How to Make Money with Amazon Affiliate Program

Make Money with Amazon Affiliate Program

With a title like, How to Make Money with Amazon Affiliate Program, you obviously believe you can make money with affiliate programs. Hopefully, you also realise that you will need to buy a domain and setup a website if you hope to earn a reasonable income from affiliate fees.

Well, here’s the hype-free way to make some money. In this article you will learn how to buy a domain, setup a website (blog) and, utilising the Amazon Affiliate program, Amazon Associates, earn a reasonable income. The whole setup process should take you no more than one day.

How-to: the Basics

To begin, I have to presume certain things abut you. I’m going to presume you are reasonably computer literate, you know how to surf the Internet and you know some basic HTML as this will definitely keep your costs down. If you don’t know the basics of HTML then try one of the many online HTML courses. Personally, I find w3schools.com very handy (it’s also free).

Even though the site we are going to construct is basically done for you, knowing a little HTML will definitely come in handy.

Select Your Niche Topic

Your main assignment will be producing product reviews and recommendations in relation to your chosen niche and topic, so pick a topic you enjoy and either know already or are willing to learn.

This is important. You need to be passionate about your chosen topic and you need to stay passionate or it will show in your blog.

To begin, choose a very narrow niche. For example if you want to start a music site, don’t simply choose your niche topic as, “Music”. This is too broad. Choose a targetted niche such as, “Rock Music”. Now select a narrow topic within this niche. Again, don’t pick a broad topic such as rock bands, narrow it to a particular band such as, “Led Zeppelin”.

Choose Your Domain Name

Choose a keyword-rich domain name. Think how you proceed when looking for particular websites on specific topics. Now think about how people will find your website in the search engines. Make your domain name keyword rich and don’t get fancy, keep it simple. For a music site, the keywords could be, music, rock bands, free music, lyrics, etc.

You can check your possibilities at JustHost or GoDaddy.

A the time of writing these domains were available based on these keywords: AllMusic.net, FreeMusicDownload.com, MusicVideo.com, HowNewMusic.com, RockBandMusic.com PopBandMusic.com, and many more.

If you need more help in deciding upon a name take a look at my article, 24 Tips On Creating Your Domain Name.

Register Your Domain Name

If you want a simple life (recommended) then register your domain name when you set up your web hosting in the next step. Otherwise, you can save a little by choosing a lower-cost provider such as GoDaddy. If you’re only planning the one site then don’t bother with this step, it really only matters if you’re buying lots (20+) of domains.

Set Up Your Web Hosting

This is where most people get stung. For the kind of site we are going to construct here you do not need a dedicated server, a shared server will do just nicely.

Currently, JustHost provide exactly what you need for this kind of site for £2.95 ($3.25 USD) a month, you do not need expensive web hosting! The KingSolutions website is hosted on JustHost.

With JustHost you also get a domain name for free so saving you the domain name registration fees mentioned above.

Install Blog Software

The easiest and quickest way of getting a site online is to use “Blog” software. My favourite is WordPress, which is open source (i.e., free). This will give you everything you need from a website. The benefits include:

Very easy to setup, less than five minutes.
Quick and easy to post new content.
Very powerful.
Loved by Google (for SEO).
Many hosts have a one-step installation from their cPanel (including JustHost).

In my opinion the great things about WordPress is the huge variety of free templates and widgets available for it. These will determine the look-and-feel of your website. If your requirements are a little more selective and you cannot find what you are looking for on the WordPress site there are many more themes available from sites such as Elegant Themes, SoloStream and WooThemes.

Set Up WordPress

Before you can use your blog you will need to set it up, for this see my tutorial, WordPress Post Install Checklist – A Step by Step Guide (Video) and then return here.

Activate Your Blog Posting Bookmarklet

You blog will need content for your posts. There are two items which will make this very easy. The first is the WordPress, “Press This”, bookmarklet.

This is a little app that runs in your browser and lets you grab bits of the web. Use, “Press This” to clip text, images and videos from any web page. Then edit and add more content straight from “Press This” before you save or publish it in a post on your site.

You will find this little app under, Dashboard > Tools > Available Tools. Just follow the instructions on the page and have a little practice.

Now write twenty article and post them on your site.

Sign Up as an Amazon Associate

Next, sign up as an Amazon Associate.

Signing up as an Amazon Associate, should be done only after you have your website installed and at least twenty pages displayed on your site. The reason for this is that Amazon will review your website prior to giving approval. If you have your site installed with a few pages showing the type of content you will be posting you are much more likely to get approval quickly and without problem.

Use Your Associates Site Stripe to Link to Any Page on Amazon

Now go to the Amazon Associates site and in the, Links & Banners tab click the, Link to any Page, menu item to get the Associates Site Stripe.

The quickest and easiest way to link to any page on Amazon is to use your Associates Site Stripe. The Site Stripe will appear at the top of every page you visit on Amazon if you are logged in using your Amazon Associates account.

To build a link to a page with the Site Stripe, simply go to the page you want on Amazon and click the ‘Link to this Page’ button on the Site Stripe. It’s that simple.

Build Your Amazon Widgets

Amazon Widgets are rich, interactive mini-applications that bring Amazon functionality to your website. Start by clicking on the, Widgets tab, and then selecting one of the options below. You’ll then be able to customize your widget and Amazon will provide the HTML for you to use on your site. Just follow the instructions to post them on your blog.

Build Your First Link

You are now ready to monetise your blog. Go to Amazon and log in with your Associates account. Find the product you want to review and use the Site Stripe to get your personalized link, widget or banner for the item.

Post Your Review

To post a review, first select any text you want to include in your review on the Amazon product page (don’t plagiarise). Now click on your, Press This, WordPress posting link.

You should now see the text you highlighted followed by a link to the product page displayed in the WordPress window. Delete the link and paste your personalized Amazon Associates link. Now write your product review and hit Publish.

You are now in business, good luck.

Tips

Promote your site via other blogs with similar topics and participate in online communities for your topic. You could also write articles for sites such as EzineArticles.com. This will give you back-links to your site via the authors footer and bio.
Remember you are not the only person writing reviews, they are everywhere. You need to give people a good reason to come to your site.
Sign-up for Google AdSense to pick up some extra pennies. It’s free to sign up and easy to maintain.
Set reasonable income expectations. You’ll make 5% on most products which means to make a million dollars you’ll need to generate an awful lot of sales. It’s not hard to make a reasonable income but don’t expect to get rich quick.