You may have heard about Amazon Affiliates from either a Facebook Reel or TikTok video, or from somewhere online. It’s a program that is under the Amazon company, and helpful for those wanting to get a piece of the pie without selling their own products. In this article we’ll answer the question about “How does Amazon Affiliates work?”, as well as share a few tips to get you on your way to making money with the program.
Written on by Nile Flores
Estimated read time 5 minutes
How Does Amazon Affiliates Work?
Amazon Affiliates is a program that allows website owners, business owners, and even bloggers to earn a bit of money while promoting other businesses’ products. This is also called affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a win-win for both the seller and the person in the affiliate program. For example, Verpex has an affiliate program where you can earn up to $200 per sale.
In order to participate in the Amazon Affiliates program, you must create an Amazon Associates account. Once you’ve done that, you can use the system to create your own unique affiliate links to most products on Amazon.com. After you’ve picked out products you’d like to make commissions off of, you simply share the affiliate link.
It’s important to note that in order to receive the commission, the user must use your affiliate link and successfully complete their purchase.
Amazon Affiliates: Step by Step
While you have a bit of an idea of how Amazon Affiliates works, here’s a bit more in-depth step-by-step process of it:
Sign up with Amazon Affiliates
Choose products to promote
Generate your affiliate link
Create content to about those products
Promote those products
Watch your commissions come in
Sign up with Amazon Affiliates
The first step to get you on your way to becoming an Amazon Affiliate is to sign up for the program. The Amazon Affiliates program is linked at the bottom of the Amazon.com site under “Become an Affiliate”, or you could just go to https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/.
When creating an Amazon Associates account for the Amazon Affiliate program, you will need to completely fill out the forms. This includes information like:
Your legal name
Your home or business address
Your phone number
Website URL that you will be promoting from
In some cases, you may also need to add tax ID information.
Choose products to promote
Depending on what you’re interested in promoting, you can search through Amazon or cherry pick through the Best Sellers. Best seller products are ones that are popular and trusted, so promoting them should be a lot easier than choosing a product that is newer and has little to no reviews.
Generate your affiliate link
Once you’ve chosen the product or products you desire to promote, it’s time to generate the affiliate links. As long as you’re logged into your Amazon account and have an approved Amazon associates profile, you can generate an affiliate link on most any product within the Amazon network. To generate a link, you just need to go to the product’s page and click a link that says “Amazon Associate”. You will be given a link that you can copy and then paste wherever you will promote it.
For example, if you’re trying to sell a book, you would go to the product listing for it, and then find the Amazon Associate link. Click on that link and then you can copy the affiliate link that goes directly to the book you want to sell.
Create content to about those products
When you’ve generated an affiliate link, it’s very possible to just share the link to your blog, your email list, or even social media handles. However, the best way to promote it, is to create content around those products. This will allow your followers to know what they are buying and if you truly stand behind it. Think of it as your own way of creating advertising, but in a clever way.
Promote those products
After you’ve created content for the products you wish to promote, it’s time to actually promote it. You can publish videos, blog posts, or even social media posts.
Watch your commissions come in
After promoting your products, you just need to watch your commissions come in. Please note that it might not happen right away and you may not get a ton of sales off the bat, but with time and clever promotions, Amazon Affiliate marketing might become a lucrative stream of income.
When someone clicks on your affiliate link, the sale is linked with your account. Usually the commission that you will accrue from the sale is based on the product’s price as well as your commission rate. As a side note, Amazon is the one that sets the commission rate based on each product category.
How to Make Money with Amazon Affiliates
With over over 900,000 Amazon Affiliates out there, it might seem a bit discouraging to promote some of the more popular items. However, don’t be deterred from that number. There’s plenty of pie for everyone! Here’s a few tip on increasing the probability of making money with Amazon Affiliates:
Choose the right products
Plan effective promotion campaigns
Build a solid following
Choose the right products
When you’re choosing products to promote, make sure to choose ones that are related to what your website or social media handles are about. This is because the people following you are interested in what you have already established and introducing products that aren’t related may confuse them. Additionally, when choosing the right product to promote, make sure the commission yields a decent rate.
Plan effective promotion campaigns
Promote your products effectively. If you’re just throwing out links and no context with them, you’re probably not going to get much, if any, clicks from your followers. Make sure your content is thoroughly researched so you’re not handing out inaccurate information about the products you’re promoting. If you’re not sure, you can always reach out to sellers on Amazon to ask for more information about their products. They are usually more than happy to provide that information, especially if it could help make them more money in the long run.
Build a solid following
While you might want to build a large audience, you will want to make sure that the following is pretty solid. This means that your followers regularly engage with your content. Otherwise, you just have a lot of followers just sitting there.
Not only with a solid following may help make you money with Amazon Affiliates, but it also helps your website and social handle stats improve. These are good if you want to do more than just affiliate markets. For example, you could become a brand ambassador if a seller on Amazon notices a regular influx of traffic coming from you.
Tips for Success with Amazon Affiliates
Here are a few tips for success with Amazon Affiliates:
Choose a niche.
Create unique and informative content.
Use a mix of images, text, video.
Don’t be afraid to add affiliate links to your content.
Do promote products on different platforms.
Choose a niche
Choosing a niche to stick to for products will allow you to focus on creating content solely around them. In fact, if you want to create several different sites, and each website focuses on a specific niche, you can certainly do that. The beauty of Amazon Affiliates is that you can promote as many products as you want. Just make sure to be smart and not inundate your followers with products from every category that they might not be interested in.
Create unique and informative content
Because there are so many affiliate marketers online, you want to set yourself apart from the rest by creating unique and informative content. Sure, some of what you say may overlap with what other affiliates, but your followers are following you for a reason - because they like how you relate to them.
Use a mix of images, text, and video
When promoting products, make sure to vary how you publish your content. Sure if you do more blogging and despise creating video, then make sure to use images and text.
Don’t be afraid to add affiliate links to your content
If you’re afraid of spamming your own followers, stop it. You’re only spamming them if it’s unrelated and unwanted by them. In fact, they will tell you. So, now that tidbit of advice is out of the way, make sure you add those affiliate links to your newsletters, social media posts, videos, and even blog posts.
Do promote products on different platforms
Your followers aren’t always in one place, so it makes sense to promote your product where they are. Just make sure if you’re promoting on other platforms like social networks, that you’re following their policies when it comes to sharing links or promoting specific products. Some networks may not permit certain products. For example, Facebook has some policies against using their advertising network for marijuana, hemp or even CBD products.
In Summary
If you play your cards right, and try out some of the tips in this article, you will make money through the Amazon Affiliates program. Hopefully this article has answered the question on “How does Amazon Affiliate work?” Good luck trying out the program, and just make sure to be patient. Affiliate marketing isn’t a get rich quick kind of thing, and does take some effort to promote products.
