Hi all. I recently decided to delve into Amazon associates, and have achieved some success that I am pretty happy with. This site has grown from $0 to about $500 this month in 4 months. That’s nothing crazy, but I figured people could benefit from how I did it.

1. Niche selection. A lot has been written about this so I won’t spend much time on it. Average product price is around $100. There are around 25 products near that price range in the niche on Amazon, and lots of them with tons of reviews (100+). Other niche type sites rank on the first page of google, so I knew it was rankable.

2. Domain name is a buying-based keyword with like 1000 searches a month (there are a lot more searches for more competitive keywords), and theme is a clean Canvas theme from woothemes.

3. I wrote a nice 1500 word homepage that explains all the purchasing considerations for the products.

4. I wrote 5 800-word informational articles like common mistakes, pros and cons of various aspects, etc.

5. Than I began outsourcing reviews. Got 800 word reviews for about $4 on odesk. I had the writer fill out a spreadsheet of which products has which features as they went, which I used to make a comparison chart. Each review got 1-2 images, and sometimes a video from youtube embedded, 4-5 contextual amazon links. Good H1, H2, H3 tags with occasional keywords.

6. The comparison chart got it’s own page, as did several “Top (CATEGORY/ASPECT) product” articles, which were summaries of reviews, but features 3-4 products that were the best within a category. The spreadsheet helped for doing this.

The blog now looks like this:

• 1500 word homepage, with feature analysis, and top 3 products.
• Top navbar links to comparison chart and 4 “top products in category” posts
• top 3 products highlighted in top of sidebar
• recent posts, categories, and 3-4 links to high-PR resources in sidebar
• 20ish reviews
• 5ish informational articles

WP Plugins:

• Akismet
• Pretty Link Lite
• TablePress
• WordPress SEO (Yoast)
• YARPP
• Quick Cache, or W3TC, or WP Super Cache

Linkbuilding:

At the beginning I think I did two fiverr gigs, one for 50 or so directory submissions, 1 for 100 or so RSS submissions (Nothing spammy).

I outsourced a couple backlink packages ($10) from the warrior forum services section, but nothing that made 1000s of backlinks (again, no spam). These were services that found related content, spun them, posted a short excepter a handful of places where content can be hosted, and provided a backlink with some tierred 2nd layer links. I did this about once each of the first three months, than switched over to youtube.

In the last month that I found someone on fiverr who would turn 150 words into a youtube slideshow with voiceover. I took each review and reduced it down to 150 words of bulleted pros and cons, with a intro and conclusion, and had them make videos of all of them. I posted each to youtube with a link back to the specific review, and the homepage in the description.

I don’t get many view or visits from youtube, but I figure google must take their own property/service well into account in the SEO game.

Some stats:

• I have about a 2% bounce rate on the site (blows my mind).
• About 35% of my visits click through to Amazon.
• About 8% of my amazon clicks result in purchases (again, crazy)
• This month has 170 purchases for $475 with a few days left to go.
• This is based on only around 130 visitors a day, which I think I can double.

SERPS:

For my top couple keywords I am about half way down the first page. I rank near the top for a lot of low hanging keywords. Really happy with the results considering that there is still room to move up on the big keywords.

What’s next:

I have about 5-10 more reviews I want done, plus youtube videos. Beyond that I’ll probably target some higherPR links, but I don’t see too much more to do. I might take the videos from the most important products and get them on some extra video sites besides youtube, and maybe build some 2nd tier links to them.

I am looking towards my next sites now. With confidence and lessons learned from this site, I am targeting a niche with about 2x as expensive products, and a lot more searches, so I am excited about it’s potential.

========= Additions from thread responses ==========

My income trend went something like this: couple bucks 1 month $90 next month $150 next month $475 this month

To be fair the site existed for a few months before this, but with like nothing on it because other things in life sprung up and took my time.

======

I’d recommend just focusing on one at a time. I actually started 3 when I started this one, and ended up not putting more than 3-4 pieces of content on the others because it was tiresome enough to do to 1. People burn out easy, so found it helped to be singularly focused.

Once you have a system really down I could understand doing multiple at once though.

====== Keyword research:

I did keyword research to determine general keywords such as “best xyz” “top category xyz” “xyz for xyz” and determining brands that seemed to be most searched. This helped influence what “top posts” I did, and what keywords my homepage targeted.

For specific products, I didn’t do keyword research. Products were chosen based on number of Amazon reviews. if they had 100 reviews, that was a good enough indicator to me to go for it. It was worth sorting the reviews by date, to make sure the product is still being purchased (instead of being outaded). The top couple products had 500+ reviews. The lowest products I reviewed had 75 or so.

======= I have a few ideas why this has been so successful:

1. It is a subniche, and has the product type goes by a couple names. I think this split up the competition.

2. I made sure that there were other non-professional sites ranking on the first page before I started. So I knew it was possible to get good rankings without crazy investment.

3. The onpage SEO is nothing tricky, but is, I think, well done. I use H1, H2, and sometimes H3 tags with 2-5 word phrases. They are not keyword stuffed, but I try to repeat a keyword in at least one H tag besides the H1. I have on average 2 images per page, with alt and title keywords. I often embed a video. The categories are brands of feature types, and I use one or two WP tags that typically match the categories.

4. At the bottom of my sidebar, I link to a handful of high PR resources like wikipedia, some EDU studies, etc. I think doing this might show google that the site means to add real value, and not just be an amazon money magnet.

========= Details on outsourced backlinking WSOs:

The backlinking was fairly small batch, diverse SeNuke XCR or GSA work with some tierred links. Offered using multiple anchors, which I made sure not to over-stuff. So I used “(my first name)”, “blog”,”my blog”, “keyword, “keyword blog. And had them link mostly to my home page, plus top 4-5 posts.

(There was also a fivverr gig for some web directory submissions, a fiverr gig for some rss submissions, and one youtube video with backlink to each review)

from: http://cash4onlinejob.net/amazon-site-to-500month-in-4-months/