Amazon Associates and Amazon Affiliates

Did you know you can earn money from Amazon besides selling products? With its Amazon Associates program, the possibilities are endless.

What is Amazon Associates?

Becoming an Amazon Associate is an easy way for you to make some extra money on the side by monetizing your website. If you provide qualifying content of any kind and get a decent amount of traffic, chances are you’ll make a good candidate as an Associate.

How is this done, you ask? By implementing Amazon’s link-building tools. This helps to direct their readers to specific items listed on Amazon in the hopes that they will make a sale. One of the great perks of this is that Associates make commission from these sales. Whether it’s from traffic they have sent or referrals, it’s a great way to make a little extra scratch on the side.

And if their readers buy certain Amazon products, those Associates can earn money from them, as well. When you sign up to become an Associate, you will get access to a slew of useful tools. These give them the ability to see reports to help them learn what readers are currently interested in. As you can see, this can be a valuable tool.

What makes this such a great opportunity is the fact that this service is free to use. You simply embed Amazon links into your website that are tied through the Associate program. Any time one of your followers or readers clicks that link and buys Amazon’s linked item, you get a kick back.

Everyone likes to make more money, and this is a great and free way to do it. Depending on what kind of traffic your website sees, you can make a great deal of income from monetizations alone. It is, of course, best to have a large amount of followers who are loyal and regularly check your website.

Having a popular blog is a great way to become an Amazon Affiliate. Readers love interesting blogs, and the better your blog is, the more readers you’ll have coming back for more. You don’t have to rely on a single monthly blog entry, either.

Many bloggers post daily. This is a great way to keep fresh ads posted on your website. Once you learn the likes and dislikes of your followers, you can fine-tune the ads to suit their tastes. This is a huge advantage to increasing your chances of clicks to Amazon and potential sales.

Who can be an Amazon Associate?

The first thing to know is that Amazon looks for people who will add value to their brand. They want folks who are passionate about what they do. Whether you create content, review products, or are an artist, you should be energetic and excited to be an Associate.

Amazon will gauge your style to see if you are a good fit for their program. You should have a good amount of driven sales under your belt. This will help your chances greatly in the application process. If you’re interested and want to know how to become an Amazon Affiliate, you must have sold at least three items within the last 180 days.

After you have signed up, Amazon will review your application to ensure you have made the minimum required sales to join. They will also check all the sites you have provided to make sure that they meet all of their requirements.

It is crucial that all given sites have fresh, new content, regardless if advertising has been removed. For a site to qualify, it needs a minimum of 10 posts. Remember, sites that Amazon can’t access won’t be permitted.

There are a few very important things that Amazon looks for when considering an Associate. You run the risk of having your application rejected if you don’t meet these requirements. Let’s go over each one so you’ll know what to have before submitting an application.

When an application has been rejected, Amazon can’t go back to reassess it. So make sure that you follow their rules carefully.

Websites

You have to own the website you are submitting and the content needs to be fresh. Amazon says within 60 days, but the newer the better. This ensures that you have a better chance of getting traffic and keeping it coming in.

Mobile Apps

Your app must comply with Amazon’s Mobile Application Policy requirements. If it doesn’t in any way, you run the risk of being rejected. Be sure that you carefully read what their requirements entail before submitting your mobile app.

Social Networks

The Amazon Affiliate program accepts submissions only from certain websites. Instagram, Facebook, Twitch.tv, YouTube, and Twitter. Make sure that you list your group or account and not just the social network URL.

It is also vital that your social network account or group is well-established. You should also have a minimum of 500 organic followers. It needs to be available to the public and not behind a paywall or closed group.

How to get started

Having a quality page can make or break you in terms of visitor and follower traffic count. Look around the internet for great deals on hosting a website. You’re bound to find one that suits your needs.

If you’re new to this game, there are two vital elements in owning a website. Hosting and domain. Hosting can run you as little as $5 a month and go up from there. This depends largely on what kind of package you’re looking for.

Domain fees are paid annually and shouldn’t run you more than $20, at most. Once you take care of the groundwork, it’s time to move on to your website’s creation. If you aren’t familiar with this process, you will need to hire someone with experience.

You want your website to be as attractive as possible, so this matters a great deal. Sloppy pages will turn people off and leave them looking elsewhere. A great website goes hand-in-hand with being an Amazon Associate.

You want your followers to trust you, and having a clean, user-friendly website is the first step. Once you have built rapport with your readers, you run a greater chance of them trusting you enough to click on your links.

Brand Recognition

Amazon has been around a long time now and everyone knows who they are. This can serve you well. Visitors are more likely to click on an Amazon link than most others. And if you’ve honed in on what your followers are interested in, you can adjust your links to suit their needs.

Amazon currently has over half a billion items for sale. This is a huge advantage to you and your website. And if you are leaning toward a certain niche, being an Amazon Affiliate makes even more sense. The possibilities to what you link to are nearly limitless. With such a huge catalog of items to choose from, chances are they have exactly what your readers want.

This will ultimately earn you more money and get Amazon more traffic. But make sure you do extensive research in what your followers like. If you provide them with a blog that covers video games, it’s probably not a good idea to link to silverware.

Pay close attention to the comments your website is generating. This will help you gauge what your followers are into so you can better decide on what item to link.

Stick with it

If you’re new to the concept of an Affiliate, it’s going to take you some time to get used to it. It’s not the hardest thing in the world, but it’s going to take some work on your end. Besides providing relevant topics of discussion, you need to learn how to engage your readers enough to where they want to provide you with feedback.

This valuable information is more than just conversation. It will tell you what changes you need to make to your website and its content. It will also tell you how to make the proper tweaks to your ads. You need to use both of these to craft the best website possible so they keep coming back for more.

If done right, they’ll want to see what you have to say, as well as take interest in your ads. There’s a ton of competition out there. It can be rather intimidating to those who are new to the process. Many give up before they have a chance to shine.

Stick with it and ride out the storm. If you are passionate about what you’re providing, people will keep coming back. This is a crucial characteristic. It is exactly what Amazon looks for when deciding on who to choose to be an Associate. If they see that you love what you’re doing and refuse to give up, you’ll have a greater chance of partnering up with them.

How much can you earn as an Amazon Affiliate?

This is the million-dollar question, isn’t it? On average, you can make anywhere from $100 to $25000 as an Amazon affiliate. But there are some other things to take into account.

• How much traffic can your website expect
• How many unique visitors who will click affiliate links
• Estimate how many of those clicks will turn into sales
• Average price they will spend
• Factor in your commission rate

These are all important aspects to consider when trying to factor in how much income you’ll be looking at every month.

Traffic changes often among website owners. This is what makes it so difficult to reliably say what you’ll bring in every month. Even the most successful websites go through dry spells and downtime.

The key is to try to find ways to keep your content fresh and exciting. This, above all else, will keep your viewers coming back.

Amazon Associate/Affiliate Benefits

Amazon makes it easy for you to get the most return from your website. By knowing what your readers are currently into, you stand a greater chance of making more money. Read on to learn of the other way becoming an Associate can benefit you.

Generate Revenue

The biggest incentive by far, being an Associate will let you earn money. If you generate a lot of traffic, your chances of earning money greatly increases. While the cost of becoming an Amazon Associate is free, you may need to dump some money into your website starting out.

Promotional Products

This is a great way to spread the word about Amazon’s massive library of products. If you get more eyes on their products that turn into sales, you can earn even more money. The more sales pushed, the more money in your pocket.

Creative Tools

These tools are a great way to customize what kind of ads you display on your website. When you know what your readers want, you can use this to your advantage. You can host what’s trending with them to help increase sales and make you even more money.

Important Jargon

Amazon provides a great list of technical jargon to help you if you’re new to the scene. Use this very helpful list as you create your unique website. It will serve you well and make the process a lot easier. If you’re interested in becoming an Amazon Affiliate, you’ll need to know most of these.

• Article : Generally in single-page form, this is a collection of thoughts set up as an informational collection.
• Blog : A collection of thoughts, typically personal or informational. Blogs usually thrive on reader feedback, allowing the writer to build rapport.
• CMS : Content Management System. A way for you to easily manage content. The interface is often set up in groups of information to allow better control.
• CSS : Cascading Style Sheets. This lets you customize web page layout. It’s a great way to make adjustments without having to know code.
• Domain : A user-friendly address that takes you to a web page.
• Footer : The bottom of a web page. This is where you often see information about the company, like ‘About Us’, ‘FAQs’, and ‘Contact Us’.
• FTP : File Transfer Protocol. If you’re using a CMS, you’ll need an FTP. This allows you to upload files to a server.
• Header : The opposite of a Footer. The Header is the top of a page where you see titles, logos, and main menu layouts.
• Hosting : If you want to start your own website, you’re going to need hosting. This is where all the information regarding your site is stored. Countless companies offer this service.
• Category : You’ll often see this on sites like Amazon. This is a grouping of several titles that pertain to different subject matter.
• MySQL : The internet’s most-used database technology. This is a system from WordPress.
• PHP : A popular programming language. It’s best used for online content, like interactive features.
• Plug-in : Software that expands the general use of existing software.
• RSS Feed : A computer file format most used in web syndication.
• Server : Hosting companies use servers to provide space on the internet. This is what allows your web page to be accessed by the online community.
• Sidebar : A graphical strip on a web page that has embedded tools. This is where you often see things like ‘Home’ or ‘Photos’.
• Spam : Spam is the undesired and unwanted junk you receive in your email inbox. It’s often in the form of advertising. Can sometimes contain harmful elements to your operating system.
• Tags : Keywords that contain links to more information. For example, when you are ‘tagged’ in a photo online, clicking on your name will take you to your page. Used for blogs and various other aspects on the internet.
• Theme : The layout for a web page. Setting a theme will cause all parts of the page to correspond in like.
• Trackback : A way for a website to communicate with another website. Useful when an update is available.
• URL : This is the long string of characters you see in the address bar of a web browser. If you don’t type it manually yourself, the site will fill it in. Contains the domain.
• Widget : A graphical tool that works as a standalone. This can be a calendar, clock, weather app, and much more.
• WYSIWYG : Short for ‘What You See Is What You Get’. A software editing system that gives you a final product closely resembling what you typed without a lot of technical jargon.

How to Apply for Amazon Associates/Affiliates

Viral Launch offers many solutions to help you along the way to expanding your business. We discussed a few of these earlier with the packages that Viral Launch offers. Let’s check out a few more in greater detail.

Steps 1

You should first read the Associates Program Operating Agreement. This will tell you everything you need to know concerning what Amazon expects from you. This will help to avoid any misunderstandings in the event your submission gets rejected.

Steps 2

After you fully understand the rules and Amazon’s agreement, head on over to their signup portal and fill out their brief online registration form. From there, you will get instant access to their Associates Central page. This gives you quick and easy ways to link just about any website to Amazon by going through their Build Links section.

Steps 3

Now, you can start earning referrals. Any sale that you generate for Amazon through your website will earn you money. Using Associates Central, you can manage and track all of your earnings. You will be shown reports of the traffic you have provided to Amazon and any applicable sales.

Use this information to your advantage by adjusting your website to suit the needs of your followers. Since you’ll know what they have been buying, you can better cater to their needs. This will serve you well in that you can continually update your website accordingly. Add new Amazon content and monitor how well it is doing with your readers.

Amazon will pay you any referral fees at the end of the month.

Final Thoughts

While this is a great way to earn money on the side, it’s best not to rely on being an Associate as your only source of income. Traffic fluctuates wildly, so while you may earn a great deal one month, the next might not do as well.

Being an Amazon Associate works best for those who have a lot of followers and readers. Obviously, the more you have the better chance of making sales. It is possible to get really good at the analytics involved and use them to your financial advantage.

But, if you’re new to the system of monetization, don’t expect to see a whole lot of action initially. Amazon says you will start earning money right away. And while this is true, to what extent largely depends on how popular your website is or how well you can drive traffic using other methods. It is definitely not a get rich quick scheme.

FAQ

Does it cost anything to become an Associate?

Not at all. There is no fee to apply, and best of all, there is no sales quota that you have to hit every month to maintain your Associate status.

How does Amazon track orders coming from my Website?

As soon as you sign up, Amazon gives you an Associates ID. Any Amazon link you use on your website has a special format that incorporates this ID. So when a customer clicks the link, Amazon is sent your unique URL with your ID embedded into it.

This lets Amazon know you were responsible for the traffic and potential sale. A nice feature about this is that Amazon tracks and stores this action even if the customer closes out their browser window. When they return, Amazon can still see this important information.