Amazon.com, Inc is the world’s largest online retailer and marketplace. It is considered one of the world’s most influential brands and is one of the Big Five American technology companies.
Affiliate marketing on Amazon is a simple way to monetize a digital presence such as a website or blog. Before understanding how to do affiliate marketing on Amazon, let us first understand the meaning of “affiliate marketing”.
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Affiliate marketing – the new digital game!
Affiliate marketing is a marketing approach in which an online retailer allows external websites the ability to create unique product links. These links are placed within the content of the external websites, and the external website promotes the link. When a visitor clicks on the link and goes on to the online retailer’s website, or purchases from that website, the external website owner receives a commission.
Affiliate marketing is essentially a “digital/online sales representative,” and the external website owner receives a commission only after the lead is qualified or the sale is completed.
Affiliate marketing has the following components:
- Merchant
- The party that creates the product
- Can be a big or small company, or even an individual
- Affiliate marketer
- Also known as a “publisher”
- The critical marketing source for the product which sells the product and earns commissions
- Consumer
- The driver of the entire program
- Their purchases drive the revenues and eventually, the commissions of the affiliate marketing system
Affiliate marketing can be graphically represented as follows:
Image source: https://referralrock.com/hub/b2b-sales-marketing/b2b-affiliate-marketing/
The Amazon Affiliate Program
Amazon’s affiliate program is called “Amazon Associates”. This program is a straightforward and easy channel to monetize a website or blog. There is no entry or sign-up charge for website owners and bloggers.
In simple terms, website owners and bloggers sign up for the program, receive instant approval, and get Amazon affiliate links to place on the site. When a customer makes an Amazon purchase through these links, the website owner or blogger receives a commission on that sale.
Process
Affiliate marketing on Amazon is very easy, involving the following key steps:
- The website owner creates an “Amazon Affiliate” account on the Amazon platform
- The website owner receives a unique Associate ID
- Amazon approves the application from the website owner
- Once approved, the affiliate starts making affiliate links on their Amazon portal
- The affiliate places the link in their blogs, website, or other digital content portals
- The affiliate earns a commission when someone clicks the link and makes a purchase on the Amazon.com website
How to do affiliate marketing on Amazon?
The following is the step-by-step process to do affiliate marketing on Amazon:
- Launch the digital platform
- A functional website, blog, app, or YouTube channel is required to become an Amazon Associate
- The platform should ideally have pre-loaded content to appear active and authentic to Amazon and potential customers
- It is essential to have a clear idea of the purpose of the platform, its audience, and the method of getting in traffic to the platform
- Visit the Amazon Associates homepage to sign up
- The affiliate needs to create an individual Amazon Associates account To become an Amazon Affiliate
- This can be done by going to the Amazon Associates home page and clicking on “Sign Up”
- The affiliate can either log into their existing Amazon account or create a new account
- Complete the account information
- The affiliate needs to enter the following account information
- Name
- Address
- Payee phone number
- The affiliate needs to enter the following account information
More details can be found on the website: https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/amazon-affiliate
- Enter the website address
- The affiliate needs to enter the address of their website, app, YouTube channel, or blog
- Enter a preferred store ID
- The preferred store ID should ideally be the same as the primary website name
- The affiliate should describe the objectives of the website
- The affiliate should choose Amazon topics that their links will target
- Describe the source of the traffic to the website
- The affiliate should give a detailed description of how they drive traffic to their website
- They should also explain how they use the website to generate income
- It is essential to provide an approximate number of visitors to the site each month
- Select the preferred payment method
- The affiliate can enter their preferred payment method (usually credit card)
- This information can also be provided at a later stage
- Start creating Amazon Affiliate links
- Once the account is created, the affiliate is directed to their personal Amazon Associate homepage
- The homepage includes the performance dashboard, which provides the following information at a glance:
- Earnings summary
- Monthly activity summary
- Total clicks (for specific periods)
Rules and guidelines for an Amazon Affiliate
Amazon has detailed guidelines and rules that all Amazon Affiliates must follow. The key rules are as below:
- The affiliate must disclose on their site and in their communications to website visitors that they may be eligible to earn commissions from their recommendations of products
- The affiliate must not make false or deceptive claims in the product or purchase recommendations
- Price (product cost) must not be mentioned because prices on Amazon.com change frequently
- The Amazon Affiliate links cannot be used in e-books, emails, or offline promotions of any kind
- Link shorteners (URLs) must not be used on affiliate links
The Amazon Affiliate must understand and follow these regulations because non-compliance could result in the affiliate being removed or banned from the Amazon Affiliate program.
How much can an affiliate earn through the Amazon Affiliate program?
The Amazon Affiliate program works on a “sales commission” basis, which means that the affiliate makes a percentage of each completed sale generated through their link. Therefore, the income earned depends on the number of referrals the Associate generates for Amazon.
The Amazon Affiliate Program offers different sales commission rates for different product categories. For example, the “automotive car parts” category provides a 4.5% sales commission from each sale. The Affiliate must therefore review these rates thoroughly before signing up on the platform. This will help the affiliate estimate the expected income they can earn from the Amazon Affiliate Program, depending on the area in which the Affiliate’s website operates.
It is important to bear in mind that, like all affiliate programs, the initial income may be on the lower side, so the Amazon Associate should ideally have another source of income as well.
Summary
The Amazon Affiliate Program is a great way to turn a passion or interest into a source of income. The affiliate should select their preferred content niche, write content that focuses on the product, and include relevant affiliate links.
This will help the affiliates grow their Amazon Affiliate Program income over time.