I’ve been making money from the Amazon affiliate program for about 9 years and used to make a nice amount of Amazon affiliate commission (without having to do much work), but recently (last few years) I’m not making anywhere near as much money as an Amazon affiliate.

Amazon Affiliate Payments Proof

As you can see from the Amazon payments page screenshot below I did quite well in 2005, 5006, but now in 2014 I might as well not bother: click the screenshot below to see my entire Amazon affiliate earnings proof.

Amazon Affiliate Payments Proof

The above doesn’t include Amazon earnings from the UK Amazon program and other countries, but in comparison they are no where near as much: I guess if I totaled it all would be 20% more.

I’ve never taken making money from Amazon very seriously, their affiliate revenue share isn’t that fair (need a lot of sales to make serious cash) and I tend to be lazy with affiliate marketing, making money online is meant to be easy, right :-)

Been looking at new ways to make money from Amazon and trying out the EasyAzon Amazon WordPress Plugin and made sense to detail my old and more recent Amazon affiliate revenue, a before and after earnings photos post. Funny thing is I’m not making as much money from Amazon as I used to so it really is a true before and after weight loss (money loss) comparison!

Amazon Affiliate Commissions

Under your Amazon Earnings Report you can go back and look at your affiliate earnings from 2009 onwards, I made most of my Amazon money prior to 2009, so had to get a little inventive since the reports don’t go back beyond 2009 by default.

Let’s look at what money I’ve made from Amazon over the past 5 years.

Amazon Affiliate Commission

As you can see from the revenue report screenshot above I’ve only made $1,000 in 5 years, that’s poor, it’s only $200 a year!

Although the Amazon affiliate earnings reports only go back as far as 2009 (5 years of commission data) the affiliate sales data is still available and easy to access: generate a report like the one I made above and edit the URL to cover the years of interest.

The unmodified URL will look like this (this is for the Amazon.com affiliate program):

https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/network/reports/report.html?tag=&reportType=earningsReport&program=all&deviceType=all&preSelectedPeriod=yesterday&periodType=exact&startMonth=2&startDay=8&startYear=2009&endMonth=2&endDay=8&endYear=2014&submit.display.x=36&submit.display.y=14

The modified URL where I changed the 2009 year to 2005, just changed 2009 to 2005 in the browser URL form:

https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/network/reports/report.html?tag=&reportType=earningsReport&program=all&deviceType=all&preSelectedPeriod=yesterday&periodType=exact&startMonth=2&startDay=8&startYear=2005&endMonth=2&endDay=8&endYear=2014&submit.display.x=65&submit.display.y=15

And the affiliate earnings screenshot below is from the above URL.

Amazon Affiliate Earnings

Amazon Affiliate Stores

As you can see I made over $34,500 in the above period from over $400,000 worth of sales, this was when Google wasn’t very good at finding and downgrading thin affiliate Amazon stores: a thin affiliate site is where the content is just from the affiliate, nothing unique, it’s thin content with as Google puts it no added value.

My Amazon affiliate earnings reduced as Google downgraded my thin Amazon affiliate stores (think it started around 2005, but could have been earlier) and I didn’t replace them, was too busy with better paying SEO clients and developing WordPress SEO themes.

Over the past few years I’ve occasionally tested the WP Robot plugin (see my WP Robot Review), but not really promoted any of my test autoblogs. I have a really bad habit of testing ways to make money online, but not using the information I discover to actually make money online.

The $30,000+ affiliate revenue I made all those years ago could have been significantly higher, but I only built a small number of Amazon affiliate stores, in hindsight I should have made dozens of them and promoted them (only SEO promoted a few of them).

Amazon Affiliate Program Review

Buy WP RobotI have found that though the WP Robot autoblogs (without promotion) make money from AdSense ads, they aren’t doing anywhere near as well as my old Amazon affiliate stores, though I suppose $200 a year from Amazon for a few autoblog test sites I’m not promoting isn’t too bad.

I guess the online public have moved on and don’t like thin affiliate product content like they used to and don’t click the Amazon buy now buttons as much as they used to. I used to make roughly the same from Amazon as AdSense from Amazon stores, now it’s closer to a 5th: have others noticed this pattern?

I’ll add I run my autoblog tests sites with the Stallion Responsive Theme which is optimized for a high AdSense CTR, so maybe that’s why (loosing Amazon affiliate sales for AdSense clicks).

So there you go, that’s my Amazon affiliate commission history for all my years online.

EasyAzon Amazon WordPress Plugin

EasyAzon Amazon WordPress Plugin
What I’m think about doing is using the EasyAzon Amazon WordPress Plugin to make it easier to monetize some of my sites: not Amazon autoblogs or thin affiliate Amazon stores.

I should have been doing what EasyAzon can achieve, but manually for years, however I’m lazy and when creating an article I never log into Amazon and search for relevant products to promote.

Other than my test WP Robot autoblogs (the Amazon promotion is automated) and a small number of Amazon banners I added to the sidebar of a few sites many years ago (not checked them in years), I pretty much have no Amazon affiliate links!

I’ve been leaving a lot of potential Amazon affiliate sales on the table, the plugin will make it MUCH easier to add affiliate links directly from WordPress without having to log into Amazon and find products to promote etc… that is assuming I don’t stay lazy and forget to install the EasyAzon plugin :-)

David Law

David Law > AKA SEO Dave
*
: 20+ Years Experience as a Freelance SEO Consultant, WordPress SEO Expert, Internet Marketer, Developer of Multiple WordPress SEO Plugins/SEO Themes Including the Stallion Responsive Theme.

Website - SEO Gold