The Amazon affiliate program, also called Amazon Associates, accounts for roughly 50% of the world affiliate market share, making it one of the most reliable programs any to-be affiliate marketers can opt for.
Amazon has thousands of products for every niche. All you have to do is find the right product to promote to your audience and receive a commission when a purchase is made with your affiliate link.
The good part is that 65% of the US population shops on Amazon. Thus, sending your website traffic to Amazon can be profitable for monetizing a blog website.
Don’t worry if you don’t know anything about Amazon affiliate websites. This guide covers what an Amazon affiliate website is, why It’s so popular, and how to start your own Amazon affiliate site that guarantees recurring revenue month after month.
- Amazon Affiliate Website: The Basics
- Benefits of an Amazon Affiliate Website
- Downsides to an Amazon Affiliate Website
- How to Build an Amazon Affiliate Website in 6 Steps
- How to Build an Amazon Affiliate Website on WordPress in 5 Steps
- How to Create Engaging Amazon Affiliate Content
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Wrapping up
Amazon Affiliate Website: The Basics
Amazon’s affiliate program is one the largest in the world, with over 900,000 active affiliates earning from promoting products on their websites.
The company pays billions of dollars in affiliate commissions every month, with some affiliate websites earning over $100 000 in annual revenue.
Before we show you how to start your own profitable Amazon affiliate website, let’s look at what an Amazon affiliate website is and how it works.
What’s an Amazon Affiliate Site?
An Amazon affiliate website is a website from which traffic is directed to Amazon products via unique affiliate links.
The website owner monetizes their traffic for commission every time their visitors buy on Amazon through their links.
If you’ve ever searched for something like [product X] review or best [product type] in Google, you would have encountered this site on SERPs. They dominate the result page.
When people want to buy online, there are always many options, making their decision challenging.
Amazon affiliate website owners make this easy by testing and researching the best products and putting them together in a blog post.
They also add the pros and cons of each product and how they compare.
And finally makes some recommendations for the best product depending on the consumer’s needs.
How Does An Amazon Affiliate Website Work?
An Amazon affiliate website aims to help online shoppers make informed buying decisions and guide them to the right products, as they can’t test and research dozens of products themselves.
These websites make money by using unique links for the products they recommend.
And once a consumer buy using their links, they earn a set commission. In a more basic form, here’s how it works in 3 steps:
- Website owners apply for the Amazon associates program to get their unique associate ID.
- Once their application has been approved, they get access to the Amazon affiliate portal to generate affiliate links.
- Associates then add these links to the content on their sites. Once a visitor clicks the affiliate link to buy a recommended product on Amazon, the associate earns a commission.
It’s that simple.
This guide isn’t about how to join the Amazon affiliate program but how to make money from the Amazon associates program using an affiliate website.
If you need to register, you can follow this guide to join the Amazon affiliate program.
Benefits of an Amazon Affiliate Website
Compared to other platforms, starting your affiliate marketing business with Amazon products has many advantages. Below are 6 benefits of Amazon affiliate websites.
The Amazon affiliate program allows content creators and website owners to earn regardless of technical expertise. Here are some benefits:
- Easy to Start
- Cookie Allows You to Make an Income from Other Products
- Built-in Authority
- Access to All Kinds of Products
- Easy to Scale
- High Demand When Selling Site
1. Easy to Start
Anyone can be an Amazon associate. So far, you have a website and some well-written content. The Amazon affiliate program accepts participants Irrespective of their technical know-how,
Once accepted into the program, Amazon provides the tools and resources to add links and display products on your website.
One of these great tools is the Amazon dedicated link builder. With this tool, you can customize your affiliate links, create unique image-only links and make dedicated product listings for your blog.
There’s also well-documented knowledge base material where you can easily find answers to your questions. The company also has a responsive support team ready to help with any challenge you face as an associate.
2. Cookie Allows You to Make an Income from Other Products
Unlike other affiliate programs where you earn from the single link your visitors use to make a purchase, Amazon allows for more earning opportunities, thanks to its affiliate cookie feature, which lasts for 24 hours.
Once a user follows your link to Amazon, you won’t only earn from the product you’re promoting. Instead, you’ll earn commissions on every product the users purchase within that period.
Interestingly, even if they end up not buying the product you recommend, you’ll still get paid for any other purchase they make besides your recommendation.
3. Built-in Authority
People trust Amazon, and you can tap into this trust to increase your income as an Amazon affiliate.
In your early days as an affiliate, your website isn’t going to have any reputation. Therefore, trying to sell other people’s products can be non-rewarding.
This lack of credibility makes selling difficult.
You can borrow Amazon’s reputation to drive sales instantly. Amazon has been in the online commerce space for decades. The reputation, credibility, and guarantee consumers seek are there.
4. Access to All Kinds of Products
Earning from your Amazon affiliate website is guaranteed because you’ll never run out of products to promote.
With millions of products on Amazon, there’s an endless catalog of products you can select from, irrespective of your niche.
Amazon is a one-stop destination for consumers, making it the perfect platform for marketers looking to promote several products within the industry or across multiple niches. You don’t need to look for a new affiliate program.
Another great advantage of the vast product catalog on Amazon is that it makes it easy for marketers to pick and test new products to figure out what’s worth promoting or not.
5. Easy to Scale
The dream of any Amazon affiliate website owner is to grow steadily and scale at some point.
In affiliate marketing, scaling means promoting more products, maybe in the same niche or expanding to other niches. Amazon partner programs make scaling your affiliate business a breeze.
You don’t need any special tools or expertise. Once you are ready to scale, It’s as simple as adding more pages to your site, creating quality content around the new categories you are adding, and adding products from Amazon, just as you did at the start.
6. High Demand When Selling Site
Should you need to sell your affiliate website in the future, Amazon affiliate websites are hotcakes on the market.
You won’t stress before finding a buyer. The demand for Amazon affiliate sites with reasonable domain authority is rising.
Downsides to an Amazon Affiliate Website
Without an iota of doubt, running an Amazon affiliate website has a lot of advantages. You’ve seen that above.
But, like all good things, there are some drawbacks to Amazon affiliate sites. Here are 3 of them every to-be Amazon affiliate website owners need to brace up for:
- Cookies Only Last 24 Hours
- Relatively Low Commission
- High Competition
- Amazon Dependency
1. Cookies Only Last 24 Hours
While there’s a good side to the Amazon Associate cookie policy, as stated above, there’s also a negative side.
If the traffic you direct to Amazon doesn’t convert within 24 hours, you lose that and every other related sale.
The reality is that not everyone purchases a product immediately. They may search for the product when on the street or on their way to work and will be ready to buy once they get home.
The 24-hour window is short, as most online purchases take time to happen.
2. Relatively Low Commission
Another downside of Amazon affiliates lies in the commission rates. Amazon Associates has a relatively low commission rate compared to other CPA affiliate marketing networks and platforms.
Although these rates vary depending on categories, the commission rates in most categories are below 10%, which is still considerably lower than when working directly with brands and individual vendors.
Owing to the fact above, Amazon’s affiliate business is a long-term play. You have to generate a lot of traffic before seeing a substantial return.
3. High Competition
The fact that there are minimal requirements to joining the Amazon affiliate program means a lot of marketer flocks to the platform every day.
Based on the benefits above, an overwhelming pool of marketers is trying to make affiliate marketing their side gig.
This makes the battle to rank for high-value keywords more fierce. You need to think about trending, popular, and evergreen when picking an affiliate niche.
4. Amazon Dependency
The problem with a platform-dependent business is that anything can happen at anytime. You aren’t in control.
While you may be confident that Amazon isn’t going anywhere, the brand has come too far to shut down. Right?
What if Amazon shut down your account? What if Amazon reduces commission rates as it did in the past? What about a restriction or change in the affiliate’s policy?
Your website and revenue will suffer a blow should any of these happens.
How to Build an Amazon Affiliate Website in 6 Steps
To start an Amazon affiliate website, you must first know how to create one. Let’s examine 4 essential steps to make lucrative Amazon affiliate sites.
- Choose a Good Niche
- Select a Domain/ Website Name
- Choose a Web Host
- Decide on A Website Design
1. Choose a Good Niche
The first step to building a successful Amazon affiliate website is to choose the right niche.
Focusing on a specific niche helps streamline your affiliate marketing effort, translating to faster growth and making it even easier to establish yourself as an authority in the space.
Creating a niche affiliate site makes you focus on a particular target audience, helping you connect and engage with them with the right message and building your followers more effectively.
There are 2 crucial factors to consider when picking a niche for your affiliate marketing business. Amazon affiliate is no exception.
- Expertise: Picking a niche you already have expertise and passion about makes you a trusted voice in no time. This expertise will entice your audience to your content and make them trust your recommendations.
- Search Volume: You want to avoid going into an already over-saturated niche where the chance of success is slim. You must research the niche well and right. Your niche affiliate site must be filled with untapped opportunities and demands.
2. Select a Domain/ Website Name
After you choose your niche, the next step is to select a domain name.
Your domain name will be your website address and your brand identity. You need to put some thought into it.
A ground rule is never to separate your domain from your business name. Doing so will get your visitors confused.
The best domain names are simple, short, and memorable. Avoid symbols and special characters in your domain. They make it difficult for your visitors to type and recall.
There’s no crime in using your niche keyword in your domain. Since Google uses keywords in the domain to determine website relevance to search queries, you may rank for such keywords.
Just make sure you don’t force it. A 2,3 or, at most 4-syllable domain is recommended.
Another critical aspect of your domain is the domain extension. Go for .com if It’s available. That’s what comes to people’s minds first.
If unavailable, try closer ones to your niches like .tech, .beauty, and .fashion.
3. Choose a Web Host
A web host is a company that hosts all your website files on its server. The wrong choice can kill your business.
For your website’s optimal performance, you need to choose a hosting provider and a hosting plan that supports the purpose of your website.
There’s always a variety of options. You’d want one that guarantees excellent uptime, solid security, blazingly fast speed, and excellent support.
Hosting companies have different hosting plans with features best suited for specific types of websites.
You must check features like allocated bandwidth and memory space suitable for your affiliate size.
Any basic hosting plan may work for a small blog. Running an e-commerce or affiliate store will require better server specifications.
Consider the size of your website when comparing hosting plans. If you want to use WordPress for your affiliate site, go for dedicated WordPress hosting.
4. Decide on A Website Design
Why should people stay on your hastily designed, hard-to-navigate website when visually appealing alternatives are at their fingertips? The competition in the affiliate marketing world is fierce.
If your users find your design unpleasant, they will skip to the next good thing on their screen. Even worse, they might not return to your site again.
It takes an average of 0.05 seconds to form an impression about your business from its appearance. You need to get the website design right.
You don’t have to spend a fortune to create a stunning website. Plus, you don’t need to know a single line of code.
Content management systems like WordPress and other modern website builders have pre-made themes, plugins, and extensions you can use to create professional-looking and well-functioning Amazon affiliate websites. We’ll look at that next.
How to Build an Amazon Affiliate Website on WordPress in 5 Steps
WordPress is the world’s most used Content Management System, powering over 30% of all websites on the internet.
With the right theme and plugins, anyone with zero experience can build any type of website on WordPress by following instructions. Let’s see.
Install WordPress
Fortunately, most WordPress hosting providers make it very easy to install WordPress.
We’ll use Hostinger for this example. Hostinger has a one-click WordPress installation with on-screen instructions to guide you. The company also offers a free domain when you host your website with them.
To host your website with Hostinger, visit the Hostinger WordPress hosting. Select a plan and pay. You’ll receive a confirmation email.
Once your payment has been verified, the next step is to set up your account by creating a new password.
You’ll be prompted to complete the short questionnaire or skip it. =
On the next page, select Build a website. On the Select a Platform screen, choose WordPress.
Create your WordPress account by adding your Administrator email and password. Click the Continue button.
Hostinger will suggest some WordPress themes for your website. You can select one or skip them. =
Next, get your free domain by inputting the name into the Enter desired domain name box, then click the Search button.
After claiming your free domain, proceed to finish the setup. Check that the information is correct, then click the Finish Setup button.
Lastly, enter the required information in the appropriate field.
That’s all! You’ve successfully Installed WordPress.
Amazon Affiliate WordPress Theme Recommendations
After Installing WordPress, you might not be impressed with the appearance of your website. That’s okay.
You can change the appearance by installing a WordPress theme designed for affiliate marketing.
Here are some of the best affiliate themes for WordPress.
- Rethink V2: Looking for a fast and highly responsive Amazon affiliate theme? Rethink V2 is a minimalist theme great for creating outstanding review posts.
- Affiliate Board: Affiliate Board is a sleek theme designed to serve affiliate websites of all kinds and sizes. The theme comes with built-in tracking and analytics software.
- Zeno: With Zeno, publishing multiple pages for your new Amazon affiliate sites comes with no stress. Zeno makes it super simple to search for products and their information on the Amazon marketplace in a snap.
5 Must Have Amazon Affiliate Plugins
Below are 5 great WordPress plugins that your affiliate website can’t but use.
- EasyAzon: Quickly create Amazon affiliate links from within your WordPress post editor.
- Yoast SEO: Get instant SEO recommendations to optimize every piece of affiliate content you create for better search engine rankings.
- WP Review: Add an extra layer of depth to your review style guide. Create a review system for various product features in no time. This plugin is also straightforward to use and will have you create an elegant review system very rapidly.
- Pretty Link: Cloak your affiliate links to make them look less spammy.
- W3 Total Cache: Nobody likes a slow-loading site. This caching plugin will help to speed up your website.
How to Create Engaging Amazon Affiliate Content
Content is king on any type of website. Amazon affiliate websites are no exception. Your Amazon affiliate business is only as good as the content you produce.
When creating content for affiliate websites, the goal should be to create the most helpful content for your audience. You must ensure that your content quenches readers’ thirst for more information about the topic.
Creating content to add your affiliate links won’t take you anywhere. You’ll end up with lame content whose intent your audience can see through.
Your affiliate content should focus on answering readers’ questions of what, how, where, and when in depth.
That’s the only way to attain credibility that makes people trust your opinion and product recommendations.
Below are 4 of the most popular content types for affiliate marketing you should start producing.
- Go for Reviews
- Try Comparing Products
- Put Together How-Tos
- Do Roundups and Listicles
Go for Reviews
Reviews posts are like the sales copy. They give readers everything they need to know about a particular product.
Share your experience with the product and explain how it can benefit your audience.
Be honest and highlight both the pros and cons of the product. Creating in-depth product review content takes time, owing to the depth of research needed.
Try Comparing Products
Another engaging content type for Amazon affiliate websites is product comparison. Put 2 similar products side-by-side and highlight their features, pros, and cons.
Offering comparisons to similar products helps customers with their research on which product to buy.
Put Together How-Tos
How-to guides show your audience how to use a product to achieve a specific result. Make sure you break down the steps into bite-sized pieces.
If possible, use images and videos to make it easy to follow.
Do Roundups and Listicles
This type of content lists the best products in a particular category or use case. Ensure sure your roundup is well-researched.
Consumers want to see a variety of products at different price points.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Much Does an Amazon Affiliate Website Make?
The amount of money you can make with an Amazon affiliate website depends on many factors, like the size of your site, traffic, and the product category.
However, the average earning from  Amazon Affiliate program ranges between $100 to $20,000 monthly.
How Do I Get Paid for Amazon Affiliate Marketing?
Amazon pays its affiliate commission earnings every month. You’ll receive a check or a gift certificate from Amazon to get paid.
At times, Amazon does deposit commissions directly into bank accounts.
Wrapping up
Affiliate marketing is a profitable industry. If you want to get started, creating an Amazon Affiliate website is one of the best ways to get in.
We’ve explained everything you need in this guide, from choosing a niche, getting a domain name, and hosting your website.
We also show you how to install WordPress with some of the best themes you can use and must-have theme recommendations.
Do you find this guide useful? Let us know in the comment section below.
