Adsense on an eCommerce Store. Stupidity or Genius?
Posted on May 22th, 2008 in General Chit Chat) by admin |
I have recently set up an Amazon Associates store selling Fitness Equipment and Health Products. This was done with ease using a very clever PHP based package called Associate-O-Matic. Simply register for a cheap hosting package that supports PHP (BlueHost are excellent!), install the PHP scripts via FTP to your sever space and follow the simple instructions and before you know it you have a fully linked up Amazon store!
The Amazon Associates program works by tracking clicks from your store to products on the Amazon site, any conversions (products sold) that are made through this link will give the associate 4% of the price of the product. This percentage rises to 6% after 7 items have been sold through your store.
This got me into thinking about other ways I could generate beer money through affiliation, this lead me on to the thought of using Google Adsense on the site. Now, I know what you’re thinking, why on earth would I want to serve up endless links to competitor sites potentially driving traffic away from my site and losing sales? This was my initial though also. I then started to think that if people have come to my site either through an adword or other advertisement it is because they may be interested in buying one of the products on the site. If they then decide not to purchase anything, what is the harm in making money from one of my competitors in the process? Arrr I hear you ask, but what happens if they see a more competitive price listed on the Adsense advert and opt to go for that one instead of purchasing your product? Well, good point and yes that could pose a problem to me especially if my products are not competitively priced, but with the amount of price comparison engines and such on the net this days, most e-customers will shop around for the best price before settling on anything anyhow.
For my site (www.theFitnessEmpire.com), I am trusting the excellent people at Amazon to keep prices competitive for Fitness Equipment/Health Products and keep constantly up to date with online price sensitivity.
Anyway, if you see me driving a Lamborghini Gallardo SE in the next year you’ll know that The Fitness Empire is far from crumbling!
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