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Comment by diminish | Hacker News Reader

is anyone making 4 or more digits monthly revenue from Amazon associates or any other affiliate program?

Last month I did. I have a number of affiliate sites, most with amazon that pull in $100-$200/mo.

At the start of the year I moved over to take advantage of their bounty program. $3-$5 per free trial signup. Movies for example included Amazon Video, HBO, and stars. So if someone tried out all 3 I got $9.

I sell books on amazon as well. My website for one series has an audible affiliate link. An audible signup = $5. If they first check out my audio book I get a percentage of the book cost and if they stay subbed for 61 days I get a $50 bonus. If they sign up for Kindle Unlimited to read it I get $3 + page reads from the book.

The straight affiliate product sites are going to take a hit. One was for an electronics niche.

There is an entire cottage industry of these folks. (I'd guess 1~2 orders of magnitude more common than e.g. SaaS companies in the same revenue range.)

I used to make close to 5 digits in the fall months.

Christmas/Black Friday shopping, or was it a fall specific product? EG. were you selling rakes?

If you've ever wondered why so many people review cameras, it's because it's a relatively easy way to rack up high-cost, good %, affiliate returns.

https://empireflippers.com/marketplace/

For sale because they are earning the current owners too much money, no doubt.

Or their business model is to build up and then flip/exit.

Clearly. Whether or not they are buying traffic is a different story. I wonder how often the traffic disappears immediately after sale? Awful lot of those listings have recent traffic inflations bumping up average revenue...

It's possible, though generally Google ranking is more important than traffic. (Many sites use PBNs to impact ranking, but generally this is disclosed)

My site made over $20k last year from Amazon. I've always known I could lose this income at any moment due to a change in Amazon's policies or a change in Google's algorithms.

Luckily this change shouldn't impact me too significantly since my primary niche will be in the 7% bracket and I was making 7-8% previously.

wirecutter is/was.

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