Breaking the Bank with Amazon Associates

Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could find a company that had millions of things that you could get paid a commission for selling without having to buy inventory or even take product pictures? Yes, it is awesome, because there is such a company.  With Amazon associates basically begging you to let them make you rich, you can have a piece of that billion dollar pie.

Too Easy

Amazon Associates is the affiliate program for the biggest company  our lifetime.  You sign up. You sell. No requirements, no special certifications. Nada! You just sign up. Sign in. Find the product. Get your link. And post the link somewhere. 

If someone, anyone, clicks on that link and buys that item, you get a percentage commission from that sale. WAIT! There’s more! If that someone clicks on that link and doesn’t buy that product, but maybe buys something else, within 24 hours of clicking that link YOU GET THE COMMISSION!!!

Go with me here! You don’t need them to buy what you show them. You just want them to buy anything at all. And you get paid. Amazon is not playing around here. They are in it to win it, and you should be too.

BUT WAIT!!! THERE’S MORE!!!

Let’s say you have a blog, or a website. Amazon Associates has a cool feature called Native Ads. So instead of getting a link and posting it somewhere, you can place short html code that shows the products in list, grid, or strip form on your website or blog.

You can pick the products for the native ads yourself. Or, you can type in a keyword and pick a category (books, toys, etc) and Amazon will pick everything for you. This is affiliate marketing made easy.

BANK BREAKING!!!

So, what if you sell items from facebook? Hmmm?!!! I think you see where I’m going with this one. But who has time to copy links all day? Well you can add an additional feature to your amazon affiliate account with a separate digital product and create catalogs with ads and videos and banners and embed it onto your blog, website, and even your facebook page. Talking about securing the bag. So, all you need is an Amazon associate account, a place for them to send your money and your catalog creator: Amazon Catalog Creator, and you have the keys to city. 

Do it for the culture

My entire goal is to see us win. All of us. I want every single one of you to be wonder what impact you are having on the world…not how you gonna pay this months light bill or next month’s rent. Some of us don’t have immediate financial crisis (what the hell is the plural of crisis?) but we could all do with financial freedom. Remember: We live black, die black…might as well buy black, and buy back our freedom!

What is Amazon affiliate

Amazon associates, or Amazon affiliate program, is an affiliate marketing program. It’s a free program for website owners and bloggers to become Amazon associates. As an Amazon associate, you will advertise products from Amazon.com on your website by creating links. When your prospective customers click the links and buy products from Amazon, you will earn referral fees.

Amazon affiliate program rules and regulations

Being an Amazon Associate is a great way for you to monetize passion projects or make supplementary income from your brand. However, Amazon has guidelines for you being one of their associates to follow, so it’s best one understands these before they dive in. Noncompliance mighy result in being banned from the program by Amazon.

The majority of these rules are in place for ethical promotion as well as to prevent associates from gaming the system. Here are a few of the big ones to have in mind:

• There need to a notice on your website or in your communication that you might be eligible to earn from your recommendations.
• You need to avoid making false or deceptive claims in your recommendations.
• Avoid referring to prices (with some exceptions) since prices change frequently.
• Do not use Amazon affiliate links in your offline promotions, email, or eBooks.
• Avoid using link shorteners on affiliate links.

You can read full policy of Amazon here.

Set up as Amazon affiliate

Getting started with the Amazon affiliate marketing program is free and easy.

Here’s how:

• Sign up by visiting Amazon and fill in the forms then.
• Make sure you read all the rules. For instance, it’s against Amazon Associates policy for you to include Amazon affiliate links in any email.
• Know and understand the product(s) you want to promote. Amazon makes room for you to search based on keywords, ​ISBNs (for books), and product numbers.
• Decide how you will promote the products you choose. Amazon will provide ad scripts that you can run on your blog or website. That’s why you absolutely need a website!
• Build traffic. All affiliate income does best with a big and steady stream of targeted traffic. There are a lot of easy and affordable ways to get people to visit your website or blog.
• Create product recommendations fit with your website topic. Probably you blog about surviving zombies, there is no need having a link to tulip ​bulbs except if tulips repel zombies.
• You need to choose products carefully. There is no need promoting something you wouldn’t buy or don’t like just to make money. It will backfire and cause you to lose credibility and trust with your website visitors. People are more likely to purchase products you personally recommend. When you don’t have experience with the product, make sure you check out reviews to see what other people’s experience with it is.
• Try to always include multiple links and linkable photos in your content. Web readers might be blind to ads. But they’re more likely to click links and photos within an informative article.
• If you’re a blogger, you shouldn’t forget to include a disclosure that the link is an affiliate link per the FTC blog disclosure guidelines and GDPR. While it’s the law in the United States, it’s also important to ​​​keep your blog readers’ faith in you.

Ways to promote your Amazon affiliate link

Here are various ways you can promote your Amazon links:

Blogging

From every indications, blogging is probably the most common way affiliates make money with the Amazon affiliate program. Some bloggers have a general topic website and use a lot of affiliate programs and other monetization options. Other bloggers have a niche website, narrowing in on select products that the website covers. Either way, making money with Amazon Associates on a blog can be done by the following way:

• Writing content for your website or blog about picking or buying a product available on Amazon website. Now more than ever, people go to the internet to research their purchasing options. If you’re a mom blogger, you may write an article on picking a low-cost vacuum with a link to your top choice or different links to your top choices. A food blogger might link to cooking tools. A photography website may link to cameras and other photography equipment on Amazon.
• Writing reviews of new products. Again, people need to know about items before they invest money in them, especially when they’re new and there isn’t much information available.
• Writing about best-sellers. You might use the best-sellers listed on Amazon, or if you have an affiliate sales history with Amazon, check your stats to know what has sold best in your blog’s community.
• Promoting special offers on your blog. This works well when you have a daily deal blog. This step requires that you keep an eye on Amazon for special promotions on products that fit in your site’s topic area.

Social media

You may use social media to share your website content with affiliate links, or you might directly share your affiliate links. Note, there is a need for you to give an indication that the link is an affiliate link when you post to be transparent and avoid annoying your followers. People don’t like when they are sold out all the time, so posting affiliate links need to be interspersed with non-affiliate and non-sales posts.

YouTube videos

You may offer much of the same kinds of content on video as you do on a blog, such as reviews. The advantage of video for generating income is that you are able to give tutorials, tours. As well as other visual content that will better help potential buyers decide whether to buy the items or not.

Lead magnet and email

Most successful affiliate marketers have a basic two-page site and an email marketing system that does their affiliate promotions on autopilot to make passive income for them. One page is their landing page that promotes a lead magnet to entice people to subscribe to their email. Once subscribed, the visitor will be sent to the second page, which often has information about an affiliate product.

The email delivers the lead magnet, together with a series of other emails that will provide helpful tips and information, as well as promotions for the affiliate products.

Add Amazon offers to your existing business

You may promote Amazon products as part of your other business offerings in order to create an additional income stream. Whether you sell a product or service, there are chances that there are products and services your customers and clients might benefit from on Amazon. For instance, if you’re a business coach that has found improved productivity with a Bullet Journal, you might promote dotted page notebooks.

Pros of the Amazon affiliate program

Well, it’s no secret that Amazon is a pioneer in ebooks and expanding opportunities for an indie author. When it comes to online affiliate marketing, Amazon also led the way for others to follow. In 1996, Amazon was a just small online book retailer run from Jeff Bezos’ garage. With a small marketing budget, Amazon then decided to tap into readers’ love of books to help in spreading the word. Instead of having an outlay of money to purchase advertising, Amazon paid people a commission when they referred customers to Amazon who ended up purchasing any product. This commission was paid after the customer must have bought, eliminating upfront marketing costs.

In 1998, when the Amazon associates program was launched, there weren’t an easy and affordable way for a budding online entrepreneur to make cool money on the internet. Amazon’s affiliate program changed the narrative. But the only problem was that making any significant income as an Amazon affiliate required you selling a ton of books. Fortunately, as Amazon has expanded its product line, the ability to make income from Amazon has become much easy now.

However, Amazon still has a fairly low payout compared to other affiliate programs out there (4% to 8.5%, this depends on the product and sales volume). But with a vast product line, large customer base, and credibility, odds are that you can still find something to promote and make money.

Like any other home based money making scheme, earning an income with Amazon requires much research, work, and marketing. This will take us to the pros of Amazon associates program

Pros of Amazon associates program

There are different great reasons to join the Amazon associates program, it include the following:

• Amazon is a highly well known, visited platform that people use and trust every day.
• It’s very free to join.
• There are no traffic thresholds or other metrics you will need to be accepted into Amazon associates program.
• There are tons and tons of products you may promote. Everything depends on you!
• Amazon has a lot tools to help you sell particular items or a category of items.
• There is a good reporting system so you know and understand what’s getting clicks and what’s selling.
• You may receive direct deposit payments into your bank account.
• Amazon offers good customer service to its buyers, so it reduce the risk of having your visitors get mad at you when they have a problem with the product.

Even when your visitor doesn’t buy the product you referred, when they buy anything on that visit, you will earn a commission.

Cons of the Amazon affiliate program

Trust me, nothing is ever perfect, even including the Amazon affiliate program. Let’s consider a few downsides:

• Their commission rate is relatively low compared to other affiliate marketing programs, 6-10% depending on the products. It offers flat rate for the bounty programs, such as $3 for referrals of prime, $15 for business account sign-ups and $5 for referrals of audible.
• Amazon cookies only last 24-hours. That means when your referral doesn’t buy within 24 hours, you won’t be able to get credit. (However, if the product is added to their cart, the cookie will then last for 90 days.)
• You’re not permitted to send Amazon affiliate links in emails. That includes your blog posts that get sent as an email. Since email is a perfect way to send great offers to your readers, this rule is specifically disappointing.
• If you have a United States website and are promoting products in the Amazon United States’ store. You won’t get any credit for referring someone who ends up buying the product from outside the country (i.e. Amazon United Kingdom).
• Payment options are only via direct deposit, Amazon gift card or check. There’s no option for PayPal.
• Minimum payout is $100, which isn’t that much when you make lots of sales, but a lot when you’re only earning a few dollars a month.

Maximizing sales and your Amazon affiliate income

Let’s look at additional tips to boost your affiliate income.

• Promote and discuss related products. If you order a burger, you will be asked, “Do you want fries with it?” Many items work better or are enhanced with accessories or other products, which you may promote.
• Find out what other items your referrals are purchasing. One great feature of the Amazon affiliate marketing program is that you get paid on products your referral buys, whether or not they buy the particular product you referred. Amazon stats will allow you know what products your referrals bought. If you haven’t yet promoted the product, and it’s a fit for your website or blog, you should consider adding them to your product list.
• Monitor your analytics to know what’s selling, what gets clicked on your site, and other data to understand what your market needs and will pay for.

Affiliate marketing with Amazon and other vendors is a perfect way to earn money while sitting at home. But it takes more than just starting a site or blog and posting some affiliate links. It takes knowing your market’s needs, providing the needed information and resources to meet those needs, and then helping them find your solutions.

How do you create an Amazon affiliate link

• Log in to your Amazon associate account.
• Click on product linking in the top banner and select product links.
• Add the ASIN of the product OR search Amazon for the product in the bar they provide.
• Click the Go button.
• Then click the Get Link button on the right side of result.
• Alternatively, you can use the Amazon Associates SiteStripe to generate Amazon Affiliate links directly from the product page.
• Use the generated link on your site or other promotional materials according to Amazon’s standards.

Log in to your Amazon Associate account.

Doing this ensures that the link text is generated in a way that associates the item you’re promoting with your account.

Click on product linking in the top banner and select product links

This will lead you to a page that will make you to create your link.

Add the ASIN of the product

An Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN) is a 10 character alphanumeric code assigned to a product by Amazon for identification within their item catalog. You may find the ASIN of a product within the product information section of the Amazon product’s listing. This means you’ll have to grab it within another window.

Alternatively, when you can’t find the ASIN, Amazon will allow you to search the product catalog for the product you’re promoting.

Click the Go button

This will generate a result at the bottom. Make sure to verify that it is the intended product you wants to promote.

Click the Get Link button on the right side

This will automatically copy your new Amazon Affiliate link to your clipboard, and you may now use that link in your promotions.

Alternatively, use Amazon associates sitestripe to generate Amazon affiliate links

A simpler way to be able to generate your Amazon affiliate links is by using the sitestripe bar, that shows up on product pages when you’re logged in to your Amazon affiliate panel.

Use the generated link on your site

Just remember that Amazon’s rules and regulations prohibit the use of the link in offline promotions such as email, and eBooks or PDFs. As with many marketing and sales, quality content is at the center of success. Ensure that you are attracting your audience with quality content and share relevant affiliate links with them on your website or YouTube channel.

Your account will be approved after some days. During that time, you need to make at least one sale, or your account might be closed. That’s why it’s so important to have a method or tactics for your Amazon Affiliate endeavors. However, you might reapply for the Amazon associate program after you’ve made some certain adjustments to your site.