How to make money online: Amazon Affiliate Program

Amazon is the world’s largest marketplace and you can find products here for almost every niche you can (and can’t) imagine. These are physical products that are shipped to your customer’s doors. The advantage to you of promoting something from Amazon is that they are a global brand that is trusted and recognized by millions and millions of people across the world. Amazon loves people promoting their products and they try to make it as easy as possible for you to do so. When you find a product you will see some information about it, Here you can see the rating given to the product by the people who have bought it and how many likes there are. These give you an idea of just how popular the product is. The more reviews and likes, the better selling the product is...

Table of content

§  What is the Amazon Affiliate Program

§  How does the Amazon Affiliate program work?

§  How to become an Amazon Affiliate

§  Amazon Affiliate Program Rules and Requirements

§  How to Create an Amazon Affiliate link

§  How to promote the products and generate sales

§  How to receive and withdraw payments

§  Conclusion

What is the Amazon Affiliate Program?

The Amazon Affiliate program also called “Amazon Associates” can be an easy way to monetize your website or blog. Simply sign up, receive immediate approval, and place Amazon affiliate links on your site. When someone makes an Amazon purchase via one of your links, you get the commission-The basic is that simple.

Amazon’s affiliate program enables content creators, bloggers, and marketers to monetize their site visitors by promoting Amazon products.

Signing for the program is free. You will receive a commission if an interested buyer clicks on the Amazon link on your website and purchases the item. The commission ranges from 1% to 20%, depending on the product category. For instance, if you sell a product at $100 you’d get $20 as commission. If you sell the same product 30 times per month, you’d make $600 every month.

       Read also: What is Affiliate marketing by Neil Patel

How does the Amazon Affiliate program work?

Amazon’s affiliate program lets you promote eligible Amazon items to your target market using a unique product link. Here’s how it works:

• Website owners create an Amazon Affiliate account on the platform.
•  Amazon gives each website owner a unique Associate ID.
• Once the application has been approved, associates can begin creating affiliate links in their Amazon portal.
• Associates then place the links in blog posts or other parts of their website.
• Once someone clicks the link and makes a purchase, the associate earns a commission.

How to Become an Amazon Affiliate

Amazon is open to affiliates from all over the world. You don’t need to pay a registration fee to join, nor do you need to maintain a quota to earn your commissions. Once Amazon approves your application to be an affiliate, you can advertise their goods right away.

Here are the following steps to  signup and start promoting products;

1. Create a website or blog.
2. Navigate to the Amazon Associates homepage and click “Sign Up”.
3. Enter your account information.
4. Enter your website address.
5. Enter your preferred store ID.
6. Explain how you drive traffic to your site.
7. Choose your payment method.
8. Create Amazon Affiliate links.

1. Create a website or blog

The most common way to advertise Amazon products is through a website or blog. To become an Amazon Associate, you must be able to describe the purpose of your website, as part of the application process. So, have a firm idea of why you’re creating your site, the audience you’ll target, and how you intend to bring in traffic ( visitors ) to your site.

2.Navigate to the Amazon Associate homepage and click “Sign up.”

In order to become an Amazon Affiliate, you’ll need to create your Amazon Associates account. To do that, visit the Amazon Associates homepage and click SIGN UP. From there, you’ll be prompted to log in to your existing Amazon account or create one.

3. Enter your account information.

Enter your account info (including the name, address, and phone number of the payee).

4. Enter your website address.

Enter your website address(es),

5. Enter your preferred store ID

Enter your preferred store ID (usually the same as your primary website name), explain what websites hope to accomplish, and select Amazon topics your links will likely target.

6. Explain how you drive traffic to your site.

Explain how you drive traffic to your websites, how you use your website to generate income, how you usually build links, and how many visitors your site brings in each month.

7. Choose your payment method.

Choose whether to enter your payment( credit card) and tax ID information now or later. Then proceed to your dashboard.

 8. Create your Affiliate Link.

Once you’ve created your account, you’ll be sent to your personal Associate homepage. This is where you’ll find your performance dashboard (including an earnings overview, monthly summary, and total clicks). This dashboard is also where you’ll search for relevant products to link to from your content.

Amazon Affiliate Program Rules and Requirements

Amazon has guidelines for associates to follow, so it’s best to understand those before you dive in. Noncompliance may result in being banned from the program.

Here are some of the big ones to keep in mind:

·       You must disclose on your site or in your communication that you may be eligible to earn from your recommendations.

·       You must not make false or deceptive claims in your recommendations.

·       Avoid referring to prices (since prices frequently change).

·       Do not use Amazon affiliate links in offline promotions, eBooks, or Emails.

·       Do not use link shorteners on affiliate links.

You can read Amazon’s full policy here.

How to Create an Amazon Affiliate link

1. log in to your Amazon Associate account.

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

2. Click on product linking in the top banner and select product Links.

This will take you to a page that will prompt you to create your link.

3. Add the ASIN of the product OR search Amazon for the product.

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

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

4. Click the Go button.

This will generate a result at the bottom. Be sure to verify that this is the intended product you wanted to promote.

5. Click the Get link button on the right side.

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

6. Alternatively, you can use the Amazon Associates SiteStripe to generate Amazon Affiliate links.

A simpler way 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.

Just click the Text button in the Get link Selector. Then copy the generated link that is provided in the popup.

7. Use the generated link on your site or other promotional materials according to Amazon’s standards.

Just remember that Amazon’s guidelines prohibit the use of the link offline promotions, email, and eBooks or PDFs.

Each link you generate will have a cookie that will then follow your website visitors after they click on the link. This is highly beneficial to you because it increases the likelihood of you receiving a commission for the sale. The only problem is that it only lasts for a limited amount of time.

How to promote the products and generate sales

 The size and engagement of your audience, your content, and your online marketing activities will all affect your earnings. The average yearly compensation for an Amazon affiliate marketer is $55,434. Although recent studies indicate that affiliate marketers can earn less than $20,00 per year, and of course, there are also those that make a big earn millions of dollars in one year.

Here are some tips on how to promote Amazon products and make money from the program:

It’s important that when you select a niche it is one where people make purchases or click on adverts online. In some niches, people solely look for information. For example, the niche of Dog Ear Infections might have a lot of traffic and little competition but people tend to be looking for information before they make a decision on whether or not to take their dog to the vet. They are not looking to buy dog-related products. This makes that niche very poor.

You need to consider whether the product or niche you want to promote is something that people buy online. Something like shoes, expensive jewelry, and watches don’t tend to be bought online. Think about it, if you were buying a $10,000 Rolex watch, would you buy it from the Internet to save a few bucks, or would you buy it from a reputable shop so you ensure you get a quality, genuine watch and good service.

All of these are things that you need to take into consideration when you are choosing your niche. It is important for you that you find a niche that is not only profitable but one where you can really make money with the level of competition in the niche.

2. Advertise your website on social media and search engines.

Without traffic, you won’t be able to drive referrals to Amazon and earn a commission. Writing good content, learning SEO, and creating a content marketing strategy will get you far. But you want to make sure you’re covering all your bases.

When you have found a product to promote then you have to determine what keywords to target in order to make a profit. This is very important because the keywords are what your target market types into the search engines in order to find your website. If a keyword has too high a level of competition then you are going to struggle to get a ranking for it and get free organic search engine traffic. If it doesn’t have enough searches per month then you will not get enough visitors to make your site profitable enough.

 Using Social media:

#1. Instagram

One easy way to gain followers is to post content regularly and use appropriate hashtags. Hashtags are those things you see that look like: #hashtag, and they are equivalent to keywords. You must use the # sign in front of the tag, and there must be no spaces. If you have multiple words in your hashtag, you can either combine them all into one word like this: #thisisyourhashtag

Always include at least 5 hashtags, and usually the more, the better because this is one of the most important ways your posts will be found on Instagram! When you properly tag your posts, people will be able to find your posts when they search Instagram for that tag, or when they click the tag on someone else’s post

#2.Pinterest

When you create your account on Pinterest, you will want to use keywords in your username AND in your profile. This will help you pop up in search results when people search by keyword. For example, you could use words like:

● Journals

● Sketchbooks

You can also include a link in your profile, so be sure to link to your blog, opt-in page, website, or Amazon profile. You’ll want to create a few “boards”, which are basically folders in which you bookmark items using images. Make sure to name your boards with focus keywords in the title, and always put a description that includes additional primary keywords. What this does is help your boards get found when people search for boards to follow. You want as many people as possible to follow your boards so all your pins will show up in their feeds.

#3.Quora

Quora is still by far the best way to generate traffic to new blogs. People ask thousands on questions on a daily basis on Quora.

What you need to do is look for question-related to your blog niche and provide answers to them but make sure you include your site link in your answers to redirect them to your blog.

One thing to know is that by answering questions on quora, you can actually be ranked on the google search engine.

Let’s say someone asks a question about how “best camera to buy in 2022” and let’s say you give a very reasonable answer and input certain keywords in your answer.

Then someone else somewhere types exactly the same or similar keywords on google, automatically your answer on quora would pop up because your answer to the question contains one or more of the keywords typed by that certain person.

#4.Twitter

Twitter is still one of the best ways of generating traffic to your site or blog. Just tweeting the title of your blog post with a link back to your site will not work, you need to be active and creative. Also at the same time, you’ll need to connect with more and more people on Twitter. Here are some ways to generate traffic from Twitter:

1. Use short tweets.
2. Include statistics and quotes.
3. Include statistics and quotes.
4. Schedule your tweet properly.
5. Use @mentions

How to receive and withdraw payments

Now that you’ve created a strong strategy for getting your Amazon Affiliate website off the ground, it's time to get paid.

Amazon Associates get paid by direct deposit. You’ll automatically receive the funds in your bank account. Alternatively, you can opt to receive an Amazon gift card or a check by mail.

Amazon Associates officially earn a commission when the order has shipped. If the customer cancels the order before it’s shipped, you won’t receive a commission. If the customer returns the product after purchase, the commission will be deducted from your earnings.

Conclusion

The amazon affiliate program is an excellent way to turn a side passion into a source of passive income.

Choose a niche, write product-centric content, and include contextual affiliate links, and you’ll be sure to grow your Amazon Affiliate income to astronomical levels.