How do you become an Amazon affiliate?

If you’re keen to start reaping the rewards of the Associates program, the first thing you need to do is ensure that you have a website, a blog or a YouTube channel that is live. Once you’ve got this box ticked off, and you’ve built up an audience, you can visit the Amazon homepage, navigate your way to the Associates section, and sign up for free. If you don’t already have a user account, you’ll be asked to create a username and password. This is very straightforward, and it only takes a few minutes.

When you’re a registered Amazon member and you’ve joined the Associates program, you can start creating your profile. As you move through the processes and pages, you’ll be prompted to provide information and answer questions about your site, including:

• Your account data: this includes your account name, your address, and phone number
• Your website address or addresses: you can link more than one site or platform to your account
• Any apps, blogs, or YouTube channels
• Your chosen store ID (this is usually the same as your primary web address)
• Details about your websites and topics and subjects that link to your target market

Amazon will also ask you how you drive traffic to your websites, blogs and apps, and also how many visitors you attract per month.
The final stage of creating a profile involves requesting a call from Amazon, which will be made shortly after you completed the other phases. You will be provided with a 4-digit pin, and once you have this, you can get started.

How to create an Amazon affiliate link?

Once you’ve registered, and you’re ready to start enjoying the benefits of the program, the next step is to create your affiliate links. You can do this via your personal homepage, which boasts a dashboard that provides you with up to date information about your account and earnings. To create your links, you’ll need to follow this step by step process:

1. Choose to ‘browse for product’ or ‘search for a product via quick links’: searching with quick links enables you to find specific products, while browsing gives you access to a wider range of products that are organized by category
2. Once you’ve found the product you’re looking for, click on the ‘get link’ icon
3. Personalize the link using descriptions, images or a widget
4. Add any further customization features you want, including the color of the text or the size of the image
5. Preview your new link
6. Copy and paste the link to your site, app or channel

How do you make money as an affiliate?

If you’re selling products online or you’re looking to monetize your site through sharing content, your goal is probably to generate as much profit as possible. Signing up for Amazon’s associates program is a means of boosting your income by earning commission on products that are bought on Amazon. If you post links to your content, whether you have a website, a blog or a YouTube channel, you stand to earn money if people choose to follow those links and then buy a product. With Amazon, you can generate extra cash even when buyers purchase different products to those that they first looked at via your link. People often click on links and end up buying a selection of items, rather than a single specific product.

Commission rates vary according to the type of products, and Amazon has a list of rates for different categories. Some are much higher than others:

• Gift cards and wine: 0%
• Video games and consoles: 1%
• TVs: 2%
• PCs, PC parts, DVDs and Blu-Ray: 2.5%
• Toys: 3%
• Amazon Kindle and Fire: 4%
• Books, health and personal care, sports, kitchen, baby products and automotive: 4.5%
• Digital and physical music, groceries, digital videos and handmade items: 5%
• Tools and outdoors: 5.5%
• Business and industrial supplies, musical instruments, beauty, headphones: 6%
• Amazon Echo and Fire TV: 7%
• Clothing, luggage, shoes, handbags and accessories and watches: 7%
• Furniture, home and home improvement, pets, garden, pantry: 8%
• Digital video games, Amazon Coins and luxury beauty: 10%
• All other categories: 4%

When you sign up for the affiliate program, you can maximize your chances of earning an income via affiliate links by increasing traffic and encouraging your users to click on the links. Through promoting your own content via blogs or videos, you’re also advertising Amazon, and they’re willing to reward you for this when a customer makes a purchase.

Comparing Amazon and Drop Cowboy

When looking to benefit from affiliate programs, it makes sense to compare different options. Amazon is the largest online marketplace in the world, but it’s not the only platform that offers affiliate schemes.

Drop Cowboy’s subscription program offers a range of benefits, including:

• 40% pay-out on first-time purchases
• 20% lifetime residual of the client
• Real-time dashboard updates and easy access
• Monthly payouts
• Global reach
• Free to join
• Sub-affiliate capabilities: sub-affiliates are affiliates who have been recommended or referred by another affiliate

Some of the most significant benefits of Amazon include:

• Global audience with access to multiple international sites
• Free to sign up
• Up to 10% commission
• Vast range of products
• Real-time earnings updates and access to mobile dashboard
• Opportunity to link several sites, blogs, channels or apps
• Customizable links

Getting to grips with Amazon affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing involves advertising products sold by a retailer in exchange for commission. Every time somebody who is on your site or app clicks on your affiliate link and then buys a product from the retailer, you will earn commission. If you’re a blogger, for example, you can increase your earnings substantially by including links in your articles or posting adverts on your homepage. To maximize your earnings, it’s advisable to get to grips with the basics of affiliate marketing. Here are some essential considerations:

• Choose a niche that is relevant to your blog, site or channel and your target audience
• Undertake keyword research
• Focus on creating high-quality, engaging content
• Update your site, channel or blog regularly
• Take steps to improve your search engine ranking. As a blogger, a site owner or a vlogger, it pays to try and increase traffic, as well as focusing on improving the quality of leads and increasing the chances of converting leads. The more site visitors you have, the greater the chance people will read your post and take an interest in your promotional links. You can push your content and try and raise the profile of your site by sharing links on social media, including backlinks, and producing informative, original content.

Increasing your conversion rate

To make money through affiliate marketing, you have to convert leads. If you’ve got a huge amount of people visiting your site and then clicking on links, this is good news, but if they’re not actually making a purchase at the other end, you’re not going to reap the benefits. In order to boost your income, you’ll need to ensure that the site makes a sale. You want your content to be as appealing as possible to elevate the chances of that reader clicking on the link and then adding an item or multiple items to their cart. The more people buy, the more you earn. With this in mind, how can you go about increasing your conversion rate?

• Creating and posting reviews
  Reviews play an increasingly influential role in the way we shop, and studies show that up to 90% of online consumers now read reviews before making a purchase. Reviews are a great way of promoting affiliate products and connecting and interacting with your audience. If you are posting a review, choose products that are relevant to the audience and focus on items that you would use. Be honest and open, highlight the best selling-points, and tell people why you think they should buy this specific product. Be succinct but thorough. It’s essential that your readers trust you when it comes to sharing reviews, so make sure every post is well-researched and that they contain in-depth information, which will help the reader distinguish that product from others.
• How-to guides
  How-to guides work really well for promoting affiliate links. People like to read guides and articles that serve a purpose, and a good guide could push a web user in the direction of making a purchase. Whether you’re interested in beauty or home renovation, you can use your tutorial to inform and enlighten your audience at the same time as urging them to visit Amazon to look at products like luxury eyeshadows and makeup brushes or tools and home accessories.
• Optimizing images and choosing the right text colors
  Many of us look at images before we buy products, and it’s really important to ensure that your images are optimized and that they contain relevant information about the product. The appearance of the page can also make a huge difference. A red or bright blue ‘buy now’ button, for example, is proven to be a lot more effective than a black or gray button. You don’t want to produce articles or videos that are awash with flashing banners or clashing colors, but you do want your content and your affiliate links to jump out from the page.
• Using feedback
  Once you’ve signed up with Amazon, you can start earning straight away, and it’s incredibly useful to keep an eye on your progress and utilize feedback. Use analytics and your dashboard to see which kinds of posts and products are most popular, which have the best conversion rates, and which engage the audience most effectively. If you’ve got readers leaving comments on useful guides or how-to videos, and these posts are generating a huge amount of leads, the majority of which are being converted, this is an avenue worth pursuing in the future. Read comments, take the time to respond, and give your followers what they want. You can track your financial progress via your account. If you do find that guides or tutorials are popular, for example, ask your readers or subscribers to suggest products or types of items they’d like to see featured in future posts.

Amazon is one of the world’s leading retailers, and millions of people use the site to buy products every year. If you’re looking to monetize your website, your blog, or your video channel, you might be thinking about trying to capitalize on the popularity of the marketplace by means of affiliate marketing. If you’re eager to get started and become an Amazon affiliate, this guide will point you in the right direction, providing you with the information you need to sign up and create a profile, and some top tips to promote your content and improve your conversion rates to boost your profits.