3 Ways To Move Forward From The Amazon Commission Cut
It was about 2 am last night, when I was about to sleep, when an email from Amazon caught my eye.
The greatest mistake that I've made is openning up that email that looks like this:
As my mind was shutting down, the whole thing sounds like a bad nightmare, and I wish that it goes off when I woke up.
Amazon Slashes Most Categories By More Than 50%
By now, if you're promoting Amazon products, you're aware that most categories suffeered a cut in commission by more than 50%.
I have a site promoting health products, which leaves me a miserly 1%.
I'm building a site on headphones, which goes from 6% to 3%.
An allergy site that's been gaining tracion is bound to lose more than 50% of revenue.
Like you, I've gone through the roller coaster of emotions. Vicious thoughts are hurled at Amazon.
But in the end, it's how the world works. It also reminds myself what being an online entrepreneur is all about.
Nothing personal, but purely business.
My Strategy In Going Forward
1. Diversification
Dylan has give great advice in diversifying your affliate vendor. After all, Amazon isn't the only one out there.
Jay, in his quick training video, shows how easy it is to look for other affiliate network.
I've wasted no time in looking for alternatives for what I've promotting.
Popular Affiliate Networks That You Should Look Into.
- CJ.com
- Rakuten Marketing
- ShareASale
- AWin
Many brands are offering their affiliate marketing program through these network. It's easy to setup an account at CJ.com. There's no approval in signing up, but an approval is probably needed for the different vendor affiliate program.
It's harder to sign up for ShareASale, as it'll vet your application. My first attempt failed, and I'm trying out with my 2nd site.
RakutenMarketing is also considerably easy to sign up.
The beauty with these platforms is that they have a search tool that let you find potential vendors, by typing the keyword of the product.
You'll also find all the necessary details (commission rates, cookies, etc.) within the platform)
Private Affiliate Program
Some brands are still sticking with their own affiliate program, which aren't hosted on these popular affilate network.
Just Google your 'product' + affiliate program and you'll find them. Chances are, most of these suppliers offer reasonably good commission.
2. Promote Digital Products
If you're in a niche where it's possible to offer related digital products, you'll want to do so.
Digital products often offer larger commission.A single sale will net you around 30% at minimum. There are some digital products that offer up to 75% in commission.
I have a site that's promoting wellness products. Instead of wasting time on phsyical products, I'll be focusing more on hypnosis downloads, meditation app and other self-development courses.
If you're promoting fitness products, maybe you can get your readers to sign up for fitness courses or yoga training?
3. Complement with DropShipping
If you've built a site that has been gaining traffic, and you have no options but promoting phsyical products, do consider doing dropshipping.
Dropshipping may take up more of your time initially, but you can eventually set up a team to manage customer service and fulfillment.
I've spent a few days learning how to dropship from Shopify, when my country went into lockdown.
Considering that Shopify is offering 90 days of free trial, it's foolish not to take up the opportunity.
Technically, it's possible to create a subdomain for your website and point to a Shopify store.
I'll be doing this for one of my site, to make up for the loss of revenue.
Affiliate Marketers Need To Be More Dynamics
If there's a lesson in this.
You can't put all your eggs in the Amazon basket or a Google basket.
Revamping the site, going thorugh the pages, applying for new affiliate programs, trying out new strategies.
They are going to be tough.
But building an online business is never easy. The only way forward is to plan, take action and persevere.
I'm done with frustration. I'm taking action. I hope you'll be too.
Don't give up yet.
Cheers,
Kenny
Recent Comments
34
That's the best advice! Once you've voiced your frustration and anger, pull up your britches and get to work! Amazon be damned!
We now have to train our readers to not shop at Amazon. Gently teach them not to feed the corporate monsters like Amazon, and instead support smaller companies.
It won't be easy, but it's in our best interest to lead our readers toward a new way of doing business. Because of the internet, people are aware of how much Bezos makes, and how greedy he appears. And more and more people are refusing to shop at Amazon. Let's help our readers join this trend.
It will take a long time to convince everyone that corporate monsters such as Amazon should be boycotted, but it will be worth it, I think.
Now get out there and find some great affiliate programs. Best of luck to you all!
Tracy
Yes. It is still possible to get better deals at other companies. For example, Amazon has reduced vitamins to 1%, but iHerb is still giving out 5%.
I’m newer here. I’ve got a e-commerce site on Shopify that’s a year and a half old, I have lots of inventory I’d love to move and I just started getting into dropshipping with my store but cureious to try a niche outside of clothing right now and trying to figure out how a sub domain would work with pointing it to a shopify store? Can anyone help? I’m not sure if this is part of the training as I wouldn’t think so but I’d love to use more blogging and keyword research for my site to get more organic traffic.
Personally, I wouldn’t use a sub domain. I would buy a domain and the build out the domain using the content creation tactics taught here.
And then simply have natural links going from that domain to your store. You can easily move people from that site to your store doing that.
You can also create best of content. And this is where you can make a post listing the top 8 or 10 products.
For example, the top 10 Kites. And then again have a link for each product going to your store. There is so much you can do.
You can also buy your domain here and take advantage of the free hosting, SSL and such.
If you already have a Shopify store, I'll suggest sticking with a new domain.
The reason that I'm suggesting a subdomain is for my site, which is already established. (plus, I'll save on the domain renewal fee)
Using a new domain is easier though, as there's no manual configuration needed.
My site is already established too. I’ll probably just start linking to items in my shopify store in my blogs.
How about adding a shop to your existing website with WooCommerce plugin (if you have a theme that supports WooCommerce)? Then you would have a shop on the same website as your blog, and you don't need to pay for Shopify.
I've never explored on WooCommerce. I'm going to dropship and I'm using Thrive Themes now. What's your experience with it?
I’m dropshipping and loving it! I’m just getting started with affiliate marketing/blogging so I’ll see how it goes with tie the two together!
I haven't started with dropshipping yet, but I'm researching the topic, and WooCommerce seems like the best option. We don't need to pay for many tools, because we already have what we need as Wealthy Affiliate members.
There's live training about WooCommerce here in WA as well: WooCommerce Niche Site Build LIVE!
I scanned through Woocommerce. You'll need to get another plugin to dropship. And it cost around $20. There are a few plugins around.
The plugin allow you to automatically place order, update price and fulfillment. Else, it's going to be a hassle.
With Shopify, you'll pay around $30 per month, but you can use Oberlo for dropship-automation, which is free for the basic plan.
I guess I'm sticking with the latter as I've set up the store..
Yes, you need a paid plugin for automation. But I guess you can do it manually when you're beginning, and then when you start getting more orders you can buy the plugin for automation.
Thanks for the great post! I was also very disappointed to read the e-mail from Amazon, but I had already figured out it's better to move on to other affiliate programs. Because Amazon has delays in shipping many products now due to the GOVID-19 crisis; who wants to even shop there anymore?
I'm already a member on ShareaSale, because CrateJoy (which I promote) moved their affiliate program to ShareaSale. On ShareaSale, I found other affiliate programs too and applied for couple of them. I was already accepted for one program with 16% commission (much better than Amazon commission!). Another affiliate program on ShareaSale declined my application, but I don't mind.
I'm also in Awin and affiliate of couple of affiliate programs there.
Promoting my own products is also something I'm working on. And I'm going to put more effort to that now. Especially print on demand, because I don't need to do the shipping for that, but I can earn more than on affiliate programs.
That's great news from you.
And I really like the approach you take in promoting your own products.
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We have had as many as 9,000 new affiliates join Awin.com and ShareASale.com looking for new merchants to replace Amazon. They've been hugely successful. Hoping everyone is finding the replacements they need for anything they ever promoted on Amazon, because 99 out of 100 times that also means a higher commission rate and longer cookie too!