As you probably know, Amazon’s affiliate commissions are pretty low compared to most affiliate programs (averaging around 4% per product.)

In this quarter so far, my sites have generated over $1,300 worth of sales, which earned me a whopping $50 bucks.

With most affiliate programs, that kind of revenue would generate at least $300 in commissions.

Nevertheless, Amazon.com is still worth considering as an additional revenue option, simply because they have great name recognition.

Also, Amazon suggests more products to buy during checkout, and people tend to purchase more than they originally intended. Of course, you earn commissions for those products too.

Just last week I earned $5.00 for a baby’s car seat and I am 100% sure I’ve never specifically recommended such a product from any of my sites.

Not to mention they sell almost anything. So if you happen to be endorsing a product, chances are, Amazon has it. You can refer your visitors to their site and earn a commission.

Widget-ize Your Site

In September of last year, Amazon introduced widgets to their affiliate program. Widgets are simply snippets of code that generate dynamic advertisements that you can customize.

Since the initial widget release, they’ve added several different varieties. I have to admit, they’re kinda fun to play around with.

Their most recent release (May, 2008) is the MP3 widget. If you have a music-related site or blog, you can promote specific songs right on your page, and earn a 10% commission for any sales made.

There’s even a widget that works a lot like Google AdSense. It’s called Omakase. You place the code on your page and Amazon will promote products that fit within your content.

I finally got around to seeing how the widgets would perform on my sites. My commissions are up about 20%, so they definitely seem to have an impact.

Lately I’ve been testing the widgets on the header of flat-stomach-exercises.com. The one I have up now is called “My Favorites” and it just happens to be my favorite widget so far.

You can choose which products you want to add to your widget and customize the colors. Notice how the widget blends nicely into my header’s background. This can all be controlled through Amazon’s affiliate management area where you can specify hex color values.

And if you want to make a change to the products or colors in your widget, you can update them at Amazon without having to update the code on your page. I even added the title, “Lisa’s Flat Stomach Product Recommendations” to give it a more personalized touch.

A lot of people pass on the Amazon.com program because of its low commissions. It’s not even close to being one of my top money makers, but the revenue is still a nice supplement, and if nothing else, it pays all my site’s hosting costs for the year.

Now that they provide so many types of widgets and different ways to link to their products (a specific search result, category, product cloud, etc.), it’s fun to experiment and see what cool ways you can incorporate Amazon products into your site.

So don’t discount Amazon’s affiliate program yet. If you haven’t tried their widgets, join the program or login to your account to see what they offer. You may find it’s worth it.