Part of selling online is knowing how to squeeze every last dollar out of every last rock. It’s not enough to simply put up a bunch of listings and call it a day. Now, you have to find new and creative ways to increase your revenue and the Amazon Affiliate Program is one of the top ways of doing so. If you’re unfamiliar with it, RepricerExpress breaks down all the details so you don’t have to.
How the Amazon Affiliate Program Works
First, you register for an Amazon Associates account in the country of your target audience. For example, if you live in the U.S. but want to target an audience in another country, then you’d sign up in that country. And if you want to target more than one audience, then you’d simply sign up in all the countries you want to target. You also have to fill out all the necessary tax forms, so keep that in mind for all the country-based audiences you want to target if you’re unfamiliar with their tax customs.
From there, Amazon gives you a bunch of product links in a variety of different forms, like native ads, text links, banners, etc. And with that link, you place it in different places where people can click on it, like blog posts, social media shares and more. Each time someone uses that link to purchase an item on Amazon, you get a commission of the sale. The neat thing is they don’t even have to purchase the item the link is for — as long as they buy something on Amazon using that link, you get a commission.
The downside is the cookie only lasts for 24 hours, which means your user needs to perform some sort of action within that timeframe, whether it’s buying a product or adding an item to their cart. With the latter, the timeframe is extended by another 89 days in which you can earn a commission on the link you gave them.
However, as with any Amazon program, there are certain rules you have to abide by…
What You Need To Do (And Not Do) With the Amazon Affiliate Program
There are several key things to keep in mind if you want to become an Amazon Affiliate.
- Sales: If you don’t make a sale within three months, then Amazon will close your account. But you can always re-apply and try and get a second shot at things.
- Reviews: Your reviews on Amazon have to stay there, as you can’t screenshot them to use on your own blog. If you have a separate site you list products on, set up its own section for that and keep it distinct from the Amazon ones (FeedbackExpress is great for this).
- Email Links: If you haven’t read the terms and conditions carefully, we can save you a bit of time. Putting in direct affiliate links into emails will get your account closed pronto-Toronto.
- Spamming: Be smart and selective about where you put your links. If Amazon finds out you’re throwing around your links all willy-nilly, they’ll close your account. Blog posts are the best places for your links.
Now that we’ve gone over some of the general rules, let’s get to the fun stuff: how to make money with the Amazon Affiliate Program.
Some of the Best Ways to Monetize Your Amazon Affiliate Links
1. Holidays
From about October to the end of the year, you can greatly increase your chances of commissions from Affiliate links as almost half of Amazon revenue comes in the 4th quarter. You’ve already likely got a solid marketing and advertising strategy in place for the holidays — the next step is to add Affiliate links to your plan. Some of the big dates to watch out for include Black Friday (the ‘official’ start of the Christmas shopping season), Cyber Monday, Christmas itself, Boxing Day, and New Year’s.
2. Dedicated Subsection On Your Blog.
If you’re a smart seller who sells on sites supplementary to Amazon, then you’ve got a blog. And your blog is an excellent place to put your links, but just putting them into blog posts is an amateur move. You’ll want to create a separate page or widgets just for the links to make it easy and organised for readers to click on them.
3. Be smart about which products you link to.
As we mentioned, you earn a commission any time someone buys an item using the Affiliate link you provided. But when you create a dedicated ad for a specific product (a native ad), the percentage of your commission increases. This is when it makes the most sense to link to products you specialise in or items related to the theme of your brand/store, like a GoPro if you run a travel blog or specific clothing items if you sell clothes.
It’s free to join up and you can get started in just a few minutes, so the Amazon Affiliate Program is about as low-risk, high-reward as you can get. You know what else is free to join and takes only a few minutes and is also low-risk, high-reward? Yup, RepricerExpress! The best time to have signed up is yesterday; the next best time is right now. And when you do sign up, you start off with a 15-day free trial. Pretty sweet, huh?
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