Busby SEO Test Amazon Affiliate aStore Review
Perhaps the most popular affiliate program, joined by Busby SEO Test participants, on the Internet today is that of Amazon.com. Its diverse products made it the most attractive online income program to participate in. The online giant continuously works on its program to keep affiliates happy and be bold to experiment further.
The Amazon aStore is not really new. It has been there for quite sometime now. It allows you to create full online store and even brand it. For this blog post, let me focus on the aStore creation process and the lessons learned I had. If lucky, some of the Amazon affiliate program folks will be able to read this and hopefully they can work on the problems I’m coping with.
Building an aStore
Creating an aStore is like making an e-commerce website. It requires the affiliate to plan ahead and consider the concerns of the prospective consumer to come up with the proper design.
Products can be added individually, by listmania, or by category. In creating the Bookstore site, I added the products individually by focusing on a keyword and by author name in another area.
Minus points: Products are added one by one. There’s no check box feature where you can select several products and add them at once. The order of the listing does not dynamically change either and there’s no drag-and-drop feature for affiliate members to change the order.
In creating the Birthstones Jewelry site, I tried categorizing the products according to zodiac sign and stated a keyword to only shows products that fits each.
One of the options Amazon gave is to include subcategories. For the jewelry category, that would be: accessories, body jewelry, bracelets, brooches and pins, charms, children’s jewelry, earrings, engagement, jewelry sets, men’s jewelry, necklaces and pendants, religious jewelry, rings, wedding and anniversary.
Minus points: That is supposed to be a good thing. However, the keyword parameter I stated does not get carried out in the subcategories that made me remove it. The removal part can’t be done by just unclicking the inclusion box, you will need to delete and add it back again (without the subcategories option).
To be able to add the subcategories I desire, will need to do them one by one.
Create duplicate stores
The nice thing about Amazon aStore is that once you’ve completed one, you can duplicate it and make further customization. For the Birthstones site, I decided to duplicate and create an all-men’s jewelry variation. Then edits were done on the categories (pointing to men’s jewelry), editing of the site name, and other settings.
Minus points: I was hoping that I’ll be given an option to edit a category sitewide and define men’s jewelry once and it will apply to all. Unfortunately, that isn’t so and therefore needs to be done per product category.
I noticed also that there are some products that creep in the men’s jewelry subcategory that does not fit it at all. I hope there’ll be a feature that we can tag a product and inform Amazon right away that this product should not be in there.
Moving forward
There is also the challenge of letting the target market be aware that your aStore exist and attract prospective customers. All the things you know about promoting a website or blog applies in this case and even more. I will share our experience on this in the future.
November 16th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Chris Andersen wrote a great book on the subject of free. I believe it?s still available, free, in audio form from audible. The wonderful thing about the internet is it gives all of us the chance to build relationships at little more cost than our time. Which is slowly killing off the yellow highlighter scorched-earth crowd who still believe they only have one shot at you. Thanks for the great post.