If you have a blog, you’ve probably thought about some ways to monetize your site.  One way that a lot of people earn some incremental income (or really good incomes) from their sites is with affiliate relationships with either eBay, Amazon, or other online marketplaces.  Some affiliate with Buy.com as well.

Amazon has some very useful ways to help you promote their products from your blog and gives you a cut of each sale you make.  It’s definitely not an easy thing to do and can take some work figuring out just what kind of product will actually sell.  

The truth is that not every product that seems to make sense to put in front of your specific audience will actually be a product that sells.  In an article at makeuseof.com, Dean Sherwin has some valuable advice on how to integrate an Amazon store into your site (click the link to read) that will help make sales for you.

Three good points that Dean makes are the following:

• People are not going to buy a $2,000 laptop through your site.  Just not going to happen–even though it would seem to make sense adding a link to this kind of product in an online review of it.  If people can go down the street to Best Buy or Wal-Mart to buy something, that’s probably where they’re going to go.

That being said…

• Visitors to your website will buy cheaper items (say around $10) a lot of the time.  They will also purchase items off your site that can generally only be found online.  In other words, if it’s only available online and there isn’t a physical store nearby “competing” with you, visitors may just buy from you.
• Build a separate page for your store and link to it in your navigation with the word “Store.”  Makes sense right?

If you already have an Amazon store or some products linked from your website or you’re looking for a way to (pretty darn easily) add a store to your site, check out this article.

Related posts:

1. The Amazon Shopping Experience: Why We Buy
2. Goodbye Amazon Affiliate Links
3. Build Your Online Business Slowly