What is the Amazon Affiliate Marketing Program?
The Amazon Affiliate Marketing Program, or Amazon Associates, is an affiliate marketing program. It’s free for website owners and bloggers to become Amazon Associates. They advertise products from Amazon.com on their sites by creating links. When customers click the links and buy products from Amazon, they earn referral fees.
How does Amazon’s affiliate program work?
Amazon Associates is essentially a referral program that pays a commission to referring websites. So when you send a customer to Amazon via a link on your website, you get a percentage of the sale of whatever they purchase over the next 24 hours.
Your commission varies though depending on what type of item a customer purchases.
It’s important to keep in mind that the percentage of the sale you receive isn’t the only factor in your commission. Your conversion rate also matters because it reflects how many people are actually clicking an affiliate link and making a purchase after visiting your site.
Your conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to your website who make a purchase via your affiliate link out of the total number of visitors to your site. For example, if during the month of August, your website receives 5,000 visitors and 10 of those visitors made a purchase after clicking on your affiliate link, that would be a conversion rate of 0.2 percent.
The average affiliate conversion rate is 0.5 percent to 1 percent. However, some affiliates regularly have much higher conversion rates.
How to become an Amazon affiliate
Registering for the Amazon Associates program is a simple process. To begin, simply visit affiliate-program.amazon.comand click “Join Now for Free.”
First, you’ll have to enter your account information, including your name, address and phone number. Next, you’ll be asked to enter the websites and mobile app URLs where you plan to display banners, ads or affiliate links. You can enter up to 50 websites and mobile app URLs combined.
In the following section, you’ll select a store ID and provide information about your websites or mobile apps and what kind of products you intend to promote, as illustrated below.
You’ll also choose the topics from a drop-down menu — such as apparel, books, gaming or movies — that best describe your websites or mobile apps.
Next, you’ll need to describe how you drive traffic to your sites, how you generate income from your sites and apps, how you typically build links and how many total unique visitors you get on a monthly basis.
Once this section is complete, you simply have to enter your phone number, click “Call Me Now” and answer when you receive a call from Amazon. You’ll be instructed to input a four-digit PIN, and then your account will be set up.
From here, you can choose whether to enter your payment and tax information now or later, and then proceed to your dashboard to begin creating Amazon affiliate links.
Amazon Affiliate Program Rules and Requirements
Being an Amazon Associate is a great way to monetize passion projects or make supplementary income from your brand. However, Amazon has guidelines for associates to follow, so it’s best to understand those before you dive in. Noncompliance may result in being banned from the program.
The majority of the rules are in place for ethical promotion as well as preventing associates from gaming the system. Here are some of the big ones to keep in mind:
- You must disclose on your site or in your communication that you may be eligible to earn from your recommendations.
- You must not make false or deceptive claims in your recommendations.
- Avoid referring to prices (with some exceptions) since prices frequently change.
- Do not use Amazon affiliate links in offline promotions, eBooks, or email.
- Do not use link shortner on affiliate links.
Amazon affiliate program: Getting paid
The payment option you select plays a role in how often you’ll receive payment because Amazon has a minimum payment amount for each type, as indicated below.
Three types of payment methods
- Direct deposit: If you choose to receive payments via direct deposit, you’ll need to provide Amazon with your banking information, which includes the bank name, account number and other identifying information. Amazon will hold payment until you earn the payment minimum of $10.
- Check: For payment by check, you need to supply Amazon with only a mailing address. Amazon will hold your payment until you reach the minimum payment of $100 + a $15 check-processing fee.
- Amazon gift card: For this payment method, Amazon will send gift cards to the primary email address on your account in the amount you’ve earned.
Read also: Top 7 Affiliate Marketing Websites In 2021
