Amazon is the world’s largest eCommerce website. In India, you would need a website to apply and a pan card to get paid. In Amazon Affiliate Marketing, three parties are involved. They are the Merchant, Amazon Affiliate Network, and your website. The Process of Amazon Affiliate Marketing is to first conduct niche research. Find out a low competition and profitable niche. Next would be to do keyword research. Then start out with a website for the select niche and write articles on your niche. Sign up for an ‘affiliate-program.amazon.in’ account. Once approved go through their website and create links to specific products on your site. Widgets can also be embedded on your site. Amazon’s massive data and optimization make it possible for the vast majority of affiliate website users to end up buying from them. Check the Amazon T&Cs and privacy policy and follow the rules for not getting banned.
Read more by clicking on Niche Marketing Strategy & Affiliate Marketing. Bloggers or website owners eager to make a living by reviewing products, cinema, books, or any other items on Amazon should create an entire website dedicated to this purpose.
Amazon Affiliate Marketing: Set up your Niche Website
Domain Name -Relate your domain name to your Niche and keep it short. Use an exact match or a branded domain name with a .com extension preferably.
Web Hosting -A fast web hosting server is preferred.
Layout -Select a CMS platform such as WordPress.
To check out hosting and domain plans for WordPress click on Image as shown in above fig1. Their starter plan offers a free https and Cloudflare CDN which can be enabled in the c-panel. WordPress plugin ‘wordpress.org/plugins/sg-cachepress/’ is available for their GrowBig and GoGeek plans. The plugin helps resolve images for automatic optimization & lazy loading, gzip compression, minify CSS & HTML, etc.
Amazon Affiliate Marketing: Niche site SEO
Scale up your Niche Sites
Scale your website and grow traffic, focus on ROI for increasing revenue, use social media channels like Twitter, Pinterest & others, deploy automated software to replace manual operations, etc. SEO improves rankings in Search Engines such as Google, Bing, etc. Read more by clicking on Yoast SEO.
Keyword Research
It helps you increase web traffic both qualitative and quantitative through search results. Optimize your niche website by using relevant keywords that match the content of your post. Find out what keywords your users type in their browser for a search. Generate ideas for new content based on user behavior. Read more by clicking on ‘keyword-research‘.
Amazon Affiliate Theme
Pick up an amazon affiliate theme for your niche website from the many options both free and paid. A ‘woocommerce.com’ WordPress theme with a ‘storefront child’ theme can build an Amazon Affiliate store for free. Publish your WooCommerce Products on Amazon using the ‘WP-lister lite plugin’ for Amazon. To make the most of this integration you need to have a WooCommerce Store already setup.
Niche site On-page optimization
This deals with website speed optimization, publishing great & fresh media-rich content, placing keywords in title, URL, image alt tags, opening paragraph, and header-h2, h3… tags. Read more by clicking on on-page-SEO.
Link building
Authority sites have quality outbound links from an SEO viewpoint. Search engines are apt to provide value to their readers. The content linked to is of significance when it is from reliable and authoritative sources. Read more by clicking on what is link building in SEO. As per Googles’ guidelines make sure to add no-follow to affiliate links when you are to receive payment for such links. Use Code by adding the ‘no follow’ attribute eg: <a href=https://website.com/ rel=nofollow></a>. Alternatively, you can also use a WordPress plugin- ‘Ultimate Nofollow’ to add ‘no follow’ to links.
Conversion Rate Optimization
The conversion rate is conversion/no.of website users*100. It calls for optimization of your website to increase people to respond to CTA objectives eg subscribe to the newsletter or buy a product. Assess your sites’ sales funnel and establish ways to make improvements. A/B test alternatives to affect landing pages, design & layout, or anything else that would result in conversion growth. Employ tools- Analytics, Survey Research, Heat Mapping, etc to implement and boost Conversion Rate Optimization.
Amazon Affiliate Marketing: Dashboard
From the dashboard fig2 create product links and place them on your blog posts. Your affiliate link is embedded in the Code for the product tag. Earn advertising fees for any ‘buy from Amazon’ resulting by clicks from visitors on these links. Create links to integrate your WordPress website with Amazon using Amazon-Auto Links – Amazon Associates Affiliate Plugin
3 - Amazon Affiliate Marketing Dashboard: HomeAmazon Affiliate Marketing: Home
This section shows you a search bar under the ‘Quick Links Search for Product’ tab. Enter a keyword or (ASIN) Amazon Standard Identification Number (for products) or (ISBN) -International Standard Book Number (for books) in the search bar fig3. The other option is the ‘Browse for Product’ tab. Under this tab select any category to display popular products under that category. Click on any product to build a link to Amazons’ product page – covers Text and Image, Text only, Image only, and Add to Widget. Customize your link and see a live preview for the link type you selected. Next, get the code for your link for placing it on your website. Below the tabs is a graphical chart overview for the month of your earnings with the summary box next to it.
Amazon Affiliate Marketing: Product Linking
Products
Search for products fig4. Select the product and get HTML code.
Use the live preview and add to product links fig5. Customize links – show up in a new window, show border, and color for the background, title and price.
Banners
Use Banners fig6 of different standard banner sizes and link to amazon categories. Include exceptional banners for special Amazon festive season promotional sales such as Diwali or Christmas.
Link to Any Page
Link to favorite Destinations
eg fig 7 – Digital Photography
Link to Search Results
In fig 7 go to the ‘Link to Search Results tab‘. Choose to eg Books from the drop-down menu under the ‘Select a Product Link’. Next, enter your keywords eg ‘Digital Marketing’. Next name your Link eg Digital Marketing Books and click on Get HTML. Highlight and copy link [which contains your Amazon Associates ID] from the preview box on to your website.
Link to Any Page
eg: fig 8 Cotton Kurtis for Women
For blog posts written on a range of products serve the ‘Link to any page’ on the Amazon website where all list of items is on the same page.
Amazon Affiliate Marketing: Widgets
Pick products of your choice from the search and add product lists for ‘my favorites‘, or ‘slideshow’ widgets fig8. Add & Save your comments on the number of products selected. Customize the display option and click on ‘Add to my webpage’ tab to get code. Similarly, choose a display format – layout & size for the carousel Widget. Hand-pick a number of products of your choice or choose from lists including ‘Amazon Bestsellers’ and ‘Hot New Releases’. Get code- Flash or JS to embed the carousel widget on your blog or social media page.
Add a search widget box to the sidebar of your site. The search widget fig9 should match the layout of your webpage for settings- size and color. Users can then search the results of Amazon products from your page or redirect to the Amazons’ search results page. Copy and paste the Ad Code on your site where you want it to be displayed.
From the drop-down fig8 select, the size of Widgets and Banners and view fig10 supported widgets.
Amazon Affiliate Marketing: Tools
To enable ‘SiteStripe’ navigate to the tools tab on your Associates’ dashboard. From the drop-down click on SiteStripe. SiteStripe creates links for specific products or pages on Amazon that can be shared with your audience on your site or social media.
On the display page, click on the link-learn more fig11… and follow options to enable SiteStripe settings. Once enabled the display status turns orange.
Navigate to your product page on Amazon. Suppose you want to recommend McAfee Antivirus fig12 to your customer. You can see the SiteStripe tool across at the top of the page. In the SiteStripe click on Get Link and choose from text, image or text+image. Select the tracking ID from the drop-down if you happen to have more than one ID. Copy the choice of your Link – short Link or Full Link. Copy the Link and post it on your site or social network.
Paste your link in the Link checker tool and click on the check link. A message in green fig13 indicates that the link is tracking your affiliate ID correctly.
Amazon Affiliate Marketing: Reports
The Report fig14 provides you a summary of the earnings – Fees, Bounties, etc. The Fees extend to details such as clicks, ordered, shipped & conversion. Whilst the bounties give you the earnings of the total number of referrals. Navigate to the Fee Schedule tab and go through the fixed advertising rates offered for the various ‘Product category’. Make a note of ‘excluded products’ as well as ‘special offers and promotions’. The Download Reports tab allows you to download reports to your device.
