The Ultimate Guide to Amazon’s Affiliate Program

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By  •  5 min read

Amazon’s affiliate program, also known as Amazon Associates, is the best beginner affiliate program out there.

It’s the perfect gateway into affiliate marketing.

There are success stories of Amazon affiliate marketers hitting over $15,000 in net profit, by blogging about their passions.

After a quick and easy signup process, their intuitive interface allows you to generate affiliate links for nearly any product instantly, allowing you to earn commission on their entire cart for the next 24 hours.

We know.

All of this is too good to be true, so what’s the catch?

Well…

There really isn’t any.

We’re here to break down everything you need to know about Amazon’s Affiliate program.


What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is one of the most common ways to make money online. It involves an agreement between a merchant and an affiliate, in which the affiliate sends traffic the merchant’s way in exchange for compensation.

While the method of compensation can vary, the most common one, and the one Amazon uses, is a commission structure.

It’s a win-win scenario for each party, as the merchant only pays out to an affiliate when they successfully drive a sale. Affiliates’ income is entirely performance-based, so it’s on them to drive the most traffic possible.

What is Amazon Associates?

Amazon Associates is Amazon’s affiliate marketing program.

Some may even call Amazon Associates an affiliate network, due to the massive amounts of products on the platform.

By advertising Amazon’s product on your platform, you’re able to earn a commission on what visitors buy after clicking your tracking link.

Depending on the product and category, Amazon rewards between 2%-10% on the entire cart, assuming a customer checks out 24 hours after clicking your link.

Because Amazon is one of the best beginner affiliate programs, you can probably guess that there are not too many requirements in order to get started with them.

How Do I Become an Amazon Affiliate?

In order to become an Amazon affiliate, you’ll need a few things:

We recommend giving their operating procedure a read.

How to Sign up For Amazon Associates

Once you’re ready to sign up, head to their site, and click the sign up now button as seen below.

Next, you’ll need to enter the asked info:

Then, you’ll need to enter some personal information about yourself.

Add the sources of all the traffic that you’ll be sending Amazon’s way.

Provide a StoreID and some more info about your website. Store ID is usually something like your site name.

Explain how you drive traffic toward Amazon.

After this, you are now ready to start creating affiliate links and promoting Amazon products for a commission!

How to Create Amazon Affiliate Links

There are a few ways to create Amazon Affiliate links.

Go tp the page you want to advertise, and you can select a few different ways to build your links via the site stripe. The most common way is a text link, but you can so do image versions or social shares. It depends on your situation!

You can also decide if you want the link to be a short one or a long link. It doesn’t really make a difference, but for the sake of appearance we recommend a short link.

Take this link and place it where ever you have traffic coming to.

What Commission Does Amazon Pay?

Amazon’s commission rates are almost always changing.

In order to see their current commission, you can read here.

Below is their current fee schedule as of December 1st, 2020:

How Do I Get Paid By Amazon

Amazon pays out 60 days after the end of a given month. So for example, affiliate commissions earned in January will be given at the end of March. This is pretty common in the affiliate world, as networks and programs need to give themselves time to handle refunds, fraud, returns, and more.

After the time elapses, you have the following options for withdrawal:

Direct Deposits

Direct deposits will need to give Amazon basic banking information like account number, routing number, and more. For a large majority of you, direct deposit will definitely be the best method.

Checks

It’s 2022, are you seriously still trying to be paid in checks?

Amazon will require a mailing address, and be able to payout via check with a minimum balance of $100.

Amazon Gift Cards

Is there a point in limiting what you can buy with your money?

If you’d like to be paid via Amazon Gift Cards, they will require a minimum payout of $10.

Can I Get Banned From Amazon Affiliate?

Unfortunately, yes. Amazon is very strict with their terms of service and will ban with no questions asked. They have an appeals process, but the chance of your application being overturned is pretty low. We created a list of the most common mistakes that people make that get them banned, so be sure to check that out.

We only recommend signing up when you have significant traffic coming through, as you’ll need to make 3 qualifying sales in the first 3 months for your application to be approved. If not, your application will be rejected.


Who is Amazon Affiliate For?

If you’re just getting started with affiliate marketing, we highly recommend getting your feet wet with Amazon Associates. They don’t pay the highest commissions and have cut them several times before, but they convert like no other affiliate program due to how much people trust them.

Austin manages a portfolio of niche websites. He has been building and selling websites for many years now. Connect with Austin on Twitter and LinkedIn.