Amazon Affiliate Marketing Explained

Let me assume that you already know the basis of affiliate marketing and how you can start to make money by joining different affiliate programs. However, if you are one of the newbies who also have the tremendous urge or desire to quit the nine-to-five and want to make money online, you might need to learn a few things before you start raking in some cash.

Unfortunately, you could spend months learning different techniques before you’ll finally discover which methods work for you. What’s more, you may need to invest a huge amount of money on materials, tools, and even attending seminars just to start off. Fortunately, everything you really need to know to begin can be found right here on Pure Residuals!  I’m here to help!

What happens if you don’t have money to buy materials, tools, or even attend seminars to learn Amazon Affiliate Marketing?

Does that mean you can’t earn online?

Of course, you don’t have to spend your last dime or go into debt on materials and affiliate marketing resources before you discover which methods work. If you have been reading these pages and my different articles about how to make money online, chances are that you have a good basic understand of affiliate marketing.

This short article is about amazon affiliate marketing or, as it’s also known as, the amazon associate.  BUT, before I go straight into the meat of the article, let’s quickly talk about affiliate marketing in brief – for the newbies who haven’t had the opportunity to delve into my other Pure Residuals web content.

Overview of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to make money online even without investing your hard earn money on any material or tools. The job (or FUN) of an affiliate marketer is to promote other people’s products or services in different platforms such as Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, or through blogs, and earn commission on every task completed by people who click on your affiliate links. Now, let’s talk about amazon affiliates and how Amazon Associates differ just a wee bit.

Amazon Associates – Amazon Affiliate Marketing

Obviously, Amazon is one of the largest eCommerce company with millions of products in almost every category.  Amazon affiliate program allows bloggers and internet marketers to promote Amazon products/services and earn a certain amount of money on the revenue generated via their affiliate links.

Amazon has six different affiliate programs in six regions where they operate. The regions are: US, UK, Canada, Germany, Japan, and France. Before you can sell anything on these sites, you must be a registered member of all the programs.  Associates receive a commission for referring customers to Amazon by placing links to Amazon on their websites, if the referral results in a sale. Worldwide, Amazon has “over 900,000 members” in its affiliate programs.

Signing up at Amazon affiliate websites is quite easy and does not require special skills. However, if the dashboard is too complicated for you, you can hire someone to sign up for you or watch video tutorials that explain the process.

Do I need to pay to join Amazon Affiliate Marketing Program?

No, you don’t have to pay any money before you can join Amazon affiliate program. If anyone asks you to pay a certain amount of money to sign up as an affiliate marketer, don’t walk away, run. Furthermore, some people might want to sell you something, especially if they know you’re a newbie (rookie) to Amazon affiliate marketing in general. Be warned, no payment is needed to join amazon affiliate program. Just click the graphic above and signup.  You can begin selling products or even setup an entire Amazon store online in minutes.

Click here to see about How to Setup a Blog in WordPress in 10 easy steps.  There are several free Amazon WordPress Plug-ins to enable a storefront in just a few hours.

What you can promote as an Amazon affiliate ?

As a registered Amazon affiliate marketer, you have the capacity to generate affiliate links for different products in any niche. In fact, you can link to any page on the affiliate sites and generate revenue from all of them.

Amazon is a multi-billion dollar company, hence you can make as much as possible through their affiliate marketing programs. When you sign up as an Amazon Associate, you can start generating affiliate links immediately and promote it on your blog or any of the 100s of social media sites.  If you really want to know the secrets behind bloggers earning? Then you need to hop over to my WordPress Setup Page and then join the Amazon affiliate marketing programs and become and instant Amazon Associate.

The amount you can make through affiliate programs depends on many factors. You will understand some of these factors in the next couple of paragraphs.
How to create affiliate links that convert

This is where you’ll differentiate professional marketers from beginners. Like I said in the previous paragraph, you can generate affiliate links for any products on the affiliate website. However, would it be proper to just generate links without conducting some research? The answer is “NO”.

Before you start generating Amazon affiliate links, make sure you know the bestselling products at the moment and the commission on each sale. Furthermore, you’ll not just generate affiliate links from different categories. You’ll need to choose the hottest product in your niche.  And, learn how to “pre-sell” the products.  This can help your bottom line (revenue) tremendously.  Be different and stand out.  Think outside of the box.

Why do I need to choose from the hottest products in my niche? What the heck is a “NICHE”?

Niche is the subcategory or area of marketing that specialize in one particular product. So how do I know my niche? It’s simple! You can select the best niche based on your interest. A simple self-test would help you choose the best niche. For example, what would you like to purchase from Amazon site? Some people love anything fashion, technology, and so on. So, you need to generate affiliate links based on what you like.

Why? The major reason is for you to be able to promote your affiliate links to the right audience. Of course, you won’t expect groups of engineers to buy stethoscope. By promoting affiliate links in your niche, you’ll be able to fine-tune the program and encourage people to complete a task (usually make purchases). Besides, you’ll be able to develop other marketing strategy for your links, or even develop your own business.

How to promote your Amazon Affiliate links

It is time to get serious. Signing up as an affiliate marketer is just the first step towards earning money via Amazon affiliate programs. Of course, you have created your account and generated your affiliate links. How do you promote the links and start making money through it? This particular question opens up an entire other topic (see my category on marketing), but before then, you can promote your affiliate links through Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Blogs, Forum, and so on.

How Amazon Associates know when sales come from your link

If you’re a beginner, you might want to know how Amazon determines when sales are made through your affiliate link. Pretty cool, huh? When you sign up in Amazon associate sites, the system will automatically generate a unique Amazon associate affiliate ID for your account. Any time you generate affiliate links from your Amazon associate account, your affiliate ID will automatically appear in the URL (www.yourwebsite.com) of the product. Using this method, Amazon can easily know when sales are made through your links.

Factors that determine the amount Amazon Associates make

I said earlier that you can make as much as possible through Amazon affiliate marketing programs. However, you need to understand certain factors that determine whether you’ll make money or not. Below are some of them:

Your niche – you already know how niche can affect your commission as an affiliate marketer. If you don’t generate affiliate links in the right niche, you may find it difficult to make money with the Amazon affiliate program.

Your target audience – of course, you don’t just post links on social media and expect hundreds of people to click and start making purchases. You need to target the right audience and promote like a professional. How do I promote like a professional?

1. Professionals don’t join forums and start promoting links immediately, they first create good impression and contribute helpful points in the forum. If you join forums and start posting your links without contributing any impact, you’ll discover that all your efforts are futile. In fact, you might serve a ban immediately.
2. You must understand what the links are all about. For instance, when you promote links in a forum, some users may comment and ask you to tell them more about the products. If you can’t explain better than ordinary member, then you’re not a professional affiliate marketer.
3. You must be able to write reviews about the products. Writing reviews about your affiliate products can boost your earnings. You can create a blog and post your reviews there continuously.

Your social media profile – Probably, you don’t think there’s any need for you to do something about your social media profile. If you don’t have any good reasons to do so, here is one.
Most people love to know the type of person that introduces them to something online. For instance, if you’re promoting something online, you need to ensure that your profile looks professional and don’t at any point contradict the product you’re promoting.

People want to trust you as an authority on the topic.  They may not know you, but you should learn to be sincere and build for relationships.  Don’t build your site to sell.  Or, at least, don’t make it appear that way.  Pick a niche you are passionate about and write how you really feel.  Also, it goes a lonnnng way if you really have purchased one of the products you’re speaking about.  It’s fantastic to be able to speak from experience.

Again, don’t hype products you have not tested or know little about. Over-hyped products usually get bad names within a short period of time. So make sure you update your profile and promote your links in the right group. Use the right tags, and share your links with the right people. Comment on other peoples links/products also.  Don’t be stingy! With this method you can start making huge money through Amazon Affiliate Marketing Programs.