This article is very timely as I was just thinking about margins given that I run a couple small websites that use Amazon Affiliate marketing.

The margin on most items is 4% (some lower, some higher e.g. luxury items are 10%).

4% is not terrible in and of itself.

But then you factor in:

- advertising costs

- conversion rates on clicks from the above

- taxes

and you get a real appreciation for how hard it must be to run high volume/low margin businesses.

Sure, you can do organic marketing etc but then you are just trading time for dollars.