Making money from your blog with the amazon affiliate program
January 29, 2018
The Amazon Affiliate
program, also known as Amazon Associates, has slowly become my
biggest source of income from blogging. By slowly, I mean I spent months
earning less than five dollars from it before realizing what a great program it
was. And that’s the thing about affiliate programs—so many bloggers give up on
them early because they’re not seeing results, and miss out on a great
opportunity!
With the right tips
and a good amount of effort though, Amazon affiliate earnings can be a great
source of blogging income. Last month, Jessica slaughter reported over
$2,000 in earnings from Amazon Associates alone. Your monthly
average will depend a lot on how much traffic your blog brings in, but the tips
I’m about to share are applicable to blogs of all sizes!
I’ll be referencing
the Associates Program Operating
Agreement quite a bit so that I don’t have to type out a ton of
legal info, so to make things simple, I’ll refer to its numbered sections
throughout this post in case you want the extra info!
If you’re already an
Amazon affiliate, you can skip the basics and head straight to the tips, or keep reading to
make sure you know your legal stuff!
So, what is Amazon Associates?
Amazon Associates is
an affiliate program, which is essentially an arrangement between a retailer
(Amazon) and an advertiser (you) through which the retailer pays a commission
to the advertiser for some particular agreement. In the case of Amazon
Associates, you’ll receive a commission when someone clicks on your Special
Link (section 3) and makes a
Qualifying Purchase (section 7).
Sessions
An important thing to
understand about affiliate programs is their cookie duration, or session. A
session is basically a period during which you can earn a commission from a
Qualifying Purchase made by the customer that started that session. For Amazon Associates, a
session begins when a customer clicks through a Special Link on your blog and
ends upon the first to occur of the following:
§ 24 hours elapse from
that click
§ The customer places
an order for a Product that is not a Digital Product (section 7)
§ The customer follows
a Special Link to the Amazon Site that is not your Special Link
Basically, you have
one day to get that person to buy something.
Earnings
One of my favorite
things about Amazon Associates is that the more items you get shipped
through your links, the higher your commission rate gets. You can see the
full commission structure here, but all you really
need to know is that the more effort you put in, the more money you’re able to
make.
The biggest jump
happens when you have more than 6 items shipped within a month, as your
commission rate will go from 4% to 6%. A good goal would be the 7% range, which
you’ll get to after shipping more than 110 products within a month. Once your
funds are that big, just a .5% change in your commission rate makes a huge
difference!
At the beginning of
every month, your rate will drop back down to 4%, but if you get it to rise
throughout the month, all of the commissions you’ve made so far will increase
as if you’d started at your new rate. Basically, if you had 6 items shipped
already at the 4% rate and get bumped up to the 6% rate, the commissions for
those 6 products will increase to what they would’ve been at a 6% rate! Some
products have a fixed commission rate,
but the majority will follow that increased rate.
Getting Paid
There are three
different payment methods available
to you as an Amazon affiliate:
§ Direct deposit – this is the
method I use. Your earnings will be deposited directly into your bank account
after earning more than $10.
§ Amazon.com Gift
Certificate – you’ll also need to earn at least $10 to get paid.
§ Check – to get paid
by check, you’ll need to earn at least $100, and you’ll have to pay a $15
processing fee (unless you live outside the U.S).
Regardless of the
method you choose, you’ll get paid about 60 days after the end of each month.
Most programs work this way, so don’t be turned off by the long wait!
Why I Like Amazon Associates
Along with everything
I’ve said above about the commission rates, these are a few other reasons why I
love using this program:
§ It’s easy to
understand and start using right away, making it a great program for beginners
§ There are tons of
products to promote, so bloggers of almost any niche can benefit from it
§ It’s a trusted
retailer that most of your readers already know about, so they’re more likely
to make a purchase
Important Notes
Before I get into the
tips, there are a few things you should know about the terms of being an Amazon
affiliate. If you live in certain states (section 2), you actually
can’t participate in the Amazon Associates program!
If you’re not in one
of those states and become an affiliate, you need to make sure you use
a disclosure on any post that includes affiliate links. I’m in no way a
legal professional, so you should probably do your own research to ensure that
your disclosure follows FTC regulations, but you can click here to see what my disclosure
looks like.
Your disclosure needs
to appear before any affiliate links do, meaning you can’t put it at
the end of your post! As an Amazon affilate, you also need to include
Amazon’s specific disclosure (section 10).
You also can’t use Amazon affiliate links in
your emails, newsletters, or RSS feeds. That means you can’t send
your posts to your subscribers in an email format, so if you already do this,
you’ll either need to stop or simply not become an Amazon affiliate.
Tips for making money as an Amazon affiliate
1. Understand what
your audience can afford – As a college blogger, it wouldn’t make any
sense for me to promote a $75 face wash. I can’t afford that, and most college
students can’t either. Understanding who your audience is and what they can
afford will help you pick which products to promote.
If you’re not
entirely sure, you can link to a variety of options at different price ranges.
That’s what I did in my college shopping list, because I know students
often have different dorm budgets.
2. When creating lists,
be specific – A go-to affiliate post is just a list of a bunch of stuff that
fits together, like the college shopping list I mentioned. While that one was
originally written without the purpose of making money from it, I’ve learned
that such broad lists don’t usually perform so well. A better idea might have
been to split that post up into “College Bedding Essentials” and “Must Have
College School Supplies”.
You basically want to
provide something that your reader hasn’t seen all over Pinterest already.
Narrow down your category, and make sure your list is actually helpful! There
are hundreds of “Gift Guide For The Blogger” posts out there, but what about a
gift guide specifically for college bloggers? Or food bloggers that are focused
on baking? Get creative and search through Pinterest to see if you still need
to narrow your topic down.
3. Your experience is
your best tool – My post on 12 dorm room must-haves is pretty simple.
It’s just a list of some things I used a lot in my dorm and their corresponding
affiliate link. And yet, it makes just as much or more money than my college
shopping list, which has over 100 items listed!
The difference is
that in my must-haves post, I wrote an entire paragraph about each item and my
personal experience with it. This not only shows the reader that I actually
purchased and used the item (so I have a reason to recommend it), but gives
them a recommendation directly from a college student they “know” rather than a
stranger on a review website.
Writing about your
experience with a product also makes the promotion more natural. It sounds less
like you’re trying to sell something, and more like you’re genuinely
recommending something because you love it!
4. Don’t push
products on your readers – Since you get paid for anything someone
buys within their session, regardless of whether it’s the item you linked to,
all you really need to do is get your readers on Amazon and in the buying
mindset. Instead of writing an entire post around a single product, write a
helpful post and recommend products where they fit naturally. By the end of
your post, there’s a good chance they’ll feel like they need the product
without you ever pushing it on them.
5. Monetize old posts – If you’re
just now starting to monetize your blog, there’s a good chance you’ve already
written some posts that could be updated to earn money. There are some obvious
places, like sentences where you literally recommended a product and just used
a non-affiliate link that could be replaced, but sometimes you’ll have to write
a few more paragraphs to make it work. Focus first on your most popular posts,
so you can start earning right away!
6. Watch your stats
to see what works – The Amazon Associate dashboard is something you should get used
to navigating. It offers a ton of information about how your links are
performing and how much you’re making, along with exactly what people are
purchasing through your links. By checking these stats on a regular basis,
especially after writing a new post with links or updating an old one, you can
see what works best on your blog!
7. Don’t get
link-crazy – When you first join an affiliate program, there’s a lot of
temptation to write a bunch of lists full of affiliate links so you can start
earning right away. This is usually called selling out. The last thing you want
to do is turn into the blogger who only posts “my favorite products this week”
and “top 10 _____” in order to make a easy money. Readers will catch on
quickly, and this will only end up hurting your reputation as a blogger,
leading to less income and traffic.
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