Amazon Associate Scheme

Amazon call their affilliate scheme the  "associates program"  . The one big drawback of the Amazon scheme is that you only get commission if the user makes a purchase during the "session" - i.e during the visit to Amazon that came via your link. If they close down the browser and come back an hour later - you get no commission. Most affilliate schemes use cookies to track when visitors arrive from an affiliate  link. Many  sites will pay commission on any sales made for up to 30 days after the initial visit.   There must be millions of clicks from Amazon associates that get nothing in commission - but the click may well result in a sale within  a few days.
But - even with this drawback - the Amazon associate program can be a good money earner if used in the right way. By linking to specific products on pages that provide relevant  information about those products. The commission paid by amazon starts at a low rate but rises to 9% for those associates that sell a lot of stuff. The maximum commission for electrical items is capped at £7 - which is another negative factor with Amazon. On a sale of £1000 - that works out at just 0.7% commission.  Many online shoppers trust and know Amazon - so they are more likely to purchase from them than from a site they have never heard of before.

Keeping Top On Google

Update your blog or website to ensure you maintain your position on Google results. A regular post at least once a week will keep the search engines interested. Stop updating - and you risk being slowly relegated down the results.  If you have a post that is doing very well on Google - don't make any changes to it. Add new posts by all means. Keep checking your position on google - to see how you are doing. Things change all the time. The number of hits you get can drop by at least 100% if you drop from top position to second position on Google. Google is the major search engine - if you lose google traffic - the traffic from Live or Yahoo will be a small fraction of the google traffic.
Be careful of duplicating content. I had a new site on it's own domain which I set up to replace an existing blog on a free blogging site. Laziness and haste made me do a lot of copy and past to get the new site up and running while he old site was still online too. I suspect that was the main reason why it appears to have vanished from google after doing very well for a few months. A few attempts to get  it back have failed  - so I will have  to start again.