Adding Products to Amazon Affiliate Site

[macdebbie]

Hopefully this is a simple question...

I have seen "turnkey" affiliate sites offered, some of which look pretty nice. Some have blogs and rss feeds for news along with the products, which in this case pull from Amazon.

The site mentions that it uses Amazon Affiliates as a platform, however, they tell me that I have to "display" (if that is the right word) ALL the products in a category. For example, if a category is cat food, they say I cannot only list the 5 brands of cat food I want to sell, that I have to display and sell ALL of the catfood that is on Amazon. I don't want that.

I had a conversation with Amazon, and they said that is not true. That it IS possible to "pick and choose products".

Wondering if these people won't do it, if it would be possible to hire someone who is familiar with the Amazon platform that could customize that for me. How would I go about finding someone like that?

Thanks in advance for the help!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Debbie,

My advice is to stay away from the turnkey sites. They look like such a brilliant idea and big time saver, but in the long run, you'll be glad you didn't go that route. The key to making money with affiliate programs is lots of traffic and the best FREE way to get traffic is from search engines. Those cookie cutters sites are sold lots of times and Google does not like duplicate content and mirror image sites. You won't be penalized but you won't get much traffic either.

"they tell me that I have to "display" (if that is the right word) ALL the products in a category". That's not the way Amazon works, that's just the way their turnkey sites are programmed.

Best to start with your own site or a Wordpress blog. Wordpress is free and easy to set up and use. There are plugins that let you pull in products from Amazon that are probably flexible enough for you to use.

 

[macdebbie]

Thank you

The other option I am considering (and the one I am leaning toward) is having my web designer (she is reasonable) create the site I want.

This will be more work that an affiliate site, but I thought I could then add some products via Amazon Associates so that I have a large selection, but don't have to carry large inventory.

Again, I would want to pick and choose which products I include.

It seems this is possible?

The only thing I am not sure about is how confusing that would be for customers, since I assume there would then be 2 checkout processes - one for my products and one for the affiliate products?

Might be cleaner if I used Amazon Webstore and then integrated with Amazon Associates, however, have heard the webstore is not that robust and doesn't handle drop-shipping well, which is what I need.

Haven't found the perfect solution yet.

Thanks for your help.