The right of passage for so many online marketers is setting up an Amazon review site.
What is an Amazon review site? A website that reviews products and makes revenue by affiliating products that can be found on Amazon.
In today’s article I’m going to show you how to setup your own site in 4 easy steps.
1. PICK A NICHE
It all starts with finding the right niche, I suggest picking something you’re passionate about. For the sake of this article I’m going to focus on affiliating Brazilian ju-jitsu (BJJ) products because it’s something I’m passionate about.
But before I go ahead and setup my website, I need to see if this niche is profitable. So I do a quick Google search for BJJ gis reviews to see how my would-be competitors are getting on:
There’s 5 websites already here which is a good sign. If there are other websites in your niche it means it’s a profitable one.
I click on the first link and see this:
7,000 people in their email list! They also have a podcast and sell eBooks.
Great, this niche is profitable if this site is selling books, runs a podcast and has a huge email list.
My next step is to pick a name for my website then decide whether to use SBI! or WordPress for hosting.
Click here to learn how to choose a good domain name for affiliate sites.
2. Product research
Your next step is to find products you want to review and promote on your website. I know that the highest value items in BJJ isthe gi, that’s the uniform they wear when grappling and training equipment.
After doing a search on Amazon for products, I can affiliate:
- Gis
- Belts
- Ju-jitsu training equipment
- Books
Books and belts are selling for less than £6 meaning from each sale I would generate £0.60 (5%), hardly worth my time.
However, the gis are being sold for over £150 and training equipment for over £250!
These will be the items I’m going to review and affiliate.
I made the mistake in a previous site targeting low value items (umbrellas) and for the time I put into the site, I made very little, focus on high-value items in the £100-£500 range.
I found that trying to affiliate anything more than £500 gets tricky as consumers usually do weeks or months of research when forking out that kind of money.
The people who land on your website will not only read your review but the reviews of other Amazon users, so set the search to find products to review to only show items that received a 4 star rating or higher:
If you’re reviewing an item that has been given several 2 or 3 stars it will hinder your conversion rates.
Because I’m selling BJJ gis and BJJ training equipment, next up is to do keyword research.
3. Keyword research
For a new niche site you want to target keywords that receive between 800-5,000 monthly searches, anything more and you’ll get dominated by the bigger branded sites and will be unable to rank.
As Jay talked about in his SBI! review, you can use their keyword program to find the most profitable and easiest keywords to target and rank for.
If you’re not using SBI! Google Keyword Tool Planner is an okay second choice:
To start with, find 6 keywords for every type of product you’re selling, for me it’s gis and BJJ training equipment so I’ll find 12.
4. Creating the content
Now comes the most important part, creating the content. Before you write a single review, please read my two-tier funnel to generating revenue for affiliate sites article.
You will need to follow that layout to get the maximum impact from your site.
“But what if I’ve chosen a niche I know nothing about, how can I review these items?”
You can’t. Okay you can and lie, but I don’t recommend that.
If you’ve selected a niche you know nothing about then I suggest you hire content writers who are experienced in your niche to review products for you. You can find them for as little as $1 per 100 words on sites like Freelancer and Upwork.
Are Amazon review site still profitable? YES!
Remember earlier when I mentioned I picked the wrong products to sell? Well I’ve not touched my umbrella review site for years and it’s still bringing me around £50 per month (it’s summer in the UK so sales are low):
While £47 isn’t going to make me a millionaire, if you take a look at the conversion rate and sales made it’s pretty darn high for a site with 12 pages.
Because I picked to affiliate the wrong product I’m making £1.20 per sale, just think if my website was selling BJJ gis worth £150!
35 sales per month would end up being around £262/month from just 12 pages and a few day’s work.
Summary
Amazon review sites won’t make you a millionaire but they are a great starting point to help you learn how to run a website, create content, drive traffic, run ads and create content that converts.
The most important part of running a profitable Amazon website is creating the content. So please read my article on how you can do that here.
