Last Christmas period (October to December) I made over $10,000 profit from the Amazon Affiliate Program. That was with just 10 small websites and very little work. Which is why I love being an Amazon affiliate it’s very easy to make money with.
A lot of people avoid using Amazon to make money online because of the small commission levels (why promote a $20 book for around $1 commission when you can promote a ClickBank product and make $40 per sale).
Of course I do promote both, Amazon and ClickBank, but I actually feel it’s far easier to make money promoting Amazon products simply because physical products are much more in demand than ebooks.
So let’s go over how I made so much money in such a short period of time. First of all, I used the techniques outlined in Info Product Killer (which is an awesome ebook) so they weren’t entirely my ideas, and at the time I did have an Adwords campaign running as well (although I only had a very small budget).
I only ran the Adwords campaign over Christmas and since then (in the last six months) I’ve still been making a consistent $500 to $800 per month commission from Amazon and I’ve barely touched any of the sites or promoted them in any way since then.
So how can you do the same? How can you make money as an Amazon affiliate?
First you will need an Amazon affiliate account (duh!), so if you haven’t already got one then head over and apply. They usually take up to a week to approve you so sit tight and be patient.
Once they approve you, you’ll be able to start promoting their products.
Some people will tell you to only choose high cost products like TV’s, but to be honest I’ll promote anything that’s hot – one of my best selling items this month was a $15 book. It may only pay me around $1 each time someone buys it, but I’m selling around 10 to 20 of these a day. It all adds up.
And of course, you also get an Amazon affiliate commission with anything else your customer decides to put into their shopping cart, so I often get credit for items I wasn’t even promoting!
Choosing A Product to Promote
The best and easiest way to choose a product to promote is to keep your eyes and ears open to hot trends. Anything that is being advertised on television is a perfect thing to promote online. I like to watch The View or Oprah to see what products or books the guests are flogging and create a website around that.
Or you can think seasonally, people buy coats and scarfs in Winter and pool supplies in Summer.
You can also take the easy option out and go right to Amazon itself and check out the bestselling items in each of their categories.
Once you have a list of potential items to promote then it’s time to do some keyword research. Ideally you are looking for something that has at least 1000 search per month and less than 250,000 competing sites. Keyword research only works if the product has been around for a while though, if it’s brand new (I like to promote new products because no-one else has jumped on them yet and you have virtually no competition) then your keyword research won’t help because there will be no stats available yet.
If you’d like to test a few products before you decide to build a website then start a free hub or blog and see what converts for you.
Next use the product name in your domain name (or hub name if you hubbing) only if the company allows it – some companies don’t care, other’s are very sensitive about it. That will give you the best search engine juice.
Write a review mentioning the product a few times and put a big picture on the page and of course links to buy the product at Amazon.
That’s how easy it is.
You should start to see some sales as soon as your websites / hubs get indexed and traffic.
Of course, if you serious about making money as an Amazon Affiliate I really recommend that you get Info Product Killer as well. It worked great for me.
21 Responses to How I Make Money as an Amazon Affiliate, and How You Can Too!
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An interesting article. I have had mixed results as an Amazon Affiliate. As with most things driving traffic is key. I believe that beginners should have the message about driving traffic pinned to their monitor so that evry time they sit at the PC the message is reinforced.
Phil
Thank you so much for this post. I use the reviewazon plugin. Reviewazon is the easy and simple way to add amazon affiliate product to your website.
I saw some very cool widgets for Amazon where you choose products that are on a virtual carousel that attractively rotates any products that you want to display. I haven’t put it on any of my sites yet, but intend to very soon.
Thanks for good article. Its very interesting and very informative. I tried hard but earning i $10 to $15 per month. Now i will trying as per your information.
Thanks Again.
Hi Waseem,
Target popular product names, make around five similar hubpages and link them together. You’ll do a lot better than $10/$15 !!
Hi Tracey, great advice here…do you feel that creating a hub for a hot Amazon product is a better way to go since websites and Blogs might take longer to get indexed?
I’ve been an Amazon affiliate for over a decade and still think it’s one of the best programs out there.
I think I saw you on Warrior Forum. I bought Dan Brock’s course. Looks pretty cool.
I trust your advice: So…Any reason to get IPK, or are the 2 courses fungible. (Crazy legal term meaning, in essence: “the same”.)
Anyway, I bought Brock’s ebook at 11:00 last night. Started reading and the first action item was to sign up for Amazon Associates program. Anyway, within 12 hours I was approved as an Amazon Associate.
I want to promote hard goods, not Clickbank crap about herbs that cure hemorrhoids (yeah right) with no less than 10 trillion affiliates pushing that product so it has a gravity of 4 quadillion cubed. (Big Gravity) Anyway, you give away some good advice which I am paying attention to. Thank you.
Two questions, in ascending dumbness: 1: Can you give us 5 examples of so called “buy words” other than BUY, CHEAP, BUY NOW, DEALS and FREE-SHIPPING?
2. Uhhhh… what’s a HubPage?
I know….shake your head side to side… “Rookies”.
Hi Eric,
thanks for stopping by. Yes I hang out at the Warriorforum from time to time
I don’t know about Dan Brock’s course as I haven’t seen it, but I would say that if it deals with promoting Amazon products that you would only need one.
Yes it is MUCH easier to promote real products from amazon as opposed to ebooks. Well that’s what I’ve found anyway.
As for buying keywords, I rarely use them. I might have some of them in the copy, but mostly I just concentrate on the product name and that’s it. If people are typing in specific product names, they are ready to buy.
e.g. If they type in ‘golf clubs’ they want information. If they type in ‘calloway x-22 iron’ they are ready to pull out their credit card, so they may as well do it through your link
A hubpage is just a one page that you can set up on the web 2.0 site Hubpages.com – you can have as many hubpages as you like and they are very easy to set up.
Here’s an example of one of my hubpages: http://hubpages.com/hub/Coach-Diaper-Bag
I like creating them, they are pretty easy.
Hope that helps!
Hello Tracey
Thx for the wonderful info – I just bought Info Product Killer and would like to know:
- Do you have to use the website software and template he suggests?
- I use XSite Pro and he says you can use it but can I say create a few blogger blogs and link it to my XSPro site.
Do you have to buy new domains for all the stuff he suggest or can you buy a subdomains also! Will the effect be the same if you use subdomains?
Now the big question is: If I create a blogger blog and buy my own domain on blogger am I the owner then of the blog and can it then be sold in the future? I know very little about blogging and only have static XSP sites.
Do you perhaps know of a quickstart blogger guide that I can get hold of.
Appreciate your time!
Kind regards
Elmien
Hi Elmien,
I don’t use Network Blazer, I just create my own sites with html, so you could definately use xsite pro to create the sites.
You could link some blogger blogs to your main site, but I haven’t found that blogger blogs rank that well lately. I do buy new domains for all the sites I have (although I only have 13 or so sites). Domains usually only cost around $8 for a year, and you are bound to make that money back pretty quickly. But you can start free by using blogger or hubpages like I do as well. (hubpages tends to rank quite well – although you don’t have the same control over layout etc).
If you have your own domain on blogger, then I don’t think you own the site, just the domain. I think you’d be better with your xsp sites.
Hope that helps and good luck with ipk!!
Tracey
just wondered which product to buy. ipk or dan brocks course ?
big decision?
please help!
Hi John,
I haven’t used Dan Brocks course so I can’t comment. I do have IPK and it is a good course, but it’s starting to get a bit dated. But you can do it on the cheap, just set up some hubpages or squidoo lenses and start earning some quick cash. Just pick a product and write about it. Go for it!
Hello Tracey
Hope you can help me out here. I’m not making money from my Ipk sites and don’t know why.
Can you please contact me.I really would appreciate it. Many thanks.
Hi Giselle,
Sure I can help you. But first can you tell me whether they are getting traffic? If so how much? If not, where are they ranked in Google?
t
Unless money is a serious issue, I would avoid hubpages, blogger, or any other site that you do not personally own. What if the site is making you lots of money consistently, goes out of business or decides that you no longer fit their guidelines and terminates your account. (It’s bad enough worrying about Google penalizing you)
To solve the problem,just set up a WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or any other content management site on your own webspace. Hosting space is cheap these days, the CMS’s that I mentioned ar all open source free software. if you do not know how to set them up yourself, you can alwasy just buy a set-up and possible even a design from Fiverr.com for $5.
It’s important to own the part of your site that makes you money. I have no problem with using hubpages, blogger, etc. for backlink building purposes, but that’s it unless it’s a temporary thing to get some money in before purchasing some hosting space. if you need a referral to cheap web hosting providers, go ahead and visit a my good friends site by clicking on my name above.
Er, ok. I’ve never advocated placing your entire financial plan on a third party site – but they are good for newbs to start with before wasting money on a blog that may or may not work (knowing what works comes with experience) AND they rank better than your own site (well in the beginning anyway). If you have read my blog in any detail you would know that I mainly use hubpages, and more recently squidoo, for finding great converting products – casting the net wide if you will. They are the best way to to learn and earn some money while doing so – all for free. And THEN I recommend start your own sites because you’ll have a better idea of what works. But I’m guessing you didn’t read the entire blog and just wanted to give a link to your hosting company. Thanks anyway Paul.
Hi
have a Amazon affiliate site and I get over 1000 visitors a month, but not making money. Can you help.
Hi Nick,
By not making money – are you saying that you are not making anything at all – or just not much?
I am guessing that you are referring to the site in your link, and if that’s the case I have a few pointers. Firstly it looks like an autoblog. It doesn’t contain any new information or anything that would make me want to buy from the site. The text contains weird characters like this: who’s – which doesn’t inspire trust.
If you are serious about turning this site into a money maker then you need to add some original content and some useful information such as comparisons or reviews. Make it a site that you would be proud to show off.
It doesn’t have to be all text though – you can have pages just with products on them. Have a look at this site: http://www.simplymobiles.com.au/ which has video as well as a nice layout for inspiration.
tracey
Hello,
I also wonder why I have not make an earning with amazon.
can you view my blog? http://the-worlds-latest.blogspot.com/
Thanks..
Hi Tracey, I want to ask from you that will niche blog make me money from Amazon? And my second question is that can you share any of your Amazon website in which you’re promoting Amazon products.