Amazon Affiliate Program: What It Is & How You Can Use It To Make More Sales

Since the 25 years of its launch, Amazon has been indisputably growing into one of the biggest eCommerce platforms, with millions of sellers and consumers leveraging its profits and benefits.

According to Statista, over 197 million people worldwide get on their mobile devices and visit Amazon—proving how seamless and convenient it is to do online shopping on the platform. However, besides the consumers, Amazon is increasingly growing its target market by developing new acquisitions and offering various services.

It is also home to many online sellers. For example, Quartz’s statistics suggest over 50% of Amazon sales are from third-party sellers.

One such popular service/program is—Amazon Affiliate Program, also known as “Amazon Associates.” Whether you’re starting your own small business, starting a blog, or hoping to become an entrepreneur, the Amazon Affiliate Program can be a simple way to monetize your business and earn profits.

But how can you exactly make money through this program? How to get started? We’ll answer all these queries and more with a step-by-step, detailed procedure. But first, let’s first start with the basics.

What is the Amazon Affiliate Program?

The Amazon Affiliate Program is a free marketing program for bloggers, influencers, and website owners to become Amazon Associates.

It’s different from selling your business products on Amazon via Seller Central. Instead, as an Amazon Associate, you can advertise Amazon’s products on your blog, website, or social media platform by creating unique product links—Affiliate links.

When your blog visitors or customers click on these links and purchase the product, you can earn a referral fee for the traffic you send on Amazon. You can mention and create links for any products that best suit your brand, target audience, or those you’ve tried and tested yourself.

For instance, if you own a food or recipe blog, you can create links for the recipe ingredients, utensils you use, or electronic devices used to make the recipe (beater, grinder, etc.) and earn a commission when your readers buy products through those links.

Here’s what you need to do:

• Create an Amazon Associate account on the platform.

• You’ll receive a unique Associate ID, and the platform will send your application for approval.

• Once Amazon approves your application, you can begin creating links on your Amazon portal.

• You can then mention and place these links on your social media accounts or parts of your blogs or websites.

• If a customer clicks on these links and adds products to their carts within 24 hours of following the link, you’ll get a referral fee/commission from the sale.

• As long as your customers add the products to their carts within the next 24 hours of following your affiliate link, they need to check out their carts within the next 90 days for you to get a commission.

Note: Your customers don’t necessarily have to purchase the product for you to receive a commission—but if they do, it’s an added bonus. 

You can read the Program Policies and Operating Agreement—implemented by Amazon to prevent negative customer experiences and potentially fraudulent activities.

As an Amazon Associate, you can earn between $100 to $20,000 from Amazon Affiliate Program, depending on the amount of traffic you send to Amazon and how many referrals you generate for the platform. However, since this program works on a commission basis, you only earn a percentage per sale.

Besides the number of referrals, the commission rate also depends on the product category. You can review the program’s commission rate per product category to calculate your potential earnings depending on your blog/website’s niche.

How to become an Amazon affiliate?

One of the prerequisites for becoming an Amazon Affiliate is owning an active blog, website, or YouTube channel. It allows you to target the right and ideal audience and bring in more traffic.

Here’s how you can become an affiliate:

Step 1- Visit the Amazon Associate homepage and click on the Sign Up button.

Step 2- Enter your credentials—email or phone number and password. Then, click on the Sign-In button. Or click on Create your Amazon account if you don’t have an existing account.

Step 3- Enter your account information.

Step 4- Enter your website, blog, mobile app, YouTube channels URLs.

Step 5- Enter your profile credentials and this information:

• Preferred Associates Store ID

• Info about your websites or mobile apps

• Select a primary topic that best describes your website/mobile app

• Select a secondary topic that best describes your website/mobile app

• Products/items you intend to list on your website/mobile app

• Select a primary type of your website/mobile app

• Select a secondary type of your website/mobile app

Step 6- Enter Traffic and Monetization information. Here’s the information you need to enter:

• How do you drive genuine traffic to your websites—paid search, SEO, email, etc.

• How do you use your blog or website to generate income?

• How do you build links?

• How many unique visitors do your website or app receive per month?

• Your primary reason behind joining the Amazon Associates Program

• How did you hear about the program?

Step 7- Enter the captcha, check on the Operating Agreement checkbox, and click on the Finish button.

Step 8- Enter your payment and tax information, or click on Later if you wish to enter it later and proceed to your account dashboard.

Step 9- Once your account is ready, you’ll land on your personal homepage, where you can see your performance and track your earnings. This is where you can create and build your affiliate links.

How to create an Amazon affiliate link?

According to Feedvisor, over 89% of consumers are more likely to buy products from Amazon than other eCommerce websites. So you can attract a share of these customers towards your brand and make money by creating Amazon Affiliate links. Here’s how:

1. Login to your Amazon Associate account.
2. Click on the Product Linking option on the top banner and choose Product Links. This will direct you to the page where you can create your unique affiliate links.
3. Amazon assigns each product an Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN)—a 10-character long alphanumeric code for product identification within the product catalog. You can find this code under the Product Details section of every product, and find the ones you want to create a link for.
4. You’ll see a list of results at the bottom of the search. Click on the Get link button of the product to copy its affiliate link and promote it to your target audience.

Amazon Affiliate Program: How to boost sales and earn more money?

Once you become an Amazon Associate, you can easily generate affiliate links if you have a valid and active blog, website, or YouTube channel. What matters is how you leverage it fully to make more sales and generate an active source of income.

Here are a few tips for you to get started and earn profits through the  program:

1. Pick a profitable and top-selling niche

The trick to make the most out of the program is picking a popular and profitable eCommerce niche. Choosing a niche provides you an opportunity to naturally promote the right products to the right target customers without being too salesy or forceful.

Moreover, sticking to a specific niche will establish credibility—thus, helping you build an authoritative and reputable brand image. And since you won’t have much competition by choosing a specific niche, it will help you attract more customers and increase sales.

Here are a few tips for choosing a top-selling and lucrative niche:

• Research popular niches, and shortlist 3-5 you like. Some examples include—kitchen ingredients and equipment, fitness gears and home gym, or DIY home improvement projects.

• Review your competition to get more insights into consumer demands and find collaboration opportunities.

• Ensure the niches are monetizable and find businesses and brands that advertise with bloggers in your specific niche.

• Narrow down your options to one based on your research, and take it forward.

A well-researched niche with personal interest, tremendous demand, and monetization capabilities is crucial to becoming a successful blogger and earning commission through affiliate links.

2. Create quality affiliate articles consistently

Creating content that’ll drive visitors who are ready to buy the recommended products from your blog/website is the next step towards promoting your affiliate links and boosting sales.

Here are some examples of content pieces that can drive affiliate sales for you:

• Product reviews

Writing a quality product review article for a niche-related product is a great way to ensure high click-through rates and maximum affiliate sales.

Example: Apple AirPods Pro review or Sony Premium Compact DSC-RX100MSA body review.

• Products comparison

Products comparison content helps customers compare two products and find relevant and specific information before making a final purchase decision.

Example: iPhone 13 vs iPhone 13 pro max

• The best products

Customers are always looking to buy the best quality and latest products. The best product type of content gets huge traffic and brings high-converting traffic if it ranks at a higher search engine ranking position.

Example: The best headphone for gamers or the best laptops for engineering students 2021.

• New products launch

There are a large number of customers consuming content related to new product launches. If you can divert this traffic to your website and convert them into customers through your product recommendations, you can bag significant affiliate sales.

Example: New iPhone 13 prices and features

In addition to writing engaging and quality content, make sure to blog consistently—at least once a week. Because the more you make yourself and your brand heard, the more opportunities for traffic and lead generation, which is vital being an Affiliate marketer.

3. Optimize your links for location-specific audiences

The maximum amount of traffic to affiliate websites comes from product-related with location-specific. It’s critical to know where most of the traffic is coming from, with their demographics.

Doing this will allow you to optimize and customize your affiliate links to a region-specific customer base—allowing you to offer the best-suited affiliate product recommendations.

4. Create a social media strategy to drive traffic to your Amazon products

Without reliable and loyal traffic, you won’t be able to send referrals to Amazon and earn great commissions through affiliate links.

The best way is to share your links on social media platforms like FaceBook, Instagram, and Twitter. Promoting your affiliate links on these sites and creating content in your niche consistently on socials and blogs will help you build credibility thus facilitating conversions, and building brand loyalty.

In addition, you can also invest in pay-per-click (PPC) ads on Google or social media platforms—a cost-effective investment for driving more traffic or referrals through your affiliate links.

Leveraging the benefits of social media marketing and search engine advertising can help you drive maximum traffic to your Amazon products.

5. Track data and metrics to improve your strategies

On your Amazon Associate account homepage, you’ll see a performance dashboard to track and analyze your earnings overview, total clicks, and monthly summary.

You can evaluate and analyze what works and what doesn’t to reach your goal by tracking these metrics. For instance, if you receive 1000 clicks a month with a 2% conversion rate, you have 20 referrals. To get 40 referrals, you can either get 1000 more clicks or simply increase the conversion rate to 4%.

You can improve your conversion rate by testing your CTAs or optimizing your landing page to achieve desirable results. Data tracking will allow you to test and optimize your strategies to get better results rather than relying on hit-and-trial and assumptions.

Amazon Affiliate Program: Final Thoughts

The Amazon Affiliate program is a great way to turn your side hustle into a passive source of income and earn more money. If you have an eCommerce business yourself, you can encourage your employees to become affiliates and start blogging or hire affiliates to do the work for you, and drive more than D2C sales.

If you already own a blog, or a social media channel, you can conveniently start and make money through this program. However, if you’re starting from scratch—choose a niche, write quality and product-centric content, and mention context-friendly affiliate links to become a profitable Amazon Associate.

Follow the tips and strategies mentioned in this article to kickstart your affiliate journey and meet your income goals in no time.

If you’re an eCommerce professional, you can check out SellerChamp that provides one-click integration with the professional Amazon Seller Software to automate your Amazon Affiliate business.