Whilst the blogosphere has been ranting or raving about Amazon’s new Kindle Ebook reader, I have been sleeping on the idea.
Sure it is easy to earn yourself a quick $40 or whatever by promoting it, by dropping text links all over the place such as this one:-
Kindle: Amazon’s New Wireless Reading Device
Or you can use some other creatives such as a nice sidebar widget (might not show in a feed reader)
Amazon’s Success Is At Least In Part Their Affiliate Program
For years affiliates have been driving traffic to Amazon. They don’t get the benefit of recurring or lifetime commissions, the affiliate program is effectively make a sale on the visit or get nothing, but because the products were mass market, some people made a fair amount of money from Amazon, and many still do.
Will Kindle Kill Affiliate Sales Of Books?
If it is successful, it could certainly have an effect.
People who buy Kindle will be the mass consumers of information, the people who buy a lot of books, especially people who have taken training to read faster such as I did at Rich Schefren’s Acceleration 2 Seminar, assuming Kindle has the features to allow faster reading.
These aren’t your “one book for Christmas” types, these are people who buy 20 books because they are going on a trip somewhere, or researching a specific topic over a few days.
Kindle Is A Direct To Amazon Sales Cycle
Amazon is cutting out the middle man. Just because you might make a $40 sale now, those people who buy the device for $400 are quite possibly no longer going to generate affiliate revenue.
It is quite possible that such people go to Amazon direct, but they are also the kind that might be influenced by a review of one book somewhere on the web, go to Amazon following an affiliate link, and buy 20 related books.
I have been monitoring the discussion around Kindle, I know Robert Scoble has mentioned making money from people reading his blog on Kindle (30% ?) but that seems like it might be only a select few. We are not going to see “Subscribe On Kindle” buttons on the vast majority of blogs any time soon.
- I would have expected Amazon to provide a lot more information on Kindle to Affiliates and what it means to them if there was a money making opportunity (not just selling the device).
- I would expect residual earnings for selling a device which will provide a residual income for Amazon.
How does this launch affect other players in the ebook market such as Clickbank?
I keep reasonably close tabs on the affiliate marketing industry, and I haven’t seen anyone rejoicing the introduction of Kindle. Have I missed something?
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*Originally published at AndyBeard.eu
