So, you want to know how to make money with the Amazon Associates affiliate program?
Well, listen up. I’ve been making money with the Amazon affiliate program since 2008.
In that time, I’ve made over $1,239,861 from it.
I’ve built dozens of sites that made money this way, like the one below, which earned $9,380.65 in a single month.
There is a lot of bad advice out there, written by people who don’t actually make any money from Amazon Associates.
In this blog post, I’ll set the record straight and show you how to do it right.
How Does Amazon Associates Work
Amazon Associates is the Amazon affiliate program.
Once you sign up, you’ll find a special toolbar at the top of Amazon.com.
You can use this to create an affiliate link to almost any product sold on Amazon.
You can share these affiliate links on your own website or social media platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, or Pinterest.
When someone clicks on one of your affiliate links, they get tracked using cookies.
“Cookies” are a web tracking technology, and unfortunately, they have nothing to do with the chocolate chip cookies you had for lunch.
You earn a small commission on whatever the person buys while the cookie is active (which is 24 hours after clicking an Amazon Affiliate Link).
The trick to making a lot of money? Recommend the right products to the right people.
If you do this through a website or blog, you can start to make money passively.
Read on, and I’ll show you the exact steps to achieve this.
Who Is Going To Click On Your Affiliate Link
It’s easy to agree that you like the idea of making money and recommending products.
But the next logical question is this: Who will you recommend them to?
If no one clicks, you won’t make any money.
And if that happens, your next instinct may be to spam your friends and family.
First, don’t be that person—nobody will want to talk to you at the next family barbeque.
Second, if you do happen to do that, you may get banned from the program. Amazon doesn’t want you to be that person, either.
The right way to go about doing it is by starting a blog and writing content about a specific topic.
Like Amazon Affiliate Kevin from Epic Gardening, who wrote this blog post about the Best Water Chillers for Hydroponics.
Kevin and Josh both started out as bloggers passionate about a topic.
They wrote great keyword target content and were able to rank on Google for some of these keywords.
Kevin now gets hundreds of thousands of people reading his gardening reviews every single month.
But this didn’t happen overnight.
Notice that in the early days, less than 100 people per day were reading his blog.
Amazon is not a get-rich-quick scheme or a magic money tree.
But, it does represent a way to build an online business and make money — if you are willing to work for it.
I’ll show you how to build a business like Kevin and Josh later in this blog post.
But first, let’s address the elephant in the room.
How Much Can You Make With Amazon Affiliate Program
The exact amount Amazon pays for each sale depends on the category of the item purchased.
Commission rates of just a few percent may seem small — and, honestly, they are. More on that later.
However, the amazon affiliate program has several redeeming features.
First, you earn a referral fee for everything people buy—for up to 24 hours—after clicking your product links, even if it’s a totally different product.
And we all know how easy it is to buy a few extra items on Amazon!
Just last week, I went to buy some dog food and also bought a new dog collar and an umbrella.
In fact, “Amazon addiction” is now a thing.
My friend Kate from Parked in Paradise recently made a $240 commission after someone bought an $8,000 metal detector—and her site has nothing to do with metal detectors!
Amazon is also one of the most trusted websites in the world. Over 112 million Americans have Amazon Prime.
In addition, tens of millions more have their card details stored in their Amazon accounts to make their next purchase quick and easy.
This means you can expect the volume of sales to be high with the Amazon affiliate program.