Hello Amazon.co.uk Associates,
Thank you all for your submissions and stories. The Amazon.co.uk Associates team sincerely enjoyed learning about your businesses, your websites and your successes!
Among the many stories we received we chose 3 winners who were selected for the uniqueness of their story, demonstrated best practice and the strength of their implementation:
- In 1st Place and the recipient of a £250 Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate goes to www.whatsthattune.co.uk for their story of a website that helps internet users answer a question we have all asked: “What was the song in that commercial?”.
- In 2nd Place and the recipient of a £100 Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate goes to www.popularscience.co.uk for their story of a website that provides internet users interested in popular science books with a niche site dedicated to the genre.
- And an Honourable Mention and a £75 Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate goes to filleritem.com for their story of a website that helps users get free package and posting for their Amazon order by allowing customers to select a “filler item”.
Many thanks to all those who submitted their success stories.
Sincerely,
Your Amazon.co.uk Associates Team
1st Place: www.whatsthattune.co.uk
My father read an article in the Sunday Times about Amazon Re-Sellers - guys who owned websites who used Amazon to sell books, CDs, whatever, and were earning more than the artists or authors per item.
Knowing I worked in "computers" he recommended I made a website from which to sell goods through Amazon. That was all very well but I knew I needed an idea. Why would people buy from my website when there were thousands of others out there that drew people in?
After some initial thoughts months passed and the whole venture slipped my mind. Then I was watching TV one night when three adverts came on and I instantly knew the artist and the song they were performing. The fourth advert sounded familiar and in frustration I said to my housemate, "Agghh!!! What's That Tune?". This utterance was closely followed by a "Eureka" and I ran to my computer and bought the domain www.whatsthattune.co.uk. The rest is history.
Amazon has been a great source of revenue to me and, as you can see, a great inspiration. After all, I did set up the website to make money and at the moment I make up to £100 a month from my re-sellers account. That's £100 a month for doing pratically no work.
I've often seen that a user clicks into Amazon to look at a song used in an advert and they leave having bought an iPod, a digital camera or even a new computer or LCD TV. The thing I love about Amazon is that once you send someone in there through your website then you get commission off anything they buy!!! And given that Amazon have such a huge range of products at really cheap prices, then it's likely that a click to buy a CD will result in 5 or 6 items in their shopping basket.
2nd Place: www.popularscience.co.uk
As an author of popular science books I had a problem. Websites are a great way to get people interested in a subject – but I’m not a household name, so who would be interested in a “Brian Clegg” site? But the popular science books themselves do have a worldwide following, and it’s quite difficult to find good reviews of these books. The newspapers don’t bother, and even magazines like New Scientist don’t review most of the titles.
There wasn’t a website specializing in reviews of popular science books in existence, so the opportunity was there to make a mark with these mind-bending titles. All I needed was a way to fund it. Although we regularly hear in the press of the latest huge advance paid to a new novelist, writing popular science doesn’t pay enough for a big marketing bill, especially as most of the site would be about other people’s books. Amazon Associates made it possible. When better to buy a book than when you’ve just read a review? With some enthusiastic readers and excellent support from the publishers, who realized that this was just as good for them as for popular science authors, we were ready to go.
The site, www.popularscience.co.uk, now has well over 400 reviews, growing all the time. It’s good for the readers, who get help selecting from a baffling range of popular science books (rarely well represented in bricks and mortar shops), good for the authors who get their books seen, and good for the publishers with increased sales. Our tag line is “because science doesn’t have to be boring” – without the support of the Amazon Associates programme, that message would not have got as far as it has.
Honorable Mention: filleritem.com
Almost three years ago before my freshman year of college I had the idea of creating a website(filleritem.com) that would help users get free package and posting on Amazon.com. Using the version of the ECS they had at the time, I was able to create a working version of my idea. The site was fairly successful, but a number of copycat websites popped up over time offering the same service and my profits slid. When the latest version of ECS came out I decide it was time to recode the website. I also decided to try to expand to amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.de, and amazon.co.jp. I did not know how popular Amazon was in these other countries so I was not expecting much of a profit. All of the sites besides amazon.co.uk lived up to my expectations. Thanks to the thrifty people in the UK (especially moneysavingexpert.com's Martin Lewis), the site took off. After being mentioned by Martin on his weekly newsletter, the site was shown on the radio and television as well. Since then the profit from the UK version of filleritem.com has far surpassed that of the original US version. It has allowed me to focus on my studies without having to worry about a part time job.
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