Amazon makes it quick and easy to sign up to become an affiliate of their products. The only requirement is to have a functional website. If you don’t have a website, you will need to set that up first.
Creating a Website for Amazon Affiliates
• Choose a catchy domain name and register it at godaddy.com, register.com or your favorite website domain service.
• Download WordPress (It’s free)
• Walk through the WordPress set up
• Choose a template, colors and style that will fit your business
• Create SEO appealing, content rich articles or blog posts for your website
• Or, contact a web designer and SEO service provider to do all of this for you
When you have your website up and running, go to Amazon.com and look on the left side of the home page. You will see the link for “Join Associates”. Follow the directions. They will ask you for your URL address, the purpose for your website and contact information. It takes about 24 hours for Amazon to review your application and approve your request. If they deny, find out why and correct that for approval. As soon as you are approved you can begin to set up your affiliate campaigns.
Choose Your Amazon Affiliate’s Products to Sell
Amazon gives you a variety of options to be able to sell products from your site. You can decide to post a collection of items or highlight one or two items at a time in ongoing blog articles. You are also able to place a variety of widgets and banners for display and create an “Astore” to integrate into your website. Once you have decided which products will specifically appeal to your customers, you can outline how you will present your product offerings.
When you have an idea of your product line, login to affiliate-program.amazon.com using the information you provided earlier. Across the top of the page you will see a blue drop down menu bar. Use this bar to choose the ways in which you will offer your products at your website.
Links and Banners for Amazon Affiliates
Under the Links and Banners menu you will find Product Links, Banner Links, Link to any Page, Quicker Linker and Link Checker. Links and banners can be used anywhere on your website. The links are especially useful for placing in blog posts. For example if you write a review about your favorite self help book, you will want to set up a link that will take readers to the book so they can buy it and you get credited to receive commission.
Widgets for Amazon Affiliates
Widgets are tools that can be customized to fit into the overall theme of your website and highlight a variety of products. You can choose a widget that will create a slideshow of options that can be featured as a list, such as a variety of your favorite electronics or other product offerings. You can create a “Product Cloud” that is similar to a WordPress tag cloud, but are clickable through to the products you attach to them. A “My Favorites” widget will allow your readers to see what products you recommend. Finally there is a search widget will allow your website followers to find products from Amazon without leaving your site.
aStore for Amazon Affiliates
Amazon’s astore application is a fully customizable online store. This will integrate in with your website or you can link to it from your site to enable shopping right on your site. There is a simple step-by-step process that Amazon walks you through in order to set up your aStore in a minimal amount of time. Amazon handles all the details and you earn the commissions.
Product Advertising API for Amazon Affiliates
If you are an application developer, you will love to work with this particular interface. It is another way to advertise products on your website. If you are not a programmer, you may find this particular option better left to a professional.
Affiliate Programs for Amazon Affiliates
There are three optional programs you can join as an Amazon Affiliate. You can choose one of them, all of them, or none depending on your product line. The options are the Amazon Wireless Associates, Endless Associates (Shoes, boots and accessories) or the Small Parts Associates.
Reports for Amazon Affiliates
Amazon offers comprehensive reporting options including earnings and order reports, miscellaneous referral reports, link type reports, daily trends, and a Track ID Summary report. Refer to the reports to help adjust your product lines and methods of advertising to test which will assist to increase sales.
With all the functionality offered by Amazon, and now that you know how to use Amazon Affiliates, you should become a successful affiliate marketer in no time. Make sure and create a variety of tracking IDs to go with different types of marketing campaigns so you are able to create reports on individual campaigns.
