How To Start Affiliate Marketing With Amazon For Beginners

One burning question for any would-be affiliate marketer is this: where and how do you begin?

Here, we will be covering all the bases to jumpstart your affiliate marketing business. But more specifically, we will be discussing how to start affiliate marketing with Amazon for beginners.

It is a simple business model, and yet starting it the right way will guarantee better results than just learning everything as you go along.

After reading this tutorial, you can expect to:

Get an overview of how affiliate marketing works
Understand how it works with Amazon
Learn a step by step process to start this business model with Amazon

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a business model where you sell someone else’s products. In return, you earn a commission.

Affiliate marketing is not an entirely new concept, as this business model has existed for many years, even before the dawn of the internet.

If you have heard of Avon or Tupperware, then you know that mothers and other salespeople sold these two products with only a brochure. For every product they sold, they earned a commission.

Unlike a typical business, you do not need to spend and stock up on inventory with affiliate marketing. What you need is the ability to sell, and the determination to succeed.

The difference between Tupperware and affiliate marketing is that the latter is done online. To get started, you need to find a merchant who offers an affiliate program.

You need to enroll in that program, at no cost, and then you can start selling the merchant’s products.

In this case, that merchant is Amazon.

What is Amazon Associates?

Amazon Associates is the technical or appropriate term for the company’s affiliate marketing arm.

It has been around since 1996, and your job is to advertise products found in Amazon on your website, your landing page, or social media channels.

For every product you sold, you will earn a commission.

How Does Affiliate Marketing with Amazon Work?

Now that you know the business model, you are ready to understand the intricacies of this business model.

Below is the summary of how it works, and we will move forward later with a step-by-step guide on how you can jumpstart your business.

You register for an account at Amazon Associates.
You need to choose a product to sell.
Each product you decide to sell will have a link. This link is YOUR link.
For example, let us say you decided to sell Headphone Brand A, Amazon will give you a link that you can post online.

Whenever this link is clicked, the customer will be taken to the page of Headphone Brand A where he can make the purchase.

In the backend, Amazon knows that this customer clicked YOUR link. As such, Amazon knows that it owes you a commission.

Amazon pays you out, and then you can enjoy your profits.

How to Start Affiliate Marketing with Amazon for Beginners

Now, we will tackle the step by step process to get you started. We will provide a bird’s eye view of the steps you need to take, but you must be cautioned that there is a lot of work that needs to be done on every level.

Find a Niche

The following step is perhaps the most challenging part of the process. A niche is a specialization or expertise. You cannot just go online and sell every item you think is popular.

As a businessman, you must convince people to buy what you are selling.

In essence, a Tupperware affiliate may not want to sell Avon products. The reason being is that lipstick and make-up do not interest him, and he has no clue how they work.

Similarly, you cannot just sell drones because they are cool. Do you understand how they work? Do you know how to upgrade the parts? Can you answer customer inquiries about drones?

To find your niche, you must look inward and ask yourself: what are you passionate about? What subject matter makes your blood jump up in excitement?

Is it clothing, tools, musical instruments? The niche of your choice must be something that you are good at. You need to be an expert in that area. Once you have the answer to this, you can now move on to the next step.

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Create Your Brand

This step is crucial. You must think of a business name that is not taken yet. It has to be catchy, and it must immediately tell a potential customer what your business is about. Here are some tips when choosing a brand name:

Avoid using weird and unintelligible names
Keep it short and easy to remember
Make sure it is not used by anybody to avoid any legal trouble later on
Do not infringe on anyone’s trademark or copyright

In this step, you also need to create your logo. Make the logo embody your company’s message and products.

Think about Toys R Us. The name is simple, catchy, and the logo uses lots of colors to give the vibe that it is about children’s toys.

Create Your Website

Amazon does not accept affiliate applications without a website.

Now, you may find this a challenging step, but you should not get rattled. An important aspect of affiliate marketing is blogging.

It is paramount for you to create a blog, and there are so many companies out there that offer free blog sites.

The most popular is wordpress. It’s easy, just register with Amazon for a free account, and then set up the essential components of your website. These are:

Domain Name
Web hosting

The domain name is the name of your business. It is also the URL to your website. Web hosting is a service where a company will make your site available.

wordpress does both.

You can do this for free, but there are premium situations where you have to pay. If the domain name you chose for your business is not available for free, you have to pay for it.

The investment to create a website is very small. In fact, you can create one for less than $20. This is also the step that you need to write blog articles and fill your site with content.

As a businessman, your primary aim is not to do hard selling. What you need to focus on is how to benefit the customer. The ideal blog entries that you post are “how-to” articles. You must provide informative blog entries that answer customer problems.

It is only through this approach that you can build a following and build customer loyalty. You need to be able to make the impression that you are an expert, and that you are here to help.

You can also do product reviews, but you can only do this once you have completed the following step.

Enroll in Amazon Associates

To do this, you need to visit the company’s website and create an account. It may sound like a straightforward step.But you need to know that the affiliate program of Amazon is not offered to all countries. Only a select few can enroll.

During this step, it’s vital that you need to choose the products listed in Amazon that you want to sell. Looking for a product requires hard work. And when choosing a product, you must consider the following checklist:

The products you select must fall within the scope of your niche
They must be from a reputable seller
Consider the shipping timelines
Check the feedback and what customers say about the product

List these down. List the product name, the seller name, the product link, and the ID link that Amazon will give to you. A best practice is to use a spreadsheet like excel.

This step will also take a while, as you need to explore the rules and protocols of Amazon. You have to become deft at using the dashboard, and you also need to know how much you will be paid.

Not all products pay the same commission rates. Typically, you will earn between 4% and 10% commission, and all of these depend on the categories of the products that you sell.

Once you are done with all of these, you can now post your product links on your website. You can do this in two ways:

Hyperlink texts or words in your blog entry to the Amazon product page
Hyperlink pictures of the products you sell from your website to the Amazon product page

If a customer clicks that link and makes a purchase, Amazon will record that transaction, and you will be paid according to Amazon’s current payout rules.

Summary of Amazon Affiliate Marketing

There you have it—a few simple steps on how to start affiliate marketing with Amazon for beginners.

The thing that matters once you start this business is consistency. You cannot expect to sell and make a living right away with affiliate marketing. It will take time to make a sale.

However, all your efforts will get compounded in time. A blog you publish today will always be there, waiting for the right person to read and go to your Amazon link.

You also need to build a social media presence. As an expert, you have to share the products you review on your Facebook or Instagram accounts.

Remember, as an affiliate marketer, you need to market yourself or your business as an expert. And when readers find you credible, that is the time you will make a sale.