How to Get Started With the Amazon Associates Affiliate Program

This is actually the first of a series of posts I’m going to make on how to use Amazon.com’s Associates program to generate income from anything from a simple website, to a big and beefy authority site. When you look at the volume of sales that Amazon does, it’s staggering… Especially compared to sites like Clickbank. A lot of people make a lot of money from digital products on Clickbank, but just in terms of numbers and getting your piece of the pie, Amazon has a much, much bigger pie to try and get a piece of.

[Update: Since this post was put up, I did an interview with Erica Stone on Amazon that's better than most paid courses on Amazon. Read it here...]

Note: the links to the different trainings will be posted below as I complete them… be patient.

I have a few Amazon affiliate sites, and together they make between $1,000 and $2,000 a month, but as the pages are starting to rank well and sales are going up, I am really liking the passive nature of these Amazon affiliate sites; so I’m planning on building a lot more and making the ones I do have into big authority sites.

Here are a few reasons why I like Amazon’s affiliate program:

• People trust Amazon, and everyone has used it before: Everyone has bought stuff from Amazon.com, and most likely they have their credit card information saved so that future purchases are even easier. This is a huge plus to you as an affiliate.
• It’s super easy to write about the products. They give you all of the information you need to write great reviews about the products, not to mention the reviews from real customers provide gold nuggets of information that you can include in your reviews to make them even better.
• The conversion rate: Amazon’s conversion rate is wayyyy higher than you’ll get promoting a Clickbank product. The nice thing about it is, Amazon is known for constantly testing their pages to increase conversions, which just makes your job easier.
• No customer service. Amazon affiliate sites are nice because they don’t require any extra time besides the time it takes to create them. You get traffic, send the traffic to Amazon, and you make commissions.
• Tons and tons of products to choose from. One of the things I really like, is that you get the same commission percentages even when someone buys a product from an external seller on Amazon.
• You get commissions for whatever people buy while they’re there. When I look at the items I’ve made commissions from, almost half of them are things I don’t promote whatsoever on my sites.

My goal with this series of posts is put together a free resource that is as-complete and as high-quality as any paid product out there. So, I’ll be starting from the ground up, and there will probably be some things covered that are very basic and that you might already know… bear with me. Here are the topics my future posts are going to cover (I’ll make them links as I put up the pages):

• How to setup a WordPress blog with or without using an “Amazon review theme”
• How to choose the right Amazon products to promote
• How to do market research and choose keywords for your Amazon affiliate sites
• Amazon niche sites vs. authority sites
• How to write Amazon product reviews
• The right mindset and “tone” of successful Amazon affiliate sites
• Building a list from your Amazon affiliate sites (how and why)
• Creating a freebie to get people on your list
• Setting up the framework of your site before you get started
• Creating effective articles for your site
• Link building for your article pages
• Improve conversions with effective link placement
• Improving conversions- other random tips
• How to use your list for even more profits
• Monitor and improve what’s working
• Do what’s working over and over
• Building more sites vs. building an authority site
• Anything else I think of along the way…

As you might have noticed, my posting schedule here on Strayblogger is irregular to say the least, so my plan for outlining some posts in advance like this will help me post more consistently.

And, I’ll graciously accept tips, questions, and criticisms you have along the way- just post them in the comments. Thanks!

http://www.strayblogger.com/how-to-get-started-with-the-amazon-associates-affiliate-program/