How to Get Started with the Amazon Affiliate Program

Amazon.com is just about the easiest affiliate to work with. Why? Because they sell EVERYTHING and they are a completely recognizable brand that everyone is comfortable buying from. You can capitalize on those things by joining the Amazon Associates program and creating affiliate links to Amazon products.

Setting up an account with Amazon Associates is easy! There is an approval process, but it’s not very grueling. I’m going to walk you through the set-up step-by-step and give you some tips for using those links.

First of all, you have to head over here to the setup page and join the program. Once you are approved and you log in, you’ll get to a screen with this menu at the top:

Let’s talk about what you can do with all of these options.
Let me make it easy by telling you that you can pretty much ignore the 4 options on the right. The only one you may want to use is reporting, but you can see instant quick reports to the right side of the home screen. Additionally, you can use the links on that right side to view detailed reports.
This is what the instant reporting widget looks like:

It will always be on the right side of the screen upon logging in to your account.

About Amazon Associates Reporting:
The reports update every day, so it’s the first thing I look at when I enter my account. The time of the update can vary a LOT. Lately, there have been updates at 7am and as late as 10pm. Another note about reporting on Amazon: orders and items shipped are not the same thing. Items will show up on your orders report before they ship. As you’ll notice, you do not see money earned from a certain item until that item has shipped. This takes some getting used to. When speaking of the commission level (which depends on how many items you have shipped in a calendar month), they go by items shipped, not orders.



This can be confusing, so hopefully this graphic showing the commission levels helps:

A worthy goal at the start is to just get beyond that 4% level. Getting 6 sales and items shipped is doable and it’ll get you a nice 2% commission bump for that month. The commission levels reset every month.

Anyway, for me personally, the instant report on the right is the only part of the home screen that I ever use. I don’t even really use the “Links and Banners” or “Widgets” options, but in case you are interested in them, let me show you what they offer.

Links and Banners:
These are good if you want to place a static ad on your page that you’re going to leave there and hope for the best. I’m not the biggest fan of these, but they can work. Amazon does an okay job at getting you updated banners as well. For instance, in March, there were a few new Easter banners available. It’s a nice, easy way to get an attractive ad on your site that might generate some income. You can get product links from this page, but don’t do that. There’s a MUCH easier way to get individual product links that I’ll show you in a bit.

Widgets:
Widgets offer a little bit more flexibility as to the items you show in your banner ad. There is a nice pre-made deals widget that will show a bunch of current deals in an auto-scrolling, browse-able widget. There is a great one called My Favorites where you can find and add individual products of your choice to a widget with pagination. You can select the widget side among common ad sizes. Here’s a look at a standard box widget that I created for this post:

Note: be aware that widgets load fairly slowly and may have a negative impact on the overall experience of navigating your blog. This is not always the case, but it is something that you should be aware of.
You can also create MP3 widgets, which can be fun. You can have it titled, “What’s on My Ipod” or something like that. You can also create your Amazon wishlist as a widget and add a few other types of widgets. Don’t get too crazy here and only add what fits with what you’re trying to do with your site.

And now, I present you with the easiest way of grabbing Amazon product links:

Site Stripe
With Amazon Site Stripe, you can link to individual products in a snap. You’ll want to be signed in to your Amazon Associates account and then visit Amazon as though you are a customer. Look at the top of the web page and you should see the stripe. It looks like this:

For every last detail of the Amazon Site Stripe, visit this page.
Now, how do I use the stripe? Like this:

So there you have it! You should be off and running with the Amazon Associates program! Remember, don’t go too crazy linking products and creating widgets. You want your readers to not really even notice that you are promoting items through Amazon. Since Amazon carries just about every product, you’ll find that it’s easier to link to Amazon items than you may think. Figure out what works for you and you could start seeing a nice little income from using your Amazon links.

For more affiliate programs to join, see: 5 Affiliate Networks to Join in 2013.

Remember that is is important to disclose that you are making money on your blog through links. See our post about disclosure policies here and the most recent updates to the FTC’s disclosure guidelines here.