– Hey, what's up. Welcome back to another
episode of Boss Tip Thursday, where I share weekly tips and tutorials to help you get stuff done. And today it's all about
Amazon Affiliate Marketing. If you're new to affiliate marketing, if you have no clue how
to even get started, this tutorial is for you. We're going to be going over: what exactly is this? What is Amazon affiliate marketing? Then I'm going to be showing you how to create your own
account with Amazon, your own Associate's account, so you can start getting into this. I'm going to be showing
you an in-depth tutorial on how to read your dashboard, where it shows your sales, your clicks, and exactly what's going
on with your account. And lastly, we'll end this video with some frequently asked questions
about this program. So if you're ready to learn
about all these things, then keep watching.
An Amazon Affiliate is a person who is partnered up with Amazon. The idea is that you bring
customers to their site, to their store, and if they buy
you get a commission for it. So you'll be getting special
links for each product that you want to refer, and Amazon will know when
they click that link, and you'll get that commission
for the product they buy or anything else that they buy along with the product you referred as long as they clicked your link and your referral link
brought them to Amazon, you get paid for anything they buy within the next twenty four hours, and it doesn't cost the
customer anything extra, it doesn't change the buying
experience in any way, you just get a small commission for bringing them there to Amazon.
And this is a fabulous way to fund your business in the beginning because as you know,
with YouTube and AdSense, it takes a long time
to start making money, and yet these videos take
time and effort and money to make them better. So this is a great way to start funding your business early on, and with the blog as well. The only way to make money on a blog is to do affiliate programs
like this Amazon one, or to create your own
products or services, but out of all those three ways, the easiest thing to get started with is this Amazon Affiliate Program, because everyone knows Amazon, everyone trusts and loves
them, it's a huge store, it's known worldwide. And to create your own
products and services, you have to start at the
bottom and build your trust, build your authority,
build your blog with SEO and all this other back stuff. So meanwhile, you work on that. You can supplement your income
with a program like Amazon. Okay, so to create your account, hop onto Amazon.com, scroll
all the way to the bottom. Here you will see this
little section that says, Make Money With Us.
And there's so many different
ways to make money on Amazon. Today we're gonna be focusing
on becoming an affiliate, so click on that, then click
on this Join Now for Free, and now you can either sign
in with an Amazon account you already have, an account
that you use to make purchases, or you can go ahead and
create a new Amazon account if you want to keep things separate.
I already haven't account, so I'm gonna be creating a new one just to show you the process. Then you'll be directed to
the application process. For the top here you want
to put your Payee Name exactly should appear on your paycheck, or when they direct deposit your money. You should put your address,
along with your city, your state, zip code, your phone number, and who is the main
contact for this account. For most of us it's gonna
be the payee listed above unless you have a VA
who's doing this for you.
So then you'd need to click someone else. The next part you have to fill out, the websites that you own, the websites that you're going to be using to promote affiliate links. And this is the part that it gets a little bit
tricky for some people. Unfortunately you do
need an active website or other platform that has
enough high quality content to be accepted. They just wanna make sure
that you're going to be promoting their products properly. Amazon doesn't say precisely what the actual requirements are, so if you do have like, a
website, a YouTube channel, or any other sort of,
like, social media page with some content, add all of those here. When I signed up I only had
about four or five blog posts on my website with not that
much engagement at all, so I still got accepted.
So give it a try. Whatever you have going on
that has some sort of content where you'll be sharing
the affiliate links, just add it here. You never know, just go ahead and try it. The worst thing that can happen is that they won't accept
you, they will tell you why, and then you can reapply. And if you happen to
have any sort of apps, you can go ahead and add
the URLs for that here, then let's click Next. This bottom little portion
basically just says that you're not allowed to use affiliate links on any websites that are
aimed towards teenagers, 13 years and under,
that's just not allowed.
So you just have to
confirm that your website isn't directed towards
13 year olds or younger. So go ahead and click
No if that's the case. All right, and now we're
onto this next part of the application, I'm
just gonna go over each of the fields and explain what they mean. The first field here is
the Amazon Associates ID. This is just the name you want to give to
your affiliate account.
You can put your real name,
your business name, or nickname. It doesn't really matter,
it's not a big deal. Just put any sort of name here. Here's your websites that you listed at the beginning of the application. And then here you have to explain what your website is all about. One word won't cut it here. This is your chance to explain
why you're a good candidate for the Amazon program. So say what you do, who it's for, what kind of Amazon products
will you be sharing, and stuff like that. Just make it sound convincing. Then after that we're going
on to the topics that describe what you're doing best. So they have a primary
and a secondary topic, so just go through those and
click what describes you, your business, your website, the best. What type of Amazon items
do you intend to list on your websites and mobile apps? Go ahead and click any
and all that apply here. And then next, we're going to the type of
websites or mobile apps.
Our options are comparison
shopping engines, content, or niche websites,
coupon deals, or search. For most of us, it's going to be just
content and niche websites. Next, Traffic and Monetization section. You have to declare how
you will drive traffic to your website. Will you be driving
traffic to your website through email, maybe through advertising, through other social media, SEO, blogs? Click any and all that apply here. How do you utilize your website and apps to generate income? Here there's different
other affiliate programs that you may be part of. So go ahead and click the ones that apply, or if Amazon Associates
will be the only way that you're going to
monetize your site for now, just go ahead and click that part. Next, how do you usually build your links? Most of us build our links
through a WordPress website. Not many of us are using
HTML editors or any of that.
So I think the best
option for most of us here is blog editor. Next, how many total unique visitors do your websites and apps get per month? So all of the website that
you listed in the beginning that are here, all of those combined, all your social medias,
all your websites, emails, all of that, how much traffic do they get per month combined? So make your best estimate,
and select that answer. And then your reason for
joining the Associates program.
Do you want to get rich
content for your sight? Maybe you want to make sure
that you're linking out to products you're talking about. Or do you want to monetize your site? For many of us it's both of these answers, so I guess just pick the one that best describes you right now. Next, how did you hear about us? Just click the one that
makes the most sense for you.
Were you searching online? Did you hear by word of mouth? Someone tell you about it? Or did you hear about it
from the Amazon website? And lastly, all you have to
do is type in the characters, and click Next. So let me go ahead and fill this form out, and I'll be right back. And that's the end of
the application process. Now all you really have to
do is verify your identity by inputting your phone number here. And make sure that this code up front is the one that you need to be using. For most of us, I think
it will be this plus one. Just make sure that this is correct so that they will be able to call you and give you your PIN so that
you can access your account. – [Amazon Recording]
This is an automated call from Amazon.com. Using the touchpad on your phone, please enter the four digit PIN number that is displayed on your screen.
(touchpad beeps) – [Sandra] Okay, so now
you just have to agree to the terms and condense,
and click Finish, and that is everything, you're all done. The only thing that will be pending now is your tax information. If you're from the United States, you're going to be filling
out your typical tax form. If you're from a different country, or you're exempt from paying
taxes for some reason, they do have an exempt form for you which I know nothing about because I do live in the United States.
But Amazon is always there to help you, just email them and they will respond, or you can always just
click this Later option because you're technically not accepted to the Amazon program yet. You still have to make your first sale, and they have to go review
your application still. So you're technically not accepted. You may wanna wait to
go through the hassle of doing all this tax
information until later. And a couple things to talk
about from the top box here is that this is your Amazon Associates ID, so make sure that you
know this and you keep it, 'cause you may need it in the future. And as you see down here that if you have not
made any qualified sales within 180 days, your
application will be canceled, and you won't have access
to the Associate Central or any of that.
So that's just something to keep in mind. So now I'm just gonna click
Later for this tax information, and show you the dashboard. Here will always be your notifications. If Amazon has something new going on, or their policy changes, they will always let you
know via these notifications, or via email, so make sure
you check your emails. Here in this dropdown menu
below your email address you will find all sorts
of important information, like your account settings,
your payment history, managing tracking IDs, which
we'll get into in a second, and just signing out.
In Account sets, you go there to change
stuff about your profile, or if you ever want to
add or delete websites, this is where you will go. For example, if you didn't
have a Pinterest account when you started your application process, but now you do, and you're going to be sharing affiliate links there, it's important to come back
here and edit that information.
Go ahead and add the website here, because this just keeps you
in good standing with Amazon. This navigation bar is filled
with all sorts of cool links, logs, and discussion
boards, so many cool things. So look through all of this just so you know what's up there. Down here is your overview of the last 30 days of
your sales, and clicks, and everything that's
going on with your account. If you want a more detailed report of exactly what's going
on with your account, click on View Full Report Here. In this detailed report section, you can customize it however you want. You can have a look at
just today, yesterday, last seven days, last 30
days, or do a custom range.
Bounties are a one-time
flat rate that you get paid for Amazon programs,
such as Baby Registry, Amazon Prime, if someone
signs up via your link, you get paid a one time fee,
and that's what bounties are. Fees are what you actually get paid, the percentage commission you get paid for referring Amazon products. And then these summaries,
just both of these combined. Furthermore, down here we
have different summaries. We have clicks, orders, shipped,
conversions, and earnings. So these are just the
clicks you got but no sales, how many people actually ordered, and the things that have been shipped. You don't get paid for anything
until it's been shipped. And then the conversions are
just the click to buy ratio, so out of the people who
did click on the link, how many people actually bought? And all this is important information to keep a close look at so
that you know what's working and you can do more of that,
and you know what's not working and what you should stop
wasting your time on.
And the last thing we'll
talk about in this dashboard is how to create and
manage your Tracking IDs. So to do that you go under your email, this dropdown menu here, and
click on Manage Tracking IDs. And Tracking IDs are just
a way for you to track where your traffic is coming from. If you're going to be
promoting affiliate links on Instagram, Facebook,
your website, YouTube, it's a good idea to know where
your traffic is coming from so that you can zero in on what's working. Click Add Tracking ID, for example, say I wanted to create one for Instagram. So I'll just go here and click Instagram, click Create, and then
if that one is taken, they'll give you some
different options here. Now when you come back to your dashboard, you can always see all
of your links together, or you can just see the Instagram one, just see if what sales came
from this link specifically. And the easiest way to create
an Amazon affiliate link is to log on to Amazon
using the information that you used to create
your Associate's account, look for your product here, and then click on this stripe on top.
You can use the affiliate links
in so many different ways. You can share it directly to
Twitter, directly to Facebook, or you can have a text and a image that you may wanna embed into a website. You can have just the
image that's clickable straight to this product page,
or you can use just text. Here normally, you would see a list of all the tracking ideas
you've created in the past. You select the one you wanna use with this particular
affiliate link, and that's it. All of that is embedded into this link. When someone clicks on it, Amazon knows that it
came from your account. All you have to do is copy
and paste it wherever. Now I'm going to be answering
frequently asked questions that I get all the time.
The first one is, how
much money would I make with Amazon Affiliate Marketing? So you get paid 4%, up to 4% for the products people buy
from your referral links. This percent can go all the way up to 10. I believe it's just the more you sell, the more percentage you get paid. But a specific number, it's hard to say. Because it varies from person to person, and it varies from month to month, depending on what you sell. It all comes with different percentages. I will say this. You can use this program
just to make extra money, to supplement your income, as I said. You have other things going on, but this is just a little bit extra.
And that's kind of the way I use it. I just create videos, create blog posts, and share books that I'd recommend anyway. Content that I would create anyway, and link to affiliate links when possible. And that's the way I've been doing it. I just do business as usual, and recommend when possible. Which thank you, by the way, if you use my links to make purchases. I really appreciate your support. But another way to do it is to go all in, like literally create a whole website around a specific product from Amazon, say cameras for example.
You can do camera reviews
and link to these cameras, and equipment, and everything
you're using from Amazon, and make a niche website, and
that's how you can make this a full time income. But there's really so much
to do with this program, it's really up to you. But the more you learn, the
more effort you put into it, the more you will earn. How and when do I get paid? You get paid once a month
towards the end of the month. Once your tax information is filled out, you will get this money in
your bank, direct deposited, or you may get a check,
depending on where you live.
They have different
rules for each country, so you'll have to check on that. But for direct deposit, you do have to meet a
threshold of only $10, and for checks you have to
meet a threshold of $100. So once your tax, and your
threshold is good to go, you will get paid towards
the end of the month. Where can I share my affiliate links? You can share your links
pretty much anywhere. On your website, on most
social media's will allow it, like Pinterest, and Instagram, Facebook, most of these sites do allow it, but there are a lot of
rules behind all this, so I really recommend that
you read Amazon's policy and really learn more about it so that you can make sure that
you're following the rules, and you're not kicked out of the program.
How do I get clicks and sales? It really is going to take time. You can't just publish two
articles, make two videos, and link up affiliate
products that you're using, and expect to get a lot of sales. It doesn't work that way. Like everything else that I talk about, like in the video of Nine
Side Hustle Ideas, it's easy. Like I just showed you how to set up your account in minutes.
It's easy. It doesn't take a rocket scientist. Everyone can do it. But it does take time,
and effort, and patience, and testing, and sticking it out, really. So do your best to keep
learning, see what works, and then try to do more of
that, try to experiment, and find different ways. There's really so much
information out there for you to continue to
learn about this program. But you really never get
something for nothing. You must put in your time, your effort, great, valuable content
to build an audience. And that's how you will bring in the clicks and sales eventually. All right, and that sums up this tutorial. I really do hope that I covered it all. I tried to make it as
condensed as possible, and put in as much information, and answer as much questions as possible. But if you have any more
questions about this, leave it in the comments down below. I will try to answer and help
you out as much as I can.
And if you have any other
requests for future tutorials, then make sure to leave that in the comments down below as well. And if you did find value in this video, do me a favor, and hit
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and that's all for today. I thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you next time. (mellow music).