Here’s a company that has managed to create some real value, and at the same time, make some large Amazon commissions for themselves.
Pricenoia.com is a shopping comparison engine across all the International Amazon sites that allows savvy shoppers to exploit price differences on books, music, games and DVD’s across different countries.
Not only does it automatically calculate shipping to *any* country in the world for all amazon sites and automatically converts the prices, but it also shows price histories for any product on across all Amazon sites.
The revenue model? Amazon Affiliate Links (for each of the international Amazon sites) plus Google AdSense. Since the service is so damn useful, I’m sure they are doing well by providing real value to their users.
Think: How can you deliver real value to your users, while at the same time promoting affiliate programs that you’re a member of?
April 20th, 2006 at 8:33 pm
I use the Amazon associate program extensively on my site (shameless plug: dvdverdict.com). I’m running a film review site, so most of my interaction is with their DVDs. I put links to purchase the titles we review at Amazon. It accounts for most of the site’s revenue. Their web service is invaluable, and I use it for much more than strictly linking to their products.Here’s some of the things I’ve done…
* Cross-reference the database from HomeTheaterInfo.com to verify information (Amazon’s data entry monkeys seem to be rather poorly trained) using the UPC.
* Look for links to the products on other stores using Yahoo’s shopping API (again, using the UPC).
April 21st, 2006 at 2:25 pm
I’ve found by using their web service, you can do just about anything. Integrate their products in with something useful to your customers - you don’t have to have a drab, boring website that just sells things - go that extra mile and offer more.
mjackson’s site is a good example. You can read the reviews, get news, enter contests and I’m sure there’s more to do that I didn’t see. He makes it worthwhile to come back to his site, read, and buy.
I’ve been running affiliate programs for a long, long time now and one thing I always see is the affiliate that slaps a link up on their site and expects it to perform. Put more into it and you’ll get more back.
May 10th, 2006 at 3:11 am
One troubling thing I’ve discovered with Amazon’s web service, is that you’re not always returned the same results as a (human) search conducted on their site.
Leads me to believe that they’re somehow messing with the results in order to push whatever their agenda is at the moment (promoting poor sellers, maybe trying to get rid of overstock, etc.)
I’ve done numerous tests, and almost every time, the site results are different than the api results.
I’ve even sent their api support people an email about it and received only a “we’ll look into it” reply.
–Jim Raposa
SponsorWorks.net
October 1st, 2006 at 2:35 am
Pricenoia.com is a really smart idea for using the amazon programme