Most of you are much farther along than me in this whole Amazon Associates thing, which I only started doing systematically last holiday shopping season. I’m just overhauling a massive product catalog lens (a whole series of collectibles which I used to have divided up by page breaks), consolidating it and re-checking all the Amazon Associates links. Things I’m checking:
- Affiliate links are nofollowed
- All the links point to the right product (duh)
- The associates id is in every link
- Correct product image
- 4 or 5 star rating on the Amazon product page
- Reviews on the Amazon product page won’t give a potential buyer cold feet (if many reviews point out major problems with the product, this may not be a good product to recommend)
- If there’s multiple Amazon listings, look for one with a “Buy” button on the right rather than “available from these sellers”
- The Amazon product page has a reasonable price
My basic template right now is
[Thumbnail Product Image linked to Amazon listing]
[2-lines of captions under image in 9-point type:]
Photos: [Link1] [Link2] | Video [linked to video review, if there is one]
[Amazon Link] [Link to eBay module at bottom of page]
Paragraph: My own comments and review. Blah blah blah blah blah…
Links/quick blurb on other, similar items for comparison.
Instead of taking other people’s photos (bad!) I include links to their pages, but use the Amazon Associates image for the thumbnail on my own lens. Of course, if I link to another page for photos, that page must (a) have the photos near the top (b) not have anything offensive on it and (c) not be selling the product. For collectibles, at least, you’ll often find a ton of “look at my cool toy!” photos on Flickr and video reviews on YouTube.
Since eBay modules tend to load more slowly, I put them at the bottom of the page as an appendix, with a link pointing down there; they’ll have loaded in by the time visitors get far enough to look at them. This is only necessary if you’ve got an older lens with more eBay modules than the 5 we’re limited to nowadays.
