One of the first affiliate programs that I joined was the Amazon Associates Program, at the recommendation of Darren Rowse at Problogger.
Since joining the program, I’ve sold a bit over $8,500 worth of products and made a bit more than $500 in affiliate commission.
In this blog post, I’m going to go into some of the things that I’ve learned about affiliate marketing since joining the program, along with advice that I have for beginning bloggers.
I hope that my story will inspire you to earn more money online! I talk more about my overall earnings online in this article.
1. Don’t Quit Your Day Job
Okay, don’t take this the wrong way, but the Amazon affiliate program isn’t going to give you instant riches. Unless you’re promoting products with a high price tag, which I’ll discuss below, your earnings are going to be meagre. I don’t look at my Amazon earnings as anything more than a nice little revenue stream.
The reason I say this is because I want to give you realistic expectations. My very first year of this program, I earned about $160.
The second year I earned a tad over $400. Haha, yay! Now I can go retire and live on some beach in the Caribbean.
The main reason that Darren Rowse earned so much from this program was that he was reviewing high-ticket items… cameras! Given a 8% commission, he could earn $120 by selling one camera for $1,500. If you’re linking to books or anything less than $1,000, you’re going to be expecting a lot less. You would earn $2.25 in fees off of a $15 book.
2. You’ll Benefit From Multiple Purchases
When I first joined this program, I was surprised that I was earning commissions off of every product that someone bought when I referred them to Amazon. This means that it makes the most sense to target buyers who are looking to purchase multiple products or accessories that will top out at a high overall order value.
One of the reasons that I’ve seen more growth in my Amazon Affiliate earnings this year is that I’ve been linking to ebooks I’ve written! When people purchase my ebook, they are also likely to purchase other books and products on Amazon, which increases the total order value.
When attempting to earn money from the Amazon affiliate program, ask yourself what problems your readers are looking to solve. What products can help them in their daily life?
3. Keep Driving Traffic
As you’ve seen from the previous two points, you need to drive a lot of traffic if you expect to earn money from this affiliate program. I personally see between 3-5% conversion percentages. If I drive 100 people to Amazon, 3-5 of them will become buyers.
It’s pretty easy to see that with these conversion rates, the only thing that’s going to influence your revenue is the amount of traffic that you send to Amazon and the total order value. With a total order value of $15 and 5 customers, you’d make $11.25 from that traffic. With a total order value of $1,500 and 1 customer, you’d make $120 from that traffic.
The more traffic that you drive to Amazon, the better analytics you’ll get about your audience. You’ll gain more insight into the products that they like and their buying behavior.
4. Track Your Traffic
There’s nothing worse than being in the dark. If you have absolutely no clue what’s working, it’s going to be very hard to impact your results.
I recommend creating different Amazon tracking IDs to measure your online marketing efforts. If you’re hosting your website on WordPress, you can also use the Pretty Link plugin to track the traffic that you drive to specific links.
Once a month, take a look at all of these analytics. Ask yourself how you can recommend more relevant products for your audience. Question yourself as to how you can increase the order totals for your account.
5. Grow Repeat Traffic Streams
I think that this is the holy grail of making money with the Amazon affiliate program. I’m actually surprised that more bloggers don’t talk about this.
There are a few different ways that you can create a stream of repeat traffic. One way is through SEO. I’ve actually talked about this a lot in the past, and this is exactly how I’ve grown this very blog to its first 75,000+ views.
Another way to grow a repeat traffic stream is with an autoresponder email sequence, using MailChimp or one of these tools. As long as you keep putting out valuable content and you have an attractive lead magnet, you’ll likely to continue to bring in new leads.
When you create a new stream of traffic that continues to result in leads or click throughs, you’ll be earning money from the Amazon affiliate program without lifting a finger.
6. Whatever You Do, Don’t Spam
The second that I joined the Amazon Affiliate program, I was all excited to earn money online! I set up an Amazon web store and started to try to get people interested in various products on Amazon. It was a disaster.
Growing an audience is hard work. The worse thing that you can do is try to “use them” to make money for yourself. Only recommend products if you genuinely believe in them. Don’t be an asshole.
If you resort to spamming your audience, you’ll only be hurting yourself in the long run. Yeah, you might make some money, but you’ll lose trust and credibility. The only thing that matters in the span of your online business career is trust and credibility. Don’t part with it so easily.
Where Should You Go From Here?
I’d love to hear from you if you have any questions! Thankfully, Amazon isn’t the only way that you can earn money online. I’ve also earned income from Adsense, Amazon ebooks, Podcasting, etc.
Whatever you do, approach online business as a slow growth process, rather than the “quick money” that many marketers try to make you believe. Hope that helps!