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Comment by jay_kyburz | Hacker News Reader

This was actually my plan (sort of) for my online sci-fi strategy game Neptune's Pride when I ditched AdSense.

I was going to hand select things on Amazon that my players would be interested in. Science Fiction books, dvd box sets, that kind of thing. Then present them to the players with my affiliate code where I would normally show a google ad.

I didn't fully implement the idea because I think the affiliate rewards are so small I was worried the math didn't make it worthwhile. But I'd still like to try one day.

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This method is not really for product affiliate ads (unless you have a whole shopping section of your site devoted for that...). Amazon links are for penny-chasers anyways.

You're really supposed to curate display ads. But, this means you'll have to make the call to your local advertisers to actually sell the ads. ("Hey do you want to place an ad on our site for 6 months for $500? I'll take you out for pizza & beer if you're interested so we can talk details.") You're not going to sell display ads to Amazon, but you might for your local gaming shop.

Selling all your inventory this way is incredibly unrealistic for most people.

Then focus on developing an audience. Don't even bother chasing pennies for programmatic ads.

Once you have your audience, it becomes easier to sell ads this way.

Depends on your product/service category. There are sole operators making $x0k/mo from Amazon's affiliate program because they picked an overlooked category and promoted big ticket items. 5% of a $15 book is a pittance, but 5% of something that's $x00 is a different story.

My company's blog does this for related products that we don't personally sell in our online shop. It's good to the tune for $10k/year without trying much, but you have to get good at writing the copy into real blog posts, not just random spam. It works pretty well. Conversion rate post-click of about 8.5% this month.

If you don't mind, please drop a link to your company blog. It's good to see examples.

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