How To Start Making Money With Amazon and Your Blog

Monetize your Blog as an Amazon Affiliate

My previous post provided some ideas on making money with Amazon as related to using a website. This post extends the thought to using a Blog for your Amazon Affiliate business.

As an Amazon Affiliate, you can promote anything that Amazon sells (which is EVERYTHING!) and make a commission of 4%-10% every time something is bought by somebody you referred through your links (which is tracked through an Affiliate ID in every link). Keep in mind that the terms Amazon Affiliate and Amazon Associate refer to the same program. 1. Decide on the platform for your blog – Why a blog, you may ask? Because it will provide the necessary structure to make it easy for you to run an effective site and easily post new content. A blog structure allows you to easily organize your content as featured posts, recent posts, archived posts, search by tags, plus advertising areas.

WordPress and Blogger are the most popular blog platforms. Both are free, easy to use, have many themes available and both provide hosting for your blogs. There are great differences in the two blog platforms as well. WordPress allows a user to download a version of their blog software and install it on their own domain. This may be beneficial to some bloggers who want more control over their blog look and feel. You can certainly have more control than when WordPress hosts your blog. Blogger is hosted by Google, but in my opinion, their hosted blog gives the user much more control than a WordPress hosted blog. I have used both WordPress (hosted) and Blogger for some time. I prefer Blogger as it allows me to change the layout, themes and insert HTML code for about any type of theme/layout. If you aren't comfortable with using HTML, this may not be as useful to you.

If you use WordPress on your own domain and hosting, then you will have more control.

You can also have a combination website and blog. This post is on my Blog which is run on my website with a Blog option. Each blog page has a blog layout for easy creation of your content. I like this combination of website and blog!

Below is an image of my website and blog combination Navigation Bar, showing the blog access option:

2. Choose a valuable niche - Your first step is to find a valuable niche, or in promoting Amazon products, select the products you want to promote. You need to choose a product(s) that will appeal strongly to the greatest number of people. You’ll also need to consider what kind of competition is out there for your product(s). Amazon customer reviews are a good place to start with product research. Also, take a look at Amazon's Best Selling list of products in different categories.

3. Make your Blog look good – Build a Professional looking site.

One of the perks to WordPress and Blogger is all the templates that you have to choose from. In addition to the hundreds of free themes, there are hundreds of themes you can buy. Pick a theme that looks good, ties to your niche, has the layout you want (header, columns, footer, etc), and offers what you want to be able to do in terms of tools. Take your time and build a blog that’s going to complement your writing abilities. 4. Create your categories – Your blog software should allow you to setup categories that help you to organize your posts and it can help you decide on your content topics. Categories also make it easier for your visitors to find what it is they are interested in reading. For example, a dog training site might have a number of categories such as dog training, dog food, dog collars, etc. In Blogger and WordPress, in addition to categories, you can also set up a tabbed Index Page (using HTML), which allows the visitors to see and select from a list of all your Posts. You can add these types of features at a later time. 5. Become an Amazon Associate – Now that you have selected your niche, domain, and web host, you are now ready to apply to Amazon to become an Affiliate. The sign up is simple, and it’s free. Just go to the Amazon site and click the ‘Join Now for Free’ button. You’ll want to have your site set up – at least the basics, with some content, as they are going to review your site before they accept you as an Associate. This may take a few days before you get the approval. Once you get the approval, then you will be eligible to start posting links to Amazon products as shown in the rest of this post.

6. Create the blog posting links – There are different ways to create your links. You can use the tools offered by your blog software, but the easiest way is using the Amazon Build A Link tool. Amazon provides good instruction on how to go about building your different type links. Log into your Associates Central page, and find the product you want to review. Build your personalized link which will contain your Associate ID. There are a number of options for link building but most marketers would tell you that the text links are more effective than banner/graphic links.

You can find help in getting started at Amazon's Resource Center. Here you will find in-depth Articles & Tutorials created by members of the Amazon Associates community and the Amazon Associates team. The Resource Center is designed to help you monetize your website or blog, improve its visibility and provide tips on using some of the great tools available on Associates Central.

The blog structure allows you to advertise Amazon products on every page in a side bar, beyond the text links and graphics you may have in your Post content. 7. It’s time to blog – Write your Amazon product reviews

The time has come to write your blog review and post it. You will insert your link code to the product on your Amazon site that you are writing the review for. You will want to include a number of reviews with good content. Add content to your blog on a regular basis.

If interested, you can take a look at how I have written product reviews on Amazon's Security Camera products on one of my blogs. 8. Promote your blog – Make sure you take time to promote your blog. There are all kinds of online communities that can help you do this, as well as social media, directories, etc. Also, there are many way to promote a product with both free and paid advertising. The more exposure you provide for your product offering gives you more chances of making a sale!

A good way to promote Amazon products (on your blog) is to write lists of products that you recommend for various reasons, complete with a description, review and picture. Using knowledge and experience you have, make them thorough and authentic, or from research of other customer reviews on the Internet. Give the visitor reading your article information to answer all their questions and be ready to click on your link to buy on Amazon. Use Text Links in your product reviews to link to the Amazon product.

In this Post, we have provided some step-by-step ideas on "How to make money with Amazon" with a blog. You are now ready to start making money with your Amazon affiliate program. So what are you waiting for?

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