Becoming an Amazon affiliate is one of the best ways of earning more income online. Every year, billions of dollars are spent buying on Amazon. If you know what to do, you can make your own cut of the revenue.
Bloggers are practically the best candidates for the Amazon Affiliate Program. That’s because bloggers have the right resources to become a successful affiliate: an active website and a target audience.
If you’re already an active blogger and have earned plenty of followers in your chosen niche, you must consider becoming an Amazon affiliate. Otherwise, you won’t be able to maximize your blog’s total earning potential.
There are only two things you need to do to make earning as an affiliate a success:
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- Join the Amazon Affiliate Program
- Promote Amazon affiliate products on your website or blog
This article will outline the steps for joining the Amazon Affiliate Program and share useful tips on how to fuse it with your blogging. If you are considering becoming an affiliate and want to know just how, then read on.
Contents In Page
How the Affiliate Program Works
The Amazon Affiliate Program allows Amazon affiliates to obtain affiliate links that they can use to promote Amazon products on their websites or mobile apps. When their site visitors click on those links and make purchases, Amazon will give them a commission of up to 10% of each sale.
The program fee rate paid will vary depending on the product category. To know more about fee rates, visit this page. https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/operating/policies#Associates%20Program%20Fee%20Statement
How to Join the Amazon Affiliate Program
First things first, you need to have an active website or blog. You also need to have an active audience, that is, a constant number of visitors. Otherwise, you won’t make money from your blog if no one is reading or watching your posts.
As soon as you confirm that you’re blog is doing good, you can start.
Here’s what you have to consider when you join the Amazon Affiliate Program:
- Do you have target audiences outside the US?
- What kind of products is your niche interested in?
- How should you promote your affiliate products on your blog?
If your answer to the first question is yes, you’ll need to create an affiliate account with the corresponding local Amazon stores. For example, if your target audience is in both US and UK, you’ll need to sign up for both US and UK programs. The same goes for those whose target audiences are in Australia, France, Italy, Japan, China or India.
In this section, the focus is on how you can join the US affiliate program, Amazon Associates.
Here’s what to do:
- Go to the Amazon Associates page: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/
- Click the button “Join Now for Free” (usually found at the top right corner of the slider). Or you can click “Join Now” found below the “Join” section under the slider.
- Sign in with your existing Amazon account or create a new account. To create a new account, click “Create your Amazon account” on the sign-up page.
- For those using an existing account, verify your information or update any changes. For a new account, click “I am a new customer” and enter the required information.
- Click “Sign in using our secure server”.
- Set up your account information and indicate the account’s main contact.
- Click on “Next: Your website profile”.
- List your website by entering the complete URL. List all other websites, including mobile apps, where you plan to display or add affiliate ads and links. Provide the description of your website’s main subject and content theme, as well as how it gets traffic.
- Verify your identity by listing your phone number. You will receive an automated call and be given a PIN that you’ll use to verify your identity.
- Read the contract terms carefully. Once you agree, click “finish”. A unique Associates ID will be auto-generated upon submission. Write that down and your application is done.
Note that after submitting your application, you might have to wait for up to 3 business days before getting a message of approval (or rejection). As you wait, continue to work on your website and don’t lose your Associates ID.
How to Start Promoting Affiliate Products
Once you get Amazon Associates’ approval, you can start promoting affiliate products and earn commissions. You just need to choose the products to promote and obtain affiliate links to earn commissions from those products.
How exactly do you do that?
- Log in to your Affiliate account and go to any product page. Choose products that are related to what you blog or write about. For example, if you write about video games and gaming gadgets and accessories, head on to any gaming product you like.
- On top of the product page, you’ll see an “Amazon Associates SiteStripe” menu bar. In this bar, you can get the affiliate link for the product in text, image, or text+image.
- To get a text link, just click on the “Text” option. A unique link will be generated and you can copy that link into your website. You can either choose to use the short link or full link.
- To use the text link, go to your website and embed the copied text link into the desired place. For example, if you wrote about the product in one of your blog posts, you can embed the link within the body of your post.
Another way to obtain affiliate links is by searching products or copying the ASIN/ISBN codes of the products on your Amazon Associate account’s Product Linking tab.
You have different options on what type of affiliate link you want to use:
- Product Links
- Banners
- Native Shopping Ads
- Mobile Popovers
- Link to any Page
- aStore
The type of link you should use will depend on how you want to promote your chosen products. Based on statistics, text links appear to be the most effective way of referring visitors. This is because text links are used in a more natural way compared to banners and native shopping ads.
Text links are best included in these types of posts or content:
- Product review
- Product comparison
- Product guides
- Product promos
- Product launch
Final Tip
No matter what kind of product you choose to promote, the key to success is your website’s quality, not quantity. If you want to be a successful Amazon affiliate, you need to work on your website’s content quality.
Content quality refers to the relevance of your website’s content to your target audience. If your website is about gaming and your target audiences are gamers, then most of your content should revolve around gaming and gamers.
Websites that cater to specific, well-defined niches have better chances at meeting success as an affiliate. If your website’s theme is somewhat obscure and your audience isn’t well-defined, it may not work out well. Thus, you should dedicate more effort in maintaining a good website and your success as an Amazon affiliate will follow.
