How to make money with Amazon

There are several different ways to make money with Amazon but this guide will deal only with Amazon affiliate marketing. Why?  Because I have found that Amazon affiliate marketing beats all their other monetization methods:

• Amazon banner ads don’t generally convert well because they are too general
• Amazon aShops lack personality and aren’t likely to bring in a repeat customer base
• Most people probably aren’t selling their own products, media, or publications

With Amazon affiliate marketing though, you have a lot of advantages which make it the ideal program:

• The affiliate commission is comparably high
• Customers recognize the Amazon brand name and are confident about placing orders
• Customers have opportunities to buy other products than those which you marketed

Getting Started as an Amazon Affiliate

It is incredibly easy to get started as an Amazon affiliate.  You simply set up an account with Amazon.  Once you are approved, you can include affiliate links to Amazon products on your website or blog.  If a visitor clicks on your link and makes a purchase, then you get a commission of the sale.  The commission comes from any sale resulting through your link – not just the product you linked to.  When I first got started as an Amazon affiliate, I was surprised to find that most of the commissions I got were from products I hadn’t marketed.   For example, I would write a review of a new Cannon camera, a visitor would click the link, and end up buying a tripod instead.

One thing to keep in mind is that there are different country bases for Amazon, such as Amazon US, Amazon Canada, etc.  Before you sign up for an account, look at your website analytic to see where the bulk of your traffic is coming from.  My photo website is for Australians so I use Amazon Australia.

Know Your Demographic

The first rule of any business is to know your demographic. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Who are your website visitors?
• What are they interested in?
• What do they need and want (not always the same thing)?
• How much are they willing to spend?
• What motivates them to make purchases?

As you may know, affiliate marketing usually works best with niche-specific websites.  For example, my photography blog isn’t going to try to sell diet pills.  However, because Amazon offers so many different products, its affiliate program can still work well for non-specific websites. You will still need to keep your demographic in mind when placing those Amazon affiliate links.

Another important consideration about your demographic is to realize their advertising breaking point.  In other words, how many Amazon affiliate links can you put up before they get sick of your marketing schemes?

On a side note, I recently found an interesting article from an Amazon affiliate who says that she deliberately writes next to the links that she gets a commission from sales.  Instead of putting off her visitors, it actually increased sales!  One visitor even wrote her saying that, each time she needs to buy something, the visitor goes to her website first and follows the link to Amazon.  Since Amazon is such a big, notorious corporation, most visitors aren’t going to mind giving some of Amazon’s profits to you on something they were going to buy anyways.

Business Models with Amazon

There are a couple business models which work very effectively with Amazon affiliate marketing.

1) You already have a successful blog or article-based website: In this case, you can occasionally incorporate posts/articles into your website which have Amazon affiliate links.  If you choose the products wisely and place the links in a way which generates clicks, then you could develop a nice income from the affiliate commissions.

The problem with this mode of Amazon affiliate marketing is that it isn’t going to get you rich.  At best, it will account for some extra income to what you are already earning from your website, such as through high-revenue ads. Since there are limits of how many Amazon affiliate links you can put on your website before you deteriorate its quality, you won’t be able to saturate the market very well.  Some website/blog owners have used some creative methods to get around this drawback, such as making sections in their blogs for “recommended products”, “best X products of 2012”, or “weekly product reviews.”

2) You develop articles and websites specifically for promoting Amazon products: If you know a lot about SEO, then you stand to make a lot of money just off of commissions on Amazon products.  All it takes is tapping into the right niche market which has a high-demand.  Since customers already know and trust the Amazon brand, you can get away with just generating traffic and serving as a squeeze page between the SERPs and Amazon.  By comparison, you would have to work hard to create high-quality reviews and informative articles to sell no-name brand products.  Of course though, your squeeze page will have to have some value or it will quickly fall off the SERPs and all your efforts will be lost.

You’ve got to be very wise on how you approach marketing though to make sure you are targeting the right keywords.  For example, let’s say you want to market an all-natural diet pill sold on Amazon.  You could target keywords like “best diet pills” or “natural ways to lose weight.”  Both apply to the product.  However, people searching for the first term are more likely looking to buy.  The people searching for the latter term are likely looking for methods they can use at home and less likely to buy. SEO takes a LOT of work and knowledge if you want to succeed.

If you are just getting started, expect to waste a lot of time with trial and error before you get any success.