It’s run by Amazon.com, the largest online retailer and provides a way for websites to monetize their traffic by seamlessly incorporating products found on Amazon into published content.

The associates program is a very effective way to make money from blogging as you can build a long term asset that helps people through recommending helpful products on Amazon to your audience.

People trust Amazon; so while the commission rates are low at around 1-8% depending on the product category, the conversions are quite high.

Just take a look at the results I get regularly from my content website about teaching (I used to be an ESL teacher in Thailand):

Why leverage the Amazon Associates program?

Amazon Associates is an excellent revenue stream because products found on Amazon can be worked into almost any type of website due to their wide range of products.

From a blog about coffee to a website about numerology, Amazon will have some sort of product vertical that you can promote within your content.

In addition, some topics are simply very lucrative for Amazon Associates as there are lot’s of relevant products to promote. SwimUniversity.com for example makes well into the six figures from Amazon (though this is the exception and not the rule).

Brand reputation

As an Amazon Associate you can leverage Amazon’s strong brand reputation. People feel comfortable buying from such a well known website. So when you link to a product on Amazon it’s not a hard sell getting people to buy.

Also, people most likely already have an Amazon account so getting someone to buy something is not too difficult as the barrier to entry of creating an account and adding in payment information is a non issue.

24 hour cookie

One lesser known thing about the Associates program is that you get a commission on anything someone you refer to Amazon buys in a 24 hour time period. So while they may have clicked a link for puppy food on your blog, if they then go and buy a robot lawn mower you still get the commission on that sale.

It’s this powerful combination of having a high reputation and a 24 hour cookie on anything bought makes Amazon a great income model and it’s one of the reasons why the program is so successful.

High resell value

If you’re able to build a website that makes thousands of dollars a month from Amazon Associates you can easily turnaround and sell that website for a large multiple due in part to how hands off the income source is.

Again, this simply makes building out an Amazon Associates website all that more valuable because the resell value of your website will command a much higher rate.

How to choose the right niche for Amazon Associates

For all website and blogs, some topics will work better than others for Amazon Associates. On some websites, it may be a nice side income in addition to selling something else, but on a true Amazon Associates website it will be the main revenue focus.

So when looking to build an Amazon affiliate website here are the specific aspects should you look at:

Have an American audience

The Amazon Associates program works best if your traffic is mostly from the United States as Amazon is an American company and it’s where everyone in America buys their items online.

Amazon does have a strong online presence in both Canada, the UK and Japan. So a western, English speaking audience will be most effective overall.

Personally for my content website it’s that old 80/20 rule. 80% of my sales are from the USA, 20% from a mix of Canada and the UK.

Products price range of $20 to $200

People tend to do a lot of research first before buying expensive products, as such if your niche has products in the $20 to about $200 price range you’ll make a lot more sales as those are less difficult to make a purchase decision on.

It’s much easier for someone to buy a Bluetooth keyboard for $50 than it is to get them to buy a $2000 camera. That’s not to say you should not promote expensive products to your audience, it it helps them and makes sense then go for it.

But you’ll make the bulk of your earnings by finding those mid tier products to mix into your websites content.

Targeted, buying traffic is required

With Amazon, the type of content that works best are review oriented content, reviews and helpful buying guides. While you do need to focus on content that’s simply helpful for your audience, think about content that could be more product focused with a buying audience.

If you’re looking to build a blog on beekeeping for example, you’ll need to create comprehensive guides that answer questions. Like, “what moth is best to begin beekeeping?” as they make your website complete. Amazon won’t work well on this type of content, but it helps make your website into a resource.

Then, go ahead and create helpful buying guides like “the 9 best beekeeping suits” as it makes sense for your website.

Competent layout

To have a high conversion, you need target traffic but also a competent layout of your blog post. I’ve found having a product link and an image link to be enough to get people to click over to buy. You can also leverage product boxes as well.

Create a Website with WordPress

The first step to making a successful Amazon affiliate website is to actually create a website with WordPress. I suggest creating a WordPress powered website that will leverage Amazon Associates.

The advantage of WordPress is that it is a free content management system and their are numerous advanced Amazon Associates plugins available for you to use on your website that will help increase conversions once you have traffic (totally optional).

You can also launch a website for cheap using a shared hosting account instead of using an expensive website builder like Wix or Squarespace.

So to create an Amazon Associates website we need to take care of four things. We need to:

• Decide on a topic
• Get a hosting account
• Install WordPress

Decide on a topic and verify your niche

Build a brand with the goal to help people. Don’t start something silly like a “toaster review” blog. Maybe that sort of thing worked in the past but not anymore.

Instead think of a topic that you’re interested where you can provide helpful content on that also has physical products for sale on Amazon.

Next, keyword research and take a look at how many possible questions, tutorials, buying guides and review style keywords there are and what websites are ranking for these phrases.

Are there any smaller websites you can compete with or is everything dominated by large brands? If all you see are large brands when then it may be too competitive.

You want to find topics where there is a nice mix under-served topics to create content on, content with good search volume that’s product related and content by other smaller websites (no big brands).

Get a Hosting Account

Now you need a shared hosting from a web host. A web host is a service company who manages powerful servers that are on 24/7.

When you purchase a hosting account, you’re renting out a piece of a server in a data center that will have all your websites information.

You have a lot of options when it comes to deciding on what the best WordPress web host is. I suggest using Bluehost as they are the #1 recommended webhost by the team behind WordPress.

First choose your plan

When you visit Bluehost they offer Basic, Plus, Choice Plus and Pro:

Bluehost comes with four different pricing plans:

• Basic – Affordable, but limiting as you can only have one website.
• Plus – Good for growing a website to around 1000 visitors a day and 30k monthly pageviews.
• Choice Plus – Perfect for growing medium sizes websites to 2000 visitors a day and around 60k-80k pageviews.
• Pro – For large, established websites.

I suggest the Choice Plus plan. You can secure a low introduction rate now for up to a few years in advanced if you’re willing to pay upfront. This allows you to get quality hosting for years to come at a great rate from the #1 recommended web host for WordPress.

Bluehost

The #1 recommended web host for WordPress websites. Free domain, and an easy, done for you setup process.

GET HOSTING TODAY

Get your domain name

Once you decide on a hosting package to purchase you’ll first have to add a primary domain to your account. All shared hosting accounts need a primary domain so here is where you’ll register your .com.

As were building a website focused on earning an income from the Amazon Associates program it’s best to build a brand. Think about it, what website would you trust more? One that’s called RoastyCoffee.com and has lots of helpful guides or bestcoffeemachinereview.com?

Google prefers brands and people trust brands. So get a great domain name (ideally a .com) that allows you to build a helpful, authoritative website on.

When you’re ready to proceed go ahead and select the hosting package you want. You’ll then have to setup your domain for you account.

On this page click on “create a new domain.”

Here you will need to register your domain name. A domain name is the web address for your website. Try to get a .com as it’s the legacy extension of the internet and has the most resell value.

This may not seem important now when you have no website, but if your site grows and become valuable you’ll be thankful you have a .com extension as it commands a higher rate for potential buyers

Next carefully fill out your payment information and proceed through the on-boarding process. On the payment page you can uncheck all extras. You also get a bigger discount the longer your package term is.

Finally, you’ll be presented with your Bluehost dashboard:

Don’t forget to check your email as it will have a welcome message from Bluehost that contains your receipt of purchase and your nameserver information.

Install WordPress

You need a content management system to help publish content, design your website, upload pictures and embed videos. All this can be done with WordPress.

To get started with installing WordPress we need to create a website with our Bluehost account.

Installing WordPress with Bluehost is very easy. In your dashboard simple click on “my sites” and click on “create site.” Next you will have to set some admin details for your WordPress install:

The site name and tagline can be anything you like and you can always change this later. From a practical perspective you’ll want the site name to match the domain name you have chosen.

Also click on the “advanced” tab where you can enter an email address which will be your recovery email as well as an admin user name and password of your choosing.

If you don’t fill this out, the install process will randomly generate for you an admin user name and password.

Choose Domain Name

With your hosting account you can add multiple domains. At this point you should only have your primary domain name so by default that should be already selected.

You can install WordPress on a directory only, but it’s typically best to leave this blank so you install WordPress on the root domain so leave the directory option blank.

With your WordPress website you can install any plugin you want. In fact, WordPress has over 50,000 plugins to choose from. When you have a moment checkout my best plugins for WordPress guide.

Click on next to continue installing WordPress. Upon completion you’ll be presented with this page:

You have now created a website and are ready to start blogging and building out your Amazon Associates affiliate website.

How To Log Into WordPress

You can log into WordPress from your Bluehost dashboard you can log in via your WordPress installation.

To log into your WordPress powered website all you need to do is visit example.com/wp-admin

Check to make sure your SSL certificate is working

With your Bluehost account you get a free SSL certificate installed on your website. That means you should see a little “lock” icon in your web browser. If not, contact Bluehost support and they will fix it quickly and easily.

In order to check your SSL certificate:

1. Log in to your Bluehost portal.
2. Click on the “my sites” tab.
3. Find your website and click on “Manage Site.”
4. Go to the “Security” tab.
5. Under “security certificate,” you will find your “free SSL certificate” status.

If everything is setup correctly you should have a secure website. It sometimes takes an hour or two for everything to get working correctly. But you can still edit and design your website.

Bluehost

The #1 recommended web host for WordPress websites. Free domain, and an easy, done for you setup process.

GET HOSTING TODAY

Apply to Amazon Associates

You’ve got your website up and running, I do suggest publishing at least 20 blog posts before you apply for an Associates account as a real human will be looking at your website at some point.

1. Create a website and start a blog.
2. Go to the Amazon Associates landing page and click Sign Up.
3. Enter your account information, your website address and any social profiles where you’ll be promoting Amazon (yes, this includes YouTube).
4. Enter your preferred store ID.
5. Explain how you will drive traffic and make sales.
6. Choose your payment method.
7. Create Amazon Affiliate links.

Please note that when you sign up, you have a probation account and are required to drive at least 3 qualified sales over the course of 180 days.

Once you do this your account will either be approved or rejected. The most common reasons for rejection are that you did not list out everywhere you will be promoting Amazon.

If you promote Amazon on YouTube but only list your blog, your account will be rejected because Amazon can not verify where the sales are coming from.

Your account can also be rejected if you do not explicitly state that your an Amazon Associate somewhere on the web page. You are required to state on all pages where you promote Amazon Associates:

I’m an Amazon Associate. I earn from qualifying purchases.

Amazon

Create Amazon affiliate links

Amazon Associates uses something called “Site Stripe” to create both image and product links. Simply log into your Amazon Associates account and at the top you’ll see the Site Stripe:

From here you have a few different options:

Amazon text links

This is a standard text link you can use to link words in your blog post. It’s a short link and redirects users to the specific product page of your choosing when using it.

Please note that you must use the Amazon short link. You can not clock it in any way like example.com/camera as that is a violation of the terms of service.

Amazon images

You’re not allowed to download images from Amazon and use them on your website.

You can use images from Amazon, but you need to have API access and then generate images using Scratch Pad (the product advertising platform in your account).

It’s a bit confusing, luckily I created a tutorial video showing you how it’s done.

In the video tutorial I show you how to create images with your API key as well as a high converting product box.

Amazon Affiliate Blog Post Layout

Now it’s time to design your website for Amazon Associates. For Amazon affiliate websites, you’re going to want to have a dedicated homepage and a blog posts page. You’ll also want to have your permalink structure be something like example.com/post-name or example.com/blog/post-name.

The homepage should act as a sort of visual menu for the website. Showcase your different blog posts, buying guides and more. Also have a clear call to action at the top of the website.

Categories for your blog posts

When you publish blog posts you need to organize them into categories. Your free to call your categories whatever you want, but it’s best to give them a short, keyword specific name related to your website.

So if you have a blog on backyard games, a good logical category would be something like “backyard games” and “backyard equipment.” Just come up with a handful of broad categories that cover what your website is about. It not only helps your visitors, it signals to search engines what your website is about.

Blog post titles

Last are your blog post titles. You need to create titles for both search engines and people. The best titles make you want to click but also have the specific keyword you’re going after in them.

Like “best bocce ball set for backyard fun and play” is a great title because it has “best bocce ball set” in the description which will help you rank for that term and related terms and is more detailed and specific than just writing “best bocce ball set.”

Offer your top choices right away

If you are creating a listicle post, make sure to offer your top choices right away as a way to meet the search intent. I do this by way of offering various product boxes at the top of the blog post that are built with the Stackable plugin (free) using their “feature grid” block:

This is useful to the end visitor because it’s the proverbial cliff notes for the rest of the post. If the user wants to gather more info to make a purchase decision, they can by reading the section of the article that interests them.

Product image and product link

I’ve found it to be very effective to use both a product link and a product image from Amazon Associates as a way to get people to buy through your link:

I typically link directly to the product from the title tag and the embed an image directly from the Amazon Associates program and have it set to the right of the paragraph. This makes the text easier to read and gets people clicking through to Amazon.

Product boxes – optional

I also use product boxes to help drive clicks and conversions:

GoPro 12

An excellent action camera for vlogging. 4k quality video, good audio and a wide array of accessories.

Buy now on Amazon

This is a “container” block from Stackable, a free WordPress plugin. The button is a custom design I created, but you can build your own buttons for free with Stackable or the default WordPress editor.

I have the container set to two columns. One for the the product image from Amazon and the other for the text and button.

Pros and cons

Finally, create a well-rounded overview of the product, who it is for, and the good and bad things about it, particularly if you’re making a list post. I usually like to have a breakdown of the pros and cons of said product, but there is no right way to do this. Just create helpful content and be honest about your recommended product because not everything is perfect.

WordPress theme recommendations

There are a lot of great themes for creating an Amazon affiliate website with. To install WordPress themes please navigate to “Appearance>Themes” in your WordPress dashboard. Then click on add new. You can install WordPress themes from the free theme directory or you can upload a premium theme as a zip folder.

While you have hundreds of potential themes to choose from, here are our top 3 favorites for Amazon Associates.

Kadence Theme – A feature rich free theme

The Kadence theme is a free WordPress theme that comes with numerous downloadable templates, and easy to use header and footer editor and it works perfectly well with WordPress’s default block editor.

In addition, this theme also comes with a specific review style custom post that is perfect for Amazon Associates. The Kadence theme is simply fantastic for all sorts of websites but is optimal for affiliate marketing style content.

Astra Theme – The most popular free WordPress theme

The Astra theme is currently the most popular WordPress theme in the world and for good reason. It’s fast, lightweight, free and comes with numerous templates to choose from using the starter sites plugin.

With Astra, you can easily custom design a website yourself for affiliate marketing or edit any one of the numerous starter site templates.

WordPress plugins recommendations

There are also a few important plugins to be aware of that are incredibly useful for an Amazon affiliate marketing website. To install plugins go to plugins >> add new.

Rank Math – On page SEO plugin

One absolutely essential plugin for helping you optimize your website for search is the Rank Math SEO plugin. What this plugin does is that it allows you to edit the meta data for your posts and pages as we mentioned.

By installing Rank Math, you can easily edit titles, the URL slug and the meta description for all published content. It also gives a readability analysis for your content.

Rank Math also creates a helpful sitemap for your website that you can submit to Google Search console to help index your site quickly and to get data on how Google sees your website.

Smush – Image optimization

Smush is a WordPress plugin that compresses your jpg and PNG image files upon upload to your website. It reduces the overall file size and makes your website so it loads faster.

While you should be using more modern .webp format for images, there are still some instances when uploading a jpeg or PNG makes sense.

AAWP – Advance review blocks for WordPress

This is a paid plugin that allows Amazon Associates to create advanced, custom review blocks like tables, charts, product comparisons, best sellers list easily.

These high converting blocks tend to work better and be much more effective for driving sales as you’re able to give visitors much more information upfront in a visually appealing way to help them make a purchase decision.

Stackable – My product box plugin builder

This is my go-to plugin for building product boxes that look great and convert. As I mentioned earlier, I use the “feature grid” block to show my top 3-4 recommended products and the container block to build a simple yet elegant product box.

Keyword Research for content creation

Now it’s time to find some keywords we can use to create content for our website. The kind of content we want to create is the following:

• Product review focused content based on keywords people use.
• Helpful content in the form of tutorials, how-to or that answers questions.
• Comparisons of specific products.
• List article buying guides.

Your goal is to create a long term, valuable asset.

Not everything you create needs to be product focused. In fact, it looks a bit lazy and weird if all your blog posts are only list article buying guides like “13 best cups you need to know about” followed up by the “12 best plates for stay at home moms.”

People won’t trust of view your website as an authority on the topic if you do this so don’t do it. Product review focused content has it’s role, but it’s a part of an information website. Not the whole thing.

Keyword research tools

We want to write content people want and are searching for in your niche. The biggest mistake beginners make is to just “wing it” and write about whatever they want. This is a sure fire strategy for failure.

You must use some sort of keyword tool to get an idea of the potential search volume or lack there of. I like Ubersuggest, aHrefs or SEM Rush. These are professional keyword research tools that enable you to find content people want and need.

Use Google auto-fill

Just by using Google can help you get started. If you type in “backpacks for college students” you’ll notice Google autofills some suggested keywords.

Take a look at “backpacks for students with laptops.” That’s a good buying keyword. Does it have a lot of search volume to it? The answer to that is to go and research it using the previously mentioned keyword tools.

Your goal is to find content like this that makes sense for your website. If you have a site focused on studying for college, college success, study tips and what not then it’s a good potential blog post.

Blog post tiles that get clicked

Once you decide on your keyword, please do not ruin your blog post by using a boring post title. Use your keyword but make the title something interesting. It’s a good idea to take a look at the winning blog post titles of other websites and take inspiration from.

If you need help crafting compelling titles you can use this headline analyzer to help you improve your titles.

Blog posts and categories URL’s

Keep your blog post URL’s descriptive but as short as possible with no stop words. A blog post on “how to make a tree house – 7 essentials you need to know” should have a URL of /make-tree-house.

Next, make sure you choose 4-7 descriptive categories that are relevant to what your website is about and signal to Google what your website is about.

Create the best content possible

I like to say, “go for the best, rank for the rest.” That means it’s best to create a singular blog post that is the default guide on a topic. Like my “sunglasses for men” example.

There are more niche phrases like sunglasses for men with long faces and what not. But instead of creating a blog post on each specific phrase, it’s better to create a meaty, 2000+ word blog post covering all iterations based on potential search volume.

Good example of Amazon Associates posts:

Best cameras for YouTube – My extensive buying gude

Monetize with Amazon

Now your ready to begin adding Amazon Associate links to your website. First, make sure to familiarize yourself with the operating agreement. Many new Associates violate Amazon’s TOS and get kicked out of the program.

Create tags in your associates account

First, create different tags in your associates account for your different web properties. As you can only have one account, you’re not able make separate accounts for each website you want to promote Amazon on.

As such, you’ll want to create tags to know the performance of each of your web properties. This is incredibly helpful if you ever decide to sell your website as any potential buyer is going to want to know the last 12-18 months of earnings.

Get your Amazon Associates links with Site Stripe

Site Stripe is how you get links from Amazon to promote on your blog. First log into your Amazon Associates account with your preferred web browser, then navigate to Amazon.com.

At the top you’ll see a banner called Site Stripe. When you visit a specific product page on Amazon you’ll be able to get an Amazon short link, image or image and text product box.

Text and image

Text and image banners work well in a websites sidebar or centered within a blog post. What’s helpful about these items is that they have the product, price and clear call to action to buy the product.

In general though these are a bit dated by modern design standards and I hope in the future they design a wider product box for use on websites and blogs.

Text only

Text only links are optimal to use as a standard link within your blog post or in the description of a YouTube channel. Please note, you must always use the standard Amazon Associate link. Do not use any type of redirect plugin to cloak the link with something like example.com/product.

Image only

Image only shows a clickable picture on your website of the image. This is the only proper way to display images from Amazon as downloading images directly is against the TOS. Image only links work by using them in combination with text links and custom buttons you can create with WordPress.

Embed products in your review posts

With content on your website you’ll find topics like “best sunglasses for men” which are inherently a review post. It’s these posts you’ll want to link to Amazon products as well as use the image only feature.

While you can use more advanced plugins to create helpful product boxes, the default tools provided by Amazon are good enough to get started with.

At a minimum, you’ll want to create a sub title for the product you’re promoting and link to Amazon using the basic text link. Then underneath you’ll want to embed an image of the product using the image tool in your Associates account.

Example of successful Amazon affiliate websites

Let’s now take a look at some great brands that use the Amazon Associates program to monetize their website through creating helpful content. You’ll notice all these websites have a wide range of content that’s helpful instead of being overly product focused.

DirtBikePlanet.com – Dirt bike care and maintenance

This site works because they provide helpful answers, tips and solutions to all things dirt bikes and then soft sell products on Amazon as it makes sense. The key focus of this website is to answer questions in order to help their audience.

Then, they combine helpful buying guides in when appropriate. They also don’t use any complicated plugins for promoting Amazon Associates, just the default tools are at play on this website.

Roasty Coffee – Coffee tutorial website

Roasty Coffee is a wonderful example of an Amazon affiliate marketing website. Long detailed posts that go after high traffic keywords like “how make coffee with a French Press” and a blog that promote relevant products from Amazon.

What I like about Roasty is that it’s a great example of building a successful, high traffic website outside any tech oriented topic. With hundreds of blog posts and a professional design, this site uses various affiliate plugins to display Amazon products in a creative, on brand way.

Own the Yard – Backyard blog

Built by a team of writers hired by Spencer Hawes, Own the Yard is currently at over 600 blog posts. This website is now an authority website in the backyard games and lawncare space. It has a good mix of buying guides, tutorials and list oriented posts.

This website monetizes with display ads on non Amazon related content and pushes Amazon heavily on specific buying guides. It uses various Amazon Associates plugins in order to promote products and increase conversions.

Farm House Goals – An affiliate ecommerce website

Powered by Woo Zone, Farm House Goals is a great example of building out a blog that has an ecommerce component to it. It looks and feels like a large store when in reality it’s an Amazon Associates affiliate website.

All this is done using a combination of WordPress, WooCommerce and the Woo Zone plugin that allows you the creator to have traditional product pages on your website.

How to create an Amazon affiliate website conclusion

Amazon Associates is still a great way to monetize your website and blog. With a massive amount of products, there is almost always some type of product you can weave elegantly into your content.

When you’re ready to create your website, make sure to go with a good web host like Bluehost and use an optimal theme geared for affiliate marketing.

Sign Up To BlueHost – Get 70% Off ]]> 6020288 https://davidutke.com/amazon-associates-earnings/ Tue, 06 Jan 2026 20:23:00 +0000 https://davidutke.com/?p=6530 Amazon Associates is an advertising and affiliate marketing program launched and run by Amazon, the largest online retailer in the world. You can make money with this affiliate program by simply linking to specific products found on Amazon.

Typically you’re going to be linking to Amazon from your own website, YouTube channel or email list. It’s a lucrative way to monetize a website as buying from Amazon is frictionless.

The program pays you a small commission when someone clicks your affiliate link and then purchases items from Amazon within 24 hours. The rate of the commission varies depending on the product category and is subject to change at any time when Amazon chooses.

Amazon Associates Requirements

The requirements to become an Associate are to first apply to the program, then make a certain amount of sales. After this your account will be reviewed to make sure you’re following the operating agreement correctly (which is found here).

Probation Account

When you make the decision to apply tot he Amazon Associates program, you’re first able to create a probation account account where you can start promoting products from Amazon with a special link tied to your affiliate account.

When someone clicks your Amazon affiliate link your cookie is saved in their web browser for the next 24 hours. Anything they buy during this period of time you get a percentage of the sale.

One you make 3 qualified sales, your account will be reviewed to determine if you can continue as an affiliate for Amazon or not. Amazon Associates is a straight forward affiliate program but they are strict about who they permit to stay in the program.

As there are quite a few things you can do to get your application rejected or your Amazon account banned even after you’ve been approved, please make sure to read below about how to get kicked out of the program.

Lastly, your an Amazon affiliate at their discretion. At any time they can close your account for any reason legally. In practice though, there is always a reason why your account gets banned or your application denied.

Amazon Affiliate Earnings

The amount you earn depends on the traffic you send to Amazon and if that traffic buys products. Traffic should be targeted and ideally from America. So you want to promote Amazon in a way that makes sense for specific blog posts, don’t just haphazardly promote irrelevant products.

Buying guides

A buying guide like the 13 best microphones for YouTube that I have here on this site converts because it gets regular free traffic from AI and Google, I built a personal brand (not some faceless site) and I create YouTube videos so I know what I’m talking about.

The big mistake I see is that beginners make niche sites about the product instead of creating a helpful resource. Make a site all about creating YouTube content, not a site ONLY about microphones.

Next it depends on what they buy.

Each product category has a different Amazon associates commission rate structure which you can learn more about by reading this.

These are fairly small commissions overall however compared to other programs like SiteGround that can pay up to $150 per sale if you can send more than 20 people a month to sign up. But Amazon has the volume.

Everyone shops online and most Americans have an Amazon account. So it’s much easier to make a sale promoting a product from Amazon than it is promoting a high ticket item like web hosting.

For some websites, it’s not uncommon to make thousands of dollars a month given the right niche.

How To Make Sales

To make sales simply requires a website visitor to click on your affiliate link to Amazon and then make a purchase. This why bloggers create specific product buying guides because they are not only helpful for your visitors, they tend to rank well for product oriented search terms.

YouTube is also another great traffic source for Amazon as well. You could create a product oriented YouTube channel where you review specific tech products and then link to Amazon. If your videos get stable rankings and views, it becomes a passive income source.

Within the Amazon Associates program you do have a few specific ways to link to Amazon provided in your Associates dashboard.

How to get Amazon Associate Links

Amazon Associates has done away with their search function in their dashboard. Now, you’ll need to log into your account and then use the site stripe feature by navigating to Amazon.com after you’re logged into your account. It’s actually more simple and convenient, take a look:

To access your links, log into your Associates Account and then navigate to Amazon.com. Now in your web browser you’ll the “Site Stripe” at the top. Here you can select images, text or text and images.

It works functionally the same as the old Associates Dashboard but now in a more convenient way. Also their is also a mobile get link that you can use to easily get links for products to share via a mobile device.

Amazon affiliate links

When promoting a product you’ll need to get your unique link for the product page. I’ve found the image and the text links to be most useful in a blog post. The image is clickable and helps demonstrate what you’re talking about and the text link is useful for linking to products.

Amazon short links

This is a standard text link you can use to link words in your blog post. It’s a short link and redirects users to the specific product page of your choosing when using it.

Please note that you must use the Amazon short link. You can not clock it in any way like example.com/camera as that is a violation of the terms of service.

Amazon images

You’re not allowed to download images from Amazon and use them on your website. You can however use “image only” links on your website. They are ideal to visually demonstrate the product in question and work well within a review paragraph or as part of a product review table.

Amazon image and text

The last are image and text product links. These show both the image and short description of the product. They fit will in the side bar of a blog and are more detailed by showing the current price.

But in general I find the image boxes to be too small to fit in with more modern design standards that exist today.

Amazon display ads

Last are Amazon Associates display ads. Unlike other networks where you get paid per impression and click, with Amazon you only get paid when someone clicks your display ad and then purchases a product.

Display ads are very effective and are best place at the bottom of a review blog post as it will show all the products you have previously mentioned.

Tags and your Amazon Associates Tracking ID

You can only have one Amazon associates account, even if you have multiple websites. The way to manage multiple websites is to setup multiple tracking ID’s so you know where you’re making sales from.

The reason this is helpful is because as your earnings grow, you’ll want to know how much each of your websites as well as YouTube channel is making.

Otherwise, it’s going to be all grouped together under one tracking ID.

WordPress Plugins for Amazon

There are a few plugins I like:

Stackable

Stackable is what I personally use. I use the built in “container” box and customize the image, text and button element. Yes it’s a pain, but once it’s done the you have a nice ready to go template you can use within your content.

HTML for the image goes here.

Manually write the product title

Product description goes here.

Buy Now on Amazon

If you click this link and make a purchase, I earn a commission at no additional cost to you.

Amazon Affiliate WordPress plugin (AAWP)

This is a paid plugin that allows you to display Amazon products with your custom affiliate links in creative and interesting ways with ease. Need to setup on of those fancy product tables or want a “best sellers” list? Take a look at AAWP.

Lasso

Lasso is a fairly expensive but advanced affiliate marketing plugin designed to improve conversions on your website by giving you actionable data on what’s working, the ability to switch out offers easily and fast without manually going through each piece of content as well as high converting product boxes.

Take a look at Lasso.

Amazon Associates Program Requirements

Want to become an Amazon Associate? Then play by their rules.

Once your account makes 3 sales your account will be reviewed or your probation account will be closed and you’ll have to start over again with a new account.

What are the most common ways people fail to meet the Amazon Associates Program Requirements?

1 – You did not list all your website where you’re promoting Amazon.

When creating your account you have to tell Amazon every website where you will be promoting Amazon from.

No exceptions.

This includes a YouTube channel as well (yes even your silly vlogs made with an iPhone). My first account got banned because I had one website listed but was driving sales from my blog and YouTube channel that were not listed.

This is not acceptable and your account will be closed if you do this.

2 – You do not properly disclose you’re an Amazon Associate

You don’t have text on the page where you’re promoting Amazon that says you’re a participant in the Amazon Associates program:

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

You must put this in your footer or sidebar. It needs to appear on any page with Amazon affiliate links.

3 – You send affiliate links in your email news letter.

You can’t do this. You can send people to your website that has links to Amazon like a review post, but you’re not allowed to put Amazon links directly in the email itself.

Update: Amazon changed their policy on this and now allow this.

4 – You have 180 days to make sales.

If you don’t make any sales, your account will be closed. If you have a specific product page, wait till it is getting at least 20 visitors a day. Not 20 visitors a day site wide, just 20 days to your specific page where you intend to promote Amazon. This is enough traffic where you should make a few sales.

5 – You have to continue making sales.

If your account stops generating sales it will be closed at Amazons discretion.

6 – Hosting images from Amazon on your own website.

Some content creators think it’s fine to right click and download images from Amazon and then upload it to their website for use in a review post. It’s not. This is a violation of the terms of service. Instead, use product links from Amazon.

7 – Hiding your Amazon short links.

You have to use the Amazon short link when linking to Amazon. You’re not allowed to use any type of url shortener.

8 – Encouraging people to use your links

Using your own links to buy products for yourself or encouraging your friends, family, website visitors or YouTube viewers to use your links is against the terms of service. It’s against the terms of service to say “support the channel” and encourage people to use your links.

9 – Having your links in paid courses or private areas of a website.

Your links can only be on publicly available websites. You can’t put Amazon Associates links in a paid course or a Patreon page.

10 – Using Amazon customer reviews

You’re not allowed to take Amazon customer reviews and use those reviews in your blog posts as a way to market a product.

11– Don’t impersonate Amazon.

Don’t lead people on to think your website is somehow apart of Amazon.

12 – No links in PDF’s or ebooks

Similar to not having links in private areas of a website, you’re also now allowed to put links in any sort of PDF or ebook. Even if the ebook is for free.

13 – No links on websites directed at children under 13 years old.

So if you have a YouTube toy review channel for example, Amazon affiliate links are not allowed.

14 – Don’t mention the star rating.

Similar to not using customer reviews, you’re also not allowed to mention the start rating of a product in any way. No, you can show an image of the star rating. No you can’t say “this product has a 4.5 star rating.”

15 – Don’t list prices from Amazon.

You can say this “camera is expensive” but you can’t say that “on Amazon this camera costs $599.” No direct mention of prices. Now on some website you’ll see the mentioning the price but that is because they are using a plugin like AAWP which uses Amazon’s API to automatically collect and update this information.

16 – You can’t post links on websites you do not own.

Social media accounts are fine if you own the account, but you can promote your link in say the comments on a blog post, Facebook group or the comment section of a YouTube video. Only link to websites, social media accounts and YouTube channels that you own and have listed as places where you will be promoting Amazon.

17 – You can’t use the word Amazon or any sort of abbreviation in your website URL.

So if your website is something AmazonTours.com and it’s about going on a tour of the Amazon rain forest, you’re not allowed to use Amazon links on a site like that because of the potential for confusion.

18 – You can’t provide any reward or incentive for using your links.

A common practice in affiliate marketing is to give away a free bonus if someone uses your link but you can’t do that with Amazon. You can not state, provide or give any type of reward for people using your links.

19 – No adult themed websites allowed. No violent themed website allowed.

Along with website targeted at children, it should come as no surprise that you’re not allowed to promote Amazon Associates on any adult themed or violent website.

Conclusion – Amazon Affiliate Program Review

Amazon associates is an excellent program for generating income passively given the right mix of website topic and traffic. The real key is to simply use the Amazon affiliate program organically in your content as it makes sense and to create excellent content that ranks in search engines and provides tremendous value.

Any questions? Let me know!

-David

]]> 6530 https://davidutke.com/unstoppable-domains-affiliate/ Mon, 24 Feb 2025 11:06:41 +0000 https://davidutke.com/?p=6520444 Everyone wants to make the big bucks with affiliate marketing, yet most fail to even make $10.

Wrong niche, wrong content, wrong offer.

You’re being a money chaser as I like to call it, doing something you think can make money, but something you have no interest in.

Like creating a stupid AI website on bonsai trees or tropical birds.

Newsflash, you’re here serve an audience. Not “get traffic from Google” and make ad revenue.

So how did I make $5000 from promoting Unstoppable Domains?

First off, recipts:

All in all, I made an even $5,600 dollars from Unstoppable Domains. They have since shut down their affiliate program so don’t bother trying to sign up.

It’s a shame because it was a unique offer that converted very well.

Anyways, here is how I made this money from affiliate marketing for this company.

I choose a trending topic (at the time)

The concept of NFT’s, Bitcoin and alt coins were in a bull run, as such there was a lot of interest circling around this topic with people wanting to know, understand, use and profit from this tech.

But, there was just no good content just explaining what the heck the difference is between a crypto domain is like .eth to something like a standard .com, and the unique ways you could use a crypto domain.

Also, there was also not a whole lot of competition from other creators, so going after free traffic was a viable option with the right content.

Last, Unstoppable Domains is in alignment with what I do on my YouTube channel. I talk about websites, domain names, WordPress and using tech to build an online business around you.

Lesson learned – choose the right topic

I looked for new and interesting content for my topic/audience and got on top of it to ride the wave so to speak.

I created content in my own style

On my YouTube channel I create helpful, honest content. It’s not my style to be loud and over the top.

I also don’t create hype videos that are all – OMG you need to buy this now.

Instead, I noticed a lot of people struggling to understand what exactly an NFT is, what Unstoppable Domains are, how is this different from traditional DNS domains and why would you even want to buy an NFT domain in the first place.

So I did was what I do best.

Create a helpful video explaining everything someone would need to know to fully grasp the value proposition of Unstoppable Domains.

Guess what?

Once someone understands what Unstoppable Domains actually are and how to use it, then they are more likely to make a purchase through my affiliate link.

The right offer

The last part if simply putting the right offer in front of my audience.

On YouTube I put my affiliate link above the fold in the YouTube video description. I also put it a second time in the body of the description along with links to other free videos.

I use a WordPress plugin called Pretty Links to manage affiliate links.

This free plugin allows me to change a long, ugly affiliate URL into something more pleasant and trustworthy like davidutke.com/unstoppable.

I also talked about this on X and linked to both my video and blog post about Unstoppable Domains (since deleted since the offer does not exist, I 301’ed everything to this content you’re on now).

Why it worked

It worked because my video was really the only video that laid out what NFT based domain names are and why you would want them and how to use them without the hype.

My video gained a lot of attention and traction because this was trending topic at the time.

The offer, Unstoppable Domains was also not expensive. People will buy through your link as long as it is a reasonable price.

Expensive items ($997 guru course offering, coaching offers etc) need more touch points and a sales process.

That’s why you need a sales funnel to sell a high level coaching call or service. Buying a 17$ digital product by contract can be done with just free traffic alone.

Finally I also know how to make YouTube videos.

It’s a skill I’ve curated that I can now leverage to get in front of an audience and serve them.

Emphasis on serve.

Be useful, it’s as simple as that.

This is basic affiliate marketing

This is what I call “basic” affiliate marketing. It’s simple, uncomplicated and how everyone starts.

Create content, get traffic for free, then convert that attention to a sale. Done.

There are different levels to this of course

More advanced strategies involve running ads to your videos and blog posts. Collecting emails and building out a funnel to sell people by being helpful or offering a bonus if people buy through your link.

With basic affiliate marketing, if you get the right offer in front of the right audience, converting sales is pretty easy.

This is why everyone always writes those “best xyz product for target audience.” If you’re able to get free traffic consistently, day after day to your blog post or video mentioning a specific offer, getting sales becomes like clockwork.

Serve an audience

So I’ll leave it there, one thing you need to take away is to stop being a money chaser. Stop doing something you think can make money but have no interest, skill or knowledge in.

Instead, serve an audience in some meaningful way.

That’s how you turn knowledge into income.

Until next time.

-David

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