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Affiliate marketing strategy of Amazon India

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Chapter 3
Affiliate Marketing Strategy
of Amazon India
Jaspreet Kaur
Trinity Institute of Professional Studies, India

Deepti Wadera
G. D. Goenka World Institute, Lancaster University, India

ABSTRACT
Affiliate marketing is one of the oldest forms of marketing in which one refers someone
to any online product (Open Topic, n.d.). When the consumer buys this product on
the basis of the given recommendation, then the person who has referred him receives
a commission. This commission could vary from $1 to $10000, on the basis of the
type of product which has been referred (Open Topic, n.d.). The rapid development
of the term “Affiliate marketing” which is a performance based internet marketing
practice, has made the online selling market even more competitive. Many companies
are now venturing into the forming or improving their affiliate programs and giving
higher incentives to keep the affiliates loyal. This study is a qualitative study about
the Affiliate program presently run by Amazon Company.

INTRODUCTION

It analyses the success and failures of the programs when it comes to increasing
sale of their products on their online portal. Internet marketing is crucial for the
market today as many companies are resorting to the online selling platform. It is
understood by many that the process of affiliate marketing, is a process of paying
money for a successful marketed order of a merchant or a partner. (Duffy, 2005,

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-2656-8.ch003

Copyright © 2018, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
 Affiliate Marketing Strategy of Amazon India

161 - 163). But when it comes to the true essence of affiliate marketing the same is
more complicated. Affiliate marketing is by far the lowest risk marketing as there
is a direct payment to performance marketing and low profile. Affiliate marketing
is the type of Internet marketing which uses methods like SEO, Paid Search Engine
Marketing, and E-mail Marketing etc to help the merchant sell his product. In affiliate
marketing, the business pays for one or more affiliates on the basis of each visitor
or customer who buys the product through the affiliates’ marketing campaign. Thus
affiliate marketing has three core parties: advertisers, publishers and consumers.
According to the “worldwidewebsize” website (2015), a 12 web application
that records the number of index web, there are at least 4.79 billion pages. Thus the
affiliate can share information to the rest of the world just by one click. It is due to
affiliate marketing that many a business sees a lot of scope in online selling.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Different business has different business requirements. Affiliate marketing has

many versions. A business selects an appropriate affiliate marketing method which
is based on the objective of advertising and the targeted customers. The same must
also be in synch with the marketing campaign.
Affiliate marketing has become a very profitable online marketing tool for many
companies. As explained by Prussakov (2007), the affiliate programs are a new
type of marketing strategy in which the partners or affiliates advertise products of
the company. It has also been explained that this type of marketing is performance
based, as the compensation is based on the amount of clicks.
Gallaugher et al. (2001) explains that these affiliate programs provide a site
operator (who is the affiliate) with a commission which he would get if any of the
products of the partner site (merchant) is bought by customers.The affiliate marketing
program was seen to be more effective as compared to the traditional online ads.
Fiore & Collins (2001) have explained that simple banner ads, which just try and
build a brand image, will turn out to be very expensive. Also their effectiveness was
decreasing over the years. As per the Forrester Research (Fiore & Collins, 2001) the
banner ads had a click-through rate of 40% in 1994. At present however the return
rate has fallen to as low as 0.5% CTR (Pick, 2008). Thus banner ad now cannot be
seen to bring in Assured sales.
Prussakov (2007) also has a view that an affiliate program could benefit
e-commerce a lot more in increasing sales. This is because the affiliate program
helps the n online business companies to sell products on its own website, and
also provide links of products on other website thus creating a larger reach for the
customers. Affiliate programs are also known as associate, revenue-sharing, or

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Affiliate Marketing Strategy of Amazon India

partnership programs. In an affiliate program, the merchant approves to pay the

affiliate a commission (Prissakov, 2007). This form of selling becomes best for the
partner as the commission is paid only of the costumers actually makes a purchase.
Prussakov (2007) explains that a partner or merchant will allowed be in a winning
situation as fraudulent or invalid sales will not count. Affiliate marketing and Referral
Marketing are but two different type of marketing. Affiliate marketing is dependent
on the financial motivations for increasing sales at the same time Referral marketing
depends on trust and personal relationships to increase sales.

EVOLUTION OF AFFILIATE MARKETING

Another pioneer in the field of Associate marketing is Amazon’s Associates Programs.

This Affiliate program by far has over 1 million partners today (Prissakov, 2007).
The first affiliate marketing program was known as PC Flowers & Gifts on Prodigy
network which was started in 1989, and founded by William J. Tobin. Tobin. He
formulated the idea of internet affiliate marketing and tried to implement the same
on his company website. The second most prominent affiliate marketing program
was WebBuy of CDnow in 1994 by CDNow’s Buyweb Program. This was brought
in by the need of Greffen Records who wanted the fans of its artists to buy online
music easily. For the same Greffen did not want to build an online shop. Thus he
contacted CDnow for the sales service of his CDs. CDnow agreed, and Greffen
then put links on its website which redirected its users to the CDnow’s webstore.
This is how Affiliate marketing started initially (Hoffman & Novak, 2000). With
this prominent affiliate marketing program, the company made a profit of $14.
CDnow received revenue of 3% from the sales. This affiliate marketing program
made WebBuy the fourth most-visited shopping site with 700,000 visitors and 5
million page views per day (Donna and Thomas, 2000). This program was present
for his website till 1996.
The most prominent affiliate marketing program was that of Amazon which was
launched in July 1996.This program is known till date as the most famous associate
program done on a global scale for an online company (Hourigan, 2013). In this
program, Amazon’s affiliates place banner or link on the personal sites and also
on their individual books which connect to the prospect directly to the Amazon
website. When the consumer reaches the Amazon webpage from associates’ links,
the associates gets a percentage of commissions. It has been seen that Amazon had
been granted a patent (6,029,141) for its affiliate program in the year 2000 (Collins,
2000). In the year 1998, there was an establishment of two affiliate networks:
Commission Junction formulated by five students at University of California Santa
Barbara and Clickbank Network formulated by Tim and Eileen Barber. These were

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 Affiliate Marketing Strategy of Amazon India

a revolution for the affiliate marketing trend as these websites gave access of the
benefits of affiliate marketing to the small vendor’s. Also the exchanges among the
sellers and associates increased with the upcoming of these websites. At present
Commission Junctions known to be the largest affiliate marketing network in the
world. In the year 2000, the United States’ Federal Trade Commission formulated
the “Dot Com Disclosures: Information about Online Advertising” which was a
set of regulations to enter the internet-based advertising world. Also the renovation
from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, brought in a revolution in the utilization of the affiliate
marketing application on their own sites. At present there are many affiliate channels
on the Internet which have enhanced their creativity which will turn the online
market into a more attractive one. Also many an affiliate program is run today by
eBay, Amazon and Google which allow internet users to place their commercials
on their own blog posts.
Affiliate marketing ever since then has been seen to be a very effective way of
online marketing. In a report by the Internet Advertising Bureau UK (IAB) it has
been stated that 100 million direct transactions have been done by UK buyers that
brought in £8 billion revenue, which was generated by affiliate marketing. After this
British Affiliate Marketing consisted of 6% of UK Internet Economy (Prussakov,
2013). Along with the tangible financial advantage, affiliate marketing has many
intangible benefits like the establishment of reputation and market control for
companies.
In the process of Affiliate marketing the content provider, who is also called the
affiliate, places an advertisement creative which could be a banner or text link or an
advertisement link on his website. If a user clicks on the banner, he gets redirected
to the merchant’s site (partner’s site). In case the user continues to make a purchase,
the same is tracked and will lead to a commission for the referring affiliate. Thus
the affiliate program is beneficial to both parties. It is crucial for the partner or
merchants as it receive traffic and increase the sales, at the same time the affiliates
receive commission or money for the users sent.

AFFILIATE MARKETING METHODS

There are many affiliate marketing methods which are being used by companies
nowadays. Some of the most popular methods are Pay Per Click, Email, Social
Media, Website/content Search Engine Optimization etc (Heitzman, 2011). As per
Heitzmans, the theoretical nature of affiliate marketing theory is simple .when it
comes to the practical terms affiliate marketing is a very complex process. The most
crucial task is to select a suitable, and effective method to apply to the marketing
campaign. The most prominent methods have been listed below:

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Affiliate Marketing Strategy of Amazon India

Pay per Click (PPC)

This is a popular technique in the paid search method. The partner or merchant
selects some most appropriate keywords which are related to his brand or products.
The method lacks in many ways. The partner has to choose a set of words which
might not be the exact words which the consumer might type for a particular product.
Thus the partner or the merchant needs a good knowledge of the AdWords and the
company also has to keep a track of whether those exact “set of words” are being
able to generate traffic on the company’s website. The key words thus must be
relevant to track the transformation (Heitzman, 2011).

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is another trend in Affiliate marketing methods which is a good way of

promoting the company. With the help of the SEO, the company will be put among
the top result pages. It is the appearance of the website which will then increases
the likelihood of the consumer users clicking on its URL. Thus here again this
method is reliant on using the right keywords on the website which will then give
it a higher rank on the result list.

E-Mail Marketing

This is a simple way of contacting the consumer. This could also contain a link which
could direct the consumer to the company’s website. The same will be more fruitful
when a consumer volunteers to receive newsletters from a website and provides the
company with his or her e-mail address. This email address is then added to the
subscribed list that delivers promotions via e-mails.

Social Media

Social Media is another form of marketing in which much of information could be

shared on social media networks quickly. The distributing speed of social media is an
added advantage for the merchant and the customers. This media is a multipurpose
method as the same promotes products and receives feedback and sells products
all together. When the link of the company shows on the social networks, the same
also allows the advertisers to track their affiliates with the help of the sharing
management function.

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 Affiliate Marketing Strategy of Amazon India

Website Content Method

This is a method in which the affiliates can post links or write feedbacks to advertise
the products. The links can be placed at the footer or header, sidebar and also as a
separate page. Merchants can also write a post that has links which can promote
their products. There is a small difference between Website/content and Social
Media which is in the appearance of the posts. If a link has been shared on social
media, the viewers will just view a title, and an image of the post. The viewer will
then have to click on the link to know more about the product and the company. In
the Website/content method, however the viewers can see full content of the post.
Thus, there is no need of multiple clicks. It is true that affiliate marketing depends
more on SEO, in case a customer does not find a post on the social media. This thus
reduces the marketing effect. Affiliate Marketing Blog (Riemer, 2015) is another
method of attracting consumers to the website.
Apart from the affiliate marketing methods some of the affiliate marketing models
are also crucial in online marketing. The most prominent models can be said to be
the Coupons, Product Reviews, Ad banner, Incentive/Loyalty, Offline Affiliate etc.

Coupons Model World

When a Customer clicks on the coupon banners to reach to the website and buy
products. The banner which is being displayed is an affiliate link. It is through the
coupon that members had, nonmembers are attracted by the good deals and offers
made by the company website. The affiliate links make the website and effective
advertising site.

Product Reviews

It is the positive reviews of any product or service which can change the decision
of customers. As consumer is already actively searching for products on the net,
it is crucial that the product reviews, and the positive feedbacks present for the
prospective consumers to view them.

Reviews Blog

This is a new review model in affiliate marketing which compare the related websites.
(Grundig, 2015) These website bring in the comparison tables to be viewed by the
consumer. The table could contain the functions and prices of the same product
which is available on different websites at different prices. This table will also have
a direct links to buy them.

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Affiliate Marketing Strategy of Amazon India

Ad Banner

These are pictures of the product. These pictures have a back link which directs the
users to the website of the product. The back-link has the affiliate’s ID which helps
the advertisers track his affiliates. Banners can be viewed on the merchant’s personal
sites, websites or forums in which customers are attracted the most.

Incentive/Loyalty

This method is generally used by the airlines or shopping sites. The website shows
an offer to members which are like a reward bonus miles, and points, vouchers if
they follow the link.

Offline Affiliate

Offline affiliate is a crucial method which is propagated by word-of-mouth. Here

an affiliate promotes the products by recommending the same to the audience. This
is done by inviting the audience to click on the targeted link to purchase them. An
offline affiliate is broadcasted in radios or TV shows. Here the audience gets attracted
by the information which is shown in advertisement, and develops a curiosity to
access the link.

COMPENSATION METHODS

Affiliate marketing gives an opportunity to the sellers to choose the most suitable
payment method. The commissions are looked after by: Pay per Sale, Cost per
Action, Cost per Lead, and Cost per Click (Dusanka, 2010).

Revenue Sharing or Pay per Sale (PSP)

PPS or revenue sharing can be said to be the safest method for advertisers as they
only pay successful orders.

Cost per Action

Here the partner or merchant has different commissions which are reliant on the actions
of the users like their registration and signing up on the website for a newsletter. The
affiliate could be paid once the visitor has completed registration and paid for a sale

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 Affiliate Marketing Strategy of Amazon India

via credit card. In this type of affiliate marketing, the affiliate can place the links
at any place of his choice and the merchant is not to be informed about the same.

Pay per Lead (PPL)

This is a type of affiliate marketing compensation in which the affiliate is paid based
on the basis of the leads generated. These could be downloading software, watching
an advertising of the company etc. These leads are then directed to a targeted website
which the advertisers control and they then track the performance of the affiliate.
In case the visitor does follows the construction of what the affiliate link offers, the
affiliate gets paid. Pay per Lead is non-financially required for a lead.

Cost per Click (CPC) and Cost per Mile (CPM)

The CPC will pay the affiliate each time a client clicks on the advertisement,
CPM means the cost is estimated by 1000 views. CPC on the other hand was used
commonly in the past for search paid and is now not used for the fear of fraud clicks.

FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS

Strategy of Amazon in Affiliate Marketing

Amazon (Amazon.com) is an e-business which was established in May, 1996. This

merchant has a foray of products, and any product can be ordered from the website
of the company. Amazon is online markets in which people can offer their goods,
set the price, make a bid, and compares the prices and even “sell-buy” regulations.
Amazon has invested in PayPal, for getting the advantage of an easy e-payment
method which could be an add on for the buyers to complete a transaction faster
and safely. The company is also a manufacturer of many products which include
electronic devices like Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets, and Echo and Fire phones.
Amazon targets two main market regions which are the North American market
and international markets. (Reuters, 2015)
The affiliate marketing program in Amazon is called the Associates Program
Advertising. It consists of the Associates Program Advertising Fee Schedule
(“Schedule”) which is a part of the Associates Operating Agreement (n.d.) which
governs the participation in the Associates Program. This Schedule shows the
advertising fee rates which one can earn as a participant in the Program. It also
describes the limitations which apply in earning advertising fees on certain Products.
This affiliate program fee schedule is modified time to time as per the Operating

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Affiliate Marketing Strategy of Amazon India

Agreement. The affiliates can earn advertising fees for Qualifying Purchases
(Associates Program Operating Agreement, n.d.) These advertising fees are
calculated as a percentage of Qualifying Revenues which are calculated with the
“Limitations on Advertising Fee Rates for Certain Products”. Amazon also offers
the advertising fees in the form of bounties or other special offers which they name
as the “Special Offers and Promotions”. “Qualifying Revenues” is another feature
of affiliate marketing of Amazon which mean amounts they receive from customers’
Qualifying Purchases, excluding gift-wrapping fees, shipping, handling taxes etc.
Amazon also runs special or limited time offers or promotions in which an affiliate
may also earn advertising fees on Products or categories of Products which have
been excluded from earning advertising fees. This leads to the affiliates earning and
increased advertising fee rates from the regular ones. For example the advertising
rate for Kindle ebooks is 10 percent.

Process of Becoming an Affiliate Associate With Amazon

It is important to know the process of becoming an Affiliate which is undertaken

by Amazon company. First of all based on the geographical location or the target
market, the prospective affiliate will sign-up for the Amazon affiliate program. In
case the target audience is the Amazon customers in India, then one has to sign-up
for Amazon India program. In case an affiliate wants to promote all products for
Amazon, then he could sign up for Amazon affiliate program for all countries like
.jp (Japan), .au (Amazon Australia) etc.
The next step would be to get links, banners, or widgets for the affiate’s website.
For the same different types of links can be chosen. In case a prospective affiliate
has a gadget blog, then they can create a page which is called “Recommended
Gadgets”.In case one has a movie or music blog, the affiliate can create a widget
on the sidebar which has the movie’s DVD affiliate link.
The affiliate can also grab links for each product at Amazon and place them
on their blog as per their convenience. The affiliates can then start linking their
products with that ID and can start earning. For becoming an affiliate for Amazon,
the prospective affiliate has to sign up using this link: https://affiliate-program.
amazon.com on the Amazon website.

REQUIREMENTS NEEDED BY AFFILIATES TO START

EARNING FROM AFFILIATE MARKETING ON AMAZON

To Become an Amazon Affiliate with the Amazon Affiliate Program the Affiliate
Will Need the Following:

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 Affiliate Marketing Strategy of Amazon India

• Profitable Segment: The website or blog of the Affiliate will have to be

made on a topic on which one will be selling products. This topic should be
related to the products which are being sold on the Amazon website through
the Amazon Affiliate Marketing program.
• Domain and Hosting: The affiliate has to then create a domain for his blog
or website.
• The Blog or a Website: The affiliates’ blog or website should now have
content about the topic and should list the related products. The sales of the
affiliate will come from this website. The affiliates could also build a niche
affiliate site for the same.
• Quality of Content: For attracting customers to the blog/website of the
affiliates, one has to motivate the customers to purchase via the affiliate link.
• Ranking in Google: For reaching a higher number of buyers, one has to
pay for getting a higher rank in the Google ranking. A higher rank and an
appropriate keyword will assure that the prospective consumers reaches the
website or blog of the Affiliate. This will increase the visibility of the Amazon
link on the Affiliates’ blog or website.
• Traffic Gets Converted: The People visiting the blog or website of the
affiliate should purchase the product one is selling.

Profitable Niche of the Affiliate

The affiliate has to find the right niche to work with. The niche is the base of the
entire money making operation which is being conducted by the Amazon Affiliate.
Here in the idea generation stage one will need to research and find out the most
profitable segment which could give business through the affiliate’s website.
To find out a profitable niche for the affiliate’s website or blog, the affiliate should
visit the Amazon website and browse the various departments of goods which are
listed on the website. After visiting the website, the affiliate should List down all
the departments in which he or she has a knowledge or skills related to the product.
In each of the department of products listed on the Amazon’s website, within each
department there would be a further classification of a category of products. The
affiliate should choose the categories in which he is comfortable working in. Also the
affiliate should study the amount of commission which is being offered by Amazon
on the selected Categories. Navigate to the chosen Category. Here the affiliate will
be able to see ‘Bestsellers’ which are mentioned in each category name. Thus one
can find the best selling products in each category. In case the buyers already know
the brand and like to buy the brand then it becomes easier for the affiliate too sell
it. Thus when one clicks the Bestsellers, this will narrow down the products which
would be more likely to be sold faster by the affiliate. This would give the affiliate

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Affiliate Marketing Strategy of Amazon India

a higher profit. Where the netseller talk of the best profits from a set of product
based on sales of volumes, another section called Hot New Releases lists the best
selling new and future products in this category.
The affiliate has to study the two sections so as to get an idea of the great product
ideas which can be sold by the affiliate. The affiliate should search for products with
high MRP and with good reviews. If an affiliate chooses a product with a higher
MRP, then this would lead to a higher commission %. At the same time better reviews
show the popularity of the product. The affiliate can work with any one product
which is listed in these sections, or with a number of products listed on the Amazon
website. The benefit of becoming an affiliate for a product listed in either of these
sections, one could assure the product popularity for the same. This is because one
could be sure that buyers like these products and will surely buy these products for
the given category. Here in this stage one can choose to work with one or more than
one product or with a whole category. A profitable niche will help the affiliate gain
the targeted profit. For the same a study of the current competition is also to be
done. The popular sites which sell the same product or same product category also
have to be done. The affiliate also has to track as to how many monthly searches
are happening on Google for the chosen product and category. It is crucial for the
affiliate to write quality content on the chosen product or category. Once the niche
is decided,it will be easy to design a website or blog on this parameter. Some of
the good niche sites doing well on Amazon are Body Building, Smart Phones, Best
Laptops, Weight loss,Kids growth etc.
After a niche is selected the next task would be to book a domain. One could go
for a generic name or try and find a keyword which is a rich domain. It is preferred
to go for the keyword rich domain. One could go for websites like GoDaddy.com
to book their domains. Many websites provide a domain at a real easy and low cost
of Rs 99/- for an year.
Once the domain is in place, the next step would be getting a good hosting
service. One could go for Hostgator or Bluehost hosting. The affiliate could create
their own blog with websites like WordPress.
The next step now would be the content creation. One needs to add interesting
content to the blog. Thus one has to choose wisely on the topics one wants to write
on. The affiliate can use
Google auto suggest or ubersuggest.org which could help the affiliate with an
appropriate popular keyword that could be sued to design topics on which the blog
could be written.
The blog should stress on talking about topics and questions which the buyers
would ask before they make a purchase. It is true that many potential buyers are
looking for answers to confirm their decisions. Thus the blog should suggest the
customer an appropriate answer to the choice of products the consumers is looking

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at. The affiliate could include phrases like 5 things you need to know before you
buy a Product or the review of the product and the comparison between two good
products. The Affiliate may have to hire a content writer for the same.
In case the affiliate is working on a particular niche of segment, the content
writing becomes easier. A good content of 8-10 pages will be good enough which
will stress on promoting the website.
The website or blog has to be promoted among the Social Sharing platform.
Common friends could share the blog to known and prospective friends or customers.
The post shared on the social media should add to the value and knowledge. The
affiliate could also use paid methods to promote the niche website. Also the website
should have a good ranking among the other search engines. Thus a lot of stress is
to be given to the SEO for your niche website. In case it does rank on the top for the
given keywords in a SEO,then the same will start minting a good amount of money
every month. This will increase the profit of the Affiliate.

Points to Keep in Mind When Designing a Niche Website

Although the above discussion in the research has listed the steps which are involved
in the successful listing of an affiliate and the efficient working of the affiliate to
gain profit, there are still some key points one needs to remember when one is
designing the niche website.
While creating a niche website, the affiliate has to remember that Affiliate
marketing is not pure selling. It is very different form a regular selling exercise.
Also the type of consumers who shop through online websites, are also different
from those who shop from physical shops. It may also be noted that the visitors to
the blog of the affiliate are already aware of the Amazon website and they can buy
directly form it. The reason why a consumers will go to an Affiliate’s blog and not
to the websites directly is because he needs some guidance and recommendation on
a particular product he is about to buy. Thus the affiliate has to make sure that the
content of the website or blog is specific and not general. It should be about the same
niche category of product he is targeting. It should be able to successfully compare
the product with different products in its category. The blog should also be able to
suggest the customers the websites from which he could buy the suggested product
at the cheapest price. For the same the affiliate will himself have to do a thorough
research on the niche category of the product. Any amount of wrong information
can distort the trust of the customers forever.
Another factor which the affiliate has to take care of is that the content created
should add value to the buyer. In case the buyer is able to make a decision after
reading the post on the blog, then he will surely buy the product using the affiliate’s
buy button.

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Affiliate Marketing Strategy of Amazon India

One way of making money from Amazon affiliate would be to compare the main
product with 2-3 other products that people could be confused with while making
a buying call. In case the affiliate is successful in convincing the buyers about the
main product on his blog and how the same is better that the rest, the buyer would
then surely buy from the Affiliate’s websites link.
For product with high involvement, the buyers like to take peoples’ review. Thus
it is crucial to have such reviews about the product already listed on your website.
It is not suggested to make false claims just to sell the product. This might work
well for the first purchase, but the same might leave the customers dissatisfied for
the rest of his life with your blog.There might be times when the customers may
not make money but one has to be patient in the beginning and wait for the traffic
to increase on the website.
Traffic is the most import factor in making money from affiliate programs; thus
promoting the website in all possible ways with the help of SEO and Social media
is extremely crucial.
Links within text gets you maximum conversions when you compare it with a
banner ad or buy button; thus the use of contextual links is suggested.
One has to be extremely careful when one is choosing a topic which are pre-
buying. Topics related to post buying will leave less chances to make money. Eg.
Which one to buy Samsung Galaxy S3 Neo or Nokia Lumia 730 Dual SIM? Will
convert more than how to take better pictures with Samsung S3 Neo.
It has to be taken care that in festive seasons like that of Diwali the sales will
go high, thus one should do heavy promotion in these days as the conversion ratios
would be high at such times.
The affiliate should make sure that the affiliate only puts in affiliate links of the
products which are highly relevant to the post or else it will be an opportunity lost.

FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION

Affiliate marketing has been used successfully by Amazon as a long-standing

monetization strategy on the web. What is crucial is that Affiliate marketing should
generate revenue success for the merchant. Many companies still don’t invest in
resources like SEO and paid search. The original model for affiliate sites has always
been to find a product to promote; list the top 50 keywords for search and write 50
pages of technically unique content centered on those keywords to build a website
around the program.
These websites however had very little unique value for the consumer as compared
to the affiliate marketing techniques sued today. Although these traditional techniques

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 Affiliate Marketing Strategy of Amazon India

did help in connecting consumers searching for a product and the brand offering
the same but they had no search presence themselves.
There are but some suggestion which Amazon needs to keep in mind while
propagating its Affiliate marketing program.

Limiting the Focus of Affiliate Marketing

It so happens that when one hears that a company is earning millions from a given
product, companies like Amazon get lured to expand the affiliate marketing programs
without focusing on the need of the same. It would not be good ideas to have 20 to
30 websites in random niche all in a pitiful domain authority not generating enough
sales to sustain.
It would be good to experiment with different niche segment but one should
remain focused on a particular category of consumers. Thus just a single website
would be enough for Affiliate marketing programs.

Content for Competition

The affiliates could be used as channel adding value to the prospective consumers.
The company needs to act quickly with content marketing. A company could spend
a lot of time approving the content strategy, but if the same is done by the affiliate,
the process could be quicker. Not all posts need an affiliate link.

Brand Building Is the Merchants’ Responsibility

It is true that the affiliate can help bring traffic for the company. At the same time it
is Amazon itself which will have to strengthen its brand. Along with being affiliate
sites, Amazon should also focus on being a strong brand.
Over time, affiliate marketers will find it increasingly difficult to succeed without
a brand that user’s trust, so consider what you’re doing to develop the brand of your
affiliate website.

Recurring Affiliate Revenue

Very often affiliate marketing programs focus on a one-time payouts. The onetime
payment but do not help in surviving the major changes in the company strategy.
Thus it can be said that one should be building up a portion the affiliate revenue in
recurring revenue.

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Affiliate Marketing Strategy of Amazon India

Single Traffic Source

It is crucial to diversify the traffic. The company should know its audience. This
means that once the consumers do reach the website the company should be able to
build a long term relation with the consumers. Thus one should own the audience
not rent it.

Mobile as a Tool for Affiliate Marketing

In November 2014, mobile accounted for 46% of all affiliate clicks. The sites to
which the traffic is being sent should then be mobile friendly. A mobile friendly site
could become a good strategy for outranking the non-mobile friendly competitors
in the search results. This holds true when now more and more consumers are
purchasing from mobile devices.

Break the Trends

Amazon needs to differentiate between seasonal and breakout trends. Seasonal

trends are recurring, and can be predicted but the Breakout trends are much harder
to predict. The predictions of experts are the best way to beat competition. The same
can be done by experimenting with the search query.

Select Products to Be Promoted

Some product which range from $0.10 commissions to $100 commissions could
be included in affiliate marketing program. This would lead to a large volume of
low commission sales which will create a solid foundation of the affiliate revenue
but the real growth comes from high commission sales. Thus the Merchant should
find products that add value to the site’s readers, and that also have the potential to
increase the site’s revenue by an order of magnitude.

Stress on Topic Targeting

Targeting individual keyword is difficult for the merchant wanting to succeed in

affiliate marketing. Thus Amazon should shift towards topic-targeting, and stress
on the capturing long tail traffic.

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 Affiliate Marketing Strategy of Amazon India

Train the Affiliates to Become Advocates

As affiliate marketers, the job of the affiliate is traditionally only to sell. Rather an
affiliate should also help the reader to get what he wants in the page of the merchant.
By helping your reader and not being an unnecessary step in the sales funnel,
you will find more sales in your affiliate account.
Affiliate marketing has been introduced in India by many online companies.
India being a big and diverse market place with growing online business has a
potential for innovative and effective business models. Another favorable situation
for affiliate marketing is its lower customer acquisition cost, and marketing expenses.
Affiliates will get business opportunity through their websites or blogs. Most of
these affiliate programs aligning with Indian bloggers, social media platforms,
and small business owners through their website to advertise their product and
services. In order to attract affiliates to join affiliate programmes various Indian
and multinational companies have started their affiliate programs in India offering
different types of incentives models. These days, affiliates marketing are one of
the important way to generate revenue for bloggers and other website owners. The
companies are improving on the transparency in the business deals. In countries
like India and China considering possibilities of frauds and bureaucratic setup of
rules and regulations getting Ad sense license is difficult and takes around 6 to 12
months to get the license. It can be concluded from the case study that the affiliate
marketing shall be growing extensively in coming years. The firms have to go a
step ahead of their present traditional business models and adapt to cost effective
models which can be achieved by affiliate network. The affiliate marketing is a useful
model for the small businesses for generating earnings. The new of technology, and
innovations will help small companies to benefit from affiliate marketing in future.

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