Affiliate marketing is one of the most lucrative and viable ways to make passive income. 

The best part? 

You don’t even have to own a business or an inventory to make a living out of it. You only promote other people’s products to your audience and get a commission on every sale. 

Heck, it doesn’t matter if you don’t even have a blog or a following social media. It’s only a matter of time before you build an audience from the ground up and start earning commission. This article will walk you through the complete process from how to create an account as an Amazon affiliate to selecting products to promote to using SEO and SEM to get more visibility. 

But first, let’s learn a little about the Amazon Affiliate Program.

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What is the Amazon Affiliate Program?

Amazon Affiliate Program also known as Amazon Associates is an internet marketing program that pays its affiliates for each sale of a product made through a unique affiliate link. How much commission you earn per sale depends on the price point and demand of the product you promote. 

Let’s walk you through the process of signing up as an Amazon affiliate. 

How to Join the Amazon Affiliate Program?

To join the Amazon Affiliate Program, go to the Amazon Associates homepage. 

• Create an account. Sign up to create a new affiliate account.

• Fill out the required information. Amazon will need you to provide information about your website. If you don’t have a website, you can use your social media account or a link to your YouTube channel. 

• Choose a preferred store ID. This is the name of your affiliate account. Make sure it’s related to your niche because it tells Amazon what type of products you’ll be promoting. 

• Explain Your Marketing Strategy. Amazon wants to know how you plan on sending traffic to your affiliate store. So, make sure to mention SEO, SMM, and paid media. 

• Provide Payment and Tax Information. Finally, you’ll be asked to share your payment and tax information. 

SEM Tip: It’s a good idea to use keywords relevant to your niche in your domain name to make it easier for people to identify and remember your store. 

You can use Google Keyword Planner or SEMrush to find the keywords with high search volume and low competition.

• Select a Profitable Niche

Choosing a profitable niche crucial in the long-term success of affiliate marketing. Pick a mass market interest that solves a problem or a need at a big level. Some of the most popular and profitable niches are technology, health and fitness, beauty, pets, etc.

Keyword Research: Conduct keyword research to learn about what people are looking for in your industry. Ideally, you should look for keywords that a huge number of people are using to find solutions to their issues. 

However, it’s not a child’s play to rank for those keywords. Specific queries using phrases such as “best workout equipment for small spaces” rather than workout equipment are usually better because they bring in the right target audience.

SEO Tip: You can use Ahrefs or Ubersuggest to identify such keywords. Try to include these keywords in your articles. Sprinkle them everywhere across the blog – in the headline, subheading, and the body of text

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• Create Quality Content

A lot of your success as an Amazon affiliate will be determined by the content that you create. Interesting, relevant, problem-solving, and informative content will make your audience trust you. Here are some content formats that have worked well for Amazon affiliates. 

• Product Reviews: Potential customers mostly read product reviews to decide whether or not they’d like to buy something. Make sure to use testimonials in your content once in a while. Using storytelling to share reviews is one of the most powerful ways to make people do something – in this case, purchase something through your affiliate link. 
• Product Comparisons: Blog posts or videos showcasing comparisons between products are excellent ways to help people in the dilemma of choosing the right product. “Top 10 Wireless Earbuds Under $100” would be a great example. 
• Lists and Buying Guides: This format offers suggestions for certain products. For example “10 Gadgets Everyone Should Have in Their Kitchen.”

SEO Tip: Make sure to add relevant keywords. Use images and videos when possible. Use internal links to keep a user on your site to prolong their stay. Another way to optimize your content for a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) is to include a captivating meta title and meta description with the targetted keywords. 

• Use Amazon Affiliate Links

Done creating content? Now it’s time to insert your affiliate link where needed. You can do this using Amazon SiteStripe to create links and banners for your website. Here are some tips to place those links effectively. 

• Place Links Where They Make Sense

Ugh! The urge to place your affiliate links everywhere hoping people will click at least once. I get it. 

Been there done that. But this approach can damage your reputation. 

It’s like someone nagging you day and night “Hey, buy my stuff. Give me money. Buy it. Come on, buy it.”

How would you feel about it? Your prospects feel the same about you when you shove your affiliate links down their throat. 

Your links should flow smoothly and feel natural so that your audience doesn’t feel irritated. 

• Keep Your URLs Short and Sweet

Short links look more professional and easy to remember. Every authority website in your industry uses sweet and short URLs and so should you.  

• Be Transparent with Your Audience

We’re so past the Trojan Horse-style days. People in this day and age know you’re going to sell them something. 

That’s why Amazon has clear instructions to keep things transparent. 

Plus, being honest also helps you maintain your integrity. Therefore you should be open to your audience about your affiliate link. Tell them you’re going to make a small cut and then also justify this commission with a solid reason.

• Track the Performance of Your Links 

Amazon offers some great tools to track how well your affiliate links are performing. You can also use Google Analytics to see which pages are getting more clicks and which ones are underperforming. 

• Link Your High-Performing Page to Ads

If you’re running paid ads, it’s recommended to redirect people to your best-performing page in order to get maximum conversions. 

• Drive Traffic to Your Content

Now let’s explore multiple ways to generate traffic and redirect that to your website.

• Organic Search (SEO): Optimizing content for search engines will encourage Google to put your website in front of more people. Find meta keywords and develop an on-page SEM strategy for title tags, headings, and alt text of images.

• Social Media Marketing: Share your content on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest etc. As with most of the visual content, Instagram and Pinterest are a great choice for pushing this type of content to a wider audience. 

• Email Marketing: Send newly published articles, share your stories, and give special offers to your email list. Do this consistently and after trial and error, you’ll develop an effective cash-generating system.

• Paid Advertising: To get more traffic in less time, you should consider taking the paid media route. Google ads, FB, IG, and LI ads can be used to target certain keywords. 

• Track Your Performance

Once your content is published and you start seeing traffic, keeping track of everything is important. Make sure you keep analyzing your marketing strategy to fill in any missing gaps. 

Even though Amazon gives you the option to track clicks, earnings, and conversion rates; however, its results aren’t 100% accurate. So, you may want to use other tools like Google Analytics for flawless tracking.

• Comply with Amazon Policies

Amazon has a certain set of policies for all its affiliates. Any violation whatsoever will result in getting your account canceled and your business will get shut down in a blink of an eye. 

Take a good look at the following rules that you should abide by. 

• Every time you share your affiliate link, make sure to disclose that you’re an affiliate of the respective company. 
• Create high-quality content.
• Don’t insert backlinks to irrelevant websites. 

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Conclusion

Amazon affiliate program is an excellent choice to build a passive cash-generating machine. However, to make big bucks in this industry, you need to exert energy and time into optimizing this business.

By picking the right niche, creating high-quality content, and deploying SEO and marketing tactics, you can develop a system that’ll milk your audience like a hormone-filled cash cow, month after month, and year after year. 

Got anything to add to this list? Feel free to do that in the comments section.