I'm guessing the site was up for a while before he added AWS.

Yeah, the site has been online since the beginning of last year or something like that. AWS was added on january 6.

[emke]

Originally posted by flyingpylon
Also, I noticed you have AdSense on some pages twice. I'm pretty sure that's a no-no.

Thanks so much. I was testing other placement of ads and if they would work out better and forgot to remove them. They're gone now.

[Chris]

The tradeoff for removing the cap on electronics was a base referral rate of 4%. So a direct item link is 6.5% with no cap -- definitely an improvement if you ask me, otherwise it'd only be $10 on that $3k camera.

[GCT13]

Originally posted by emke
I've had great success with AWS.Superb :)

[pas]

What's recommended for the payment plan: classic or tiered?

[pas]

Also, what's the difference between "Easy Links" and "Direct Links"? Are the AWS "add item to shopping cart" forms regarded as one or the other?

[GCT13]

Originally posted by pas
What's recommended for the payment plan: classic or tiered? I think colleges are offering a 200-level course on just this topic. Here's what I think. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

If you are fairly certain that you will sell 36 or more products including at least 1 non-media item this quarter, then go for the Tiered Structure.

What's a non-media item? Anything that is not the following: Book, Music item, Video, or DVD.

[chromate]

Basically yeah. If you're sure you're shifting a lot of items + a few non media items, then the Tierd structure would probably be better.

Direct link is where the item is specified, so the AWS "add item to shopping cart" are direct links.

[Chris]

Two things.

1. Apparently power tools are no longer a new category and they're still capped. So those $400 tools I'm selling only get me $10 in commission :(

2. I think straight text Amazon links perform better than clickquick ones, just from a couple days of testing.

[chromate]

Do you get more people buying stuff, other than what they click on with the normal text links (using the cookie)? I imagine you would. I haven't thought about that before.

Dan, oops!!! Looks like we've done the same site: http://www.camcorder-reviews.net/ When did yours go live? Sorry I didn't notice it before. Oh well, when we both get some PR we could exchange links, compare notes etc...

All my reviews seem to be down right now. Hmmm. I'm not caching at the moment.

[incka]

Someone else was talking about reviews gone...

Yes, BobbyB has made one. I wouldn't worry much, I'm sure he won't mind.

[chromate]

Who else has mentioned the reviews problem? I guess it's just a AWS glitch.

[chromate]

Originally posted by Chris
1. Apparently power tools are no longer a new category and they're still capped. So those $400 tools I'm selling only get me $10 in commission :(


How's it going? Sold many?

[Chris]

Its going pretty good. $10 a sale is still nice (but not as nice as I thought it would be).

[Mike]

So you reccomend instead of the popup box, a direct link to amazon on product pages Chris?

Thanks,
Mike

[Chris]

Yes. for a couple reasons.

1. It appears to convert better.

2. 1 makes sense because if you think about it not everyone is smart enough to realize that that popup is really amazon, or trusting enough to believe that that popup is really amazon.

3. With the normal link there is a higher chance for them to buy more than just the one item. They might make an impulse buy that you'd get credit for.

[flyingpylon]

What about just putting the item right into their Amazon cart? That's what I'm doing. Er, that's what I would do if I could get some traffic!! (Looks like Google is starting to add my pages though, so hopefully soon...)

I also provide a direct text link, though it's not as obvious.

[chromate]

When I tried having items added to the shopping cart it didn't seem to do too well. I think this is because it's not too obvious what's happening. The button says "buy from amazon". When a user clicks it, they land on an amazon page saying "Customers who shopped for blah also shopped for..." (or something similar). It's not too apparent that the item's actually been added to their cart ready for them to purchase.

With the text link / quick buy, the user is actually invited to add the item to their cart and think that's more "progressive". It makes the buying process a bit more intuitive with respect to "what's going to happen next".

[incka]

Chris has only tested the results on one site though, auidence matters and different auidences will do different things. I will not be convinced one works better than another until I see a survey of a large variety of sites.

Chromate - Carbohydrate Counter might fail as people realise that the Atkins diet works from protein reducing hunger rather than low-carbohydrare.

[GCT13]

Originally posted by chromate
Dan, oops!!! Looks like we've done the same site: http://www.camcorder-reviews.net/ When did yours go live?Too funny. Went live yesterday. Good thing our keywords are sliiightly different - "review" vs. "reviews" :p

[Chris]

Remember Google stems now, your keywords aren't that different.

[GCT13]

Originally posted by incka
Yes, BobbyB has made one.I should clear up the signature, BobbyB's is a website/future print publication I help out on; my name's Dan :)

[GCT13]

Originally posted by Chris
Remember Google stems now, your keywords aren't that different. Super. Well this was bound to happen someday.... :eek:

[chromate]

Well, I don't think either of us are going to get too near the top with our "front page" keywords anyway. I might change my site name. Seems silly us both having the same name.

[Mike]

Chris how long did it take you to get your site spidered? I submitted just over a week ago and none of the pages are there when I do 'allinurl: mp3playerreviews.net'.

[incka]

Dan, have you made the article on AWS yet?

[chromate]

Originally posted by Mike
Chris how long did it take you to get your site spidered? I submitted just over a week ago and none of the pages are there when I do 'allinurl: mp3playerreviews.net'.

Has the GoogleBot been through your site? It takes a little while after that to actually get in the index. If you haven't seen GoogleBot yet, keep submitting pages from your site. I do it every other day on new sites and normally get deep crawled pretty fast.

[incka]

Your launching alot of AWS sites chromate... I best launch some myself soon or all the categories will be taken. I found a script for one on a site, and it looks abit like your sites, so I'm using that script.

[Mike]

Originally posted by chromate
Has the GoogleBot been through your site? It takes a little while after that to actually get in the index. If you haven't seen GoogleBot yet, keep submitting pages from your site. I do it every other day on new sites and normally get deep crawled pretty fast.

I can't say I've seen it in my logs. When you say pages do you mean product pages as well?

Thanks,
Mike

BTW, I've sent you a PM:)

[chromate]

LCD Monitors is my last one. 5 is enough! :) If I can't make them work well, I'll give up. I'm going to spend all my time building them up now with articles etc so they're not just "worthless" sites, as they are now.

Might build a few separate content sites to gather some PR and then push it all over to the relevant AWS sites.

[incka]

You have 6, not 5. One is not listed in your sig.

[chromate]

Errr which one isn't listed? Camcorder Reviews? I scrapped that one so it wouldn't clash directly with Dan's site. We're using different primary keywords now.

[incka]

You just scrapped it?

Why not give it away like Shawn Weeks does? Or atleast give away it's AWS script to all of us at website publisher...

[Chris]

It took around a week for me to get spidered. A little less maybe.

[Mike]

I don't know what's happening with me then. Hopefully I will be spirdered within the next few days.

[incka]

Hopefully I will see an example on website publisher soon or have a program that can unzip .tar.gz's soon...

[Mike]

If your stuggling then follow the example on devshed. It confused me at first, but after asking questions I've got it all to work.

As chromate told me, all of the code on that tutorial is basically all you need.

Or you could just wait until the article here is done.

[GCT13]

Originally posted by incka
Dan, have you made the article on AWS yet? I'll have the article finished today, so depending on any revision requests from the Editor-in-Chief :) , you should see it on this site in a day or two....

Stay tuned!

[incka]

Is the article going to contain a step-by-step guide or an example code? If it does it will be simply spiffing. (I am going to try to use more traditional british words in my posts to uphold the UK's reputation.)

If I can get this .tar.gz open I've got an example code, but I can't find a free program that will do it, and I don't want WinZip, thank you very much.

[GCT13]

Originally posted by incka
Is the article going to contain a step-by-step guide or an example code?As I said, stay tuned..... :D

[incka]

If it is then all I can say is Jolly Good Show you old codger!

[chromate]

Originally posted by incka
You just scrapped it?

I didn't scrap it. I just changed the name, that's all.

[incka]

I must say your new name is simply spiffing. And the LCD monitor name is too...

And a great exploit of the misspelling of South Beach Diet, how do you think of so many cool names?

[chromate]

That southbeach diet one was working fantastic until this latest update. I was number one for about a week without any PR :) Now things have changed :( ...

It's not really a misspelling anyway... I'm just conjoining two words ;) Loads of users have mailed me saying they found the site useful anyway. So that's ok.

[pas]

Originally posted by Chris
Perhaps my estimate was a little high. On Monday I only got 800.

Wow, how are you getting that much traffic with a PR0 site?

[Chris]

Lots of pages of content, and Google guessing PR.

[incka]

Mmm... When is this article on AWS going to be finnished? I'm waiting for that before I start work on my AWS sites...

[DaveM]

^yeah... I cant wait to read it to get a handle on these AWS sites

On a unrelated note I have a few links for amazon on my other sites and set a new record yesterday 5 sales :D haha it's nothing much but im happy with the results Im seeing from amazon since starting to use them more lately.

[GCT13]

Originally posted by GCT13
I'll have the article finished today...Yeah right :rolleyes:

I just turned in the first draft. Went through a lot of revisions. It was a much larger project than I anticipated, but I wanted to be as thorough as possible.

[incka]

Yes, best to be perfect and take a few weeks than being rushed and being inaccurate or hard to follow.

We are really thankful for your future contribution to this fine resource.

[Chris]

I'll try to get the article posted in the next couple days.

[incka]

Then I can make my jewelry AWS and my other AWS that ties in with one Mike is making.

For now it's online viral marketting for me...

[chromate]

I considered a jewelry site. But of course, being a new store, you wont have any reviews etc. You may also find your have problems implementing the AWS with it. It tends to be a bit screwy with the new stores. They ask you to promote them and then they don't work properly. Great. :)

[incka]

Well I've made the design, and the secret to high SERPs is to get in early.

[Chris]

You know, Health and Beauty is weird.

I get sporadic orders, but when I get an order the person orders like 10 bottles of advil. The large quantity helps me get to Amazon's next tier, and I get 10% commission, but its odd. I was expecting more variety in sales.

[incka]

Which site did you get the sale from?

[Chris]

kissitmakeitbetter.com

[chromate]

You're probably finding that your visitors know what they want already and maybe already use the product, which would probably quite often be the case with health and beauty products. They know what already works for them and they've just found that through your site they can get it cheaper than they would from where-ever else it is that they used to buy it from. Just a guess.

[eMEraLdwPn]

do you think a music AWS site could work? at first i thought i could use tie-ins from my lyrics site so it might work, but then i realized most people probably just go straight to amazon already when looking to buy music - is that a fair assumption? or is setting one up worth a shot?

[MarkB]

My music AWS site is currently getting (on average) 1 order a day. Although the last week has seen anywhere from 2-5 orders (items) per day.

[Chris]

Just today Google hit kissitmakeitbetter.com up for 3700 pages (so far).

Teoma hit up discountpowertools for 12,600 pages and Google did for nearly 7,000 pages.

Looking good.

[incka]

What about all the web? They are indexing almost as many pages as google, and their rankings, even though they do have spam sites in, seem more fair.

[Kings]

Originally posted by eMEraLdwPn
do you think a music AWS site could work? at first i thought i could use tie-ins from my lyrics site so it might work, but then i realized most people probably just go straight to amazon already when looking to buy music - is that a fair assumption? or is setting one up worth a shot? I'm running a music lyrics/reviews, but I'm still trying. It's not costing me anything, so I might as well try.

(For example, http://www.chill2music.com/shop/list/301668/1/top_selling.html)

[Mike]

AWS question coming. Do you just have to include your associates ID in a URL to amazon if you want to be commissioned? Or is there something else to add?

Thanks,
Mike

[Chris]

Your associates ID is all you really need.

[Mike]

Thanks:) BTW, I don't know if you've read it yet, but I pm'd you last night.

[pas]

Any tips on getting Teoma to visit your pages?

[eMEraLdwPn]

i got the code for the amazon API off a devshed article a while ago, but i've had problems with it since the start... it takes like 15-20 seconds for any page with the API on it to load and i can't seem to figure out why.. i've broken up the code into different parts and can't really figure out what's causing the delay

sample page is here:
http://www.lyricallysquared.com/amazon.php?amazon_artist=Finch

and some of the code i used is here (this is what i think is most likely causing the problem anyway)


// include class
include("nusoap.php");

// create a instance of the SOAP client object
// remember that this script is the client,
// accessing the web service provided by Amazon.com
$soapclient = new
soapclient("http://soap.amazon.com/schemas3/AmazonWebServices.wsdl",
true);

// create a proxy so that WSDL methods can be accessed directly
$proxy = $soapclient->getProxy();

// invoke the method
$result = $proxy->BrowseNodeSearchRequest($params);

[Chris]

Google has indexed more of my tools site (and kissitmakeitbetter.com). My tools site now gets 3-4k page views a day and yesterday I sold 36 items through AWS. 15 or so of them were less than $5 little bandaid things but still.

[Kings]

Originally posted by Chris
Google has indexed more of my tools site (and kissitmakeitbetter.com). My tools site now gets 3-4k page views a day and yesterday I sold 36 items through AWS. 15 or so of them were less than $5 little bandaid things but still. Okay, you've got about 19,000 pages in Google, you have got to tell me how you did that.

My site doesn't seem to get spidered fast at all. Every now and then 50 more pages get into Google, but it's not happening as fast as it seems for you. What's the secret? :(

[chromate]

It's just not the same for all sites. The time varies. I've had some AWS sites listed within a week (completely) and some that still don't have any more than the first page listed. Just keep submitting... it's all you can do.

[Chris]

I have a dedicated server so maybe it responds faster than what you have. SE friendly urls help of course as well.

[s2kinteg916]

how many sales are u guys averaging from amazon a day ?

[Mike]

0 :d

[chromate]

3

[GCT13]

2

[chromate]

Though, I'm still getting seriously low traffic. Like, 150 - 200 uniques a day for each site (camcorders and lcd are getting none, because they're not indexed yet).

[Kings]

Originally posted by Chris
I have a dedicated server so maybe it responds faster than what you have. SE friendly urls help of course as well. I suppose it's because I don't have a dedicated server then, because I do have SE friendly urls (e.g http://www.aspit.net/faq/miscellaneous/using_cdonts_on_windows_xp_professional.asp)

I guess I'll just keep submitting my sites, and the main subpages, and wait for Google to finally index ALL my pages.

[GCT13]

Originally posted by chromate
Though, I'm still getting seriously low traffic.Same here. If only Google Japan would propogate to www.google.com :D

[incka]

0 - Site not launched yet and I haven't finnished AWS.

[chromate]

So you're getting 0 sales from a site that doesn't exist yet? Thanks for letting us know Incka ;) lol

[Chris]

In addition to my URLs being SE friendly they're short.

domain.com/item/asin

domain.com/market/node

That might be helping.

[incka]

Yeah, I always prefer sites with www.site.com/category/article rather than www.site.com/category?article=articlename

[MarkB]

I've made 35 sales so far this quarter... so about 1 per day. But it only kicked off around the second week of January.

[cameron]

What is your AWS site url Mark?

[flyingpylon]

Originally posted by Chris
In addition to my URLs being SE friendly they're short.

Chris, I noticed that about your URLs. I was surprised that you were not putting any potential keywords in the URLs. On my site I include the item title in the URL, but it certainly makes the URL longer.

What's better... short URLs, or keywords in URLs?

[chromate]

Interesting point. All my kitchen sites use short url's like Chris's. My other two sites (camcorders and LCD Monitors) both use longer keyword rich URLs.

All the kitchen sites got deep crawled pretty quickly. The other two sites (using the longer URLs) are still waiting for a deep crawl.

Wonder if the URL's have something to do with it?

Having said that Mike's site uses the short URL's and is still waiting for a deep crawl. So we're probably reading too much into it.

[Chris]

I'm not adverse to putting a couple keywords in the url, like on the main part of this site. However amazon titles are probably 10 words on average and that makes the url extremely long. Too long for my tastes.

[MarkB]

Originally posted by cameron
What is your AWS site url Mark?

I actually have two - together, the sites have made 58 sales this year (items sold, that is).

www.buymetal.net is the one doing best.
www.mygroovywedding.com/shop/ was my first (basic) attempt at AWS using Mr Rat's perl script.

Buy Metal uses the same script, but more trimmed down as far as items spiderabobble.

[MarkB]

Oh, and on the 29th someone ordered 10 coffee mills LOL

[incka]

I'm still trying to get my product pages to work like /product/asin

I can do it for none amazon pages, but no amazon ones...

[MattM]

Originally posted by incka
I'm still trying to get my product pages to work like /product/asin

I can do it for none amazon pages, but no amazon ones...
Which method are you using?

[chromate]

Originally posted by Chris
I'm not adverse to putting a couple keywords in the url, like on the main part of this site. However amazon titles are probably 10 words on average and that makes the url extremely long. Too long for my tastes.

Yep. I agree. A lot of the words used in the title are just additional features of the product and don't really contribute much. If you look on my URL's I've just included the first 4 words of the product title. That way it normally includes the make and model of the product, plus two other words for good measure.

I figure that a lot of other AWS stores will be using the product title for their own html page title in a detailed product page. So I've actually just used the first 4 words on these page titles too. Hopefully, it will increase the keyword density of the important keywords that people will use in their search terms and give a slight edge over the competition that are using the whole product title and wasting the density over inconsequential words. Of course the danger of just using the first 4 words is titles that just seem to stop abruptly and therefore people will be less likely to click on them from the search engine. The majority of the time they make sense though. It's too early to tell how this is going to work out, because my sites that do it haven't even been deep crawled yet.

[incka]

Im using Dan's script with .htaccess and

$var_array = explode("/",$PATH_INFO);
$ASIN = $var_array[2];

[MattM]

Try this code:

$var_array = explode("/",$REQUEST_URI);

$var = $var_array[2];
$Asin = $var;

[Chris]

Remember variable names are case sensitive so if you need a variable named "Asin" then "ASIN" will not suffice.

[MarkB]

Chris, I'm wondering if you're able to share a slice of your code?

I have nodes stored in an sql DB, in a table which is simply:



ID NODE
6 67207


as an example.

In my code, I have:



$var_array = explode("/",$REQUEST_URI);

$sql = "SELECT node FROM cat WHERE id=$var_array[3]";
$result = mysql_query($sql);

if ($result == 0) { $cat = 67207; } else { $cat = $result; }


And then $cat is called when asked for the node number later on.

But it only produces an error with AWS - obviously the node is not being carried through... Any ideas?

[chromate]

Mark, I think there's a few things missing from your code. Try:



$var_array = explode("/",$REQUEST_URI);

$sql = "SELECT node FROM cat WHERE id='$var_array[3]'";
$result = mysql_query($sql);

if ($result == 0) { $cat = 67207; } else { $cat = mysql_result($result, 0, 'node'); }


I'm not certain, but that's just what I would do out of habit. Try echoing your $sql var and then run it through mysql manually. Also try echoing $result to make sure $cat is being set to something meaningful.

[MarkB]

That seems to have done the job, mate :)

Why was my code not working?

All I need now is Chris's node spider script to do all this for me automatically ;) Any chance of that, Chris? :)

[chromate]

Depending on how you have your field types set in your database, you needed the quotes in your sql to make it valid.

You can't always access $result directly either.

[MarkB]

www.buymetal.net/ - PHP-powered AWS now up :) Have to wonder how to power the main page without just having it static or redirected... will have to work on that I think.

[incka]

Grrr.. I still can't get my code to work...

[Chris]

Here is my SQL structure. The pid is what I use to access the categories. Amazonid is obvious. Parentid is the parent category's amazon id. textid is an optional text identifier to use instead of pid (I'm not using it). Name is the name. mode is the mode (mode is sometimes necessary).

CREATE TABLE blank_categories (
pid mediumint(9) NOT NULL auto_increment,
amazonid int(12) NOT NULL default '0',
parentid int(12) NOT NULL default '0',
textid varchar(70) NOT NULL default '',
name varchar(70) NOT NULL default '',
mode varchar(20) NOT NULL default '',
PRIMARY KEY (pid),
UNIQUE KEY amazonid (amazonid,parentid),
KEY textid (textid),
KEY parentid (parentid),
KEY mode (mode)
) TYPE=MyISAM;

[Chris]

Here is the code I use to parse browsenodes.com files into my db:



$quotelist = file("$url");

$db = mysql_connect("localhost", "user", "pw");
if (!$db) { echo( "<P>Unable to connect to the " . "database server at this time.</P>" ); exit();}

mysql_select_db("dbname", $db);

function addquote($element){
$quote_array = explode("|",$element);
$name = $quote_array[0];
$parentid = $quote_array[1];
$amazonid = $quote_array[2];
$mode = $quote_array[3];

global $db;

$result1 = mysql_query("INSERT blank_categories SET name = '$name', parentid = '$parentid', amazonid = '$amazonid', mode = '$mode'", $db);
if (!$result1) { echo("<P>Error performing query: " . mysql_error() . "</P>");



}

}

array_walk($quotelist, 'addquote');

?>


Its modified from a script I made to do much the same thing with quotes for my literature site's quote db so that explains the naming conventions. Access it like http://www.example.com/script.php?url=browsenodesfile.txt

When getting the browsenodes.com files use | as a seperator and make sure it includes mode.

[Chris]

Oh My God.

You'll never guess how many items I sold through AWS yesterday.



200 of these: http://www.kissitmakeitbetter.com/item/B0000532MK/

I'll only make say $30 off of it, but damn. That is alot of items. I don't know why but people are always buying the health type stuff in bulk.

Whats great about that is that it will help power me up to the next tier.

Now Amazon only has 4 left in stock.

[chromate]

lol. That helps :)

I only have 6 items left needed to get to my next tier (5%)

[MarkB]

I missed out on getting into the scaling tier thing this quarter - damn me and my laziness!

CHRIS! Thanks very much for posting all that - extremely generous of you!

BTW, how long did you have the site open for spidering before you announced it to us here?

And would URLs like: www.domain.com/cat/1 be less spiderable that www.domain.com/cat/1/ ?

[Chris]

I announced it as soon as I was finished with it. The same day I submitted to Google.

I think one reason that my kissitmakeitbetter.com and discountpowertools.net have been spidered could be PR. Kissit had a bunch of PR to start with and I linked to discountpowertools from jalic.com which fluctuates between a 6 and a 7.

[Chris]

Oh... those two URLS are equally spiderable.

[iKwak]

How do you guys from looking at the search engine (first link on first page) are an affiliate link and not from Amazon?

[Chris]

Heh.... someone bought 200 of these:

http://www.kissitmakeitbetter.com/item/B000052X31/

[chromate]

What tier are you on now? I'm still on 5% lol

[incka]

No sales :( But 16 clicks on the buy button by 11 different people

[chromate]

It takes a LOT of clicks to get sales. At least it does for me :)

I've had 2668 clicks and only 185 sales. Only 31 of those sales are kitchen items, the rest are south beach diet books.

[Mike]

I've had about 90 clicks and 1 sale, heh

[chromate]

Really? Cool. What did they buy? Anything good? :) is the rate 5%? or 7.5%?

[Mike]

Well I don't know if I can class it as a sale, as MarkB bought it (thanks Mark) :)

It was a DVD, I'm not sure weather its 5% or 7.5%.

[MarkB]

It'll be 5%. Bought by accident (well, by accident via his link - I should used mine!;)).

[incka]

LOL... You like Phoenix nights? Why not buy it after going on buy-jewelry.net from amazon.com ;)