Boost Your Earnings Using Amazon Reports

As a participant of the Amazon Associates program, regularly keeping tabs on your site’s performance is of paramount importance – you always need to have the most up-to-date information, since this is about your income, after all.

YOU’LL LEARN:

• What individual Amazon Associates reports tell you
• How you can generate additional revenue
• Tips for using different tracking IDs

With the help of the Reports section found on the platform, Amazon not only provides you with a detailed revenue overview, but the Reports also provide you with important information about how you can make changes and adapt your strategy in order to increase the revenue of your affiliate website. No website is perfect; therefore, a more detailed look at Amazon Reports is definitely worth your time.

The Information That Amazon Associates Reports Provide

Log into Associates Central and you’ll find an overview of the last 30 days of activity, in the form of a graphic. Below this, you’ll find the period of time indicator, the sum of your advertising costs, the sum of your bonuses and also the number of clicks on your Associate Links. You will also find a summary for the current month. This is all clearly useful information, so let’s dig down and see some more Reports.

Clicking on the Reports tab brings up an overview, with various options and functions. For example, select a 30-day viewing period (you can also select from the pre-set date ranges, including today, last 7 days and last 90 days) and select the period ‘Last 30 days‘ in the upper-left section, under the Reports heading. At the bottom right-hand side, select Group by Tracking ID from the drop-down menu. The following information is now available:

• Summary: the sum of all receipts for advertising expenses and bonuses
• Commission incomes: the cost of advertising, without consideration of Bounties
• Bounties: fixed-rate earnings from events such as Free Trials, Program Membership or Registry Creation
• Clicks: the number of clicks on your Affiliate Links
• Ordered Items: the total number of items ordered through your Affiliate Links
• Dispatched Items: total number of items dispatched to customers
• Returned Items: the total number of returned items (when customers return products for a refund)
• Conversion: the number of products ordered divided by the number of clicks on your Affiliate Links
• Shipped Items Revenue: an overview of the sales of already-sent products
• Total Earnings: total earnings from commission incomes and Bounties.

Let’s go to the bottom section and click the ‘Ordered Items’ tab. Here, you’ll find the Tracking ID for an order that was placed or tracked. In addition, you can see the number of orders made via a associate link. If, for example, you have an Affiliate Link for a screwdriver placed on your blog or website, here’s where you’ll find the number of screwdrivers ordered. All other products ordered via the Affiliate Link for the screwdriver can be found in the field ‘Number of other products ordered via the product link’.

The screwdrivers ordered via the Affiliate Link, as well as all other ordered items, are summarised in the next field – ‘Number of all products ordered via the product link’. In the last section of this overview, you’ll find the ‘Ordered receipts’ and the turnover of your Affiliate Links.

Go to the next tab, Revenue. Here, you can find the Tracking ID which was when the order was placed. The next field also treats the clicks on the Affiliate Link the same way as in the previous tab. Additionally you will find Shipped Items. In the next field, Revenue, you’ll again find the turnover – the revenues generated by your Affiliate Links. The last field in this overview, Advertising Costs, shows you the sum of the revenue generated by the Tracking ID or Affiliate Link.

You remember we selected the Last 30 days’ period at the beginning and then chose the ‘Group by Tracking ID’ drop-down menu? In addition to grouping by Tracking ID, you also have a grouping by date and category.

Generating Additional Revenue

Let’s stick to the previously mentioned tip, where you can find the ordered items by clicking on the Tracking ID. As an example, let’s say you’re the owner of an affiliate website that revolves around the subject of vinyl LPs, and you find out that many of your site visitors also refer to CDs, or furniture for storing CDs, as well as vinyl records using your Tracking ID. In this case, you should think about integrating these products into your website and to create new content for them on your website.

By using ‘Group by category’, it’s also possible to find out which product categories were obtained via the Affiliate Link or the Tracking ID. If some visitors to your affiliate website have, for example, purchased products from the category ‘Books’ or ‘Electronics And Photography’, a closer look can be a good idea at this point, to consider new product categories for your website. For each product you see in the Amazon Associates Reports, you can also create a link directly, by clicking on ‘Create link’ on the right of the product.

You should always bear in mind products which you refer to on your website regularly, and check that they’re still relevant. Is there a successor model, a development or a new trend in the product’s field? The inclusion of new products, the inclusion of successor models as well as new product categories ensure your website is current with up-to-date, relevant information, which can have a positive impact on your revenue.

After you’ve logged into Associates Central, you’ll also find product recommendations at the foot of the page. This is a selection of products that might match your affiliate site. The selection of product recommendations is based on which products your visitors buy from Amazon.co.uk, or for the specific products they show interest in.

Tips For Using Different Tracking IDs

Up to 100 Tracking IDs are available to every participant of the Amazon Associates program, free of charge. While the cost of advertising is always allocated to a single, fixed-associate ID, you can use multiple Tracking IDs to document the performance of different affiliate sites, or to see which products are accessed via which website. If you deal with several topics, or more precisely, several different categories on a web page, the use of different Tracking IDs makes sense.

By doing this, you see products which were obtained through the Affiliate Link, but which are not the advertised product themselves. Depending on the frequency of these purchases or the relevance of the products to your website’s content, you can then decide if it makes sense to advertise the product on your site.

Different Tracking IDs on the same affiliate website can help you to optimise your campaigns, because you can see precisely which products were ordered via a specific Tracking ID, or how many clicks were made via the Affiliate Link. By clicking on your email address in the upper section of the Associates Central page and following ‘Manage your Tracking IDs’, you can create a new Tracking ID with just a few clicks, or manage your existing Tracking IDs. If you then create a new Affiliate Link – made easy by using SiteStripe – you can choose your new Tracking ID directly.

The creation of several Tracking IDs not only helps you in the evaluation of your Reports, but also gives you the opportunity to look at the performance of several affiliate websites, differentiating them in order to separate out valid data. You can also discover new products of potential interest for your affiliate website by evaluating the Tracking IDs, to give you an accurate insight into which products are of interest to your readers.

Available Reports can be grouped not only according to the Tracking ID itself, but also by the product’s category. This, in turn, can help you find more interesting products for your readers in the same or a new category, which you can then advertise on your website.

With one click on the category, or one of your Tracking IDs in use, you will see exactly which products have been ordered. If you move the mouse pointer over the corresponding product, you can create a link directly and integrate it into your website, as you see fit. You can also find more useful tips in our article “How To Use Reports In Associates Central“.

Hopefully, by following the steps outlined in this article, you will be able to boost your earnings and take your website to the next level.