If you're looking at signing up as an Amazon associate or creating your own website in order to generate extra income through selling products on Amazon, there are some things that you should be aware of before making any decisions.
In this article I'll look at what being an Amazon affiliate entails, and whether you can earn enough from these programs to justify spending time setting them up. We also discuss which platforms offer the best commissions per sale, and why they may not necessarily be worth joining.
Amazon has its own network of partners called "Amazon Associates" who have their own tools for tracking performance and reporting earnings, but only if you sign up directly with the company. If you choose to join one of the other networks like ClickBank, then you will receive payments via PayPal rather than direct deposit. It's still pretty easy for people to find out about all the different types of payment options available though - so don't worry too much!
There is one exception here however - when using Shopify for instance, you will be paid by check instead of paying via Paypal. This is because Shopify allows users to create custom checkout pages where sellers can add links to external sites such as Amazon (or Google Shopping) without having to use the standard system provided by the platform. You might want to keep this in mind if you plan on building your own store, otherwise it won't really affect your decision.
The amount of money you get paid varies depending on the type of product you sell. Some items cost more to manufacture and ship than others, meaning that even if you sold 10 units of a $20 item, you'd actually only end up earning $2 each time.
However, most products listed on Amazon fall within three categories: books, DVDs & CDs, and electronics. These tend to be fairly expensive, especially compared to similar products elsewhere online, so you shouldn't expect to see huge margins like those offered by Apple or Microsoft.
You can take a look at our list of the top ten highest paying Amazon products to give you an idea of just how low you can go.
As well as the price of the actual goods themselves, there are several factors that influence your overall earnings. Firstly, you must decide what percentage of sales you wish to make. The higher this figure is set, the less profit you'll make per unit sold. Secondly, you must select a category - in this case we've chosen Books & Music, since this tends to be the easiest way to start making money from Amazon. Finally, you must pick a subcategory - for this example let's say we chose Fiction.
Once you've done this, click Add Products to begin listing your wares. Once you've finished adding everything you want to sell, you'll be presented with a summary page showing you exactly how many units you've made over the last 30 days. As you can see above, my total earned was around $1.50 per day.
This doesn't sound very impressive until you consider that I'm not doing anything special - just choosing random products from the various sections on Amazon. So while you could probably increase your earnings considerably by taking advantage of specific offers and promotions, the average person isn't going to achieve anywhere near the same results unless they spend hours researching every single aspect of marketing Amazon products.
So now you know the basics, how difficult is it to become an Amazon affiliate? Well, it depends entirely upon you. Do you enjoy writing articles, uploading videos, or designing graphics? Are you good at finding new ways to promote products? Or perhaps you prefer to focus solely on customer service? There are plenty of opportunities for anyone willing to put in the effort required to succeed.
At the moment, the biggest hurdle facing many potential affiliates is simply getting started. While Amazon provides detailed instructions on how to become an associate, it requires you to apply separately for every site that you intend to participate in. Each application process takes approximately five minutes, and involves sending personal information including contact details, photograph, and proof of identity.
It's certainly possible that you could miss something along the way. Even once you've been approved it's unlikely that you'll ever hear back from the companies involved. However, considering you already have to submit paperwork anyway, it seems silly to waste valuable time applying for nothing. Instead, try contacting individual agencies directly to ask if they would accept applications from non-members.
On the plus side, once you've got the ball rolling you can continue working away happily for years without worrying about running short of funds. A few months ago we wrote a post detailing all of the benefits of becoming an Amazon affiliate. In part two, we discussed how to maximize your chances of success, and in part four, we looked at the various methods used to track your progress.
While there are thousands of affiliate programs across dozens of different web hosts, the vast majority of them aren't profitable. This means that you'll almost always come out ahead financially if you choose to work with an agency that specializes in Amazon promotion. Of course, it's important to note that you will need to invest quite a lot of energy into promoting your website in order to achieve decent returns.
That said, it's definitely possible to turn a small profit from advertising on Amazon. For example, if you were to buy 20 copies of the latest Harry Potter book, upload them to Amazon, and place ads on the front page of the relevant section, you could potentially sell three copies yourself. That's 3 x $3 = $9. And if you had 100 copies of the book lying around, you could easily sell 50 of them.
But again, this assumes that you have spent considerable time preparing your items for submission. It also assumes that you've found a good balance between quantity and quality. After all, if you have twenty thousand copies of the latest James Bond novel sitting unsold on your shelf, you obviously wouldn't bother trying to advertise it on Amazon.
If you're interested in learning more, we recommend checking out our full review of ClickBank, which includes a complete breakdown of the different affiliate programs available. We explain everything from how to properly market your products to how to ensure they remain popular.
We also provide tips on how to avoid common mistakes that lead to failure, and advice on how to build solid relationships with your customers. Finally, we explore the world of video, which is another effective way of boosting profits.
It’s no secret that Amazon is one of the most popular online stores in existence today, and as such, there are thousands of people looking to capitalize on its popularity by becoming Amazon Associates (or “Amazon Affiliates”).
If you want to start making money from this platform, here’s what you should know about becoming an Amazon associate.
The first thing you have to understand when thinking about joining the Amazon affiliate scheme is that it doesn't work like other affiliate programs out there where you earn a percentage of every sale generated through a link on your website or blog.
With Amazon affiliate, you get paid only if someone makes an actual purchase at Amazon.com using a product linked to by your site – which means you don't really get any direct credit for anything unless you're directly responsible for getting the customer to click over to Amazon.
This isn't necessarily bad news because it gives Amazon more control over who gets commissions. However, it also means you won’t be able to build traffic to your own sites until you reach some kind of threshold number of sales – typically around $500 per day.
To put it simply, if you expect to join the Amazon affiliate program and generate enough sales volume to pay yourself a decent living wage, then you'll probably need to spend several years building a substantial audience before you see results. You might even consider it a waste of time if you aren't already working towards establishing a following anyway.
Once you've made your initial sales, the Amazon payments will usually come within 24 hours after the order was placed. If you're not generating a significant amount of sales each day yet, however, you may not receive payment right away. This could mean waiting anywhere between 2 weeks and 3 months depending on your situation.
In terms of average wait times, we found that Amazon pays affiliates approximately two months after they hit their monthly payout target. The exact length of time depends heavily on whether or not you meet your goal during the previous month, but it tends to range somewhere between 30 days and 60 days.
For example, let's say you earned $1,000 last month and set your target again for $2,000. Assuming you did everything right, you'd earn another check approximately 90 days later. In fact, if you didn't meet your goals, you wouldn't get paid for the entire year!
You can speed things along though by setting up recurring payments so you always have a little extra cash coming in throughout the course of the year.
When it comes to selling products on Amazon, the key factor behind success is going to be having a large social media presence. While Facebook remains king when it comes to driving traffic to websites, Twitter has been growing steadily as well. It now boasts nearly 300 million users worldwide - meaning plenty of potential customers are visiting your page regularly.
As far as Amazon itself goes, the company uses Pinterest as its primary way of promoting new products, so you definitely need to follow them on there too.
On top of that, you'll also want to establish a few accounts on third party platforms like Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, etc., since these communities tend to attract a lot of attention from shoppers.
But just being active on social media alone isn't good enough. To maximize your chances of earning commission off of your content, you'll want to focus on sharing high quality posts that offer useful information and help solve problems. These types of posts are great for SEO purposes, too, which helps increase your visibility across search engines.
At minimum, you'll want to post once a week on all three major platforms (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) to ensure you maintain consistent engagement levels. As you grow your follower count, you can expand beyond those guidelines to include more platforms and more posts.
While the costs associated with starting an Amazon affiliate account vary based on what type of merchant account you sign up with, most merchants charge $39/month for basic membership. That fee covers access to a single dashboard that provides data on the performance of your referral links.
There are also fees for adding specific features like auto-shipments and analytics tools, but overall, it's pretty cheap compared to other options available. For instance, Shopify charges $99/year for a basic plan while ClickBank offers a similar service called "Affiliate Manager" for $49/month.
Of course, these services provide significantly less functionality than what Amazon allows you to use. They also limit your ability to customize your account settings and manage multiple campaigns simultaneously. But when you compare all three platforms side by side, the differences are minimal enough that choosing Amazon seems like a reasonable option.
Overall, the biggest drawback to using Amazon instead of other affiliate networks is that you must rely entirely on referrals. There are no ads or banner advertisements on Amazon like there are elsewhere, so you'll essentially have to convince people to buy something without trying to sell them something else first.
That said, the benefits outweigh the drawbacks in our opinion. With the power to drive massive amounts of traffic and potentially hundreds of dollars worth of purchases from anyone interested in buying a particular item, it's hard to argue against putting the effort toward convincing somebody to shop at Amazon.
Anyone who sells products through Amazon has become an “affiliate marketer” or “Amazon seller”. It doesn’t matter whether you sell physical products or services — it all comes down to how well you promote those sales.
Here at Get Rich Slowly, we have written extensively about Amazon affiliate programs and their best practices, so if you’re interested in learning more about them, check out our articles here!
Basically, what this means is that when someone purchases something from any product listed on Amazon, they will receive a commission based on the amount they spend. This commission goes back to whoever created the listing (whether it be the retailer or the third party), and not to Amazon itself. The only thing Amazon gets involved with is processing payments.
The Commission Rate
There are two types of commissions available to sellers under the program: fixed rate and variable rate. For example, let’s say you create a listing for a $15 DVD set. If you choose to offer a 10% commission fee, then each time someone buys that item through your link, you get paid $1.50 (10% of $15) plus whatever fees and taxes apply.
If you chose to offer a 15% commission fee instead, then you would earn $2.25 per sale ($1.50 + $0.75 = $2.25). In both cases, however, the same percentage applies to every single transaction made through your links. So regardless of whether someone purchased five
The ecommerce giant has been around for over two decades now, but its reputation as one of the most effective ways to generate income still remains intact. In fact, even if you're not interested in selling products on Amazon itself, there are plenty of opportunities available from third party companies who want to sell their products through this platform. And that includes the ability to earn money by simply promoting other people's goods or services.
Amazon is well known for having some of the best commissions among all online retailers. The company pays its sellers about 9% - 12% on sales after all costs have been taken care of (including shipping). That means you'll likely see more than $100 per sale when working with them. However, if you've got multiple items ready to ship at once, then you might actually end up making more money than that!
But what exactly makes Amazon so appealing? Is it because they offer such good deals on everything? Or perhaps you like the convenience of shopping while being able to watch TV shows on Amazon Prime Video? We could go on forever discussing all the reasons why Amazon sells millions upon millions of units each year. But let's focus instead on something else -- how much money can you expect to make by getting involved with Amazon affiliate marketing?
As mentioned earlier, Amazon offers various levels of compensation based on your performance. You start off earning 5%, which increases to 6% once you reach 25,000 active orders. From here, you'll receive 7% on anything above 100,000 active orders and 8% on any activity beyond 250,000 orders.
In addition to those basic tiers, you may also qualify for higher payments depending on whether you meet certain conditions. For example, if you already own a website and/or blog, you'll automatically qualify for some extra benefits. If you don't yet have either, though, you can still apply for the Basic Program. This tier will allow you to build your following without needing to worry too much about traffic generation.
If you manage to hit 50,000 impressions within three months of starting the Basic Program, you'll receive 10% on every order placed thereafter. Beyond that point, you'll only be eligible for the next highest payment level, which comes in at 15%.
It goes without saying that these figures assume that you work full time in order to achieve those numbers. It doesn't matter if you spend half your day sleeping or just surfing YouTube videos during lunch break. As long as you put in consistent effort throughout the entire week, you should eventually be able to reach those milestones.
You won't necessarily need thousands of followers before signing up with Amazon. Instead, you'll need enough social media presence to keep track of new customers' actions whenever they shop on your site. To help you along, Amazon provides detailed guidelines on where you should place ads on Facebook and Instagram.
For instance, if you sign up for the Standard Plan, you'll be allowed to post links to relevant content anywhere between five times and 20 times per week. When using different ad formats, however, you'll need to stick closer to the recommended number of posts per month.
Even if you choose the Basic Program, you'll still be required to maintain a minimum account balance of $10 worth of purchases made via Amazon Payments. That way, you can ensure that you provide a reliable service to potential customers.
Once you've earned enough trust points with Amazon, you'll be given access to a dashboard where you can view all your earnings. There, you'll find information regarding your total monthly payout, average selling price, and amount spent on advertising.
Your final payout depends on several factors, including your current level of engagement. So far we've discussed how much money you'd potentially earn by reaching specific targets in terms of impressions and followers. Now let's take a look at another important factor -- the conversion rate.
This refers to the percentage of visitors who follow through and purchase one of your product listings. Of course, this figure varies greatly depending on the niche you operate in. Generally speaking, you can count on landing somewhere around 3%-5% of users purchasing an item from your store.
However, if you focus primarily on digital downloads, then your conversion rate would naturally increase due to the lower barrier to entry compared to physical merchandise.
You can use tools like Google Analytics to determine which pages perform better than others. Once you identify the ones driving the most conversions, you can invest more resources in optimizing them further. This includes adding call to action buttons, making sure your images load quickly, etc.
While you'll certainly enjoy seeing your follower base grow steadily over time, it takes much longer to realize any kind of cash flow. Even if you were to hit the big 4 million mark today, you'd only be receiving around $2.50 per 1,000 followers. With that said, you shouldn't lose sleep over it. Just remember that it took years to accumulate those numbers.
At first, you'll probably struggle to gain traction. Then again, there are always methods you can employ to improve things. One thing you can try is to create original content that's highly engaging. People love to share interesting stories and insights, especially when it involves topics related to personal growth.
That said, you won't really make much profit unless you have a large audience to begin with. Fortunately, there are tons of ways you can expand your visibility and attract larger audiences. Some of them include joining affiliate programs like the ones offered by ClickBank, Shopify, ShareASale, Rakuten Advertising, eBay Partner Network Inc., and AmzSecrets.
All of these programs require you to promote the brands featured on their websites. After doing so, you'll be rewarded with a portion of the profits generated as a result. These percentages vary according to the type of program you join.
Generally speaking, you can count on making anywhere between 70 cents and $1 per click. Depending on the size of your audience, you stand to reap hundreds of dollars in returns every single month. Plus, you'll never have to deal with customer support issues since all transactions happen directly via PayPal.
There are lots of great perks associated with these programs. For starters, you can easily boost your brand awareness and reach huge amounts of targeted buyers. Also, you'll be provided with dedicated assistance from experienced professionals. Most importantly, you'll save yourself countless hours of research and development.
With all that said, you should definitely consider giving these platforms a shot if you haven't done so already. They each feature unique features that should appeal to everyone looking to maximize their exposure.
And if you prefer to stay away from direct advertisements, you can always opt for Amazon Marketplace seller accounts. These give you complete control over your inventory, allowing you to set your prices accordingly. Not only will you benefit from greater flexibility, you'll also be able to avoid dealing with other merchant partners altogether.
Just follow our battle-tested guidelines and rake in the profits.