Word Press is a good site to create traffic.  I have also signed up in Word Press and hopefully get good traffic from it.  It uses blogrolls and banners.  Good suggestion here Gary.

Hello again everyone!

Yeah, I'm totally addicted to WP now. I actually set up my First Amazon Widget as I wrote this review. In my opinion, with the ability to customize them, and specify highly relevant content, widgets are a really smart way to connect with your audience, and monetize at the same time.

Entitled "How To Monetize Your Site With Widgets", this session was hosted by Zahid Khan, Product Manager,  Amazon

With him were Erin Friedman, Senior Marketing Manager, Amazon Associates, and Angela Pak, Marketing Manager, Amazon Associates.

Amazon.com is one of the oldest and most successful affiliate programs on the internet.

Commissions vary from 4% for electronics to 20% for Digital Products.

They offer a really nice toolset for affiliates, including static links and banners, the a-store, widgets, and their latest addition, SiteStripe, which lets you instantly create links to any product while you're browsing on amazon like a consumer.

Astore is a personallized storefront that you can design. Good for personalizing the shopping experience. The only time they leave your site is checkout.

The topic of discussion, however, is Widgets.

First, what the hell is a widget?

It's a clever portmanteau of "Web" & "Gadget". They're a window into a specific amazon functionality. Viewers can use and access those features and functions without ever leaving your site. Widgets are highly customizable to match site style, more and often more feature rich and more interactive than your standard banner ad. Widgets will often use sophisticated techniques for automatically displaying relevant products.

There is a large number of different widgets to choose from.

A good examples is the Auto Part widget, which is very specific to the auto parts industry. You might have that on a blog following a restoration project, or dedicated to a particular type of car.

The Mp3 clips widget lets viewers sample music and cover art, without leaving your site.

You can have a widget that shows the latest Deals and promotions, and even have one that shows their timed lightning deals.

Widgets can be keyword populated, and you are able to personalize then with a default search term.

Widgets are not fully ads, not fully content. They blur the line. They aren't just an ad anymore, you can use them as content and actually use them to compliment your own content. That means higher click thorough rates, and higher conversions.

Publishers that use widgets have a more loyal readership. They like to come back to see what you recommend.

BEST PRACTICES

Insider tips on how to get the most from your widget.

Choose the best widget for the job.
1. Do whats best for your site. No such thing as a one size fits all widget. Do you have a product review site? Check out the my favorites or the carousel widget, to properly display your reviewed products.

Do you have a personal blog you simply want to monetize? Then you should check out the wish list widget, and even try a personalized carousel. Media site, movie or music review site? MP3 or TV and Movie preview widgets.

Placement is critical = What size and where?
Center page typically works best when you have highly topical content or one-off content. For example, you can use the 250X250 MP3 clips widget inside of a blog post about a concert you recently attended. Might not do so well in the banner or sidebar location.

Those products should be relevant over MANY pages, and longer periods of time. For example, if you have a gaming console site, have a Ferris heel style carousel in the sidebar with gaming products.

A lot of widgets have free-size capabilities, you can use a slider to change the size and shape of your widget. They also have standard IAB sizes. You are encouraged to use the free size capabilities to reduce ad-blindness. Consumers are more likely to interact with your widget if it's NOT a standard IAB size.

Use widgets as a self expression tool, not just an ad.

When you do that, to personalize it, you'll get higher Click through rates.

There are two ways to personalize the widget itself. One is to add user comments about the products in the widget.
IF you don't have time to add comments to each product, make sure you at least use a personalized widget title. It reduces ad-blindness, and encourage your viewers to click through.

Changing content frequently is critical to higher click through rates.
There are two ways to add products to a widget. One is hand picked and the other is to let amazon decide.

Hand picked always beats automated content.
If you have the time to hand pick product, you should. If you don't have time to pick individual products, use the relevant subcategories within amazon to focus the products into a more relevant display.

Customers and viewers expect you to update regularly.
Widgets that are updated in the widget store are automatically updated across the board.

The net result is that by being highly relevant you will increase clickthroughs.

Make sure you test what works best on your site.

What not to do!

Don't overuse them. Don't plaster your page with tons of widgets. Not only does it look back, but It will make your page longer to load, and you will lose customers.

If something doesn't work for you, don't just throw it away or give up on it. Tweak it until you hit on what works for you.

Here are some questions and answers that I noted from the session.
Q. can you showcase 3rd party seller product?
A. Yes, anything you can search for, can be showcased in a widget.
Q. Do you have contextual widgets?
A. Yes, specifically, the Omakase widget. Very easy to add, and they crawl your site and show relevant content. Other widgets let you handpick, You can also get highly specific with a best sellers widget, for example.
Q. What happens to a product out of stock, or pre-order products?
A. Not certain, hunch is that they won't show up until they're stocked.
Q. Any User targeting?
A. In testing phase. Highly experimental at this point, but they're "working on it".
Q. If you have a very wide site with 100,000 or a million pages, do you have to have a different API defined for each one?
A. There is a programmatic way to do that. Widget Source lets you have complete programmatic control of your widgets. You can use them to place individual widgets, contextually, automatically. (<-AWESOME!)

As always, never hesitate to hit me up if you have any questions!

Peace!
-Mike

Last edited by Mike Oyama (2009-08-22 04:54:02)

just a reminder goddes, do not put affiliate links in message, that is why we have signatures... please edit your reply asap.
to create your signature click on profile on top of this page, and select signatures

Last edited by jlongoria (2009-09-17 19:01:56)

You just got reported.

Thanks Gary, I just signed up with you under your blog and will start using your tips. Thanks. Laura

Thanks for the information and it is very useful for me to follow your tips.

Your presell page should work. just enter /tissa.htm at the end of your acme people search domain.

so is wordpress better than blogger.com?

Hi, plz give me the way to montize my site.
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Hello

I joined Word Press today, its massive, and has so much to offer.

Please I need a help maybe you can save me, I hope you will answer, I am stuck because I joined the step 3 of tissa's program but the www.match.com declined my request of affiliate and I cannot finish to put the ID in all of them in the list cos match declined my affiliate.What do I have to do? thank you can you answer to : stefanooreto@hotmail.com
thanks