How To Grow Your Income By Joining The Amazon Affiliate Program

There’s no question that Amazon is one of the most recognizable brands today given how it has dominated the retail industry worldwide.

With a sales revenue amounting to up to $125.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2020 and an average of 4000 items sold per minute, it’s not surprising why a lot of people and businesses would like to do business with this online sales powerhouse.

The good news is anyone can access a share of the retail giant’s profits and all that’s required is for you to have a website or a social media presence where you can promote products and become a part of the Amazon Affiliate Program.

What Is the Amazon Affiliate Program?

The best way to describe what an Amazon Affiliate Program is is to define what affiliate marketing is in the first place.

Affiliate marketing is defined as a marketing tactic where a website or app owner or a YouTuber promotes product links from an online retailer who in return provides commissions for every item sold using the links promoted.

Given this scenario, you can only earn money as an associate when the link you promote is used in a transaction.

This is exactly how the Amazon Affiliate Program works. By signing up, Amazon allows you to create unique product links that you can post on your website.

You will then need to drive traffic back to Amazon by promoting these links so you can earn a commission every time someone buys an item through the links you promoted.

Commissions may vary depending on the kind of item a customer purchases. Be that as it may, there’s always that potential to earn big money through the Amazon Affiliate program. You just need to know how to play your cards right in terms of the kind of product you promote as well as how well you promote it.

Joining the Amazon Affiliate Program is a really good way to monetize your passion and make supplemental income from your brand.

It is worth noting that Amazon has several rules and requirements associates need to follow. It’s essential for you to clearly understand these rules before you dive in and below are some of them.

• Full disclosure (on your website) that you may be eligible to earn from your recommendations.
• Avoid referring to prices since they change frequently.
• Avoid making false or deceptive claims.
• Avoid using affiliate links in offline promotions.
• Avoid using link shorteners.

How to Join the Amazon Affiliate Program

Now that you are aware of Amazon’s existing rules and the Amazon Affiliate program is all about, it’s time to sign up for the program and become an associate.

Create a Blog or Website

The most important requirement to join the program is to have an active app, blog, website, or even a YouTube channel (if you still don’t have one) because this is where your affiliate links will be placed.

It would be an even bigger advantage if the site is pre-populated with useful content because it shows authenticity and activity which can be crucial to attracting more traffic and clicks.

It’s important to remember that part of the application process requires you to describe the purpose of the website so make sure that you have a firm grasp of who your target audience is, how you’ll drive traffic, and why you created the website before you sign up.

Sign Up and Provide All the Necessary Information

Go to the Amazon Associates homepage and click on the Sign-Up button. You will then be asked to provide relevant information about your account such as your name, address, and phone number.

You will also be asked to provide your website address (or your app or YouTube channel depending on what’s applicable), your preferred store ID (which is usually the same as your primary website name), as well as the Amazon topics your links will likely target.

Explain How You’ll Drive Traffic to Your Website

Amazon will also ask how you drive traffic to your website, how you use it to generate income, how you build your links, and how many monthly visitors your website brings.

Make sure to provide all the information needed as best as you can because what you provide in this section may be crucial to the approval of your application.

Provide your Preferred Payment Method

Lastly, Amazon will also ask you to enter your payment method as well as your tax ID information. You can choose to either provide the information now or later.

Once this is done, you can then proceed to your dashboard.

Create Affiliate Links

Once your account has been created, you can then proceed to your personal associate homepage where you can find your performance dashboard.

This page will show you relevant information such as your monthly earnings as well as the total clicks your links have generated.

The dashboard also allows you to search for products to link to based on the kind of content you share on your website.

To start creating links, proceed with the following steps:

1. Log in to your Amazon Associates account to ensure that the link text is generated in a way where it associates the product you’re promoting with that of your account.

2. Click on “Product Linking” at the top then select “Product Links” so you’ll get taken to the page where you’ll be prompted to create your link.

3. Manually search for a product or add the ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) of the product you would like to promote. The ASIN is an alphanumeric code assigned to a product that you can find within the product information section which you can then find in the product’s Amazon listing. Click on “Go” when you’re done.

4. Click on the “Get Link” button to copy the Amazon affiliate link to your clipboard and begin using it in your promotions.

5. You can also use the SiteStripe bar that you can find in the product pages if you’re looking for a simpler way of generating affiliate links. Just click on “Text” in the Get Link selector then copy the generated link provided in the popup.

That’s it! You have now created your Amazon Affiliate link which means you can start using them in your promotions. Just make sure to keep the rules and requirements in mind when promoting links to avoid possible violations.

Each link generates a cookie that follows your website visitors after they click on your links. While this can increase the likelihood of receiving commissions, it’s important to take note that these cookies only last for a limited amount of time, 24 hours to be exact.

This is designed so that the cookie stays in their browser the entire time and that the purchase will still be credited to you even if they check out at any time within those 24 hours.

The cookie mentioned is just one of the ways you can make money from the Amazon affiliate program. All of this being said, you must still get more visitors to your site to click on your links.

How to Make Money in the Amazon Affiliate Program

Signing up for the Amazon affiliate program isn’t really the challenging part. The more challenging part is how you’ll make money from the links you have displayed on your website.

Below are a couple of effective tips you can implement so you can start making a profit as an Amazon associate.

Pick a Niche You are Passionate About

Displaying affiliate links on your website is not going to be enough for you to start making money. You need to have a sound strategy if this is going to work.

You don’t want to appear as if you’re only writing content for the sake of having one. If you want people to keep coming back and thereby increase the chances of clicking on those links, you need to make yourself look more like an expert.

The best way to do this is to pick a niche that you are passionate about. Write about something that piques your interest. Something that you can do over and over without getting tired of it.

The more specific the niche you select, the better the chances of making a profit because there’ll be less competition and you can gain people’s trust because you know your topic well enough to come across as an authority figure when it comes to that said niche.

Write More Product Reviews

Another effective way to make more money as an Amazon associate is by writing reviews and comparison posts.

This makes perfect sense because comparing products means you’d get to link to more products than just writing about and linking to one.

It should be noted that comparison posts provide a better chance of making a sale because people love to read reviews before buying a product. What this means is they are ready to pull out their wallets at any time. They just need to be convinced a little more.

This is also another advantage a comparison post has to offer because you are providing potential customers with alternatives to choose from. Even if they don’t like one of the products you wrote about, they still have more items to choose from.

All of this being said, writing a comparison post is a win-win no matter which way you look at it.

Be Consistent

The best way to kill an affiliate link project or business is to not produce content regularly.

Blog owners will be the first ones to tell you that when it comes to content, consistency is key simply because people are always on the lookout for fresh content.

Consistency also provides you the opportunity to include more product mentions and links which is why it is recommended that you write new content at least once a week. If you can do more, the better.

Do make sure, however, to write something of quality because a poorly-written blog post won’t be enough even if you write five of them per week.

Affiliate marketing, like content creation, is also a numbers game. The more entries you send, the more chances of winning.

Promote Your Content on Social Media

Writing good-quality content is nothing if there’s no one to see them and one of the best ways to get more eyes to a piece of content is by promoting them over social media.

Go beyond sharing them over your personal accounts or Facebook pages. If you want to generate a higher profit, make sure to invest in paid ads as well as pay-per-click whenever possible because these guarantee a bigger, wider reach.

Also, make sure to brush up on your SEO skills so you can make your brand appear on the first page of search engines, the biggest of them being Google. This makes such a huge difference considering how people’s attention spans are getting shorter.

Do you bother to click on the second page of your search results? Probably not because you most likely only look at the top three results, right?

Sure, it will cost you a considerable amount of money but the return on investment on these tactics is definitely worth it.

Create a Storefront on Your Website

People today have become highly visual especially in the online world. This is the reason why the use of images and videos is so important because they are effective in grabbing people’s attention.

That being said, creating a storefront on your website should also be a consideration because it doesn’t require content writing. It’s like creating an online store and the only difference is that when a customer clicks on the image, they will be brought to an Amazon page instead of proceeding to checkout.

The only thing you need to remember is to always check if the links are updated at least every month because pages get moved and removed from Amazon every now and then.

Money Is Waiting For You

Whether you’re looking for a side project or just looking for ways to earn an additional income, the Amazon Affiliate program will always be a worthy alternative as long as you do things right.

With a sound strategy and adherence to Amazon’s rules and requirements, making commissions shouldn’t be challenging or impossible. This guide should provide you with everything you need to make the right first step. The rest is up to you!

If you’re looking for additional tips on how to increase your income, check out our post on how to make money through blogging.