Amazon Affiliate Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to earn money online without doing masses of work. 

Gone are the days when the only way to earn an income is to go into a busy office or to work for other organizations.

Affiliate marketing is a form of marketing that drives sales, generates income, and drives traffic to websites. 

This form of marketing benefits both affiliate marketers and the companies who use them to promote their products and brands.

What Is Amazon Affiliate Program?

The Amazon affiliate program is known as Amazon Associates. 

It is a great way to monetize your website or your blog. 

We all know Amazon as the king of retail, the company that makes billions of dollars through online trading. 

The Amazon Associates program is a form of affiliate marketing on Amazon and gives people a chance to make money online via amazon as an affiliate marketer. 

This means you can promote, recommend and sell Amazon products to your audience and generate commission income on sales through affiliate marketing.  

This way you can run an Amazon affiliate marketing program from your own website.

All you need to do is sign up as an Amazon Associate, wait for the approval and then you can start using Amazon links for products you want to recommend to your audience. 

The program is free for all website owners and bloggers, so anyone who falls into that category can become an Amazon Associate. 

Every time someone uses one of the affiliate links to make a purchase from Amazon, you will be paid a referral fee as part of the affiliate marketing.

How Does Amazon Affiliate Program Work?

There are certain guidelines you have to follow if you want to become an Amazon Associate and join the Amazon affiliate program. 

It is imperative you follow Amazon’s guidelines otherwise you could be banned from the site and banned from ever using their Amazon affiliate marketing program in the future.

The rules are as follows:

• You must be transparent when using Amazon links, this means whenever you use an Amazon affiliate program link you need to mention to your audience that you will be eligible to earn money from the link and any recommendations
• You cannot make any deceptive or false claims when you recommend products
• You must not refer to prices as prices on Amazon’s website change a lot
• You are not permitted to use any link shorteners on any affiliate links with the Amazon affiliate program.

Once you start getting clicks and sales, you start earning income.

Every time someone clicks on your link and makes a purchase from Amazon, you will be paid a commission by Amazon within 24 hours as an Amazon affiliate.

How To Become An Amazon Affiliate?

In order to become an Amazon affiliate, and succeed with affiliate marketing on Amazon, there are certain actions you need to take so that once you start using the links you can effectively monetize:

1. Create An Affiliate Website Or Blog.

As with all good affiliate marketing, the first place to start is to ensure you have a good website.

Amazon will require you to have an active website, app, blog, or YouTube channel, and if you have all of these that is even better. 

Make sure your site has good content, keep it populated and up-to-date as this will make it appear authentic and attractive for Amazon and the users of your website.  

Amazon wants to know that you have a platform for the Amazon affiliate program as this will help you succeed as an Amazon affiliate.

2. Visit Amazon Associates Homepage.

When you have your website up and running, visit the Amazon Associates homepage and click the button which says ‘Join Now’.

If you already have an Amazon account you can use that to log in, and if you do not have an Amazon account then you can create an account for yourself.

3. Create A Profile.

You will need to build your Amazon Associates profile, and you can do this by clicking ‘New Customer’ once you have signed into your account.

Follow all the prompts and get your profile set up.

4. Provide Account information.

You will be asked to enter all your account information.

This will include your name, address, and phone number.

5. Enter Your Website URL.

Once you have entered your personal details you will then be asked to enter details relating to your website, including the address.

6. Create Store ID.

You will then be asked to enter your preferred ID, this is usually the same name as your website name.

You will be asked to explain some details about your website, including what you want to accomplish, and also you will be asked to select Amazon topics your links will want to target.

7. Give Information About Your Traffic Sources.

You will be asked to explain how you generate and drive traffic to your website, blog, or YouTube channel.

You will also be asked to explain how you plan to generate income, how you build links, and how many people visit your site each month.

8. Provide Phone Number.

Amazon will ask you for your number, you will be asked to press the ‘Call Me Now’ button and you will immediately receive a call from Amazon.

They will provide you with a 4-digit code to insert and once you have done this, your account will be approved. 

You will then be considered an Amazon Associate.

9. Select A Preferred Payment Method.

You will be required to choose a payment method and given a unique Associate ID.

10. Create Affiliate links.

Once the account has been created you will be directed to your own Amazon Associate’s homepage.

This will contain a dashboard that will show your earnings overview, total clicks, and monthly summary.

Your dashboard is also the place you will start when you search for relevant products and product links.

Use the dashboard to keep an account of how the Amazon affiliate marketing program is working for you.

How To Build A Successful Amazon Affiliate Website?

There are a few ways you can build a successful Amazon affiliate marketing site, and it can be very profitable. 

The following steps will help:

1. Choose A Good Niche.

The starting point for finding a good niche for affiliate marketing is to find an area you are personally interested in. 

If you are not interested in your niche then it will be difficult for you to keep up the momentum and motivation required to be a successful Amazon affiliate using Amazon’s affiliate program. 

If you love cooking make that your niche, if make-up is your niche use that, if you like reading make books your niche.

If you do not have a niche you will find your website will be far too general and you will not generate traffic or sales for your affiliate marketing.  

Also, check the commission rates on the Amazon associates program as they do differ depending on the product.

For example, luxury beauty products on the Amazon Associates program generate a 10% commission, whereas Amazon groceries generate 1%. 

Gift cards, alcoholic beverages, and digital kindle deliver 0% commission so these are not items you want to use as part of your affiliate marketing link program.

Make sure to check product prices, if you are wanting to recommend a hairdryer on your website then line to an expensive range which earns you more commission. 

Remember though to bear in mind your audience, do not price them out, and remember that people are usually unlikely to buy high-ticket items via affiliate marketing links. 

Know your products well and know your audience too so that any affiliate marketing links are put to use.

Now that you have your niche and you have chosen your products, think of your traffic numbers.

Try and work out how much traffic you will need in order to make money and meet your affiliate marketing financial goals. 

Of course, ultimately you will need to have an estimate of traffic potential as well as traffic numbers. 

Run comparisons with other sites in your niche by searching google for ‘best hairdryer’ and see what sites come up in the search. 

Find niche sites that are a similar size to yours, and estimate the level of competition in the affiliate marketing area. 

Do your research on products and other sites so you can estimate how much traffic you will get, and how much traffic competitors have.  

If you can build traffic it means you can try and convert the traffic and get them to use your affiliate marketing links.

2. Keywords.

The importance of keywords cannot be underestimated. 

Once you have your affiliate marketing niche you need to do some research to find what keywords are relevant to you. 

You can do this by using a good keyword tool that will help you identify the keywords. 

The right keywords can drive traffic to your website. 

You can find some seed keywords from Amazon’s site directory. 

Look in your niche category on the Amazon Associates site and find the sub-categories, and from there you can look at what keywords are used. 

The better the keywords you use, the more likely you are to succeed in the Amazon affiliate marketing on your site.

3. Content Creation.

Good content is crucial if you are to make a success of the affiliate marketing program. 

Everything on your website should be good quality, whether it is a blog, an article, a video, or a product review. 

Take the time to find out what your audience is interested in, what kind of products they want, which products are the best etc. 

Make sure you look on Amazon for highly-rated products and popular products so when you share a link to them the audience is happy with the ratings. 

Check other websites to see what products they recommend, read online reviews, and find out all the information you can about the products.  

If your audience sees good content they are more likely to click on your affiliate marketing links.

4. Implement SEO.

SEO will help drive traffic to your website, this is essential if you want to succeed with Amazon affiliate marketing. 

SEO can include lots of different things which can help you optimize your site so that it ranks higher in search engine results. 

It does not matter what your niche or market is, SEO can ensure that search engine results are optimized for you, so you drive traffic to your site. 

The first thing you will need is high-quality and unique content for good affiliate marketing. 

This serves both your audience and Google as Google loves high-quality content, and this can enhance the performance of your affiliate marketing links. 

If you use any images make sure they are optimized so make sure you name the image and use a keyword in the caption if you can. 

Make sure you use keywords in your content and keep your site free from spam and optimize your affiliate marketing links.

If you can make your voice heard through social media then that will help your affiliate marketing campaign. 

Stay active on your platforms, build your awareness, be interactive, and engage with your audience.

If you are using videos then make sure they are good quality, bad quality videos turn consumers away and can damage your site’s integrity, and your affiliate marketing links with not perform well. 

Include good keywords in the meta and title, as Google uses these when ranking. 

If possible keep content to a good length, 1000-2000 words is good. 

Internal links embedded in your content will be beneficial for SEO and ultimately this benefits your affiliate marketing, especially with Amazon Associates.

Amazon Affiliate Program Rules And Requirements.

Violation of any of Amazon’s rules relating to the Amazon affiliate program could result in you being banned from using the site and losing any commission you have made.  

The rules are not difficult to understand and some of them have been listed above. 

However, there are some other important requirements you need to be aware of:

• Do not use links in PDF documents, emails, private groups, or e-books. Amazon prefers you to bring people to your website rather than you going direct to people.
• You cannot ask others to click on links and you must state that you are an Amazon associate using affiliate marketing to earn money from the link.
• Amazon does not allow you to purchase from your own affiliate marketing link.
• Make sure you have a Privacy Policy on your website or blog. This should include information about what information is being collected and how it will be used.
• When designing your website you cannot copy the Amazon website, its logo, or colors. This could confuse consumers and they will remove you from the Amazon affiliate program.
• Make sure you know all about the Amazon Product Image Guidelines. These guidelines state how you can use the images.
• You should also take time to learn about the Pricing Display Policy of the Amazon affiliate program which contains information about displaying pricing.
• You have six months to make a sale, if in 180 days there have been no successful referrals from your website to Amazon then Amazon can reject you from the Amazon affiliate program.
• You are not allowed to promote any products which are offensive to children under the age of 13 as an Amazon Associate.
• Do not manipulate any cookies when using the Amazon affiliate program.

Some Tips For Affiliate Marketing On Amazon.

These tips will help you to reach success with the Amazon affiliate marketing program:

• Select a great niche.
• Link to other products within your content.
• Clickable affiliate links can be contained within product images.
• Try and link to Amazon.com as much as you can within your content.
• Articles and blogs with product reviews have the best conversion rate. If you can do a high-quality review you usually get a higher click rate.
• Create an email list.
• Target your audience during national holidays as sales and clicks tend to be higher during these periods.
• Check Amazon’s pay-outs and see which ones are worth it for you.
• Track and analyze the clicks so you know where the income generation works best and which links work best.
• Make your link stand out, use a ‘BUY NOW’ button for maximum effect.
• Create comparison tables that show the best value and product details.
• Create a bestseller list that you update regularly.
• Make sure your website is easy to navigate, and the layout is best for conversions.
• Get as many people to Amazon’s website as you can. You can then benefit from commission for 24 hours, so anything they buy in that time you can get a referral fee.

Conclusion.

The Amazon affiliates program is a really good place to build your experience as an affiliate marketer. 

The program assists content creators to monetize their blogs and websites and create an income stream for themselves.

There are millions of products on Amazon and this means that the potential for using the affiliate links is also huge.