I saw some stats in my Amazon sales figures which made me realise something I hadn't noticed before: if you're selling games consoles, Amazon destroys the competition.

Let's begin by looking at what other well known console retailers offer to affiliates:

GAME - 3% on hardware
Gamestation - 2% on consoles
HMV - 2% on consoles

Now I had an XBox 360 sale come through yesterday on Amazon. I'm currently on the Performance tiered scheme, and up to a default commission of 6%. On top of that, for sales that come from a direct link click through, you get an additional 2.5% premium. So my commission for the XBox 360 was a whopping 8.5% (which worked at about £18).

So unless I'm missing something very obvious, 8.5% blows 2% and 3% out of the water. If you're promoting games consoles and not going through Amazon, you're potentially missing out.

In fact, under Amazon's Performance Fee sliding scale, if you were selling 1600+ products a month, your default commission would be 7.5%, which would take you up to 10% for qualifying direct link clicks that generate the 2.5% premium.

With figures like that, is there any reason you would promote games consoles through anyone else?

Labels: affiliate marketing, amazon, games consoles