I got an email today from Amazon stating that starting on November 1st, any commissions generated through Amazon Native Ads would earn a 12% commission, which is INSANE.
I think Amazon typically caps out at 8.5%, so to raise that commission during the hottest time of the year amazing.
Amazon Native Ads have been pretty successful for me. They have a higher conversion rate than text links (for me, at least), and I love how customizable they are. I have had a few people ask me how to get these set up, so here are a few tips.
First off, there are three different types of native ads available:
- Search: Select a search phrase that you want to use to generate the items that show up. I think this is good when you are want a specific category of products, but not necessarily a specific product. You can see an example of that here.
- Recommendations: Select categories of products that you want to show up (this is best for when you put them in the sidebar or bottom of posts automatically – doesn’t have to be as niche. My highest conversion rate is with these at 12%).
- Custom: You select the items you want to show up in these ones. I select this option when I am talking about very specific products in a post. You must select four products in order for a code to be generated.
Next, where should you place them? The thing about Native Custom Ads is that they are very flexible to where you want to put them.
I recommend placing one at the bottom of your posts that shows up automatically – especially if you are a very niche blog. For Clarks Condensed, we write about multiple topics, so this doesn’t work as well (I don’t want to scare away my food fans with breastfeeding products!). You can still accomplish for multiple topics by using the custom sidebars plugin, but that’s a tutorial for another time.
I also recommend placing one in each post with products related to the topic of the post. For instance, if you are writing about a slow cooker recipe, put in an ad that has a slow cooker, slow cooker liners, etc. It’s up to you what kind of native ad you want to put here. I recommend starting with your most popular posts and going from there.
Now, how to get your Amazon Native Ads code!
First, login to your Amazon Affiliate account. At the top of your dashboard is a tab that says “Product Linking”. Hover over this, and then click on Native Shopping Ads.
When you get to this page, on the left hand side you will see something that says “Create Ad Unit” with an arrow. Here you can select what kind of ad you want. For this, I selected the Recommendation ads (I’ll show how to set up the other ones after the main tutorial):
Once you get to Recommendation ads, you can select the categories you want to show up. You can select more than one. You will move the categories you want from the “Available Categories” to “Selected Categories” using the arrows.
Then, there is a box underneath the categories that says fallbacks. If you select “search keywords” you have to put in a search keyword that will show up if no other products are available. When you do this, your code will finally appear. You can select no fallbacks and get the code…but I think it’s smart to have a fallback.
Before you copy the code, go down to “Advanced Settings”. You can select if the unit shows customized ads (based on the users search history) or not. Then, you select the ad size. I actually always choose “One Size” and “one row”. Otherwise, the responsive unit often shows up with two rows, which I think looks a little spammy.
Installing the Code
Now, select the entire code. This is what you will put on your site. If you are putting it in a post, paste it directly into the text or html mode of your post composer. Press save, and then go look at the post.
You must NOT navigate back to the visual mode, because this will mess up the code and make it not render correctly.
You can also install the code in your sidebar using a text widget (in WordPress) or an HTML unit (in Blogger). Just make sure you press save.
After you’ve installed your code, it should start showing up right away in the post!