The Amazon Affiliate Program (also known as "the Associate Program") is one of the largest and most popular affiliate marketing opportunities available on the Internet today. It's also one of the easiest to join -- all you need is an email address!
If you're interested in learning more about this opportunity, here are some quick answers to commonly asked questions.
We'll begin by answering what exactly is an Amazon referral link? How do I become an Amazon affiliate? And finally, we'll answer the question - where do I find out my Amazon referral earnings?
In order for your website visitors to earn cash through Amazon, they must first click through from their web browser to another affiliated partner website that has been approved by Amazon. This means there needs to be a link between two websites.
This is why it's important to always use only verified links when linking to other sites. These links should come directly from Amazon itself or from other reputable sources such as Commission Junction, ClickBank, Rakuten Linkshare, etc. It doesn't matter if the referral site has any relation at all to Amazon whatsoever, but if it isn't coming directly from them then it's not going to count toward your total potential earnings.
There are many different types of links that will qualify towards earning commissions. Some examples include product reviews, blog posts, articles, videos, social media shares, etc. When someone clicks through these links, it generates a unique tracking ID which allows us to track how many people clicked through each link. You will receive credit based off of the number of referrals that visit your own website. For example, let's say you direct 100 unique visitors to Amazon from your website. Then you would get 10% of those sales. That's $10.00 earned per sale. But wait...there's more!
You may wish to advertise via social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google+, Reddit, etc., so you can generate even more traffic. In fact, the best way to build an audience is to share content across multiple platforms using various forms of advertising.
Amazon makes it easy to post ads on your own pages. Simply go into the dashboard, navigate to Ad Settings, add your ad code and copy/paste it onto your page. Once done, just hit save and voila! Your ads are live.
Here's a great resource article that walks you through it step-by-step:
Just because you've joined the Amazon Affiliates Program doesn't mean that you automatically gain access to the Amazon Employee Referral Program. There is no special button for employees that will allow you to participate in this part of the process either. To take advantage of this option, you will need to follow certain steps, including submitting your application form.
Once you complete the application, submit your information and upload your resume, you will receive confirmation within 24 hours whether you were accepted. If you were rejected, don't worry; you still have plenty of options. Just keep reading below to discover everything you need to know.
No, they don't offer a referral program specifically designed for employees. However, there is a method around this problem called cross-selling. With cross-selling, you create products that customers might want to purchase along with your main product. They can buy both items together and receive additional discounts.
For instance, if you sell pet food, you could make a deal whereby if a customer purchases both dog and cat food they receive a discount. Or perhaps you sell kitchen appliances and you provide cooking classes. Customers who attend the class and purchase the appliance may receive a further discount.
However, you cannot claim to be offering something completely unrelated to the original product being sold. So, while you can promote related things, you cannot sell anything else unless it is directly connected to the original product.
At present, Amazon pays 3% of every item purchased through its platform. Of course, this percentage changes depending upon the type of product you are promoting.
Let me give you an example. Let's say a visitor comes from your website to Amazon.com, buys a book, and returns back to your website after making a purchase. Based on our previous rules, you would get paid 3% of the price of the book, or roughly 1 cent per transaction.
But now imagine you had five hundred thousand visits to Amazon from your website and twenty percent of those made purchases. Now, your revenue increases tenfold because you received 2 cents for each transaction instead of 1 cent.
So, you see, although the amount you receive depends on the size of your business and the volume of transactions, it is definitely possible to achieve substantial profits with little effort. All you need is a good knowledge of SEO techniques and the right tools to help drive traffic to your site.
And remember, if you'd rather not spend time managing your account, you can hire a professional to handle your Amazon accounts for you. We recommend working with an expert if you're new to selling on Amazon.
As you can tell, the world of Amazon affiliates offers endless possibilities, especially once you learn how to set yourself apart from others. By following the above tips, you'll soon be raking in serious dough with minimal investment.
To learn more about becoming an Amazon associate, check out our Amazon affiliate guide.
Do you already have experience running an Amazon affiliate account? Tell us about it in the comments section below!
How to create your own Amazon referral links
You don't need any special skills to earn commissions from your referrals in the Amazon Associates Program. In fact, if you're just starting out, it might be worth checking out some of our free tutorials before getting involved.
But there's another way for people who already know how to code to get started...
There's no limit to how many times you can use this technique, but we've found that using more than two URLs per page doesn't really improve results. You should only add new URLs at the bottom of each existing URL.
To see what I mean, take these examples:
"http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/associe..."
"http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/B00C6W8RXI/"
"http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=2001210"
In each case, the first URL will contain the product title, while the second will show additional information about the review. And the third example contains a list of related products, which could include other reviews, user ratings or even customer testimonials.
If you want to test different variations, here's how you do it:
Go to www.amzreferrallinks.com.
Click Add New Link under Create Your Own Links.
Enter your unique domain name into the Text box. For example, mydomainname.com.
Type in your keyword phrase where it says Search Term above the textbox. This will appear below the main URL field when you click Submit.
Use the
The Amazon Associates Program is one of the largest and most successful online affiliate programs, with more than 800,000 members joining worldwide each day. If you have a website that sells products from any company (not just Amazon), then this program could be perfect for you!
If you own a blog, YouTube channel, social media account, etc., but don't sell anything online yet, you may want to consider creating your own Amazon store in order to earn some extra income through your existing audience. And if you're already selling items on eBay, Etsy, AliExpress, and other marketplaces, why not expand into another massive marketplace like Amazon as well? It's easy and free to join the Amazon Associates Program, so let's take a look at what it entails and learn how to get started.
To begin, click on "Create New Account" located under the top menu bar. You'll need to provide your email address and password in order to complete registration. Once registered, log back in using the same information along with your username and password. This will allow you access to all of your personal data, including your dashboard and profile pages where you can manage your referrals.
From here, you can also view an overview of your Amazon activity by clicking on the "My Activity" tab found near the bottom of the screen. From there, you can see all of the sales made by your referrals over time, or even track individual transactions by referring certain links to specific people who purchase something from Amazon. This is extremely helpful when trying to figure out which links are working best for you.
You can also use this section to promote new offers directly to your followers, such as coupons, deals, discount codes, and much more. There are many ways to customize these promotions depending on your needs, so check them out below for further details.
On your home page, you should notice a list titled "Your Referrals." Clicking on this button will display a summary of all of the current accounts associated with your Amazon ID. Select the name of anyone currently referred by you in this list and they will appear in their respective sections within your Dashboard.
Now that you've created an Amazon Associate account, you might feel a little lost without having a place to direct traffic to your newly-created store. Luckily, this process is very simple and takes only a few minutes. On your homepage, scroll down until you reach the "Links & Tools" section. Here, click on the blue "Make A Link" button.
This will bring you to a form where you must enter your URL and select whether or not you would like to include images. After entering both fields, simply hit submit and you're done! Your new referral link will automatically go live once approved by Amazon. To add additional options to your landing page, head back to the Links & Tools section and click on the green "+ Add Another Option" button.
After adding your desired option, repeat steps 1 - 3 above again in order to generate a second link. When you finish, save it to your computer before proceeding. Now that you have two links available to send visitors, you can decide which ones you'd prefer to keep active and which ones you would rather turn off completely. In the case of our example above, we decided to leave the first link turned on while disabling the second.
Once you've selected your preferred links, return to your main Dashboard and click on the blue "Add Promotion Code" button. Enter the code corresponding to whichever link you wish to activate and click Save Changes. Then, visit either your first or second link in order to receive credit for the sale. Simply share the promotion code with friends and family in order to help increase your earnings potential!
It doesn't matter if you've followed every step listed above perfectly, you still won't know exactly which links you used to drive traffic to your site. Fortunately, this isn't too difficult to accomplish since you can easily retrieve this information via the Amazon Associates App. First download the mobile version of the app onto your phone and open it up.
Next, tap on the three dots next to the search field and choose "Edit My Profile." Scroll down until you locate the section labeled "Referral Links," then copy your unique referral link(s) from the text area located underneath. Be sure to replace spaces in the URLs with underscores (_). Now, paste those links into your browser to verify that they function properly.
Finally, delete the unused links from your mobile device. These will no longer be needed after completing the rest of the tutorial above.
While making a referral link is incredibly easy, creating an actual affiliate link requires quite a bit more effort. Since you likely aren't familiar with coding, this task may seem daunting at first glance. But fear not, because we've broken everything down into four separate steps so that you can follow along easily.
First things first, open up your web editor of choice (such as Notepad++) and type in the following HTML code:
Save the file somewhere accessible on your computer, and then upload it to your server. Next, navigate to the root directory of your website and create a new folder named "Amazon". Inside of this folder, create a subfolder called "AffiliateLinks", then drag and drop your.html file inside of it. Finally, rename the file to "affilatelinks.html".
Now, copy and paste the entire content of your.html file into the empty space of this file. Make sure to remove all line breaks and unnecessary characters, leaving the final product looking similar to this:
When finished, save your changes and preview your new affiliate link in a different window. Take note of the exact location of this link on your site, then proceed to the last step in order to set it up correctly.
Before publishing your affiliate link, ensure that it matches the domain of your website. For instance, if your website is www.mywebsite.com, then your affiliate link should be formatted similarly. However, if you plan to redirect users to a third party, such as the Amazon storefront itself, you should append ".com/storefront" to the end of the url.
In addition, make sure to change the "Product Name" and "URL" values according to whatever it says on your Amazon listing. For example, if you're promoting the latest edition of Harry Potter, then the Product Name value should read "Harry Potter 7th Edition". Likewise, the URL value should match the title of your book, e.g. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows [Book]".
Lastly, you'll need to fill in your unique tracking number. This number is included in the Affiliate Tracking Report found inside of your Amazon Dashboard whenever you publish a promoted offer. Unfortunately, it cannot be generated manually due to security concerns, so you'll need to wait 24 hours between each attempt.
Remember, if you're unable to obtain a tracking number, your promotional materials will not be eligible for commissions.
Conclusion
With the steps outlined above, you now know exactly how to generate a referral link on Amazon and create an affiliate link on Amazon. Both tasks require minimal effort, but the results speak for themselves. While it may sound overwhelming at first, the truth is that setting up an Amazon associate account shouldn't be intimidating at all -- especially considering the fact that the Amazon Associates Program pays high referral fees to affiliates who refer customers to its store on a regular basis.
If you're looking to begin making some extra cash by using your website as a way to drive traffic to other sites, then there's no better option than becoming an Amazon Associate (or "Amazon Affiliate"). This allows you to earn commissions on products that people buy through links placed within your own content in exchange for driving visitors to those websites. It works like this: You simply place a product or service onto your website -- or any article that mentions it - and include an Amazon referral code. When someone clicks on that link, they will be taken directly to Amazon where they'll see information about the item along with recommendations from other customers who've already purchased it. They may even click on another related product which could lead them back to your site again!
The best part about being an Amazon associate, however, isn't just the ability to make money passively but also the fact that you don't need to spend money building out your own site. In addition to having free hosting provided by Amazon, all you really need to set up is a simple email account and some basic knowledge of HTML markup. It doesn't take long at all to create a few pages dedicated solely to promoting specific items and generating leads. And while many affiliates use WordPress plug-ins to speed up their setup process, there are plenty of options available for anyone willing to learn new skills.
For example, once you register as an Amazon affiliate you'll receive access to the Amazon Associates App, which has more features than necessary for what you want to accomplish. However, you still need to know how to navigate around these tools, so we recommend downloading the Amazon Associates App for Android and iOS instead. There are several different ways to generate revenue when setting up an affiliation with Amazon, including creating custom offers, selling digital downloads, and offering special discounts on certain products. But before getting started, let's first take a look at how you find yourself able to share this opportunity with others.
You should only promote Amazon products that you actually believe in. That means finding a good deal, purchasing it, taking pictures of it, writing reviews, putting together a blog post, and sharing it on social media. Once you publish something publicly, you become eligible to join the Amazon Associates Program and start earning income. Your earnings depend upon whether you choose to sell products on your own website or elsewhere, such as through Facebook ads or Google AdWords campaigns.
Once you've decided to participate, you'll notice that your profile page contains a section called "Your Referral Links" which includes everything you've ever published featuring Amazon's logo. These links allow potential buyers to purchase a product directly from Amazon without going anywhere else. For instance, if you were to write an article mentioning a book, you'd likely provide a direct link to the product page. A user would click on that link, and boom -- they're buying the book!
However, if you weren't sure exactly how to format your Amazon link, fear not because Amazon provides helpful instructions. Simply go into your Account Settings " Personal Information " My Referrals Page. Here, you can view every single referral link you've ever created, plus see additional details pertaining to each individual sale. From here, you can easily copy and paste the unique ID associated with each sale, allowing you to edit your existing articles or add new ones quickly.
While you might think that the easiest way to figure out if you're an Amazon affiliate is to check the URL contained in your browser address bar, you wouldn't be far off. After all, you probably remember seeing that URL somewhere down below the text box labeled "Website Address." This is a common occurrence since Amazon uses an affiliate tracking system known as ClickBank, meaning whenever someone purchases a product via your website, you're credited with a small percentage of its price.
But if you prefer to keep things organized, you can always download the Amazon Associates App for Android and iPhone devices. On the main menu, tap "Account," followed by "My Accounts & Lists." Scroll down until you reach the area titled "Affiliates." Underneath the list containing your active accounts, you'll see a button labeled "My Referrals." Tap it to open up a screen with all your previous sales listed across the top. Each time you sold a product, you received compensation based on the amount of that sale.
As mentioned earlier, you'll notice that every referral link begins with an AMZN number. To avoid confusion, it's important to note that this number represents your personal referral ID. Unlike the standard URL structure used throughout the internet, this particular string of digits is unique to you. So if you wanted to change the name of your affiliate link, you'd simply replace the numbers with letters. For example, if your ID was 1a43zxyu3t6j7s8, your new link would read "1amzn123456j78". By contrast, if you had two identical IDs (1a43zxyu3t6j7s8), you couldn't possibly confuse one with the other.
So now that you understand how to determine if you're an Amazon affiliate, you're ready to dive deeper into learning how to maximize your profits. Stay tuned next week for our tutorial explaining how to build profitable Amazon ad campaigns.
How to Get Started
To get started with Amazon Associates, you need to sign up as an associate first.
Visit http://www.amazon.com/gp/associates/homepage/start-here/?ref_=aw_nodl_dp1
Click Register Now
You should receive a confirmation email from Amazon saying that you have been accepted into their program.
Once registered, you need to create a profile page at your domain name.
The next step is to add your Amazon Referral ID number to all of your articles and webpages so that your readers can easily access your account.
When writing an article or blog post, select the text editor tool and insert an appropriate Amazon referral code between the tags
For example: This Article Is About...
Finally, copy and paste the URL of your article into the form provided when registering. Your article needs to contain a minimum of 20 words describing what you want to sell.
Submit your entry to make sure it meets the minimum word count requirements before submitting it.
Just follow our battle-tested guidelines and rake in the profits.