This is a guest contribution from Joy Allford.
When it comes to making money from your blogging there are main routes most blogs take:
- Selling a product or service
- Monetizing with advertising such as Google AdSense
- Affiliate marketing
Something that is often overlooked by personal bloggers that are simply blogging for a hobby, or only interested in making a small income is how effective amazon marketing can be as a secondary income.
I am not going to be discussing how to build a complete site with Amazon (you can find the ultimate guide here), simply how to add some extra income to your blogging efforts with only a small amount of extra effort.
Related Reading: How to Make Money as an Amazon Affiliate
Why do I recommend Amazon Associates?
Amazon is the largest online market place; with I dare not count how many products. Put simply, there is a product related to every blog post you write. The downfall is they have a 24 hour cookie, meaning you only earn a commission if someone clicks your link and then makes a purchase of any item within 24 hours. Another downfall is if you live in a country where Amazon does not really ship to or have a large database of items for sale – but it depends where your readership is, and if they will make the purchases you suggest.
Social Media and Amazon
Adding amazon items to your social media schedule is a great way to boost your income. You could choose to share items simply of interest to your fan base or related to your products or service.
Another great way is to share quirky or funny products. These are often the types of products that will be shared or re-tweeted, meaning the life of your affiliate link can go on forever.
I tend to keep my sharing ratio low, 1 in 10 social media updates will be a product, it depends on which account I am using as to what kind of product I share.
Remember, there is nothing stopping you sharing items of interest to your friends on your personal accounts either, your friends probably shop on Amazon as well.
Your blog and Amazon
I have three websites: one is a passion niche, and one is focused on niche marketing, and the other of a viral nature.
On my viral blog I create entire list posts featuring amazon products. If you were in the wedding niche for example, you could create a list post once a month that is completely dedicated to Amazon products, maybe the 10 most expensive wedding rings, 15 bouquets under $100. These types of posts get shared, and anyone that clicks on your link doesn’t have to purchase the item you recommend for you to get paid. If they add the item to their cart, your cookie gets extended to 90 days, so if they complete checkout in the next three months you still get your commission for that item.
Related Reading: 11 Wacky Things Bought via My Amazon Affiliate Links in 2010
My niche marketing blog is where I write a review on a related Amazon product once a month. I then share that post on social media regularly until the next review is released.
Let’s assume you have a blog related to finances, you could review the latest budgeting book each month, often when new kindle books are released you can download them for free, you then wait until the free period is over before you release your review.
My lifestyle blog features Amazon’s custom ad banners, this allows you to add a selection of products to a banner style ad. For best results, I display this about half way through the post, with a mix of cheap and more expensive products related to the post. A recent post was related to de-cluttering your home; I put a banner in the middle containing five books about de-cluttering.
Regardless of what your niche is, you can make better use of the Amazon Associates program by thinking outside the box and a little careful planning. You can read Darren’s post about how he has made more than half a million dollars from the Amazon Affiliates program here for extra ideas too. It’s a pretty nice income just from promoting products that your readers want to look at and will find useful.
I hope you have got some great ideas, leave any questions in the comments and I will do my best to help.
Related Reading: How to Increase your Amazon Affiliate Earnings for the Holidays
Joy blogs about niche affiliate marketing here, and you can find her on Twitter.
I created an Amazon affiliate program for my products Joy but have not promoted it too much. May be time to spread the word freely on that.
What I did: I gave folks a step by step tutorial for setting up an Amazon affiliate account. Then I showed how you can find Blogging from Paradise eBooks, audio books and paperbacks on Amazon. You’re free to add up to 15 items. I think. You can correct me on that one ;)
More than a few folks have joined as affiliates. I see BFP products adorning their sidebar. Helps a bunch with boosting sales but more than that, with branding. Just share your products freely but make sure that you’re providing valuable solutions for your audience because folks crave value above all else.
It sure helps to do transparent reviews too. Either creating the product or using it to share what’s inside – and the benefits of the book or whatever – can build trust, and trust can boost sales nicely. I review or outline each one of my eBooks to give readers a gander at what they’re buying. We all know how we’ll spend those 99 cents, right? Hehehe…..
Ryan
I personally believe if Amazon raised starting commission rates from 4% to at least 7% perhaps they can see more affiliates working around the clock even more promoting the Amazon affiliate program. I so believe being an affiliate of the Amazon affiliate program is a great way to earn some stable income, but starting commission percentage is way too low if you personally asked me. There are many people quietly earning a fortune from the Amazon affiliate program, who like yourself have been quite successful writing reviews of products and services sold through Amazon. These are most likely the kinds of people that don’t have a day job or take affiliate marketing seriously to heart. Do you feel that Amazon would fare off better if they raise the starting commission from 4% to 7% for new affiliates?
amazon affiliate program is a great way for bloggers to make a buck.. thank you for posting
I’ve been using flipkart and amazon affiliates from past year. there are good. recently I’ve started using vcommission. it is somewhat good. but the commission rate is very low. the sweet spot of vcommission is it has many programs when compared to others in india
That’s bunch of great tips to try. People generally tend to avoid affiliate marketing because they don’t want to put much effort in bringing out the result. Affiliate marketing won’t show results overnight. It takes time before you see your first sell. There are plenty of opportunities for affiliate marketing and Amazon is certainly the best of them all. Thanks for inspiring.
Thanks a lot for the lecture, Darren. My concern, -as a totally newbie-, is that while I am residing in Jakarta, and of
course with my Indonesian English, could you please provide me with essential and technical ingredients for my
idea to start with Amazon Affiliate Program. Once again, thank you very much for your advice and time.
It’s also important to note that Amazon is 14 different storefronts globally, and 12 different affiliate programs. Anyone can join all of them, but Brazil, Mexico, China, India, and Japan require a local bank account to issue payment.