Learn Amazon Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the strategies to monetize websites and social networks that are gaining more popularity in recent times. Do you want to know what it is and how to build a good affiliate marketing strategy? Do you want to know why Amazon is the company that captures most of this business, and how to get into it? In this Amazon affiliate guide, we offer you all the answers, and keys, so that you can start making money with your website and your social networks in a simple, and fast way.

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1- What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a type of business relationship between a company and an advertiser that is based on the direct results of the advertising carried out. Instead of charging a certain and predetermined amount in advance (traditional advertising system), or an amount per click or impression (Google's ad system, for example), the company pays a commission if the user becomes a customer and makes the desired purchase. 

It is a safe method for the company, which loses nothing if advertising does not bring it benefits, and which can be very profitable in the case of the affiliate if they know how to develop their strategy properly.

For example, if we own a blog on any subject, and we decide to join a company that offers online courses, we will advertise on our website, and for each course that said the company sells from our links or banners, we will take a sales commission. Sounds simple? It is, as long as we know how to follow some basic rules.

2- Basic rules of affiliate marketing

The first thing you need to enter the world of affiliate marketing is to have a powerful website, blog, or social networks. If you have not yet taken this first step, it does not make sense for you to jump right into learning what affiliate marketing is. 

Build your website or leave it in the hands of professionals; Only when you have this step taken can you start working on affiliate marketing.

The second thing is to have a regular and large audience that visits your content. There is no use in having a wonderful website or blog if no one visits and reads it. The first objective once we have our website to increase the flow of visitors.

How can we get this? There are many strategies to increase the traffic of our website (SEO audit, social networks, conventional advertising, collaborations. and if you want to grow in the field of affiliation you will have to know and use them all.

However, many visitors will not automatically earn you money from affiliate marketing. It is not enough to have many visitors, you have to have quality visitors, interested in what you have, and above all that they have placed their trust in you. 

The second step after getting an audience is to strengthen that audience, to get them to stay, to believe in you, to follow you, to trust that the products you are talking about are what they are looking for. 

This is possibly the most difficult step since it does not depend so much on metrics, and the use of tools as on your ability to seduce and keep an audience hooked with the material you publish. The key here, as for so many other things, is content. 

If you publish quality content on a regular basis, if what you offer generates value for the user, you will earn their trust and the visitor will return. 

If your content is misleading or does not contribute anything, you will lose the trust that the visitor places in you. Remember that in the 21st century time is one of our most important assets. Nobody likes to lose it by reading useless content.

We already have a blog or website, we have visitors, and we have an audience that trusts us. Then, can we get started with our affiliate marketing strategy? It is time for you to choose which company you are going to work with, what type of advertising you are going to choose, how you are going to integrate it into your blog. The success of your campaign and the amount of money you get to earn with it will depend on these choices.

One last tip before launching into the Amazon affiliate system. Don't abuse affiliate marketing. If your audience discovers that your only interest is to sell products at all costs, you will lose their trust. Be careful, be selective, and above all, don't be too pushy.

Remember that we live in a world where advertising is a plague, and we all are prepared to run away from an invasive salesperson who offers us nothing but an endless list of products to buy. 

Take care of your audience, and they will reward you. Treat your audience like a mere pawn in the market, and they will turn their back on you.

3- How does Amazon affiliate marketing work?

How Amazon affiliate marketing works is very simple. A user comes to your website, discovers that you are talking about a specific product, feels interested, and clicks on one of the links or banners that you have arranged for it.

If the user finally becomes an Amazon customer and buys the product you are promoting, Amazon will deposit a percentage of the said sale in the bank account that you have previously indicated.

Is it necessary for the user to buy the product that I am promoting? No, it is not. The action of clicking on the link that you have embedded in your website generates a cookie in the user that will make all purchases made on Amazon up to a maximum of 24 hours later to generate profits.

It does not have to be the product you are promoting nor does it have to be at the exact moment you click on the link. All sales (with some exceptions) that the user makes in the 24 hours after clicking on the link will generate a profit percentage.

What percentage of profit do I get for each sale? The percentage depends on the country from which you are operating and the type of product that the customer buys. The percentages that are applied in Amazon Spain for the most common products are the following:

• IT, TV, Audio, Video, Mobile and telephony, Electronics and Videogames 3.5%
• Cinema and series, Music, Musical Instruments, Kitchen and DIY 5%
• Books, Electronic books, Toys and Games, Sports, Health, Stationery, Baby, Home, Garden, Car, and motorcycle, Pets 7%
• Clothes (except underwear and nightwear), Shoes, Jewelry, Watches 10%
• Products that do not fit into these categories 3%

As you can see, it is not a very large percentage, especially in some categories, but we assure you that it is the same or more than what other affiliate platforms offer, with the difference that on Amazon you enjoy a series of advantages that we will see below.

Some time ago Amazon applied a limit to the profits you could obtain per product promoted and sold, but this must have angered most of the affiliates so much that they decided to remove it, so now the percentage is applied directly to the price of the product.

Of course, keep in mind that your earnings are calculated on the price without VAT, so do not be surprised if you see that you receive less money than you had calculated. You must apply the percentage to the price after deducting taxes.

These rates can be modified by Amazon at any time, and although in theory, they have the obligation to notify affiliates in advance of any change of this type, the truth is that Amazon's communication policy in this regard is quite deficient.

The notices are usually camouflaged in cumbersome emails with the very small print in which it is easy to get lost and with which the temptation to send them to the trash before reading them completely is great. 

Therefore, remember to be attentive to these fluctuations if you want to keep an authentic control of your affiliate campaigns and the income you generate from the products you promote.

What happens if the buyer carries out the action from outside the United State? This is one of the main problems that great affiliate marketers have encountered with the Amazon system. 

This company has various platforms, both to sell its products and to manage the work of its affiliates. There is Amazon Spain, Amazon United States, Amazon France, Amazon Japan.

The usual thing is that if your website is written in English and focused on the USA market, most of your visits come from this country, so clicks to your links and the sales they get will also come from English territory. 

But what happens if a reader from Chile or Colombia comes to my website, clicks on one of my affiliate links, and buys a product? Well, that sale simply will not generate any income.

There are several tricks to circumvent this system, but they already present a certain complexity, so we do not recommend them until you are very familiar with the work of Amazon affiliate marketing. 

The best thing to start with is that you focus on the market niche of your country and that you try to optimize the number of visits, clicks, and sales you make on Amazon Spain. 

Once you have passed this first phase and you feel comfortable in the world of affiliate marketing, you can put into play the tricks that we talked about.

3- Why choose Amazon?

Since it was born in 1994, by its creator, Jeff Bezos, Amazon has become the largest retailer in the world. What began as an online bookstore, has become a monster of the markets with the capacity to reach billions of customers around the world, generating sales revenue that grows every year and becoming a business model that has transformed the way you buy products. 

Amazon quickly stopped focusing exclusively on books. Jeff Bezos always wanted to increase the business to new products. To this day, they continue to expand their networks, so that a customer in any part of the world can purchase almost any product and have it at home in a more than a reasonable time, and at a very competitive price. 

Amazon has become synonymous with success, and although its business practices have been the subject of much criticism, its growth appears to continue to increase in the short and medium-term.

The Amazon affiliate marketing system allows you to enter this business and take a small (yes, very small) part of the profit that each sale generates. Who wouldn't want to get some crumbs from this great cake?

The reasons for choosing Amazon over other affiliate systems are many, but they can be summed up in one. Amazon is bigger, stronger, and more trustworthy than the rest. Amazon is bigger, and that will allow you to choose from a wide range of products to promote. 

Amazon is stronger, and that gives you the guarantee that it will not go bankrupt or disappear in the short or medium term, leaving you and all your efforts hanging. 

Amazon builds trust, and that means that customers shop without hesitation or fear. Amazon sells more and sells better, and that is something that you, as a potential part of your business, suits you.

Amazon or eBay? This is one of the doubts of the great that assail all those who want to start in the world of affiliate marketing. eBay is one of the main portals for the sale, and auction of second-hand objects, and its market potential is as great as Amazon's. 

Before Amazon eliminated its maximum commission limit for selling a product (which was a disappointing 10 euros), eBay had a great advantage that it did not impose these limits. That is to say if you got a sale of a very expensive product you pocketed a very succulent commission, while on Amazon you were stuck at the miserable barrier of 10 euros. 

This was one of the reasons why some users chose eBay over Amazon, and it is very likely that this was what motivated Jeff Bezos's company to decide to eliminate the maximum commission cap. Once the barrier is removed, the main reason for choosing eBay over Amazon has disappeared, and now there are very few advantages of the first over the second.

What are the advantages of eBay? Not many. It is true that it has slightly higher commissions, but since the products are cheaper, the money that finally flows to your account is the same or maybe less. 

The reality is that eBay does not enjoy the trust that Amazon has gained around the world, and that leads many customers to hesitate before buying a product. Ultimately, from our point of view, Amazon beats eBay easily on affiliate marketing.

You may still have doubts after everything we have said, and it is normal. The offer of affiliate platforms are not only very large, but it grows every day, and the network abounds with pages, many of them promoted, that will try to convince you to opt for other platforms other than Amazon. The final decision is yours.

Also, note that you do not have to focus exclusively on the Amazon affiliate system as a means of monetizing your website. Even if you bet on Amazon decisively, you can combine it with other affiliate platforms that suit you in each specific case. 

The best thing you can do is to test, be constant, monitor, and analyze processes and results, and stay with the system that interests you the most.

5- How to start. First Steps on Amazon Affiliate Marketing

• STEP 1 OPEN AN ACCOUNT On AMAZON

The first thing you need to do is create an Amazon account as a buyer. It is very likely that you already have it (who in the 21st century has not bought anything on Amazon), but if you are one of the few people who have not yet used Amazon services, ask yourself a couple of questions before continuing. 

Why do you want to work with a platform that you have never used? Why do you want to get into an adventure with a company you don't know anything about?

If you have never bought from Amazon before, we recommend that before continuing to advance in affiliate marketing, you spend some time learning about the experience as a buyer. 

Get to know the catalog as thoroughly as possible, take time to read the descriptions of the products that you will later want to link to, observe the prices, stop to analyze the shipping times. Read the opinions of customers who have already purchased it.

Make a couple of orders, value the experience. Consider even making a return and find out about their conditions.

Once you've experienced what it's like to be an Amazon buyer, you'll be much better prepared to embark on the affiliate marketing management process. Wait, you'll think, this is a waste of time and no other affiliate guide I've read on the net recommends that I do it.

Why not jump right into the action and start putting links on my website? Why delay the time to earn money? Very simple if you have not had the experience as a buyer, you will hardly be able to advise others who want to be. 

You can, of course, but the data, and opinions you offer will be partial, unfounded, and sometimes false. Ultimately, you will not be generating trust in your audience, and in the long run, this will punish you. 

Believe us when we say that it is worth spending some time getting to know the buyer experience in this first step. This time will affect your income in the long-term.

Are you already a regular Amazon buyer and do you know exactly what this experience means? Then you can skip this step and directly create your affiliate account.

• STEP 2 OPEN Affiliate account

Once we have our Amazon buyer account, we can enter the affiliate program. Be careful, we do not want to create an Amazon seller account that is a completely different matter with totally different objectives. We don't want to sell anything, what we want is to promote what others sell.

Log into your Amazon buyer account and scroll to the bottom of the page. Click on the link, "Affiliate Program” and you will access the process of creating your account. 

It is a slightly longer process than creating a buyer account, but it will take at most fifteen minutes to complete. Follow the steps indicated by the platform and provide all the information that is requested.

Especially important is the part called a profile of your web site before signing up as an affiliate permanently, Amazon will analyze the web page from which you want to promote its products and will verify that the data you have provided is true. 

You will have to include the name of your website, the main URL, the theme, and the type of products you want to promote. 

This last information is merely indicative, and will in no way limit you to later promote other products other than the ones you mark now.

You will also have to say how many visits your website has in a month. We recommend that you be sincere. We know of websites that with less than a hundred visits per month has passed the Amazon filter without problems. 

But if you lie and Amazon finds out (and expects that they can easily find out) it may decide to penalize you and deny you the use of the affiliate program. Be honest, you have nothing to lose.

What happens if I intend to work my affiliate program from several web pages with different URLs? Nothing at all. You don't have to create multiple affiliate accounts. 

You just have to include all the websites that you are going to use in this step of the questionnaire. If in a while you want to use new web pages you can add them without problems.

When you have completed all the information in this section, you will have to fill in a CAPTCHA and press finish. You will immediately receive an email in the email account you have provided, with a link to confirm your identity and continue with the process. 

If you click on the link, it will take you to a new screen where you can choose the payment method with which you want Amazon to pay you your succulent and millionaire commissions.

What payment methods does Amazon have Amazon Spain for its affiliates? To date there are three systems:

•  An Amazon gift voucher that you can only spend on the platform itself
•  A deposit in the bank account you indicate
• A bank check

If you choose to charge by bank check, you will only charge your commissions when you have accumulated a minimum of 50$. If you opt for either of the other two payment systems, the accumulated minimum will be 25 $. 

Choose the one that best suits your needs and fill in the details carefully. We advise you to be very careful when filling in the bank account information since any mistake could lead to your precious and worked money ending up in an account that is not yours.

Once you have finished this process, Amazon will take some time to give you an answer. The time will depend on the time and day of the week when you started the process, but under normal conditions, it should not take more than a few hours. 

It is time it takes Amazon to check your website and verify that all the information you have provided is in order. Once you have done it, you will receive a confirmation email. and that's it! You are now part of the Amazon affiliate community.

• STEP 3 LINK YOUR WEBSITE WITH AMAZON PRODUCTS

The next step is to place the necessary links on your website for your readers to click on them and make their purchases on Amazon. 

The how, where, and how many links to put on your website is the most complex part of affiliate marketing, and only a careful reading of the experience of other affiliates and your own analysis of the results will allow you to optimize the process.

The first thing you have to keep in mind is there are several types of affiliate links, with very different results and strategies:

Amazon banner links. It consists of placing a more or less large banner somewhere on your website. The Amazon affiliate platform is very simple and intuitive in this task.

You just have to choose the type of banner you want to insert and copy the code provided to you on your website. 

There are general banners that link to the Amazon landing page, banners for broad product groups (books, movies, televisions, and product links.

 As we point out elsewhere in this guide, banner links typically don't perform well. They are too obvious an advertisement, and in a world in which we are saturated with information of this type, very few readers are going to click on a link of these characteristics. 

Who clicks on a link that takes you to the general Amazon page? Stop and think about your own user experience. 

Would you click on one of these links? Only product banners, located in very specific places and contexts, can work and give some performance. 

But even these show very low sales. The problem can go further: the appearance of a banner can put the user on alert, and discourage him from clicking on other more productive links. In short, we strongly discourage you from using banners within your affiliate strategy. 

The appearance of a banner can alert the user and discourage him from clicking on other more productive links. In short, we strongly discourage you from using banners within your affiliate strategy. 

The appearance of a banner can alert the user and discourage him from clicking on other more productive links. In short, we strongly discourage you from using banners within your affiliate strategy.

• Text links. Text links work best in an affiliate marketing strategy with Amazon. They are discreet and always give the user the feeling that he has decided to take the step of starting the purchase process. For these reasons, they are the most chosen by Amazon affiliates.

• Text links with images. In this type of link, we find the name of the product, its price, and a small photograph. Unlike banners, they are discreet enough, so that the user does not run away from them, in addition to offering specific information that can be decisive in encouraging the reader to become a buyer.

Where should we place the links? There is no definitive answer to this question. Each affiliate has his techniques, depending on whether they are looking for a more or less aggressive style in their strategy.

What you must be clear about is that filling the text with links is not going to help the reader click on them more frequently, and of course, it will not increase the number of sales you achieve.

A strategy that usually gives good results is to alternate the discreet links (for example, put a link when the name of the product is cited in the text) with other more obvious ones (if you want to buy this vacuum cleaner at a great price, click here).

The links must appear at the beginning of the content and at the end so that the reader can access them at any time during the reading. But remember don’t abuse them.

• Promote only what you yourself would consume. Be sincere. Sometimes it is even interesting to talk about products that you consider the low quality and make devastating reviews of them. 
• It is clear that you will not sell anything of this product, but your audience will appreciate your sincerity and you will pay the way so that when a positive review arrives, they believe in you and start buying the product. If you permanently sell each product as the panacea that every customer wishes they had, people will stop believing in you.

•  Bet on natural links. The banners may seem very striking and colorful to you. You may even think that they add something to the design of your page.

• Not surprisingly, Amazon spends a great deal of money and effort in designing attractive banners for affiliates to put on their websites. But let's be serious, who clicks on a generic banner today? Would you waste a time clicking on a banner that said “the best books of the year” or the best deals on music”? No, you wouldn't. 

• Because both you and all of us are immune to these kinds of calls to action. It is proven that the system that works best in affiliate marketing is text links. They can be less obvious, and strategically placed in the middle of the content, or they can be totally explicit, such as “if you are interested in this product, click here.” In both cases, they work much better than banners.

•  If you use banners, at least they are for specific products. These banners that direct to a certain product have a higher performance than generic banners. You can place it at the end of the text or in a prominent place.

• You can even choose banners of related products, always making it clear that it is not the product you are talking about but that it has similar characteristics. Even so, our advice is clear: avoid banners whenever you can.

Photos are great places to put affiliate links. It may not be the cleanest strategy in the world, and there are those who may consider it unethical, but the truth is that this strategy does not cause any damage, and your income can be increased exponentially. 

If you put an affiliate link in the photographs of an article and get the reader to click on them you will have planted the much-desired cookie and all purchases made by that user in the next 24 hours will generate a commission.

You can be honest and put a small text next to the photograph indicating that if you click on it, it will take you to Amazon to buy the product (or simply to consult more information about it) or be a little more cheat and not indicate nothing of this. 

If you opt for the latter, we recommend that you use small images that invite the reader to click on them to enlarge them. Naturally, the image will not be enlarged, but you will already have the affiliate cookie in the place you wanted. 

If you use very large images, the reader will simply look at them with more or less indifference, but will never click on them, this we are looking for after all.

Be careful if you promote Kindle ebooks that are free. Promote free ebooks? It seems like an absurd idea! It is not at all. These transactions do not provide you direct income, but they can be interesting since they offer a free product to your users and help you increase your value before them. 

You can be sure that the visitor to whom you recommend a free product today will return tomorrow in search of more, exponentially increasing your website traffic and in the medium, and long-term its possibilities of monetization. 

For Amazon, however, these sales are not interesting, so if it detects there are many free book downloads

from your links, it can block all your earnings for the current month or even delete your affiliate account.

Expensive products or cheap products? If we use logic we will conclude that it is better to focus our

affiliate marketing strategy with Amazon on expensive products, since these will give us a higher commission

percentages than cheaper products. 

In principle this is true, and there are many affiliates who base their philosophy and strategy on this premise.

However, it would be a mistake to look down on cheap products simply because they yield a smaller

commission. 

Cheap products, precisely because they are very affordable, are sold more easily than expensive ones, and

in greater numbers. If you know how to manage it well, it is possible to earn interesting commissions

with products that a priori do not seem to be going to bring you many dividends.