The Amazon Associates program is Amazon’s affiliate marketing program that allows you to easily monetize your blog, website, app, or social media profile.
Just sign up, and once approved, generate and add affiliate links to your page. When someone clicks the link and makes a purchase on Amazon, you earn a commission, it’s that easy!
But what do you need to do to become an Amazon affiliate? In this guide, we show you how to become an Amazon affiliate, how to create Amazon affiliate links, and how to get paid as an Amazon affiliate.
Table of Contents
1. What Is The Amazon Affiliate Program?
2. How To Become An Amazon Affiliate
3. How to Create an Amazon Affiliate Link
4. Tips For Maximizing Profits With The Amazon Affiliate Program
5. Getting Paid As An Amazon Associate
What Is The Amazon Affiliate Program?
The Amazon Affiliate program, known as Amazon Associates, is Amazon’s affiliate marketing program. Website owners and bloggers can become Amazon Associates for free. They then create special links to advertise Amazon products on their websites. If a user clicks on the link and makes a purchase on Amazon, they then receive a referral fee.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a marketing technique used by online retailers that allows specific website owners to create special product links known as affiliate links.
In exchange for promoting the link, website owners earn a commission when someone clicks on the link and makes a purchase.
If you already have a blog or website with content that organically allows you to mention products, like an album review blog, affiliate marketing can be a great way to bring in additional income.
If your website already sells products directly, affiliate marketing might not be the best fit for you, although it is possible to use a hybrid of affiliate and product selling.
How Does The Amazon Affiliate Program Work?
In the Amazon affiliate program, Amazon associates earn referral commissions by creating affiliate links, promoting these links on their website or blog, and driving traffic back to Amazon.
The process looks like this:
- You create an Amazon Affiliate account
- Amazon gives you a unique Associate ID
- After approval, you can create affiliate links
- Place these links on your blog or website
- If someone clicks the link and makes a purchase, you earn a commission
How Much Does The Amazon Affiliate Program Pay?
The Amazon Affiliate program operates on commission, which means you get a percentage of each sale. Typically, Amazon associates earn between $100 and $20,000 per month. Of course, this is dependent on the number of referrals.
The commission rate depends on your product category. For example, if you run a book review site, you’ll earn 4.5% per sale. If you sell three books at $100 each in one day, you’d make $13.50 from those three transactions. If you sell the same product 30 times per month, you’d make $135 every month.
If you’re just starting out as an Amazon Associate, income can be slow, so it’s important to have alternative income streams to support you during this time.
To get a rough idea of how much you could earn from your website’s niche, check out the fixed commission income rates per product category.
Amazon Affiliate Program Rules And Requirements
Although the Amazon Associates program is a great way to earn additional income from your brand or passion projects, there are several rules you need to follow if you want to become an Amazon affiliate.
Make sure you’re familiar with them because failing to follow these guidelines can lead to you being banned from the Amazon affiliate program.
Most of the rules center around preventing the system from being exploited or the ethical promotion of affiliate links.
Some of the most important rules include:
- Disclosing that you earn a commission from your recommendations
- Not making false claims about your recommendations
- Avoiding referring to prices since these change often
- Not including affiliate links in emails, ebooks, or offline promotions
- Not using link shorteners on affiliate links
- Making at least three sales in six months
- Not making purchases via your affiliate link
You can read Amazon’s full policy here.
How To Become An Amazon Affiliate
Becoming an Amazon Associate is a simple 8 step process.
1. Create A Website
To become an Amazon affiliate, you need to have an operational website, blog, app, or YouTube channel. Ideally, you should already have it filled with some content so that it looks active and legitimate to both users and Amazon.
You’ll need to describe what the purpose of your website is during the application process, so keep in mind the reason why you’re creating your website, your target audience, and how you’ll be driving traffic to it.
2. Click “Sign Up” On The Amazon Associates Homepage
To become an Amazon affiliate, you need to create an Amazon Associates account on the Amazon Associate website. Once there, click “Sign Up”. You’ll be asked to sign in to your existing Amazon account or create a new one to continue the process.
3. Add Your Account Info
Next, fill in your account information including the name, address, and phone number of the person Amazon will be paying.
4. Add Your Website URL
Next, enter the addresses of the website(s), social media profile(s), and/or mobile app(s) you’ll be using to promote your Amazon affiliate links.
You need to add at least one address but can add up to fifty different addresses if you plan on promoting your Amazon affiliate links on multiple channels.
Be sure to include the full link to your page or channel if you’re adding a social media profile.
5. Add Your Associates Store ID
Enter your preferred Associates Store ID. This is the tracking ID that gets added to your Amazon Affiliate links.
This is usually the same name as your main website. Don’t stress too much about choosing the perfect Associates Store ID, since Amazon lets you add more IDs once your account has been approved. This also means that you can create different IDs for each of your promotional channels such as website and social media profiles.
You’ll also need to explain what your website is about, and select Amazon topics you’ll target with your links. Again, no need to stress too much about topics, since you’ll still be able to promote any type of product, this just gives Amazon an idea about what you’ll be promoting.
6. Explain Your Traffic & Monetization Strategies
Enter how you drive traffic to your websites, how you utilize your website or app to generate income, how you usually build links, how many unique visitors your site and apps get per month, plus your primary reason for joining the Amazon Associates Program.
After completing the Captcha and agreeing to the contract terms, you can click finish to submit your application and wait for it to be approved.
7. Repeat For Other Amazon Locations
If you want to promote products on different Amazon region stores, you’ll need to apply for each one individually.
To easily access the Amazon Associates program for a specific region, visit the Amazon Associates homepage, and click on the region selector in the top-right corner of the page.
8. Create Amazon Affiliate Links
After your account has been approved, you can log into your Associate homepage. Here you’ll find your performance dashboard including an overview of your earnings, monthly summary, plus total fees, bounties, and clicks.
You can also search for products and create Amazon affiliate links for any product from this page.
How to Create an Amazon Affiliate Link
1. Log In To Your Amazon Associate Account
This ensures that the affiliate link is associated with your account.
2. Select Product Links Under Product Linking In The Top Banner
3. Add The Product’s Asin Or Search Amazon For It
A product’s Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN) is a 10-character alphanumeric code used by Amazon for identifying products in their catalog. To get a product’s ASIN, navigate to the “Product information” section on the product page.
If you can’t find the ASIN you can also search Amazon for the product.
4. Click “Go”
This will generate your Amazon affiliate link for you. Be sure you created an affiliate link for the correct product!
5. Click “Get Link” On The Right
This will copy your Amazon affiliate link to your clipboard. You can now add it to your website or promote it in another way.
6. You Can Also Use Amazon Associates SiteStripe
An even easier way to generate Amazon affiliate links is using Amazon’s SiteStripe toolbar. If you’re logged into your Amazon Associates account, SiteStripe shows up at the top of product pages.
To generate a link click either “Text,” “Image,” or “Text+Image” to an Amazon affiliate link. A popup will appear with your affiliate link.
Tips For Maximizing Profits With The Amazon Affiliate Program
1. Find Your Niche
The websites that have the most success with affiliate links are ones that are focused on a specific niche. If you want to increase your chances of success, spending time finding the area of eCommerce that you want to focus on is key.
It can be tough finding a niche that is both profitable and has low competition, but a good idea is to find a niche that you are passionate about or have knowledge of.
It makes it much easier to create engaging content if you have an understanding of your audience and the market you’re targeting.
You should also do some keyword research to find out how competitive your niche is and which keywords you can easily rank for.
2. Write Product Reviews
Product reviews and posts comparing two or more products are some of the best ways to make money with Amazon’s affiliate program. This is because these types of posts make it easy to organically include links to the products in them.
The best part about these types of posts is that most visitors viewing them are almost ready to make a purchase and are just looking for a review to help them decide.
Comparison posts are even better because if a visitor decides that a certain product isn’t for them, you’ve presented them with alternatives that they might consider instead.
3. Post Consistently
The more content you post, the more opportunities you have to promote your affiliate links. This means posting consistently is the best strategy to maximize your affiliate profits.
Of course, quality is more important than quantity, but aim to post at least once a week.
To ensure that your content is relevant to your selected topic, create a content marketing strategy and follow these tips to improve your SEO to help your content rank higher.
4. Create An Amazon Affiliate Store
Instead of mentioning your affiliate links in your content, you can also create an website that looks like a normal online store, except that users get sent to Amazon when they want to make a purchase instead of sending them to a checkout page on your website.
An Amazon Affiliate store is great because it requires less upkeep and content than a regular website. The layout also makes it easy for visitors to browse through the various products and easily purchase them, compared to links hidden in content.
The main thing you’ll need to do with this kind of website is to keep an eye on your various listings to ensure that they are all still active and available.
5. Advertise on social media and search engines
Traffic is key to maximizing your Amazon Affiliates commission. While great content, implementing SEO, and a content marketing strategy are essential to driving traffic, there is one more tactic that will aid in boosting your traffic numbers.
Paid social ads and pay-per-click Google ads will help your content reach more people. While it might sound costly, advertising can actually be pretty affordable if you use the pay-per-click model.
Here you only pay if someone clicks on your ad and you can set a budget to ensure that you’re not spending more than you can afford.
Getting Paid As An Amazon Associate
How Do Amazon Associates Get Paid?
As an Amazon Associate, you have the choice between 3 payment methods. These are:
- Direct deposit (bank)
- Check
- Amazon gift card
Bank deposits are supported in the United States, United Kingdom, and fifty European countries.
When Do Amazon Associates Get Paid?
Amazon Associates get paid at the end of each month, but only receive payment for any given month sixty days after its end. This means that you’ll only get your commission for October in December, for example.
How Long Does The Amazon Affiliate Cookie Last?
After a person clicks on your affiliate link, an Amazon affiliate cookie is generated. This cookie lasts for 24 hours. During this time, if the person makes a purchase on Amazon, it will be credited to you.
When Do Amazon Affiliates Earn Commission?
Amazon Affiliates earn their commission when an order is shipped. If the customer returns the order, the commission will be subtracted from your earnings.
Related Content
- How to Make Money With Affiliate Marketing
- 5 Awesome Affiliate Marketing Examples (And What to Learn from Them)
- How to Sell Online Without an eCommerce Website
- Complete Beginner’s Guide to Amazon Advertising to Increase Your Sales
- 6 Sure-Fire Ways to Increase Your Blog Affiliate Marketing Revenue
Wrapping UP
Now that you know how to become an Amazon affiliate, you can get started with creating an Amazon affiliate link, promoting it on your pages, and earning your commission.
To maximize your earnings, ensure that you’ve found a good niche, write product reviews or comparisons, post consistently, consider creating an Amazon store, and advertise on social media and search.
Are you an Amazon Associate? What has your experience been like? Any tips we should add to this guide? Let us know in the comments.
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