I told you I was going to tell you how we made the leap to Living Differently, and Amazon is part of the secret. No paid courses here, no e-books, I’m just going to tell you, for free. I’ve been dabbling with Amazon affiliate marketing for over 10 years now, earning a little here, a little there, but it’s only after a few years and learning a few tricks, did it all started coming together. This site was actually way past the $1000/ month mark a few years ago, long before the global shutdown. I’m more than happy to share some Amazon affiliates (or associates) tips to help you bypass the early stages of trial and error and jump you straight into making real money from Amazon Associates accounts adding to your diverse patchwork income from travel blogging. Or indeed, from any type of blogging.
Amazon affiliates sales can, and do, work for just about every niche site or blog, if you do it right. The Amazon affiliate program also works for most countries, with the United States performing best for me (Amazon.com), followed by Amazon Australia (Amazon.com.au), UK, (Amazon.co.uk), and Canada (Amazon.ca.)
Most Amazon sales for me, come from the countries above, and international sales are now all integrated through the Amazon dashboard, although you do need to create an account for each country individually.
This post contains very simple tips and instructions for absolute beginners based on what worked for me to make money as an Amazon affiliate. If you have any questions or need more information, just put them in the comments.
It could also be helpful if you need to grow your Amazon affiliate income.
I was a 6 figure blogger up to early 2020. Obviously the travel world was decimated by restrictions. Today our income is rising steadily again and our Amazon affiliate program income is rising too.
Making Money Through Amazon Affiliates
Some of you will already be bloggers, if not, I have more information on blogging, for free, which you can access via our travel blogging home page.
I’m not a blogging blogger, I’m a travel blogger, but people want to know how we do this stuff so the posts are available.
I have several other niche websites outside travel too, but this is our travel blog so everything here is travel related. All of our websites make something from Amazon.
Something else I want to tell you is, you don’t need to buy courses. They’re expensive and the information in them is available elsewhere for free.
Sure if you have $1000 to spare and like everything neatly packaged, go for it, but I promise there will be little content you can’t find by Googling.
Ten Top Tips To Make More Money as An Amazon Affiliate
- Target the US audience.
- Sell expensive products with high percentage payouts from Amazon.
- Use your own photos and video, you should buy the products you plan to review to get these.
- Have good SEO. Including in-depth content, a fast website and strong internal linking.
- Get very niche with your long-tail sales keywords.
- Create seasonal sales posts months in advance to allow them to rise to the top of Google in time.
- Include a table or comparison chart in your sales page.
- Create a variety of posts for different seasons to keep your Amazon income flowing year-round.
- Check your Amazon links constantly. Products can become out of stock.
- Always update old sales posts with fresh products that have come onto the market.
A lot of people will tell you to use buttons on Amazon sales pages to increase sales, I’ve found that text links perform better than buttons and I’ve tested this using heatmaps from both Hotjar and Affilimate. (Grab a free trial of Affilimate here, it’s good.)
Before You Start as an Amazon Affiliate or Associate
Obviously, sign up for an Amazon Associates account. You can use your existing Amazon account to do this.
You need a website and it needs to have some authority. This means your website isn’t spam in the eyes of Google and isn’t brand new.
Your site needs to either have a bit of age and maturity or some genuine incoming links. Ideally both.
People must like your content. Google can tell if they do. Other websites must like your site or your content and so link to it from their own pages, this tells Google your content is worth showing in its search results.
The more authority your site has, broadly, the higher it appears in search results so long as you get your SEO right.
Obviously, you can’t copy or spin other people’s content. Copyright theft is illegal and Google knows. Duplicate content isn’t smart.
Bloggers tend to measure the authority of a website using a metric called DA, Domain Authority, it’s a score out of 100 and the higher it is the better.
I’ll tell you that DA is not the be-all and end-all. A better post can beat a site with a higher DA.
So don’t lose hope if your new site’s DA is low, you can grow it and you can still potentially beat higher DA sites.
DA is a metric created by Moz, not Google. DA is based on your backlink count. Actual Google ranking is based on far more factors than just backlinks.
This site has been around quite a while and has reasonable authority, so if I write a post with the keywords “best travel sweatsuit” I have a fair chance of Google showing my post to somebody searching for that exact term.
Of course, I will have made sure that my on-page SEO exactly targets that term and that my site structure and internal linking supports that term.
My posts have ranked on page 1 within a day sometimes (if I check the competition isn’t too high before picking my keywords), more often it takes a few months.
Over time posts rank higher and higher as Google gets good feedback from happy readers in the form of no returns to the search results and plenty of time on page.
On one of my smaller sites, with less authority, I have less chance of ranking highly straight away, so the trick is to look for a more obscure search term, usually a less profitable one that every other blogger isn’t trying to capitalise on.
For instance, I used ” best ***** maker” recently, it was a low competition keyword (Words, obviously, 3 of them) but it ranked quickly and does well in Amazon sales despite being on a low authority site.
This is what keyword research is all about, finding keywords that your site can rank for because your pages need Google traffic to get the customers who are ready to buy.
It’s pointless to halfheartedly put a few links in a post and calling it “Family Travel Gear” as I did on this site. I doubt I’ll ever rank for that term because the competition is too strong. ( I was actually surprised but – that post now does rank pretty well and is one of the bigger ones on this site, it took around 6 years to get there)
Do it that way and you will only pick up a few bucks now and then from one of your regular subscribers, or somebody who just happens to be visiting your site and stumbles across your page full of links.
You need a targeted, organised approach and I’m going to start you on your way.
Likewise, don’t just stick random affiliate links in your sidebar, it rarely works.
Never Mislead Your Readers
Never promote any product you know to be a dud. It’s the quickest way to lose respect, credibility, friends and readers.
I’ve cursed other bloggers for selling me products just for the affiliate commission. I’ve bought products, courses, plugins, hosting, all sorts of things, that turned out to be sub-standard.
Tell the truth, keep it real.
Don’t sell out.
The products below, I use and need to make an income.
You Need to Target Amazon Customers All Over The World
In 2023 you can ignore everything I wrote about Eazy Azon, you don’t need it any more.
The two best ways of doing this is probably Amazon’s own One Link tool. One link does now include Australia.
One Link will localise your links to the US, Canada, UK, Spain, Germany, Italy etc.
All of your Amazon links need to lead to the correct Amazon site according to your readers’ locations. If they are in the UK they must go to Amazon UK, in Australia, Amazon Australia etc.
This is called link localisation.
You need to organise this today, because if you do it further down the line you have to go back and change all the Amazon links you painstakingly inserted.
Amazon One Link, (go to your affiliate area and find it under ” Tools”. There is some set up involved.)
Previously we used Easy Azon, we no longer recommend it but Easy Azon does (last time I checked) allow you to localise for Australia. We feel that the Australian Amazon market is too small for us to target.
Most of our Amazon earnings come from the US, so the extra hassle of targeting Amazon Australia just isn’t really worth it currently.
If you need to localise for Australia, maybe go with Easy Azon Pro or One Link.
EasyAzon Pro is a premium, paid plugin that makes your Amazon empire global. There are other, free, plugins that claim to do the same thing, I’ve tried some of them, for years, they didn’t work nearly as well as EasyAzon and I was losing money every day.
EasyAzon Pro is not, by any means, easy right out of the box. I finally got it figured out and it worked well for me for years. Basically, it helps you register with Amazon in most countries Amazon delivers to.
Then it allows you to add Amazon links and images simply and quickly, right from your WordPress interface. You won’t have to skip back and forth to the Amazon websites ever again.
You need to localize each product. That means, make sure your Amazon dot com link, points to the same product in each country.
If you don’t localise your customer will possibly click-through to a “product not found” screen or something unrelated based on keywords.
You can pick, through the Easy Azon Pro interface, exactly which product your customers, in each country, see.
Use your Google Analytics to see which countries your site’s visitors are coming from. This will give you a good idea as to how much money each country should be making for you.
For me it’s USA by a long way, then the UK and Canada. Australia is high up there but Australia is tricky and is a low-volume market. For every dollar I make from Amazon Australia I probably make 50 from Amazon USA.
You certainly need to target the US. That’s where the big Amazon money seems to be.
Easy Azon also has some useful ad-ons such as a bestseller list creation tool and a table creation tool. I own both and the product comparison tables are supposedly a fantastic thing to add. They never made me a dime.
Comparison tables are a great thing to add (although we didn’t test EasyAzon’s version in the end) but the EasyAzon bestseller list drove zero sales. I had a unique tracking code on them and there was no increase in Amazon sales at all through adding those.
As I said above, Amazon’s own localisation tools, from the Associate’s Site Stripe, are all you need now. I haven’t needed Easy Azon in years.
You Need a Way to Collect Your International Amazon Earnings
This is another of those things you need to do now, today. I’ve learnt this lesson through bitter experience.
I had hundreds of dollars of Amazon credit on Amazon USA, enough to keep us in Kindle books forever, because there was nothing else I could spend them on.
Amazon US credits can only be spent on Amazon dot-com and you’ll find they deliver very few items to the rest of the world.
I was hoping to use my credits to buy my new DSLR, unfortunately, when push came to shove, not one camera on Amazon dot-com was deliverable to Romania.
It was my own fault entirely. We eventually discovered that we could collect international Amazon earnings through Payoneer, today we use Transferwise. This has now rebranded as Wise. You can sign up for Wise here, it’s great for collecting, and spending, international earnings around the world.
Each country’s Amazon will pay onto a card and I can use it like a pre-paid debit card, anywhere. Depending on your location, you may now be able to collect payments direct from Amazon.
Amazon do pay out by cheque too, but the banking fees involved were steep for us and we needed a permanent address, which of course, we didn’t have.
Please check with Amazon as these details change all the time.
You Need Targeted, Ready to Buy, Customers
You need people arriving on your site, ready to buy whatever Amazon product you’re recommending.
That means, the woman who wants to buy a travel organizer and is in the decision making process of Googling for more information on which organizer to choose.
You need to get her to your site and give her information to help her make her purchase. She then clicks your link, straight through to Amazon and makes her purchase.
How to do that? It’s usually done through good SEO. That’s Search Engine Optimisation if you’re a complete beginner. SEO is about getting your search results to the top of page 1 of Google.
You need to find the right Long Tail Keywords, find out how many people are entering those keywords into Google and discover how competitive those keywords are.
Pick a keyword set with high traffic, low competition and write the post to fit the keywords. That’s how it works.
The tool I originally used for this job was called Long Tail Pro and it was incredibly useful, not just for your Amazon earnings, but to get more traffic (and more advertising revenue) to your websites.
Keysearch is another keyword research tool, I’ve used both and I prefered Longtail. It’s just personal choice.
These days I use SEMRush for my keyword research. It’s a more expensive tool and not for beginners.
I won’t tell you to do this one now, because it’s a little advanced, if you’re new it may be just too much to figure out.
This tool is also expensive and you pay every month or annually, so until your website is earning nicely you maybe won’t want to commit. But if you invest upfront, now, your path to financial freedom will be shorter.
Another tip here, pick your competition. Don’t go after the same keywords as Amazon, it won’t work, you have to be different when up against the e-commerce sites.
Buy Longtail Pro Platinum Here (it’s essential to have the Platinum for the keyword competitiveness data) or try the trial to see how you like it. Have a play around, it’s pretty neat. It would also be a very good idea to use Longtail Pro to pick the domain name and get ideas on traffic volume in the niche of your new website if you haven’t even started yet. Just saying.
Don’t Lose Your Readers
These Amazon posts (I often refer to them as Sales Pages ) don’t have to go out to your regular followers, they can go straight to the website, no announcement. You’ll lose your valuable subscribers if you bombard them with every Amazon earning post you pump out.
For Jetpack users, just switch off subscribers before you hit publish. Easy! Just don’t forget to switch it back on again.
Same for sponsored posts, never send those out to your subscribers if you don’t have to.
When you’ve been blogging a while switch from automated notifications of new posts to an email notification service provider like Mailchimp, MailerLite, Convert Kit or any of the more expensive ones.
It gives you greater control and your sales pages can then go in your newsletter. Both Mail Chimp and Mailer Lite are free to bloggers with small subscriber lists. Once your list is big these services get expensive.
Hope this helps you to get it right from day 1. I’ve just shaved a few years off your learning curve if you’re a new blogger. Happy to help.
Other Things You’ll Need to Make Money Through Your Website or Blog
I’ll give you another heads up here, you may need a plugin called Advanced Ads (alternatively, AdInserter) to place adverts in the same place on every page of your website. I used it for Adsense before I joined Mediavine, but it works for Amazon ads or any others.
My Adsense earnings multiplied 100 fold the day I set that plugin up properly and it’s just so much easier than coding in adverts manually. 1 click and an ad is placed wherever you want it, on every page. Thank me later.
You’ll also need great hosting. Great hosting is fast and page speed affects Google rankings. I struggled with Host Gator before switching to Blue Host because of a blogger recommendation. That was a disaster.
Site Ground is the hosting company we used for years now, our big site uses Agathon, but this is probably too expensive for new-intermediate bloggers.
I couldn’t be more pleased with Siteground and the customer service and support was superb. Any tech problem I’ve had, they fix, for free, instantly. I loved them, check them out here.
This big sitejust outgrew them and now we pay a lot for hosting on this one.
What Goes on An Amazon Sales Page and More Amazon Affiliate Sale Tips.
- Your well-chosen keyword will be in the title, url, a subheading, your meta description, image alt tags and the text. As always, keep it natural.
- Likewise, any secondary keywords that you think or hope your post will rank for. Improve these over time with feedback from Search Console.
- Purchasers really like buttons, graphs, tables, and charts, easy to use, easy to compare, easy to buy. I had add-ons of Easy Azon to create these page features I did implement Easy Best Sellers lists but it didn’t perform, which was no surprise.
- A video is always a good idea to hold people on page longer.
- Table of contents plugins are generally recommended for better SEO. You’ll see one at the top of this page.
- Really go to town on useful information to help people make up their minds and make yourself sound like the ultimate authority on whatever it is.
- You should make sales pages that fit with other content on your site. Choose items that Google may already think you’re an authority on and that you can easily internally link to. Internal linking is a massively important part of SEO.
- Try not to get too complicated or generalist with sales pages. Don’t include extra items that don’t really fit with the keyword. I was very guilty of doing this when I first started. Keep it niche and specific.
- Use stock images if you have to. I buy stock images from Shutterstock sometimes if I need to but I always prefer to use my own unique images.
- You can add Amazon links to every page if you like. If, for instance, you have a post on Sri Lanka, you can add an Amazon widget featuring items you would recommend for travellers to Sri Lanka. These will never perform as well as targetted sales pages but they can bring a few sales here and there.
- Just getting people to Amazon is a big part of the process, who knows, once they’re there they may remember that TV they wanted to buy. Amazon is very good at selling.
- Check all your Amazon links regularly, things change.
- Check your localisations too if you use Easy Azon. There is a lot of work involved in this, don’t let anyone tell you it’s truly passive income.
Bonus Amazon Affiliate Sales Tips
I update these old posts all the time and I’ll keep adding tips to help you make more affiliate sales.
- Tracking. Something we’ve been working on recently is really getting organised with the Amazon affiliate pages. Everything was a mess and we didn’t know which pages were driving sales, which were a disaster. So slowly we’ve been creating unique tracking codes (you do this in Amazon under “manage tracking codes”) and inserting them into old links, just so that we can better see what’s going on
- It’s also worth looking at the percentage payouts Amazon allocates for different types of sales. These vary from 10% to just 1 %.
- So if you’re going to create Amazon sales pages, don’t just think about SEO and what you can rank for. Also, go for higher-priced items with higher percentage payouts.
- Monitor each sales page obsessively to drive those posts up the rankings, using your Search Console data.
- Christmas has a massive effect on sales, start pumping out your sales pages in January to grow their authority for Christmas and around Christmas time give them a big push on all social media channels.
Making Direct Amazon Affiliate Sales From Social Media
Yes, you can do this too. If you look at your Amazon affiliates bar at the top of your account, you’ll see buttons to create Twitter and Facebook links. Use these, sparingly, to drive more people to Amazon from your personal and business social accounts.
Be absolutely certain that you read all of Amazon’s requirements and service terms. They do have some strict rules on what is and isn’t allowed.
Amazon Affiliate Earning Proof
I’m not going to give you screen shots of my bank balance nor of the back end of my Amazon affiliate account. I don’t need to. So why add this paragraph?
I noticed people were searching for proof and ending up on this page. Our proof is this, we’ve travelled full time for 6 or 7 years on our affiliate earnings and advertising revenue.
If you look around this website you’ll see photographic proof from over 50 countries, including Bhutan, possibly the most expensive country to visit. This isn’t a scam or a pyramid scheme.
Affiliate marketing is a legitimate way to make a living and there are millions of people doing it.
Amazon Rate Cuts on Affiliate Sales
Amazon cut their rates from time to time and there’s nothing we can do about that.
Before going into Amazon affiliate sales seriously, do check out the percentage payments on the different kinds of products Amazon sell.
Some products give the affiliate better returns than others.
As a rule of thumb, target expensive products from the higher rate brackets for maximum affiliate return.
Some Strict Amazon Affiliate Rules to Follow
Always check Amazon’s own terms and conditions, they are very strict as to what is allowed and what isn’t. You will need to display a precisely worded Amazon disclaimer. Ours is in the footer of this page.
You also need to disclose that a page contains affiliate links, you’ll see ours just below the heading. I hope, I think that ours are OK.
Never offer incentives to suggest people should visit Amazon from your site, that’s not allowed. Do not put direct Amazon links in your newsletter.
Is it worth selling through Amazon Affiliates in 2023?
Yes, it’s still very much worth selling through Amazon affiliates. Even if you only make $1 per day, that’s a useful amount of cash at the end of the month. Amazon have cut their rates, this is true, but spending a day creating an Amazon sales page on your website could make you an income, every day, every night, for years to come. Why leave money on the table?
Create a few sales posts with correct SEO, tables, a unique video and your own images. You need to show that you’re actually using the product, so order it, get the images, and test it properly. Google wants authentic sales pages, your readers need authenticity too. Honest content creators win at the end of the day and several Google updates have aimed to take affiliate spammers out of the search results.
So off you go, start focussing on your affiliate sales.
I’ll tell you now that Amazon is just one part of the puzzle, on this site we maybe have 50 different affiliate schemes and programs set up and each one brings us an income. None are implemented perfectly, but we get there.
We have around 10 Amazon sales pages on this site because I find them boring to make. Had I made more, sooner, with good know-how, I’d be rich today. Like you, I’ve learned over the years so what I did as a new blogger and what I do today will look very different, but if you want to sell on Amazon get those sales pages made now, don’t put it off because those posts will bring future-you an income, a growing income as they rise through the search results.
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Hi all,
In my blogs, I always try to finds niche and good quality products, the first products I started with were from Secrets Of Tea, I’m making very good commissions with them so I kept looking for companies that have the same quality and standard, it will be nice to get more ideas from you where to post more links.
Thanks.
Thanks Anna. Small companies that nobody has heard of tend not to do as well as the mighty Amazon. Which is a shame, but it is what it is. People are used to buying from Amazon and all their details will already be in there. But as I’m a huge fan of tea, and we really struggle to get good tea in Australia. I’ll check your company out. Thanks. I have bought that particular beverage on Amazon from the usual British companies because its just not in the shops here.
Hi ! I’m from Romania and I registered for amazon affiliates, but with an US account. How do I receive any payment? Because I put my romanian account. Is there any issue with that?
I don’t know specifically how to deal with it from a Romanian account, but for US payments we use Wise, formerly Transferwise.
Hi Alyson
I have just registered the first of my blogs after months of ghost writing for other bloggers.
It is too soon to start moving on the suggestions made in your post, or should I start setting up affiliates now?
Travel safely.
Paul
If you have content published that need affiliate links in them. Put them in. If you want to create sales posts, create them. But it will take time for a new site to rank, without your posts ranking you won’t get sales and there is a lot to getting them to rank. Google is in the middle of rolling out new updates, Core Web Vitals, be extra careful to make your site and individual pages as fast and minimal as possible.
Hey,
I was wondering how your income has changed since the amazon affiliates commission rates cuts? Is your website mostly geared towards amazon products? If so, how has it been impacted and do you have any thoughts on whether its still worth it to have an amazon affiliate website?
Thanks!
Hi Magda, the changes didn’t affect us too badly because most of the items we sell weren’t slashed. I have a friend who sells a particular product that was in one of the categories that was just decimated, and yes, she was badly affected. It’s very underhand and not at all fair, but it is what it is. Yes, I think it’s worth it. But you’re still at the mercy of Amazon. Obviously, we’ve been smashed by Coronavirus, we’re on about one-third of our normal traffic, but the Amazon sales pages stayed fairly strong. The “incidental” Amazon earnings have gone though. Like when people buy a huge food shop via your links, that doesn’t happen because those items are 0% now. So yes, impacted, but ticking over. I do have to hold my hands up and say that I’ve barely bothered with the Amazon links lately, a lot of old links will have expired or become broken. But it’s only a small part of our income so not top priority. Best of luck.
Hey Alyson,
I wanted to get on your radar and leave a comment because in the interview the guest mentions using Keywords Everywhere when it was still a free tool.
Of course Keywords Everywhere is now paid, and I think a great alternative for your readers would be our tool what’s my serp everywhere – a free keywords search tool, with unlimited searches displaying CPC and volume metrics.
It has 5 star reviews and 20k+ users. I’d love for you to try it and see what your thoughts are.
Thanks, I’ll take a look. Yes, it was very annoying when Keywords Everywhere stopped being free. At that time I switched to SEMRush but stil, my favourite keyword research tool is Longtail Pro. It’s the one I’ve used for years and years while others I’ve just tried and not really got along wth as well.
This is a really helpful post on explaining the international amazon affiliates approach. Thanks for sharing it.
Hi, Thanks for the detailed guide, I’m getting a lot of traffic from Australia and China, but onlink does not support these two and few other countries. How I can earn with this traffic? am losing a lot of $$…
I I can place the Aus-affiliate links . My main ca is Amz-US and other UK Canada affiliate working fine with onelink.
-Michael
Easy Azon covered Australia last time I used it but I just don’t think, for us, it’s worth targeting most countries outside America.
Hello
I am a bit confused. In one sentence you state “Previously we used Easy Azon, we no longer recommend it.””
Then the next 3 paragraphs go on to tell us how great it is.
So do you use and recommend or not?
Thanks
Al McCall
Read it again. I think there’s an update there.
I have recently started an Affiliate Marketing Business and for this purpose, I have started a blog on this. But somewhere I found difficulty in searching for new contents for my blog and also I am confused about what products to promote on the blog which I have started.
Finally,
I found your article which was so useful and an eye-opener for me. I have learned a lot from this post.
I really like this post. lots of useable tips. I set up an Amazon.com.au affiliate account when i set up my blog but as no one bought anything they deactivated it. I was looking at Ezyazon now i have a bit more on my site and was wondering why you stopped using it. Is the Amazon onelink easier to use?
the other question i had was when i sign up again to Amazon should i use the US one as my original. DO i have to sign up for Australia as well.
The Payoneer account sounds really good. I will definitely look into that when i get things set up.
I think i need to work on my SEO before i get too affiliate happy.
I have got one guest post with a link to my website but that was only in a newsletter.
I stopped using Easy Azon because it’s just too annoying having to localise every product precisely and check each link and localisation code every few months. Also somebody said Easy Azon images aren’t in compliance with Amazon’s terms. Easy Azon allows localisation for Amazon Au but because Amazon Au is so useless, there are hardy any products on there, localisation was really hard and half the time just wasn’t working for me. Australians can order from Amazon US again now though … with extra tax and huge delivery fees unless you have Amazon Prime and the item is on Prime. We just bought an item and delivery from the US was $160… plus extra tax. It’s crazy that Australia can’t get stuff at the prices the rest of the world pays. And don’t even get me started on how we can’t get the latest technology here, it’s maddening. We still fly to Asia to buy phones and computers. With One Link things are more straightforward but there is no localisation for Au. Which is no loss. I make over 10 x what I make from any other country from the US. In countries like the UK, Canada, Germany etc Amazon is superb and well established, people use it all the time. In Au it’s still new, delivery is poor and the buying population is tiny so I just don’t think it’s worth worrying about yet. Hopefully it will improve. US is by far my biggest audience and that’s where we earn, in advertising and in affiliate sales. Next time you sign up for Amazon be sure to give it a big push and sell some items fast. It’s easy to do through social before your Google traffic takes off. And target the US.
Hi there, I really love the blog post. I have a question I can’t seem to find the answer to – do you need to have a minimum in Amazon sales to continue on the affiliate program? I ask because I’m a new blogger so my page views and traffic are both relatively low at the moment. But, with the little traffic I DO get, I’d hate to miss out on potential income.
They will kick you off for no sales sometimes, but I’ve never heard of anyone being kicked off for low sales. It’s pretty easy to get a couple, just use social media. Pinterest is good for me too.
Hi I like your post and it gave me some good ideas????
I just start to promote on my new web as affillitte and have promoted some products on facebook. I have around 500 clicks in a two weeks but no sells. What do you think the reasons for that? Do i have to change my products links every week or once i get a link it enough?
I have so many questions as a biggenner… Thanks a lot
I’m sorry Orit. I think you’re just doing everything wrong. I’m presuming you’re the victim of a get rich quick course seller. Ask yourself this .. if these people were actually making so much money in affiliate sales, why are they selling courses ? This industry is full of fakes and I hate it. It makes me sad on your behalf. Don’t waste your money on courses.
Well I’m not have taken any course just try to learn about it from the net. So maybe I have to take one????
What can be wrong if I get traffic and clicks? Can you tell me what was your percentage between clicks to orders when you started?
No idea Orit, sorry. My current conversion rate is about 8% on Amazon I think. But the cookie length helps a lot. And a huge part of my Amazon sales are totally unrelated items, I just got the person to Amazon. Also which countries? I make way, way more from the US than from anywhere else. Australia will never fly for me, the UK is pretty lame, but America is huge. I don’t even know how many clicks per day I get, but I’ll go look for you… roughly 200 per day in January to America only, didn’t check the others. Christmas would have been a lot more. I only have maybe 6 Amazon sales pages. Obviously if I made more ( I don’t enjoy making them) I could boost this a lot, but I prefer making a living from advertising.
THANKS A LOT FOR YOUR REPLAY AND THE TIME YOU SPENT FOR IT????
This is quite an eye-openign read! I had just switched to ezoic for my adsense platform and thought I was doing well! $300 a month from ads I thoguht was good but it seems like Amazon is an even bigger game changer.
I’m not much of a travel packing and equipment aficionado. Mostly just pack light and grab whatever I can so not sure what I would write in this regards but it’s good to see you taking advantage of it! Congrats and keep traveling 😀
Johnny, I make a lot more money from Ads than from Amazon, several thousand per month. Amazon is actually one of the more annoying affiliate programs in that you have to keep updating and making sure links still work. It’s a lot of effort. It is by no way my best affiliate income stream, but they all work, every small stream adds to the river and of course the more Amazon sales posts you can get up, the better. I still have very few, under 10. But 1 of them is the biggest post on this site so does pretty well. Obviously you’ll do better if you’re selling higher value products, so sell TVs not bookmarks. Best of luck!
I’ve only just come across this post and I wonder if you are still using EasyAzon? I have been trying to use Amazons new Link Builder plug in because I am a UK blogger but like you, the majority of my traffic comes from the US and I don’t want to put multiple links all over my blog! However, until I make 3 sales through the US site, they won’t approve my API keys. (Chicken and egg scenario!) Does EasyAzon require API keys for all countries you want to sell from? I have my API keys for my UK account.
Thanks for any help in advance, I’m kind of pulling my hair out stage now!
I am still using EasyAzon, yes. I tried Amazon’s own tool and you couldn’t precisely localise to a product. I don’t know if they have added this feature since. I don’t think you need an API key, no. I’ll check if I can but I set all this up so long ago, I can’t remember. Easy Azon guides you through the process of getting your affiliate account set up for each country, although not Australia as yet, which is annoying. Can you even make a regular link to US Amazon without an API key? Localisation is really important and yes, absolutely you need the US, I make at least 10 times more from Amazon US than Amazon UK. A little from France Germany, Canada too, but in all honesty I don’t bother checking those daily. UK and US are the big ones.
OK, there was an API key required for set up, but it looks to me that Easy Azon Pro only needs one API and I’m presuming it’s my British one.
You need an Amazon AWS account. I have one, it says Amazon.com on it. I was guided to this from Easy Azon.
Okay, thanks very much for your help with this, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it! I will have a look at EasyAzon and see what happens ????xx
Should we wait till we get good traffic on the blog, say 1000 visitors daily and then start affiliate ads on the website. What do you recommend?
What types of affiliate products you suggest for city bloggers and which have traffic from particular states only in India.
No, I would absolutely start monetising straight away, as soon as possible. What you choose to sell is normally determined by what terms you can rank for ie. yourkeyword research.
Hi there! I just wanted to say thanks so much for all the valuable information you have provided so far! I’ve been following all the tips and tricks and implemeting them as much as I can 🙂 I’m having some troubles with EasyAzon, but hope I’ll have it working soon. I may be needing a Skype call or something soon haha!
EVERYONE has troubles with EasyAzon LOL. It’s not Easy. But mostly it works. It’s still the best I’ve tried but I’m always on the lookout for something better. Good luck!
Hi Guys
With Easyazon do you still have to sign up to individual countries within Amazon?
Yes, but you do it through the Easy Azon interface, back end, it really easy. Use Google translate for the non English speaking ones. In all honesty I only make reasonable money from Canada, UK and USA though, occasionally France and Germany. So don’t sweat too much. Looking forward to Australia being on EasyAzon, hopefully once Australian Amazon is really up and running that will be another big income stream. Also collecting money from Canada is tricky, we’re just letting it build up and if we get enough we’ll go to Canada and spend it .LOL. There must be a way other than by cheque or bank deposit but we haven’t done it yet. ( Haven’t tried too hard either, happy to just let it build).
I’m just starting out and looking at several hosting companies to help launch my blog (thanks for suggesting Site Ground). I have considered the affiliate program with Amazon as well, so the information you have here about how to run an international Amazon business is fantastic! I’m currently saving to invest and get started! I’m also interested in working with other companies as well, for marketing/advertising and promoting brands to help generate extra income.
I do have a few specific questions –
After finding the niche audience, what kinds of companies are best to affiliate with when just starting out? Do we go for smaller online or local businesses, or should we go for bigger companies? Do these companies really care about the size of your audience, or do they care more about sponsorship? What’s the best way to approach them, to begin building the affiliate-business relationship? Do you have more helpful information on how to market yourself?
Also, was just curious as to how you and your family find places to stay while traveling?! Do you share/rent homes for a certain period of time, or do you just stay in various hotels? I only ask because we do travel with kids and wondering how you best accommodate them, while always on the move. Thank you for all the advice, guidance, and wisdom! Your blog is inspirational, and the information you post has been most helpful in my family’s journey to living our dreams traveling the world!
Megan, you don’t have to have a relationship with the company to be an affiliate, anyone can apply and in 5 years and hundreds of schemes I’ve only been refused once or twice. It’s easy to get on affiliate schemes, very easy. What makes most money is the big price ticket items. Also just starting out you’ll need to really focus on your keyword research and hunt down low competition keywords to get any Google traffic to your affiliate sales pages. Simultaneously work like crazy at growing your DA ( collabs and guest posts) so that you can target higher and higher competition keywords ( with more search volume) and get them in the top 3 in the SERPS. Getting your page to Google #1 is priceless in affiliate marketing. Where do we stay? Hotels mostly. We’re in a house rental now, found locally in Vietnam, bcause we’re here for a few months because of my husband’s training. I’d far rather stay in hotels and not have to cook/clean, although in Asia we mostly eat out it’s cheaper, but the moment we move into a house or apartment Mum becomes domestic drudge again, I hate that!
I spent most of my adult life in the IT world and the last decade in web design. So I kind of know what I am doing. However, once I handed a site over to the customer I was done with it. I have little experience keeping a specific web site profitable. I’m about to retire and travel a lot already. We always set up a blog for family and friends who all love it. Making extra money would sure help the travel budget.
What I wonder about is exactly how much time you devote to all the research and coding, how much time you spend on search words, advertising and finding the next “app that you must have” to keep your blog profitable? As I said, I am about to retire and my partner already is. I don’t really want another full-time job. Our experience already has shown that blogging in countries/areas where the internet is sloooooow at best time is very time consuming. To my mind, spending too much time writing/posting, hours trying to upload decent pictures and keeping the adverts relative and working would make the travel experience much less fun. At my age, I just have less patience with all that.
Can you give me an estimate on how much time I would need to devote to a site or two to make some extra money? I’m not looking to supplement my entire salary. The pension will provide most of my meager needs. We don’t really want to give up our home and live our lives constantly traveling. But, a couple thousand more per trip would sure help us travel for 3 months at a time each year.
I do it because I love it Rick. It’s never been work to me, it’s fun, it’s my hobby. You’re right, trying to work while you’re travelling is hard, particularly with bad internet, so I don’t do much when we’re on the road. That said, I often get back from a day out and just have to share some photos and words because I’m buzzing with excitement. A post can take from an hour, to 2 days, depending on content, length, photos, adding links, it depends how thorough I’m being. During our down time I focus on getting everything set up to just keep ticking over. I’ll schedule a lot of social media and try to get a few posts semi- written, ready to publish If I really don’t have time to put something out. Of course I’ll work hard on the stuff that makes the money too and make everything as profitable as possible. I can happily spend all day, every day working on my sites, from 4am to bed time around 8pm. I could, but I don’t. I have kids and cooking, cleaning, laundry, shopping, all that stuff to do. So every spare minute if I have nothing better to do, is probably the best answer you’ll get out of me. My advice would be, don’t do it if you’re only doing it to make money, then it’s a chore. You need passion, otherwise it will be obvious that it’s just a cash cow. There is never enough time and you can always do more. When you’re self employed it’s always hard to stop improving and consider your working day over.
By the way, your images need to be resized and optimised, uploading them at under 100MB should be pretty quick.
Thanks for the informative reply. By the way, I love your blog and I have learned quite a lot about Sri Lanka travel, our next possible destination and about blogging in general.
I quite understand what you mean about “loving what you do”. To be honest, after 35 years of IT work, I am a bit exhausted by the endless learning curve. It was truly fun in my 30s, but an awful lot of work in my 60s and lots of work is not what I want. I am retiring after all. I might not be the best choice as a profitable blogger.
Our trips to India and Guatemala showed us that travel within the comfort zone we have become accustomed to in our more mature years has become too expensive for us. Back and knee injuries have made long bus/train rides something to avoid and no air-con in hot, humid climates is also less desirable (actually sometimes we do occasionally opt for fan only rooms due to budget). Even in our usual destinations in certain S.E. Asia countries the costs have slowly risen to almost more than we can afford on our limited retirement incomes. I don’t mind putting in some work on making a blog profitable. But,
I was just hoping to manage without it becoming a full-time job. In your opinion, am I hoping for too much?
Why don’t you try it and see how it goes? It costs very little to get it set up. But work smart. Don’t focus on writing travel stories, focus on writing posts with good SEO that sell something. A hotel booking, a product with affiliate links. Then build links to those posts and do each one right. If you can get the incoming links you can increase your DA ( your content, obviously needs to be good, people need to click on you in search results and spend time on your pages). If you can get your DA up you’ll get sponsored post offers. IF you’re prepared to do them, many aren’t, they’re instant money for 10 minutes of work. But it’s a risk to your site, Google can de-index you. Many make money that way, my site is too big to risk like that. We find fan only fine for us, but we’ve lived in the tropics for many years, it’s something you have to get used to and adjust your life to. In the crazy heat of Luxor and Aswan last week we needed that aircon, but we rarely see temperatures that high. We’ve just payed $30/ night for a Marriott resort on the Red Sea, there are ways of doing it cheaper.
I don’t yet have a website, but is it possible to sell affiliate Amazon products with Facebook advertising using the easy azon pro?
Thanks so much.
You can put Amazon links on Facebook and on Twitter, it’s simple to do. I do sometimes but it looks terribly spammy and you could lose followers. But I’m not sure if they’ll let you have an account without a verified website.
Okay, thank you.
I also wanted to ask if there is a way of finding other online companies, aside from Amazon, that you can apply to set up affiliate accounts with, particularly in the travel niche.
I have seen quite a few sponsored posts on Facebook/Instagram that promote products as an affiliate, but wondered how I go about finding the companies that are looking for people to promote their products.
Hope this makes sense.
Thank you.
Just Google for “X company affiliate scheme”
Time to rethink our Amazon links for websites as many years ago we used Reviewazon but that was awful hard work and stopped working when Amazon made some drastic changes – I forget what. Anyway on your recommendation I will give Easy Azon a try. Already have Payoneer account just need to work out how to get address approval to resend new card as it’s due to expire soon! We have no fixed address that we can prove with relevant ID etc as currently in Gran Canaria. Great advice for people getting started in this and yes you have shaved years of the trial and error we went through LOL!
Cheers @Samantha. I think we had our Payoneer sent to London, can’t remember now, don’t think we needed any proof.
It’s ok I may have got mixed up with Citibank – my bad! But thanks for taking the time to respond.
Thank you thank you thank you! We’re finally starting our own family travel blog thanks to your help.
– Globe Darting Family
And THANK YOU Nancy. If I can help you in any way I will. And don’t pay for courses!!!
Hello Alyson!
We’re super excited my wife and I have found your website! We are a family of three and our little guy is 2 years old. I just got out of the US military where we were fortunate enough to start our traveling to South Korea for a year. We are now looking to prepare for our traveling around the start of 2018. I read above that you don’t mind setting up a time to schedule a time to Skype and talk with you guys. That sounds great and I think that’s what my wife and I need to understand the way you have made this all possible.
Hi D & K, good to hear from you.
You need this page ( which I’m still building, I’ve been ” quietly” doing all this Skype consulting and only just started publicising it. My email address is on there. Shoot me an email. Cheers and good luck. https://worldtravelfamily.com/family-travel-help-and-advice-from-world-travel-family/
Thanks Alyson. Great post since we’re in the early stages of trying to monetize our site. We’re currently signed up with Amazon UK and US but did not realise you only get cash payment if you have a Payoneer account. Can we not use our Paypal account instead? I can’t see us being in a place long enough to receive a Payoneer card in the mail. Any advice on this would be much appreciated 🙂
Darren & Shelley
No, you absolutely can’t use Paypal, Payoneer is the only way. 1 of the above is your home country presumably, revenue from that country can go straight into your home bank account. For now set the payout threshold to something really high, that way they won’t pay you in Amazon credits and you can get Payoneer sorted out when the time suits you.
Thanks Alyson. Good idea about setting the threshold high for now. I can see that Payoneer can also transfer money into our bank account so maybe that’ll be better if we’re lucky enough to make some money this way. We’re just about to purchase EasyAzon using one of your links! 🙂
Hey, it’s not luck, it’s hard work and doing it right! You’ll get there, but be targetted right from day one and put affiliate links of some sort in every, single post.
Hi Alyson! I am wondering how you get Payoneer payments from Amazon Canada? I have not found a way to do this. Works beautifully for my US, DE, FR and UK though. Getting the Canada cheque is ultra annoying so I’d love to stop it if I could!
Also wondering how you are finding the exchange rates when using the card in Thailand? I found the rates so bad whenever I used it for anything other than bank transfer (usually adding up to about an 8% charge!) that I stopped but that was over a year ago now. Any chance you happened to calculate the difference? Hopefully, they have stopped ripping their customers off
Hi, James handles all this, he says he hasn’t bothered hooking up Canada yet, don’t know if it’s possible or not. We tend to just le it add up until it’s worth collecting I know USA and Germany are paying out nicely. We don’t use it for cash withdrawals ever in Thailand ( or anywhere) we just use it to pay for stuff directly, shops, restaurants etc. The exchange rate is pretty good, just a fraction under the inter-bank rate and no charges at all, so it’s our best friend here, accepted everywhere in Thailand that we’ve tried so far. We’ve also found out how to get cash out in Thailand without any bank charges, finally! ( not with Payoneer obviously, our normal bank cards) The Thai bank we used to use that had no charges has stopped doing that, they all charge about 200 Baht plus home bank charges, so now we get cash advance from a bank, over the counter, no charges at all on the cash advance in Thailand ( only what your home bank charges, for us very little). So yes, all working out very nicely. James will be posting about all this money stuff soon on his site, I hate numbers! I like monks and puppies and food and lovely things. This is why I married him 😉
Thanks for the tip for Thailand! Here’s one for payoneer – you can get Amazon UK money out by getting it transferred into the German Payoneer account. For some reason, it doesnt work with UK Payoneer acount but that work around works just fine.
We have UK bank accounts, it goes straight in. Those accounts give us free transactions anywhre in Europe, pretty neat !
Thanks for the tips, Alyson. I bought Easy Azon recently but had no idea about Payoneer, so that’s a great link to have. x
How are you getting on with Easy Azon Jane? It took me ages to get it right! Yep the Payoneer has simplified my life and my Amazon earnings x 1 million.
Good post 🙂 I started getting Amazon affiliates on a home ed blog I started *9 years* ago! 😉 I had about £10 sat in it for ages before starting to get serious about it again. Finally cashed it out :p
Nice work Kirsty! You’ve been an Amazon affiliate even longer than me.
not really something to be proud of though!! 😉 Imagine where I could be if i got serious 9 years ago!
Oh I know that feeling! But it’s good to know we’ve got it sorted now. I visualised it, and it happened, but it’s been a lot of work to figure it all out.
something i learned this morning was if you link to search results it does not localize the search! I’m trying to figure out how to fix that as i like to link to search results instead of a specific product!
Lindsay, it does work. See I’ve added the words blue shoes at the end of the post? Well that’s a US link and if I click on it I go to the UK site. But the search is language, not code based, so in non-English speaking countries you’d need chausseaurs bleu or whatever. I wonder if you can put the foreign language equivalent into the localizer?