Amazon Affiliates: how to earn $2,500 per month on autopilot
There are many ways to earn money online, but my favorite is, without a doubt, the Amazon Affiliate program.
Because I like it so much? Especially for its ability to generate income with few visits and its passivity. It's a system you set up, and then you practically forget - Amazon takes care of all the rest.
You don't need to have any technical knowledge; the key is to make the right decisions (in this article I will show you which ones). If you do it right, a little more than a couple of hours of work a week can provide you with a monthly salary that many employed workers would already want.
In my case, in a single year, I went from believing that it was impossible to make money online to earn more than 7,000 euros in a single month. And that during those four weeks I barely dedicated time to the project!
Today I have several projects that generate passive income with Amazon Affiliates. I have created some that are real mines, while with others I made mistakes from which I have been able to draw great lessons.
If you also want to start making money with Amazon Affiliates, in this guide you will find EVERYTHING there is to know about this money-generating system. With good planning and initial effort, I assure you that it can give you many joys. Let's go there.
What is Amazon Affiliates
Amazon Affiliates is an online system through which you get customers for Amazon and the program pays you a commission for the purchases of those customers.
In other words: you are in charge of sending people to the Amazon website, and if they buy, Amazon pays you a commission. This is how you both win: Amazon gets customers and gives you a percentage of those sales.
Imagine you have a blog where you talk about coffee makers. If you recommend a certain coffee maker in one of your articles, you can earn income by sending people who are interested in buying that product to Amazon.
Incorporating this system to a website or blog is very simple. You just have to add some links that Amazon provides to the products you are recommending, like this one.
If someone clicks on that link, they will go to the relevant page on Amazon. If you buy, Amazon will know that that sale was thanks to you and will give you a percentage. For practical purposes, you can recommend anything that is in the Amazon catalog, such as books, food, video games, drones, clothing, or home accessories.
This system requires very little initial investment and can become totally passive: you leave the web mounted and it works for you even while you sleep.
You just need people to visit it, click on those Amazon links, and buy something. And for that, you don't need to intervene in anything else.
My first results with Amazon Affiliates
My first project was a website where I analyzed and recommended various models of tablets. I was one of the first to own an iPad and I became a fan of this type of device, so I wanted to write about it.
During the first three months, I spent an average of two hours a day, the next ten months about 4 hours a week, and a year later I was dedicating about 4 hours a month. In total 384 hours of work in two years, an average of just over half an hour a day.
In the economic section, my investment during the first two years was the following:
Domain = $15 / year x 2 years = 30 euros
Hosting = $5 / month x 24 months = 120 euros
WordPress templates (optional) = $70
Writing articles (I hired some editors when I didn't have time to write) = $50
Link creation =$ 300
Total costs = $570 in two years, which makes an average of $24 per month.
Although the market for tablets is down (perhaps the biggest mistake I made when choosing the niche) and Amazon lowered the commissions after a few months, in two years this website has provided me with more than $48,000 in passive income.
The benefit was, therefore, $48,000of income -$ 570 of expenses = $47,430 of profit, which represents a return of more than $123 per hour invested.
When you compare it with what is paid per hour in a job today, the difference is enormous, and I do not count the freedom that it offers to work on it from anywhere.
Once you know the basics about Amazon Affiliates and why it is my favorite method of generating passive income, let's see what advantages and disadvantages it has.
Advantage
The economic investment is very low
To earn money with Amazon Affiliates, you just need a website. Nowadays, that means spending between 10 and 20 euros a year on the domain, and if you want a professional hosting to host it (which I highly recommend), add an additional 5 euros a month.
Optionally, you can buy a professional design for your website (although there are plenty of free ones), spend money so that other websites link to yours and thus get more visits (although as you will see below you can achieve it for free), and even pay people to write the contents for you (although I advise against it and then I will explain why).
Low maintenance required
Although at first, you will have to spend many hours writing the contents of the web, once you have them you can practically leave it on automatic pilot.
Apart from the necessary updates to keep the products you recommend up to date, it will not require much more, and you can take advantage of that to start other new projects.
Amazon is a vending machine
This is what makes this affiliate program a real money maker.
More and more people are buying online at Amazon, and its website is perfectly optimized so that practically no one can leave without buying something. It recommends products according to your preferences, it has very low shipping costs and it is possible to find some of the best prices on the market.
Amazon gives you a commission on everything the customer buys
Another of the great advantages is that you will not only earn money for the product you recommend but during the time the cookie lasts (this is how Amazon identifies that this customer comes from your website), you will receive a commission for everything buy the customer.
In fact, it is very common to earn commissions for products that have nothing to do with your recommendations, since people often take advantage of being on Amazon to buy more things.
Drawbacks
The cookie only lasts 24 hours
Every time someone clicks on one of your affiliate links, Amazon automatically sets a cookie on their browser. In this way, it identifies that it is you who has referred a client
This is how the vast majority of affiliate programs work, but in the case of Amazon that cookie disappears after 24 hours, so if the user visits Amazon but does not buy until after 24 hours, the sale will not be counted.
Other affiliate programs offer cookies that last up to a month or even longer. In this way, if the customer doubts or prefers to wait a little before buying, you still get the commission.
It is a great handicap, but I have done a lot of tests with other affiliate systems and despite this Amazon is still much more profitable. I have already told you that it is a vending machine.
Commissions are low
Amazon's commission percentages range from 3 to 10%, slightly below other popular affiliate programs.
A couple of years ago they were higher, but there was a limit per sale of $10. That is if a $1,000 product was sold and your commission was 5%, instead of earning $50 you only got 10. That's why very few people used Amazon Affiliates to recommend expensive products.
Now there is no limit, which means you can seize the opportunity and make money by recommending high priced products.
Amazon commands
So is. Amazon can change its operating agreement at any time, lower the fees, or even cancel your account for bad practices (hiding links or tricking users to click on them). It is entirely your right.
But do not worry. If you do things right and your website receives traffic, there will always be other affiliate programs to monetize it in the unlikely event that Amazon decides to discontinue its program. Although it has a rope for years!
Amazon commissions
These are the current commissions of Amazon in Spain. Notice that they are separated according to the category to which each product belongs:
Ideally, find a subcategory of products with high commissions and good sales volume.
As Amazon becomes more popular in Spain and other countries and does not need its affiliates to send them visits, the commissions will go down. In fact, in the United States, some categories such as video games are already at 1%. The opportunity is now!
How to register with Amazon Affiliates
Although a few years ago Amazon had to review your website before granting you access to the program, today the process is practically immediate.
The first thing you should do is go to https://afiliados.amazon.us/ and click on Join for free.
If you already have an Amazon customer account, simply enter your email and password. Otherwise, you must create one for yourself.
Once you have done it, it will ask you in whose name you want the payments to be issued. This is you!
You must also indicate if you are a US citizen for tax reasons, enter the website that you want to monetize with Amazon Affiliate, and some information about it.
You will then need to create a unique ID to identify your account. Put a name that allows you to recognize it quickly, like your website. Select the theme of your website (do not worry because it is not relevant) and mark the category of Amazon products that you are going to publish on your website.
Check the boxes for How are you going to generate traffic for your website? The most common is through blogging, SEO, and email.
In the section on How do you use your web pages or apps to generate income? and How do you generate the links normally? you can put what you prefer.
Mark the visits you currently have on your blog (if you don't have any, don't worry), and that's it! You should receive approval from Amazon immediately.
You will see that it allows you to subscribe to affiliate programs from other countries because each one must be managed separately. If you still do not have traffic on your website, ignore it, but if you already receive visits from abroad, it is a good idea to register for those countries.
Finally, it is time to enter your payment information, indicating how you prefer to receive the money (through a deposit in your account or gift vouchers), the name of your bank, holder, IBAN number, and BIC code. Keep in mind that you will need to reach a minimum of $25 in commissions for Amazon to make the first payment.
From now on, every time you are logged into your Amazon account, you will see your Amazon Affiliate web bar at the top left, where you can get the text links (or with an image included, if you prefer) to promote that product on your website.
How to create links and banners
Once you have your affiliate account approved, creating a link is as simple as searching Amazon for the product you want and clicking the Text option in the affiliate bar that will appear in the top left.
Then it will show you a link, which you must add to the text of your page that you want to link to the Amazon product.
Adding the link is very simple. In most text editors of web content creation systems, such as WordPress, you will only have to select the text and click the link sign to enter it.
Amazon also allows you to create text links with an image. In that case, it will give you a code that you must copy and paste into the HTML version of your text editor.
Image links are more visual, but give too much information, and then you will find out why that is not good.
Banners are designs, usually animated, that you can also place on your website by copying a code that Amazon provides you.
They are usually placed in the header or the sidebars, but they are only effective when they announce special offers, such as Black Friday since in general users tend to ignore them. This is a standard example:
How to track conversions
Once the contents of your website already have affiliate links and are receiving traffic, there will be people who will click on them and end up buying something on Amazon.
Your Amazon Affiliate account has a control panel that is updated daily and where you will find the clicks to Amazon you have achieved and the commissions generated during the last 30 days.
You also have a table with your results since the beginning of the month, where your conversion rate (the number of purchases per 100 clicks) is shown.
If you click on View Full Report, you will be able to see which products are generating the most commissions and select custom time frames to view your results.
You can also create more tracking IDs, allowing you to better identify where clicks and sales are coming from.
If, for example, on one page or article you recommend high-end coffee machines, and on another, you recommend low-cost coffee machines, you can create a different ID for each one and use it in the links you put there. In this way, in your affiliate reports, you will be able to see what results in each of these two pages is generating for you and make decisions.
How to make money with Amazon Affiliates
Now you know how to sign up for the Amazon Affiliate program and the fundamentals to understand how it works. But you have the most important thing: the strategy to make that become a source of income.
After more than four years of experimenting and making money with this affiliate system, I have managed to identify the steps necessary to be successful. It requires planning, but it is not difficult. And then I'm going to show you each one of them.
And I repeat: don't let your lack of technical knowledge put you off. You don't really need any.
1. Decide on your niche or multi-niche
Let's start strong because this first decision will largely determine the results you will achieve.
You have to decide what you are going to write about and what kind of products you are going to recommend.
Imagine someone needs a handheld vacuum cleaner. There are many websites where you could buy one, such as Amazon itself, El Corte Inglés, or FNAC. But if you have no idea about handheld vacuum cleaners, you probably want to educate yourself on these types of products first.
In that case, it would be good for you to read a comparison or analysis before making your decision, right?
There is a chance. Online stores do not usually offer this type of information (although Amazon is trying), and you could create a website or a section of your website where you can find it.
You would receive visits from people looking for information, and if they are convinced by what you recommend, they will end up buying it on Amazon (and you taking a commission).
Therefore, you have three options.
You could create a website called aspirarbien.com (it is an example) focused solely on analyzing these types of articles. This is called specializing in a niche market.
You could create a generalist website called choosebien.com, for example, where you would analyze many types of products, from vacuum cleaners to video games. This is called multiniche because it is not specialized in anything in particular.
Or you could create a blog about something that really interests you, for example, graphic design, and among the articles that you were publishing write one recommending graphic tablets or design programs. This is called an authority website. Example: the recommended books on the web abilitysocial.com
The third strategy is the one that works best. If you add value with your content and empathize with readers, you will create a loyal audience, and it will also be easier for you to make your affiliate articles visible in search engines such as Google.
Also, if you are a designer, you probably prefer to write articles about your creations and tablets instead of vacuum cleaners, right?
However, this strategy requires a lot of time and effort.
The first strategy, that of creating a website with your opinion about products in a specific niche, is simpler and faster, so to start I recommend this one.
The second strategy has the greatest potential to generate income but requires investing a lot of resources. Also, specialized niches generally have greater visibility in search results, since Google understands that this website is a reference on that topic.
2. Forget what interests you
There will be those who recommend that if you are going to create a website specialized in a type of product, choose something that you like since you will have to write a lot about it.
I disagree.
When I started my tablet website I wanted to write about it. But after more than two years creating content, I assure you that I prefer to see a chapter of Save me than to start writing more of the same again.
Assume that writing product reviews will end up being boring, even if it's about something you like. You should have some knowledge about your niche (or are willing to inform yourself well), but it is best to be guided by its ability to generate income.
Because when something gives you money, it costs you less to work on it.
Also, what you like doesn't have to be a good market opportunity. If you are passionate about jewelry and create a website about it, it will be very good, but they do not have the volume of sale or enough price on Amazon to make it worth it.
3. Validate the niche with Amazon
The first step to validate if a niche has potential is to see how it sells on Amazon and what the average price is. Typically, the more reviews a product has, the more it sells. And if the average price is more than $50, you are facing a good opportunity.
Then click on one of the departments on the left to show you the 100 best-selling products in the last hour.
In this case, we go to the home and kitchen department because it offers one of the highest commissions, and in position 58 we find a coffee maker with more than 400 opinions and a price of $69.99.
Before continuing, you must make sure that it is not the only product that has potential in its category, so follow up to the best sellers in its category, in this case, capsule coffee machines.
We see that the category of capsule coffee machines usually sells quite well, with several references above 100 opinions and an average price of 60 euros. It seems like a good niche, but we still need to run two more checks.
4. Validate the volume of searches in Google
To automate the generation of passive income, the idea is that your website receives visits through its organic positioning in search engines.
In other words, what you want is that when someone searches for "Capsule coffee machines" or "Capsule coffee machines comparison" in Google, they find your website and visit it.
But if it turns out that no one is looking for capsule coffee machines online, you will receive a few visits.
That is why it is essential to know how many people search for that keyword on Google. And the good news is that there is a free tool that can help you get an idea.
The Google Keyword Planner.
It is actually a service for companies that want to advertise on Google. Google informs them about the number of people who are searching for something specific so that they can adjust the budget of their ad campaigns.
And you can use that information to validate the potential of your niche.
If you don't have an account, you will need to create one. It will ask you to enter the URL of your website (I'll explain how to get one later) and will send you to the administration panel.
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