3 Growth Strategies to 10X Revenues for Amazon Affiliate Sites | Skipblast

3 Growth Strategies to 10X Revenues for Amazon Affiliate Sites

The majority of niche website builders start by creating “Amazon Associates sites”. In short, these are sites focused on a specific niche, think kitchen, home, dogs, cats, among other topics, monetized purely by the Amazon Associates program.

These types of sites have several pros, which are:

  • Easy to get started: slap on a WordPress theme like GeneratePress and you are good to go
  • Easy to monetize: Amazon Associates has some of the highest conversion rates and also pays 3-5% commissions on ALL products in the shopping cart
  • Easy to write/outsource content: Anyone can write buying guides and/or individual product reviews on typical day-to-day products
  • Easy to sell: almost all the top website brokers in the market sell these types of websites at 30-40x monthly average profits. The exit strategy is clear.

While these sites are relatively easy to build up, I’ve seen throughout my time in the industry (12-years with over 175 website purchases), that most niche site creators miss out on the easy wins that would increases revenues on their sites by 10X at a minimum. Not only does it increase revenues quickly, but it also provides a much higher exit sale price when and if you decide to sell.

Also, if you are a website investor like I am, you can use these strategies to spot underperforming websites, buy them up, improve immediately, and then keep in your portfolio or flip.

Let’s get into the strategies.

Top 3 Easy To Implement Growth Strategies for Amazon Sites

Add and Optimize Product Comparison Tables

All too many times, I see sites that have no comparison tables within buying guide articles (e.g., Best X of Y articles). This is an easy win.

Comparison tables can be created with a plugin like AAWP or created manually using HTML/CSS. I use both tactics but the easiest way is to use a plugin

Make sure that your tables are optimized with the following conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategies:

  • The product image should be added and linked to Amazon
  • The product title should be added and linked to Amazon
  • A list of features
  • A call-to-action button that is a stand-out color (e.g., yellow, red, blue)
  • Mobile-responsive tables are a must

With extensive testing, the comparison table’s best location is right under the introduction section.

The user’s intent is usually satisfied when the comparison table is shown towards the top. Typical clickthrough rates (CTRs) on comparison tables are 20-30%, so for example, 100 visitors to your site will result in 20-30 people clicking through to Amazon from the table itself.

Example

Here is an example of an AAWP table automatically created using WordPress shortcodes. This is the easiest way to apply this growth tactic.

AAWp table

If you have the expertise (or can outsource) to put a custom HTML table together, then you can create unique tables for your site. For example,

custom AAWP table

As your site grows and goes from a small niche site to an authority site, it’s worth it to invest in custom tables that make your site stand out from the rest.

Takeaways

  • Comparison tables have the highest CTR of any element on a buying guide article
  • Place tables towards the beginning of the article. I like to place them right under the introduction
  • Focus on the 80/20 principle and improve your top 10 articles getting traffic first

Link Product Images to Amazon

This is an easy one to spot and fix but is often missed by website creators.

Another missing piece on many sites (or specific pages on sites) is not linking the product image to Amazon. These are images placed within the article specifically.

Website visitors love to see product images and it’s one of the most clicked elements on the page.

Audit your articles and manually check if your images are linked back to Amazon. You can use Google Chrome extensions like NoFollow to highlight the nofollowed outbound links. If the extension is enabled and links are missing, it will not highlight the image. Easy way to catch missing links!

Example

Here is an example of a product image in a review article:

tire affiliate

Takeaways

  • Make sure to first include product images within buying guides and product review articles
  • Link the main images of the product with Amazon links

To test, create a separate affiliate ID in Amazon Associates and use that tag to link the image. This will give you data on if the images convert into sales. (P.S., don’t worry they will convert!)

Add Callout Product Boxes

Product boxes, or callout boxes, convert well. I like to place these boxes with AAWP plugin right after an individual product review.

The review structure is as follows within buying guides:

  1. Product title
  2. Product image
  3. Product features
  4. Pros, Cons
  5. Product box

I’ve seen people place call-to-action buttons instead of the product box, which also works just fine. However, the product boxes provide a summary of the product all encompassed in a nicely designed container box.

Example

Here is AAWP typical product box:

aawp product box

Here are my custom product boxes that I had created for high-value pages:

custom product boxTakeaways

  • Place product boxes in buying guides, individual product reviews, and information articles. They convert well and are easy to insert.
  • Ensure you have a bright call-to-action button
  • Test the use of product boxes in lieu of call-to-action buttons

Bonus: Double-Check Your Top 10 Pages For Broken Amazon Links

This is another common one. Amazon products go out of stock, change IDs, and get discontinued all the time. If your top pages have broken links, this can reduce earnings.

Use a tool like SiteBuddy.io to monitor your pages and get automated reports listing out which products on what pages are out of stock.

Case Study: Strategies Boost Earnings from $300 to $3,500/mo in 2-Months

In early 2020, I acquired an outdoor site from Flippa. The site was receiving 95,000 pageviews of traffic but the owner was a hobby blogger and thus did not have a strong idea how to monetize.

After applying the above growth strategies on the site, within 1.5-months, the earnings jumped to approximately $3,500 per month.

Here is the revenue and cost chart for 2020:

case study chart

Overall, these tactics act as your “swiss army knife” which you can use if and when appropriate to your niche sites or website acquisitions.

Implement These Hacks Today

These are quick easy wins that you can apply immediately and see the earnings increase from the same traffic you are receiving on your niche site. The goal is to increase the potential revenue per visitor.

Do make sure to track your earnings by page if possible. What I like to do is create dedicated affiliate tags in Amazon to track changes. Whenever I do a test, like any of the tactics above, you can use the new affiliate tag.

This will allow you to generate a report in the Amazon Associates dashboard to see the earnings increase from your efforts.

Try out the tactics! Do leave a comment if any questions.

8 thoughts on “3 Growth Strategies to 10X Revenues for Amazon Affiliate Sites”

  1. Hey Mushfiq,
    I enjoy your writing and in awe of your knowledge.
    I have an Amazon affiliate site in the archery niche.
    It’s about 7 months old and has about 15 articles published ranging in word count from 800 to 3,000.
    I have used only low competition (KGR) keywords.
    So far I’m only getting 1 to 2 visitors each day.
    Your post on 10x traffic increase is a ripper, I’m going to file it for when the time comes.
    Do you have any other valuable tips for a struggling newbie mate?
    Best,
    Peter

    Reply
    • Hey Peter,

      Just carry on publishing content. You will need much more content to start getting significant traffic and also you are in the time period of getting out of the so-called Google Sandbox.

      Up the content. Improve on page SEO. Then wait.

      Good luck! I had an archery site in the past and it’s a great niche

      Reply
  2. Hey Mushfiq,

    Nice to hear from you.

    When you say ‘improve on-page SEO’ can you briefly describe specifically what you mean please?

    I’d love to have a look at your old archery site, do you know the URL?

    Cheers mate,
    Peter

    Reply
  3. Hi Mushfiq,

    Really nice article. Brief and to the point but at the same time very informative.

    We have only been in amazon affiliate marketing for a year and increasing conversions is the next step for us.

    Besides AAWP, can you recommend any other Amazon affiliate linking tools/plugins?
    Ideally, besides comparison tables one would also manage international Amazon affiliate links (US, CAN, UK, FR) as well, and also monitoring dead product links?
    I’m a bit confused as there are pros/cons for each plugin I found.

    Thanks

    Reply
    • Thanks! I use AAWP for all Amazon links. They support international Amazon geos automatically. It’s honestly the only plugin you need.

      As for out of stock products, use SiteBuddy.io for $12/month per site.

      Reply
      • Thanks for the suggestion re SiteBuddy.io

        I have a few questions related to product boxes. These are mostly autocopy content from Amazon (features, pros/cons etc…) and makes the content much longer than Frase or SurferSeo recommends it. Have you ever experienced any negative effects if you add more boxes (5+ or 10+) to a top 10 type review page? And do you also take these texts into account when auditing content with Frase?

        Reply
        • Good question.

          I have not seen any negative experiences. I do limit the character count to less than 100 characters in AAWP. This makes sure in AAWP the title, and description bullet points do not become too long.

          I do not take these boxes into account for Frase, Surfer, etc.

          Reply
  4. Hi Mushfiq,
    Thank you for sharing the valuable content with us. You have shared some great tips for the affiliate marketers like me.

    But one point I am not clear. You told about the product box. I got some idea from your writing but not clear enough to implement on my site. Actually I am using CTA button instead of product box.

    My question is, I have mentioned everything in the product description and the pros, cons sections. So what I will write in the product box?

    Would you please share an example page in which the product box is implemented?

    Thanks
    Habib

    Reply

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